Shipwrecks and Rafts

Acali raft

How often do we hear that the base nature of humanity is pretty nasty and brutish? We may not hear it in our day-to-day conversations, but the belief is not far below the surface.

With the westernised culture based very much on Judeo-Christian teachings and credos the idea that humanity is basically flawed has been taught from early on.  The phrase original sin is not used in the Bible, but the implication is there. It was Saint Augustine (354 – 430 CE) who coined the phrase original sin and the term and its connotations have harassed and tormented us ever since.

Not only have theologians persuaded us of the nastiness of humanity, so too have philosophers over the ages. Thomas Hobbes 17^th century claim that life is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ is well known. In the 20^th century we hear the Italian philosopher, George Santayana, claiming that, if you ‘dig a little beneath the surface you’ll find a ferocious, persistent, profoundly selfish man.’

Psychologist too, could not resist the urge to tarnish our human nature. Consider this quote from the grandaddy of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud. Writing in 1930 he asserted that ‘the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting, instinctual disposition’ of humans.

All this can be summarised in the oft-quoted line, ‘Man’s (sic) inhumanity to man.’ Many of those quoting this are probably unaware of the source of the quotation. It is from a poem by the Scottish bard, Robert Burns. The poem was written in the late 18^th century amidst a time of social upheaval and economic gloom and reflects the pessimism and despair of the times. Even though the poem was written about a particular place and time the words have come to suggest inhumanity is the general nature of the human psyche and being.

In literature too we find this idea well established. Lord of the Flies (1954), by William Golding, is often cited as portraying the base nastiness and brutality of humanity if left without authority and any ethical grounding.

Yet, all these beliefs and worldviews are fictional, imaginary, and false.

At least two events indicate the spurious nature of the claim that we are nasty and brutish by nature.

A Shipwreck …

In June 1965 six Tongan boys (aged between 13 and 19 years old) stole a boat to run away from the boarding school in Nuku’alofa. Unfortunately for them a storm arose and the boat’s sail and rudder were destroyed. The anchor rope was also broken. For eight days they drifted in the Pacific Ocean aboard a steadily disintegrating boat. Eventually they sighted land, the uninhabited island of ‘Ata.

There they remained for the next 15 months before an Australian fishing boat captain noticed them. They were rescued and returned to their homes and families. By this time their families had given them up for dead.

The remarkable thing about the 15 months they spent castaway was that, contrary to the Lord of the Flies narrative, the boys remained in good spirits and shared out any resources and work that needed doing. Working in pairs they tended a garden, collected rainwater, and kept guard. They shared out cooking duties; one of them had built a fire by rubbing sticks together and they kept that fire going throughout their isolation.

At night they kept their spirits high by singing and playing an improvised guitar. Over the 15 months they wrote five original songs.

Following their rescue all six of the boys were found to be in good health.

A Youtube re-enactment with the boys was filmed in 1966. It can be seen here.

… and a Raft

Almost a decade later, in 1973, an experiment was undertaken designed by a Mexican anthropologist, Santiago Genovés. Genovés had read about research suggesting that violence amongst monkeys often was about males sexually competing for females. He wanted to see if this applied to humans as well. Although his intention, of discovering the sources of human violence and hence being able to bring about world peace, may have been admirable, the design and implementation of the experiment was not. The experiment might well fail the standards of an Ethics Committee if presented for academic study today.

Genovés chose a diverse group of five men and five women, all (according to him) sexually attractive, and all aged in their 20s and 30s. He had a raft built and named it Acali (from a Mexican language meaning house on the water. Using only the power of the wind and ocean currents the Acali took 101 days to sail from Spain to Mexico.

The voyage was a dangerous one, especially as they were heading into hurricane season. However, Genovés believed that in dangerous situations people would ‘revert to their baseline instincts.’

When violence between any of the participants did not eventuate within a week or so of leaving Spain, Genovés tried to provoke it by passing out questionnaires to the participants. Amongst the questions were ones such as; ‘who would you like to get rid of?’ ‘Who would you like to sleep with’, and other questions designed to ramp up the tension.

As the voyage progressed the participants, far from descending into their baseline instincts became friendly and more and more suspicious of the intentions of Genovés himself. At one stage they even debated whether to kill him and throw him overboard but decided against this.

The experiment did not bolster Genovés thesis that diverse groups of humans, when faced with danger, would descend into their baseline instincts of nastiness and brutality.

The experiment showed exactly the opposite.

At one point during the experiment Genovés retreated below deck in a depressed state. During this time he wrote perhaps the most insightful line in his journal that he had had during the entire journey.

