Max Only Borders on Good Point

Over at TCS Daily is a Max Borders piece called "The Stone Age Trinity", in which his espousal of evolutionary biology causes him to miss making some interesting points, and write a rambling piece that goes nowhere instead. In fact, the piece completely misses the evolutionary advantage served by emotions because of its presumption that three negative emotions inherently lack value to a human being in the context of today's society.

Borders speaks of a trio of negative "egalitarian" emotions people can feel in the context of comparing their fortunes to those of others.

The late philosopher Robert Nozick pointed out that when people compare themselves to one another, they are disposed to feel one of two emotions -- guilt or envy. Guilt when someone has a lower station than you; envy when someone has a higher station than you. I would add a third to this mix: indignation. That's when you compare someone of a higher station to someone of a lower station, and feel that something is wrong. I refer to this complex of emotional responses to unequal life-stations as the "Stone Age Trinity."

The first thing that jumps out at me is that Borders drops context in a couple of different ways at once. Let's focus on just one of these for a moment: whether a given emotion is appropriate or can serve a useful purpose to a selfish human being. I can immediately think of good reasons why any one of the so-called "Stone Age Trinity" might be an appropriate and constructive emotion. So I'll go through an example of each.

(1) Guilt If someone actually cheated another person out of what was rightfully his, guilt would be wholly appropriate. Aside from possibly causing a person to act justly, by returning his ill-gotten gains, the shame at deception might also, sooner or later, trigger some healthy introspection, which might lead to the realization that attempting to live by fraud causes one not only to depend upon others, but upon the inability of others to detect fraud. Such a line of thought could ultimately lead one to resolve to become more independent and so become able to make his own way.

(2) Envy Here, I am not talking about what Ayn Rand called "hatred of the good for being the good", but of the less malevolent mixture of jealousy and resentment that most people refer to. At the very least, a feeling of jealousy might cause one to realize something like, "Well, if that clown can do it, so can I," and this could ultimately be just the sort of kick in the seat of the pants someone needs to get going, and realize his potential in some way. Resentment, a bit less healthy at first, again can trigger reflection. "Why do I resent this person?" might be a starting point. Someone might come to realize that his resentment comes from the more fortunate person's harder work, greater skill, or better connections -- all things that someone can make for himself through his own effort. The feeling of resentment may well be a reaction to having essentially being told "You're not good enough," and initially feeling powerless to do anything about it. It is only when considering how the more fortunate person won out, and seeing that it was not "all luck" that one realizes that he does have the power to do better the next time. Ultimately, such a thought process will cause someone to stop feeling powerless as he takes matters into his own hands rather than bemoaning the "good luck" of some other chap.

(3) Indignation is the most interesting of the Borders's Trinity to me because, although it is also a negative emotion, it is the one most often experienced by fully rational people -- when they experience or witness injustice. Clearly, this emotion can spur someone to act to seek justice. But because the function of this emotion is relatively straightforward, it becomes easy to introduce the second gaping hole in the context of Borders's argument: Where do emotions come from?

I have been alluding to the origin of emotional states throughout the last few paragraphs. I discussed this in more detail long ago, so I will just quote the meat of it here.

According to Ayn Rand, emotions are instantaneous, subconsciously-made evaluations of what one is experiencing or thinking about at any given moment. Emotions are also experienced, much like percepts. However, what one feels about something will ultimately be based on one's philosophical premises. The concept of rationality doesn't apply to emotions as such, although it certainly does to the thought processes that led someone to adopt the premises underlying the emotion. This is a profound and very important insight....

... Did you shout with glee and pass candy around like a savage on September 11, 2001? Or did you cry because you saw fellow human beings jumping out of windows? These differing emotions reveal opposite judgments of that event and of the value of human life. (In many cases, one's own: which philosophy led to nineteen men immolating themselves that day?) Were you angry? At America as the "world aggressor" or at the terrorists? Same emotion, different underlying philosophical premises.

Borders does not seem to appreciate the role that one's philosophical premises have in shaping one's emotional makeup. Rather than seeing egalitarianism as something we have a choice about, he sees it as "hard-wired". To wit:

Why do we have these egalitarian emotions? Religious folks would say we have egalitarian feelings because a benevolent God wants us to be charitable; or that greed is a sin. Moral philosophers might give us grand theories about guilt, envy and indignation that have to do with the "moral law" or some other high-falutin' rationale -- arguing, perhaps, that these feelings are a psychological complement to more enlightened reflection.

