The Promises and Pains of Modernity

As noted last week, I'm not going to assume a higher power exists in order to discuss one. Spirituality is a socially and psychologically emergent behavior - not a rational one. Tvorsky and Kahneman (1979, 1982) have shown the flaws in assuming humans are fundamentally rational, through the use of gambling tests. They maintain that a person's choices between risk-seeking and risk-aversive behavior are biased non-linearly - that is there's a much larger perceptive difference between 19% (a little of something) and 20% (a little more of something) than there is between 99% (the possibility of nothing) and 100% (the guarantee of something). Pure rationalism would suppose this not to be the case, however. Rather than rational decision-making, I maintain that humans behave overwhelmingly along evolutionary biological drives.

Emergence and convergence

Emergent behaviors are those which are observed through patterns - not the behaviors themselves. If weather were a behavior, climate would be the emergent behavior. Likewise, if spirituality is the observed human behavior, religion is the emergent societal behavior. Many societal behaviors can be seen as emergent human behaviors, which in hand can be seen as emergent from underlying biological behaviors. Overwhelmingly, biological organisms (cells, creatures, and societies of creatures) display two aspects: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Most, if not all behaviors of organisms can effectively be modeled as emergence from these two, which are themselves emergent behaviors from the lower (evolutionary) drives towards self and species-preservation.

More often than not, however, rational decision making at the creature-level comes about as a convergent behavior. When making difficult decisions, an organism has to weigh inputs from generally divergent memories and perceptions, and come up with a convergent action to ameliorate the cognitive dissonance. In humans, this may happen in the basal ganglia, a section of the brain predominantly associated with motor control, emotion, and learning. This convergent behavior forms the building blocks of “intelligent” cognitive function in a creature, those associated with pattern recognition, abstraction, and application.

Causes of spirituality and religion

Spirituality and religion (and thus ethics and morality) are emergent behaviors from the evolutionary drive towards self, tribe, and species preservation, and by our predilection to seek pleasure and avoid pain. They are not assumptions.

My understanding of the distinction between spirituality and religion is purely a environmental one. In my previous article, I posited an internal dialogue as a solution to Kant's scandalous question of Heidegger's ontology. I came to find out last week that this manner of internal dialogue has been described in detail by Marvin Minsky at MIT. Spirituality is the practice of constructing and practicing a world-view around the intrinsic need for an overwhelming otherness, while religion is the formation of social constructs from those practices. This division is purely internal versus external, prejudice versus practice.

Religion is ubiquitous enough that it's considered a cultural universal. We want to believe in an overwhelming otherness because it assuages our fear of death (of self, tribe, and species), and because it simplifies decision-making (social organization - another cultural universal). I see every day people who would rather outsource important decisions than make them themselves. We do this typically through democratic processes, but not exclusively. Every time we make a transaction or interaction with another being, we're handing over decision authority to that person or group.

Altars to television gods have replaced books and conversation in the modern household, and social interaction with the illusion thereof. Modernity has promised to us unavoidable progress, but in taking it up we're losing our soul as a people. It's too convenient to delete an email, turn off an instant messaging application, or not pick up or return phone calls. These activities allow interaction, but at our convenience, fooling our brains into thinking we're participating in meaningful social discource. As recently as two centuries ago, if you wanted to talk with someone, you had to travel to meet with them in person. This includes all the trappings of normal interaction - touch, taste, sight, scent, and hearing - audible, visible interaction. Digital interaction can trick our minds into seeming genuine, especially with the emergence of immersive online environments such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. These fulfill certain aspects of our human need for interaction, but without near as many benefits of failure.

Analog of biological emergence

Sir David Ferrier performed neurophysiological research (”The Triune Brain in Evolution - Role in Paleocerebral Functions”, Paul D. MacLean, pp. 19-24) in the United Kingdom early last century in frog cerebral functionality, the analogous section of human brains which is considerably more advanced than in earlier mammals. The Cerebral cortex is that which is traditionally understood to process memory, learning, language, perception (though not necessarily sensation), reasoning, and decision making. A large part of his studies consisted of “decerebriation” of vertebrates such as fish and frogs. In this process, he would surgically remove the cerebral cortex from animals, and observe the subsequent changes in their behavior.

Earlier experiments with decrebriated fish showed a lack of social interest: they wouldn't school. Ferrier later noticed in frogs, however, that without the section of the brain which allows most “high functions” (the cerebral cortex), they exhibited some peculiar behavior:

”Deprived of its cerebral hemispheres, the frog will maintain its normal attitude, and resist all attempts to displace its equilibrium. If laid on its back, it will immediately turn on its face, and regain its station on its feet. ... If its foot be pinched, it will hop away. If it is thrown into the water, it will swim until it reaches the side of the vessel, and then clamber up, and sit perfectly quiet. If is back be stroked gently, it will utter loud croaks. ... Indeed, in many respects, it would be difficult to say that the removal of the hemispheres had caused any alteration in the usual behaviour of the animal.

”But yet, a very remarkable difference is perceptible. The brainless frog, unless disturbed ... will sit forever quiet in the same spot, and become converted into a mummy. All spontaneous action is annihilated. Its past experience has been blotted out, and it exhibits no fear in circumstances which otherwise would cause it to retire or flee from danger. ... Surrounded by plenty, it will die of starvation; but unlike Tantalus, it has no physical suffering, no desire, and no will to supply its physical wants.” (MacLean, pp 21-22, emphasis mine)

Ferrier's later studies with higher vertebrates identified the same patterns: When an animal is deprived of its higher processing facilities, it can still function as that animal, but without a shred of “directed, spontaneous behaviour.” I maintain that humans, when similarly removed of their higher facilities through modernity, the Prussian schooling system, fundamental religious beliefs, or digital interaction, exhibit many of these same qualities.