He wrote: ‘Only one has shown any kind of aggression and that is me, a man trying to control everyone else, including myself.’

Genovés insight shows a keen observation and understanding of the nature of humanity.

Humanity’s instincts are not nasty and brutish.

But there are those amongst us that would use their power to manipulate and control others so that it would seem that way. We must continuously guard against this.

A documentary of the Acali Experiment is available on Youtube here.

The lesson from this shipwreck and raft experiment is that before we assume that the base nature of humanity is nasty, brutish, ferocious, or selfish, and that sinfulness is the natural state of Homo sapiens we might want to reflect on what these two events truly tell us.

Firmly Held Opinions

‘I’m not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.’ So opined the often acerbic Mark Twain.

Indeed, our propensity to mix facts and opinions is well established. Although we may know that an opinion may be based on fact; claiming a fact based on opinion is fallacious. Yet, we can all be guilty of such, can we not? Indeed, these blogpieces of mine are most likely full of opinions not based on facts.

Is this a problem? Maybe, maybe not. Having opinions, or views on subjects helps us gain clarity. Having clarity helps us make moral choices. Clarity helps us navigate the world.

Yet, holding on too dearly to an opinion can be a problem. It is when we grasp hold of an opinion and cling to it steadfastly that we create problems for ourselves and those around us.

It is the clinging that is the problem, not the opinion itself.

The first, and possibly clearest, problem with clinging to opinions is that in doing so we are almost compelled to disagree with someone with a different opinion. Continuing to adhere to our opinion is then likely to arouse an emotional response in both of us. In turn these emotions can lead to anger, and possibly even violence. All of this leads ultimately to a closed mind.

A second problem is that the opinions we hold may indicate culturally ingrained worldviews and belief systems. Hold onto these opinions too strongly means that we hide these worldviews and beliefs from ourselves. Holding beliefs rigidly stymies our critical thinking ability and thus our chance to examine where and how we come to hold certain beliefs.

Associated with this second problem is that if we hold onto our opinions too steadfastly then we can find it difficult to accept that the world is continually changing. Our learning potential becomes thwarted.

Perhaps the most damaging problem with clinging to our opinion is that we tend to then associate our opinion with what is “true.” We can easily tell ourselves that our opinions are “right” and that contrary opinions are “wrong.” We come then to associate our opinions with reality.

If we step back from our rigidity of thought we can recognise how deeply fixed we are to opinions, viewpoints, and belief systems. We can see it in ourselves and in others. Wider afield, we can see this inflexibility in larger systems, including geopolitics.

No wonder there are many “enemies” in the world.

As the English language developed the word opinion came to the language via Proto-Italic roots. The word opeje has the meaning of to choose. Intriguingly, opeje also meant to grab. It would seem that early speakers of what has become the English language knew the danger of opinions; they recognised that there was a danger in grasping onto opinions.

To recap.

Having opinions is not a problem.

Holding onto opinions rigidly is.

For my own part, I do find holding opinions lightly to be a difficult undertaking.

Solstice Reflections (A poem)

Here in the Southern Hemisphere the winter solstice is only three days away. For those of you reading this in the Northern Hemisphere it will be your summer solstice. This poem is written from the perspective of one living in the Southern Hemisphere.

Solstice Reflections

The day is short, the night is long

We mark it simply as another day, on

Calendars and watches, tick off time

Second by second, day by day

Never noticing the turning of our sphere

For we have turned the longest night, away

From darkness, dreams and from our fears

Made it resplendent with lamp and street light, this

Cycle we once knew

Day and night, night and day

Birth and death, death and birth

Where is our soul, where is our place?

We’ve torn ourselves from the earth

And now, another long night is here

We give it a number, give it a date

It is simply not as it was last year

Maybe I should go and mark the spot

Upon the horizon where sun does rise

Note the shifting of each rising sun, maybe

Then I would see, I would comprehend

My place, my time, is not marked by a line, but

By a circle, with no beginning, and no end.

Progress Is Lovely

Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne,
characters in "Brave New World."

‘Progress is lovely.’ So declares Lenina Crowne, one of the characters in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World.

Brave New World, published in 1932, imagines a world set well into the future where citizens are controlled, not by an authoritarian “Big Brother” (as in George Orwell’s 1984), but by being fed a constant supply of a happiness drug (soma) and having been programmed from the time of artificially engineered birth via sleep-learning and conditioning. Each engineered person is assigned to one of five classes (from Alphas to Epsilons) and remain in that class throughout life.