But I (and some others) think it has to do with the wiring of the brain -- a neural circuitry configured over millennia in our evolutionary past. In other words, I agree with the likes of some of the original evolutionary anthropologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby who, in their Primer on Evolutionary Psychology, write:

"The environment that humans -- and, therefore, human minds -- evolved in was very different from our modern environment. Our ancestors spent well over 99 percent of our species' evolutionary history living in hunter-gatherer societies. That means that our forebears lived in small, nomadic bands of a few dozen individuals who got all of their food each day by gathering plants or by hunting animals. Each of our ancestors was, in effect, on a camping trip that lasted an entire lifetime, and this way of life endured for most of the last 10 million years."

Hence: "Stone Age."

In other words, because we evolved over a long period of time, our brains are unfit to feel appropriate emotions! The snappy comeback that Borders's rational faculty must also be inadequate was tempting until I realized that it would apply equally well to myself. Or poorly. Oh what the hey! Let Borders furrow his protruding brow a bit as he ponders this. The rest of us can go on.

Consider the "egalitarian feelings" Borders alludes to "religious folks" attributing to God and philosophers attributing to "a psychological complement to more enlightened reflection". He was so close to making a great point it hurt to watch about as much as seeing a footballer miss a shot on an untended goal from two yards out. Let's consider the Stone Age Trinity again -- from explicitly egalitarian premises, which Borders never questions, but seems to both regard as ingrained and "enlightened".

(1) Guilt "I was being too selfish when I outbid that other man for this beautiful house. Where will he and his eight kids live? And who am I to deserve to remain here?" This emotion, if it does not lead one to question his moral premises, will either make one into a hypocrite and undercut one's enjoyment of the house, or provoke a more consistent altruism, even causing him to give the house away. This emotion is a direct result of a person believing that material wealth is immoral if it is not given away to the poor. This idea is not unique to religion, but Borders's "religious folks" spend a lot of time drilling it into the heads of children.

(2) Envy "That selfish bastard! He works, but only for himself. He's rich, and so obviously is selfish. He knows all the 'right people', and immoral, materialistic birds of a feather flock together, so they're all crooks anyway. At least I can look myself in the mirror in the morning." Notice that these feelings stem from the idea that it is wrong to profit materially from one's own effort. Notice also that such feelings, rather than leading one to wonder how one can also do well, are more likely to cause one to revel in his misfortune (as a badge of greater moral worth). Also, these emotions can help one fail to realize that the other guy's good fortune, wealth, and connections all came about because of his effort, or at least could come to oneself through effort. Rather than helping someone learn to become powerful, this altruistic envy can lead to a "magical" view of success and a vicious cycle of failure and further feelings of powerlessness.

(3) Indignation This is the emotion most people will most easily see as being in response to a perceived injustice. But what if one is an egalitarian? Then anyone else's success will arouse one's indignation! And the enjoyment of one's own success will be blunted by the realization that others will be (justly or not) indignant about it. The remedy? The economic agenda of the Democratic Party -- tearing everyone down.

Note that all of these emotions, when rooted in egalitarian premises, are maladaptive. No wonder Borders calls them "Stone Age"! But note that Borders, like most other intellectuals, takes "egalitarian feelings" (i.e., altruism and its emotional consequences) for granted. Assuming that teamwork (e.g., "reciprocity and division of labor" later on) equals altruism and ignoring the fact that man has free will, Borders makes the mistake of seeing the negative psychological consequences of egalitarianism as unavoidable evolutionary baggage. Instead, he could have written a powerful essay on how maladaptive altruism and its psychological consequences are.

And, as we have already seen, these mistakes have caused Borders to fail utterly to appreciate the fact that even negative emotions, aided by rationality, have survival value to man.

***

In closing, I would like to comment on another interesting point made by Borders below.

Now, folks who've encountered Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point may recall the "Magic Number 150." This number seems to be a kind of cut-off point for the simpler forms of human organization. Gladwell reminds us that communal societies -- like those our ancestors lived in, or in any human group for that matter -- tend to break down at about 150. Such is perhaps due to our limited brain capacity to know any more people that intimately, but it's also due to the breakdown of reciprocal relationships like those discussed above -- after a certain number (again, around 150).

This is, I think, merely an example of the "crow epistemology" at work, of the ability of the human mind to keep only so many concretes in hand at once. Borders claims that communism can "work" up to this number. Aside from that debatable point, and the even more debatable contention that Marxists would have listened to anyone who told them that their "scientific" system was limited to communes of about this size, I think there is merit in the idea from a sociological standpoint.

-- CAV