Do We Grow Up?

Human beings have an innate moral sense.  This innate moral sense is not much different than the ones in other social mammals.  A definition of individuals within "my" group.  Cooperation within that group (while still trying to get more than your fair share).  Severe punishment for cheating (going against cooperation).  Look on any school playground and this is what you will see.  As an aside, if you think humans are born good and then corrupted by the trappings of civilization, go to a playground populated by children between 5 and 10 years old.  There will be screaming, crying, violence, theft, lies, bullying until they return to the classroom and behave.  Children are our best guide to human nature, and they are indeed nasty, brutish, and short.

However, within our societies most of us as adults happily interact with a wide group of people, actually showing interest in people from other groups.  We may think of ourselves as a fan of the Owls, an Oregonian, an Agnostic, a Democrat, but we tend to show interest and friendliness to even a Wolverine, Englishman, Atheist, Independent until they start behaving badly.  I know for a fact that if you get lost on a mountain track in Costa Rica, local farmers will guide you back to the main road without even considering asking for anything in return.

The cooperation within societies is breathtaking.  300 million people, spanning a continent have all agreed to have pieces of paper represent goods, which can then be exchanged.  Rush hour traffic might seem chaotic, but imagine what it would be like if everyone just decided to drive where and when they felt like it? (I hear much of Asia drives like this, but I haven't seen it personally.)  This is cooperation on vast scales between people that would never consider themselves part of the same group, after all, they don't even know each other.  They have never met.

There is punishment for cheating, breaking the law, but the punishment is decided through a process that attempts to be objective and forbids cruel punishment.  Generally, someone found to be cheating isn't simply beaten by the surrounding group.  Compare this to Old Testament laws, particularly stoning, in contrast.

So, I want you to imagine a situation (1) where a child has bullied other children.  A much bigger child sees this and is worried that the bully might hurt some of his/her friends.  So the bigger child goes over and beats the snot out of the bully, makes sure that bully is incapable of bullying again, just in case.  What would we think about the bigger child?  Is this the behavior we want from a child?  I certainly hope not.

How about a situation (2) where there is a playground.  A new kid comes to school and all the other kids hate them because they are different and use the playground equipment that they want for themselves.  So they all get together to go smack that kid around in order to make sure it goes away from their playground and never comes back.  However, the new kid knows kung-fu and really kicks the group around.  For the entire time that all of these kids are in school the new kid takes away any toys and makes sure they can't play in the playground.  When asked why?  the kid replies that "they started it, and if I don't stop them they might try it again."

Two children have to work out where they want to go in the afternoon (3).  One wants to go to see a film, the other wants to eat ice-cream.  Both would prefer a film or an ice-cream to nothing at all.  A child pokes another child.  In return comes a pinch.  A slap comes in retaliation.  Then a punch.  The kids fight and then neither gets ice-cream or sees a film.

Or the classic, "My toy is better than your toy!"  "No it isn't, my toy is better!"  "My toy has three bits, yours only has one!"  "My toy is red, and that's way better."  "More bits is better."  Red is better!"  "I hate you!  "I hate you more."  'You're just a liar, you always lie.""  "That's a lie, see, you are the liar."

These are all the sorts of situations that we often see from children, but try and change through instruction, education, rules.  In short, we hope that children will grow up to behave better than their innate nature, and we work hard to ensure they do.  Those that don't are considered anti-social, deviant, possibly mentally ill.  However, it seems to me that once we get to the stage of international relations or internal politics these basic ideas of morality simply go out the window, and most people never even notice.

While the situations are obviously more complex, it seems to me the moral questions involved in the four situations described above are essentially the same as major modern situations involving vast numbers of adults.  Situation (1) seems to me to be essentially the same moral situation that was faced before the invasion of Iraq.  Situation (2) seems to me a pretty good representation of the situation between Israel and the surrounding countries.  Situation (3) seems to me a pretty good description of the many protracted conflicts based on ethnic, religious, or ideological differences (Muslim/Hindu problems between Pakistan and India, Kurdistan versus Turkey/Iraq, Marxist rebels in Colombia versus the free market economy of the government).  Situation (4) is simply the situation of political discourse in the United States, and probably elsewhere, in which differences in point of view descend into a death spiral whereby, regardless of what the other person is saying, they are wrong, lying, and have a grand plan to destroy everything good in the United States.

Can we not try to behave like adults, when behaving like adults really matters?  Why do we behave like naughty children?  How come nobody seems to notice that this happens.  Are we really going to take somebody seriously when they use the words "evil doers?"  Are we really going to take people seriously when they say that television is a method of distracting the "sheeple" from the Machiavellian machinations of the elite?

Things are getting better, generally.  There are fewer wars.  There is more democracy in which people fight with words rather than guns.  There are more, and more stable international organizations.  The number of religious fanatics willing to kill for their religion is going down.  But really, we have to wait decades for vast swathes of the adults in the world to stop acting like children?