Lenina is a Beta and enjoys this situation; she cannot do otherwise due to her conditioning. Her partner at the time of her statement about progress being lovely is Bernard Marx, an Alpha Plus and a sleep-learning specialist. Bernard is somewhat of a misfit; he is short and does not enjoy many of the pursuits and experiences that other residents of this brave new world do. Crucially, he does not enjoy the drug soma, completely at odds with his contemporaries. Bernard missed out on something in his conditioning. This makes him a non-conformist yet is tolerated because of his Alpha status.

Bernard’s non-conformism though, does mean he is sceptical of Lenina’s assertion.

He replies to her, ‘Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen to seventeen.’ Huxley has Bernard saying this ‘…wearily, as though to himself.’

Lenina does not hear him clearly and asks him what he said. Bernard restates Lenina’s own declaration, ‘I said that progress was lovely.’

In this short exchange we hear the majority habituated view, expressed by Lenina, that progress is to be desired. Bernard, on the other hand, alludes to this idea being a conditioned one; a thought that one is indoctrinated into throughout the teenage years.

Reading Brave New World today we might ask ourselves if the notion that progress is lovely has indeed been a conditioned one since our own childhood.

The idea that we, individually and collectively, must progress is deeply ingrained. Individually we attempt to keep up with the Jones’ and collectively we keep searching for the next great technological breakthrough.

Progress is a seductive notion promising that if we keep increasing our income and wealth, obtain more material things, grow the GDP, invest in new technologies, then the future will be better. Progress vows to help us live longer, happier lives.

If there are unwanted harmful by-products of all this, then progress claims that more progress will fix them.

But, all that is a sham, and Bernard Marx knew it. Sadly, he can only voice his reservation ‘…as though to himself.’

What is the goal of progress? What is our destination? When will we get there? Crucially, what will be the signposts to indicate that we have reached our journey’s end?

The creed of progress does not answer these questions. Progress simply offers more progress as if there is no destination. Significantly, as we are finding out to our detriment, the progress myth does not recognise any limits to the journey. According to the progress mantra we never reach a stage in the journey where we can say, this is it, this is where we have enough.

No, progress promises that the future is always better. The corollary of this is that there can never be enough.

Yet, Bernard Marx (and his creator, Aldous Huxley) saw through the conditioning and indoctrination that we are constantly fed through the media, advertising, and political campaigns.

In the early 1930s when Aldous Huxley was writing Brave New World, he imagined that such a world, if it was to come at all, would arrive well into the future. However, a little less than thirty years after Brave New World was published, Huxley wrote the non-fiction book Brave New World Revisited. Therein Huxley noted that the world of Brave New World was arriving much quicker than he had imagined.

In the time since Brave New World Revisited was published (in 1959) we would have to conclude that Huxley’s imaginative world has truly become more firmly established.

Is there a better future than that portrayed in Brave New World? Is it possible that we might progress (excuse the pun) toward a healthier world? Is it possible that we might dispense altogether with the endless desire for progress?

Aldous Huxley published his final novel, Island in 1962, a year before his death. Island is the utopian counterpoint to Brave New World.

In the years to come, can we divert ourselves from the dangerous mantra of progress, progress, more, more and direct ourselves towards something more akin to Island?

 

Note:

1. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Longman, Harlow, Essex, England, Second impression 1983 (text originally published 1932)

Let Goats Escape

In Leviticus 16:8 and 16:10 we read that Aaron (the brother of Moses) was tasked with separating, by lot, two goats. One goat was to be offered as a sacrifice for the sin of the people. The other was to be an atonement for the sin of the people and it was to be let free into the wilderness. This second goat effectively escaped being a sacrificial offering.

When William Tyndale (1494 to 1536) undertook the first translation of the Bible from Greek, Hebrew, and German into the English language he coined the word (e)scapegoat as a translation of the Hebrew words that referred to the second goat.

So today, in the English language Bible we read that ‘…the scapegoat shall be presented live before the Lord…’ and that Aaron was to ‘…let it go as the scapegoat into the wilderness.’¹

The scapegoat that Arron let go took with it the sins of the people. Leviticus 16:22 tells us that this goat ‘…shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land: and (Aaron) shall release the goat in the wilderness.’

The word scapegoat has now been part of the English language for almost 400 years. We are still making use of it, and doing so increasingly. In the early 1800s the word was used approximately 0.04 times in every one million words uttered. By 2019 it was being used 0.83 times in every one million words. That is a staggering twenty-fold increase in just 200 years.

Why? we might ask.

Does the increase in the number of times we use the word scapegoat mean that we are more willing to atone for our sins? Does it indicate an increase in the number of scapegoats?