The Prussian Schooling System

The modernization of the school system is evidenced by the predominantly Prussian-style compulsory systems implemented in most western-style industrialized democracies (including all English speaking nations that I know of.) In stark contrast to the voluntary home or church-based education systems which existed previously, Prussian systems industrialize the practice of education through standardization, division of labor, application of technology, and diverse applications of the economies of scale. This system emerges from the same avoiding-pain behavior of organisms in that it outsources what-to-teach decisions which were typically reserved to families, but has the same effect - homogenization of thought and behavior, and the subsequent social hegemony of popular views over unpopular ones. This form of education is well-adapted to producing workers, but less so for producing citizens capable of independent critical reasoning. When parents aren't forced to make difficult decisions, children are predilected to do the same.

This form of education, enacted under the auspices of providing literacy (another promise of modernity) and broad introductions to the wealth of human knowledge, has had the effect of forcing opinions upon the world's young people. Likewise, it produces generations of workers who can do basic math and regurgitate the names of a dozen species of dinosaur, but are fundamentally incapable of performing their civic duties of making rational decisions which apply to other citizens of their state. In many ways, students in primary and secondary education systems starve when surrounded by plenty. The system fails at its goal of universal education, but succeeds magnificently at producing citizens robbed of their abilities to make intelligent decisions.

The solution to this problem is to make a decision: if a government is going to subsidize public schools, attendance should be voluntary, and the subsidy of that child's education should apply equally to any other person or institution of a society who wants to train that child to be a productive member of that society. If a government is not going to subsidize education, it should maintain no say in how education in that nation takes place. I would prefer to see the former take place.

Religious Fundamentalism

It also benefits to mention the parallels between the behavior of Ferrier's decerebriated frogs, and the teachings of fundamentalist views on many popular religions. A full treatment of the nature of fundamental religious philosophy is beyond the scope of this article, and will likely be addressed in my later writings. In short, however, fundamental religions in my observation has typically taught its followers to seek answers through a religious text, rather than through critical analysis or autognosis. These behaviors, along the same lines of the Prussian school system, have inflicted a form of “religious hegemony” on its followers, with analogous effects on religious thought as our education systems produces for other branches of human knowledge.

In my experiences with western-style Christendom, even with the most liberal of protestant interpretations of their hold texts, answers are still viewed as emerging only through analysis of a text. This removes the pains of cognitive dissonance inherent with deciding ones own ethical codes, but is wholly unnecessary for the functioning of a society. Contrary to popular religious understanding, humans (or the deities perceived by humans) didn't invent moral codes - evolution did. Monkeys didn't have a burning bush, the wisdom of Hammurabi, or even complex language - but they do display personal and societal ethics. I addressed the generation of ethics and morality in my post last week. They have the same pains of decision making, and typically rely on the alpha male of their society to determine the best courses of action. Humans do the same thing, as a species. Religious humans simply outsource these decisions to their gods, which can often be remarkably effective, but can be dangerous in their removal of responsibility. This is one characteristic of humans which other intelligent vertebrates appear to lack: we can feel guilt, and we can blush. The emergence of religion removes these dissonances by introducing others, traditionally doing so by also offering amelioration to the fear-of-death / self-preservation-drive through reincarnation, eternal life, or some form of understanding of that which fundamentally can't be observed or known (Pascal's wager.)

The emergent pains of modernity

Modernity promises social progress through industrialization, division of decision- and manual-labor, universal education, and religious tolerance (the subject of my next article.) To gain this world, however, a citizen must forfeit the soul of their culture in subjugation to the opinions, prejudices, and behaviors of the larger society in which they are a part. This is a religion I choose largely to do without. I certainly own a computer and more than my fair share of books, but you'll not find a television or radio in my possession. When I want to know what's going on in my world, I read news sources from around the world (in multiple languages) and integrate my own opinion. Possessions not needed for mental, physical, and social growth are nothing more than the anesthetic trappings of a soulless lifestyle. Like Ferrier's decerebriated frogs, we starve of social, mental, and physical interaction while surrounded by plenty.

Lemert maintains (Social Theory - The multicultural and classical readings”, Charles Lemert, pp. 21-27) that modernity is an oedipal divorce between desire and possibility, a position with which I largely agree. The promises of modern life can be met, but with a cost no reasonable culture would buy if offered as a package. Slowly and cyclically, it has overtaken the lives of citizens of western-style industrialized democracies - this happened as much in Rome and Mongolia as it does in America, Australia, and Britain, though without the “blessings of industrialization.” Likewise, it removes them of their capacity to make critical decisions, through cultural submission. This has formed populations either unaware of the abuses of their governments, or unwilling to fight for change.

In effect, modernity is a religion, one which I largely choose to do without. In most suburban living rooms, televisions have replaced people as the social and religious altars; elected officials, celebrities, sports figures, and television personalities have taken the place of gods; promises of anyone being able to do anything have proven to be completely untenable; and beliefs which, for the most part, come from religious teachings (the second dark ages) rather than rational thinking have tried to remove us from our abilities to think critically. Everything citizens of a society can do to remove themselves from this modern social flow only serves to greater illuminate the causes and effects of human and social behavior. We seek pleasure and avoid pain, like all other biological organisms, but we have an intelligent function: critical decision making. In threatening this function, we isolate one of the facets axiomatic to humanity. I fail to see the usefulness in a school of thought which requires the absence of thought.