10
10
The Clint Eastwood Conundrum
We think of ourselves as rugged individuals, cocky Clint
Eastwood-like characters capable of making up our own minds, no
matter what kind of group pressures might torpedo the less inde-
pendent thoughts of people around us. Eric Fromm, the psychoanalytic
guru of the '60s, turned the idea that the individual can control his own
universe into a rabidly popular notion. Fromm told us that needing
other people was a character flaw, a mark of immaturity. Possessiveness
in a romantic relationship was an illness. Jealousy was a character stain
of the highest magnitude. A mature individual was one who could drift
through this world in the self-contained manner of an interstellar
transport, manufacturing its own oxygen and food. That rare healthy
soul, Fromm wished us to believe, had an indestructible sense of his
own worth. As a consequence, he had no need for the admiration and
reassurance that only the weak simper after.
Fromm was trapped by a scientific fallacy that has become
mainstream dogma. Current evolutionary theory, as promoted by
scientists like Harvard's E.O. Wilson and the University of Washington's
David Barash, says that only the competition between individuals
counts--the concept is called "individual selection." Social groups may
glare and posture, threaten, connive and occasionally battle to a grim
and bloody death, but none of this really matters. The dogma of the
moment declares emphatically that the creature struggling alone, or
occasionally helping out a relative, is the only one whose efforts drive
the engines of evolution.
However, the accepted view requires a closer look. Among
humans, groups have all too often been the prime movers. It is their
competition which has driven us on the inexorable track toward higher
degrees of order.
This is one key to the Lucifer Principle.
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10
10
The Clint Eastwood Conundrum
We think of ourselves as rugged individuals, cocky Clint
Eastwood-like characters capable of making up our own minds, no
matter what kind of group pressures might torpedo the less inde-
pendent thoughts of people around us. Eric Fromm, the psychoanalytic
guru of the '60s, turned the idea that the individual can control his own
universe into a rabidly popular notion. Fromm told us that needing
other people was a character flaw, a mark of immaturity. Possessiveness
in a romantic relationship was an illness. Jealousy was a character stain
of the highest magnitude. A mature individual was one who could drift
through this world in the self-contained manner of an interstellar
transport, manufacturing its own oxygen and food. That rare healthy
soul, Fromm wished us to believe, had an indestructible sense of his
own worth. As a consequence, he had no need for the admiration and
reassurance that only the weak simper after.
Fromm was trapped by a scientific fallacy that has become
mainstream dogma. Current evolutionary theory, as promoted by
scientists like Harvard's E.O. Wilson and the University of Washington's
David Barash, says that only the competition between individuals
counts--the concept is called "individual selection." Social groups may
glare and posture, threaten, connive and occasionally battle to a grim
and bloody death, but none of this really matters. The dogma of the
moment declares emphatically that the creature struggling alone, or
occasionally helping out a relative, is the only one whose efforts drive
the engines of evolution.
However, the accepted view requires a closer look. Among
humans, groups have all too often been the prime movers. It is their
competition which has driven us on the inexorable track toward higher
degrees of order.
This is one key to the Lucifer Principle.
<< < GO > >>