Or, through a subtle shift in the sense of the word scapegoat, does it suggest a keenness to shift the blame for our sins, and iniquities, onto someone else, and treat them as a scapegoat?

Today, the meaning has shifted subtly. A scapegoat is someone who is blamed for the sins and iniquities of another. Furthermore, in today’s world a scapegoat is not only blamed, but often punished. We see it often, don’t we; not only at an individual level, but also at a societal and even global level. Something bad happens and immediately we (individually and/or collectively) look around for a scapegoat – someone to blame.

That someone (the scapegoat) is then threatened in all sorts of ways. It could be a threat of personal violence. It could be the threat of exile. It could, as we have seen many times throughout the past century, be the threat of bombing and invasion of one country by another.

The scapegoat nowadays is no longer the means by which our sins, iniquities, and harms are let go into the wilderness. The scapegoat is the reason for those sins, iniquities, and harms.

When will we rediscover the courage to admit that we can be the authors of our own misfortune and not seek out a scapegoat to blame, accuse, and threaten?

If the world is ever to find some peacefulness and harmony then we will have to learn what Aaron was taught.

We will have to let the goats escape.

Notes

1. Holy Bible, New King James Version, copyright 1990 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Six Million Years of Power and Sex

We humans share 98.7% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives in the diversity of life on this planet. The common ancestor to all three of us existed around six million years ago. Chimpanzees and bonobos split into two species around two million years ago. This split appears to have coincided with a drastic reduction in the flow of the Congo River.

Today, chimpanzees are mainly found north of the Congo River in equatorial Africa. In the wild bonobos are found exclusively south of the river in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Why do the two species remain apart? Because of the Congo River.

Chimpanzees are reluctant, or unable, to swim. Bonobos are also reluctant swimmers, although they do sometimes forage waist deep in water.

The Congo River is the deepest river in the world, the ninth longest, and the third largest by discharge volume. It is also very wide, up to 19km across at its widest point. No wonder reluctant swimmers, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, have not crossed from one side to the other during the past couple of million years. But that drop in flow about two million years ago was just enough to enable a band of their common ancestor to cross the river.

Thus, for the past two million years, chimpanzees and bonobos have been evolving along separate trajectories. They may have had a common ancestor but nowadays they display dissimilar behaviours and identities.

Chimpanzees have been studied for much longer than bonobos and hence less is known about bonobos than chimpanzees even today, especially in the wild. As we have a common ancestor with chimpanzees from six million years ago it has been tempting to identify some of our human behaviours as similar to that of chimpanzees, and to trace these comparable behaviours back to that common ancestor.

These studies suggested that our levels of violence and male dominance have their beginnings in our common ancestral heritage. We have been seduced into thinking that such behaviours are innate in our DNA.

However, more recent studies of bonobos are calling this innateness into question.

Bonobos have sometimes been labelled as the hippie chimp. Bonobos do tend to display less aggression and a greater degree of egalitarianism than their chimpanzee cousins. This rigid distinction however, is simplistic. The reality is much more nuanced. Bonobos do become aggressive, although their aggression usually does not go as far as killing one another, as it can do with chimpanzees. Furthermore, bonobo aggression in the male of the species is normally restricted to male-on-male aggression. Chimpanzee males, on the other hand, more often direct their aggression towards females. Chimpanzee males are also likely to coerce females into sex, whereas male bonobos do not.

A further distinction between the two related species is in the manner in which they go about reconciliation after such violence. Bonobos use sex. In bonobo society sex is used to build close relationships, to calm one another down, and to resolve conflict. Sex is also used by bonobos as a way of greeting strangers.

Bonobos can be thought of as xenophiles, whereas chimpanzees act more from a xenophobic stance. Bonobo clans enjoy meeting another, sometimes unknown, clan of bonobos. It is often the females of each clan that initiate this contact, usually with sex.

The ways in which chimpanzees and bonobos deal with power and sex are noticeably divergent. So much so that the noted primatologist, Frans de Waal, quipped that ‘…(chimpanzees) resolve sexual issues with power, while (bonobos) resolve power issues with sex.’¹

All of this, of course, raises questions about the level of violence, and male aggression towards females within our own human societies.

Can we, as was once time thought, blame our genetic coding for male violence within the Homo sapiens species? Has our evolutionary history predetermined that men should be dominant over women?

When we consider the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos, the answer is clearly not.

We (chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans) have a common evolutionary path, yet we find that the two species that split most recently (two million years ago) have developed quite distinct behavioural traits. This suggests that male violence and male dominance is not innate. It is instilled in large part culturally.

If culturally imparted, then it can be culturally immobilised.

Let us hope that it does not take another six million years for that to happen.

 

Notes:

1. Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, Granta Books, London, 2005

Prediction, Prophecy, or Probability

Nostradamus

This blog begins with a supposition that globally we are in a mess; although predicament might be a more technical term than mess. The mess is made up of environmental, social, personal, and familial elements.

Can we get out of this mess? The answer to that seems to clearly be “no!” The reasons for this answer are many, and a later blogpiece may address those reasons. One of the compelling reasons for answering “no” however is that collectively we do not appear to realise that we are in a mess.

If we are unable to get out of the mess, can we get through it? By that I mean can we pass through a bottleneck and emerge, as a living species, on the other side of the bottleneck. We have been through a bottleneck before, although most of us won’t remember doing so; after all, it happened almost one million years ago. At that time 98% of the Earth’s hominid population failed to survive, leaving only approximately 1,280 reproductive individuals to make it through.¹

So, it has been done before. Could it happen again? Could we get through this mess and pass through a bottleneck to a future in which Homo sapiens is one of the surviving species on the planet?

There are at least three major techniques by which we might answer that. We could predict the future, based on previous trends, and using a logical approach to analysis. We might approach a soothsayer or someone with special authority from a divine being to prophesise the future. Or, thirdly, we could assign probabilities to a range of scenarios.

As the Latin etymology of the word implies, prediction literally means to say before. Prediction usually implies one prescribed outcome. To say something will happen before it has happened is a recipe for being accused, at best of being wrong, at worst of lying.

In the current situation (in the midst of a mess) there are some who take the techno-optimist view that our future technological expertise will enable us to get through the mess. Others proclaim that this is the end of the road for humans. The Sixth Mass Extinction that is upon us, they say, includes Homo sapiens as one of the species that will go extinct. Then, there are many others who take a number of different positions between these two extremes.

All of them make a prediction that excludes all other possibilities.

What about prophecy? Can we reliably seek the announcement of a prophet to foretell the future. Some do. Etymologically, prophecy derives from the Old French word profete meaning a prophet or soothsayer. Prior to the Old French the word goes back to the Greek word propheteia which meant to have the gift of being able to interpret the will of God. Hence, prophecy has a spiritual or divine factor in its meaning, and a prophecy is passed on to a human prophet via some supernatural being.

For many early prophets the purpose of their prophecy was to warn of impending consequences should changes in behaviour not occur. For later prophets (e.g. the well-known Nostradamus) the prophecies were less about warnings and more about outlying future events. Some prophesies succeeded, but many (perhaps most) did not.

Prophecy too, is not a reliable foretelling of the future.

Finally, we could assign probabilities to a range of future scenarios. This is what most futurists do. Probability also has an interesting etymological history. During the 16^th century it meant that something was likely to be true. By the early 18^th century the word had taken on the statistical meaning of the frequency with which a proposition is true measured against experience. Hence, absolute certainty would have a probability of 100% and complete uncertainty would be 0%. The probability of something being true, in the statistical sense, lies somewhere between 0% - 100%, rarely being set at either of the extremes.

Thus, a number of future scenarios could be described and assigned a probability of accurately depicting what actually happens in the future.

Coming back now to the earlier question. Can we get through the mess? Furthermore, if we can get through, will those who do so emerge with a more healthy and sustainable culture?

I am extremely reluctant to predict the future, as being certain of what the future will bring is impossible for me to predict (if you’ll excuse the circular argument.) I do not have access to any divine or supernatural message and so I am unable to prophesy anything about the future.

It is, however, possible for me to assign probabilities towards differing future scenarios. Some of those possible scenarios hopefully will include societies and cultures that are wise enough to not make the mistakes we have made in getting ourselves into this mess. Hopefully too, those future societies will be able to inhabit the Earth in a sustainable and cooperative manner, respecting all the Earth’s creatures.  

For us now, on the edge of this mess and peering into the bottleneck we might ask ourselves: How can we skew the probabilities towards a higher chance of betterment in a post-collapse future?

The answer to this is not what we do in the future.

The answer lies in what we do here and now.

The answer exists in what seeds we sow today that may bear fruit tomorrow. The answer rests on our ability to plant the seeds, knowing that we will not be fortunate enough to eat the fruits thereof.

And that enterprise involves giving up the paradigms we have been living with and adopting new paradigms.

How we do that is the subject of another blogpiece.

Notes

1. Juliet Dubois, Daily Galaxy, 5 June 2025, Only 1,280 Survived: The Near-Extinction Event That Nearly Wiped Out Humanity 1 Million Years Ago