IT TAKES EFFORT TO OVERCOME THE INERTIA IN OUR SOCIETY

By

Karl H Puechl

October 13, 1991

To start this talk, entitled: IT TAKES EFFORT TO OVERCOME THE INERTIA IN OUR SOCIETY, let me read the associated commentary that I put in the Newsletter.

"If we just `go with the flow' nothing much will ever happen because, inherently, culture has built-in assurances to bring about replication without change. Can we teach `self-esteem'? Can we improve our educational system? Can we ever successfully compete in the world economic arena? Discussions relative to these questions are currently at the ludicrous stage; i.e., the proposals put forth by our elected officials and other responsible members of our society are laughable. Can we get serious about these important questions before it is too late?"

I suspect that what I am about to say may rub some of you the wrong way. To minimize the probability of your getting mad at me, please stay focused on the object of my talk; i.e., societal inertia. While I will touch on individual psychological aspects, I do this not to be critical of individuals but rather to show that the inertia is seldom overcome even when we, as individuals, work at overcoming the tyranny.

Now to get into the subject matter, let me cite a few quotations.

In 1859 John Stuart Mill in his "Essay on Liberty" expressed the truism: "The despotism of custom is everywhere a standing hindrance to human advancement." I say this is a "truism" since by definition "custom" means reacting to a particular stimulus, the same way, over and over and over again. Therefore, the definition of the word "custom" implies the despotism or tyranny that Mill is talking about.

Somewhat later, and on a grander scale, Friedrich Engels, the compatriot of Karl Marx, wrote the following when describing the German peasant revolution of the sixteenth century: "It is the worst thing that can happen to the leader of an extreme party when he is forced to seize power in an epoch which is not yet ripe for the rule of the class which he represents, and for the carrying-out of the measures which this class demands. What he CAN do does not depend upon his will, but upon the level of the conflict between classes and of the development of the material conditions of existence.... What he CAN do contradicts all his previous positions, his principles and the immediate interest of his party; and what he SHOULD do cannot be done. He is, in a word, forced to represent, not his party, not his class, but that class for whose rule the time is ripe." Obviously, this could have been written just yesterday relative to the current situation in the USSR, or the continuing situations in many South and Central American countries; Haiti being the most recent example. Karl Marx added a slightly different twist when he wrote: "Social theory is the study of the unwanted repercussions of nearly all of our actions. That is, so to speak, the impact of historical necessity upon human freedom; we do not choose the circumstances under which we act, we are in part the creature of the moment."

Now, recently, Richard Dawkins in his book, THE SELFISH GENE, brilliantly draws analogies between the genetic evolution of biological species and the cultural evolution of human societies. The book is mainly concerned with biological evolution; the cultural analogies are only pursued in the last chapter. Dawkin's main theme is the tyranny which the rigid demands of the replication apparatus have imposed upon all biological species throughout evolutionary history. Every species is the prisoner of its genes and is compelled to develop and to behave in such a way as to maximize their chances of survival. Only the genes are free to experiment with new patterns of behavior. Individual organisms must do what their genes dictate. This tyranny of the genes has lasted for 3 billion years and has only been precariously overthrown in the last hundred thousand years by a single species, Homo Sapiens.

We have overthrown the tyranny by inventing symbolic language and culture. Our behavior patterns are now to a great extent culturally rather than genetically determined. We can choose to keep a defective gene in circulation because our culture tells us not to let hemophiliac children die. We have stolen back from our genes the freedom to make choices and to make mistakes.

In his last chapter Dawkins describes a new tyrant which has arisen within human culture to take the place of the old. The new tyrant he calls the "meme" (spelled M E M E), the cultural analog of the gene. A meme is a behavioral pattern which replicates itself by cultural transfer from individual to individual instead of by biological inheritance. Examples of memes are religious beliefs, linguistic idioms, fashions in art and science, in food and in clothes. Almost all the phenomena of evolutionary genetics and speciation have their analogs in cultural history, with the meme taking over the functions of the gene. The meme is a self-replicating unit of behavior, like the gene. The meme and gene are equally selfish. The history of human culture shows us to be as subject to the tyranny of our memes as other species are to the tyranny of genes. But Dawkins ends his discussion with a call for liberation. "Our capacity for foresight", he writes, "gives us the power to transcend our memes, just as our culture gave us the power to transcend our genes". "We", he says, "alone on Earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators".

In touching upon the same subject, but being somewhat carried away, as is his fashion, Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist, now retired from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, wrote the following in his book, INFINITE IN ALL DIRECTIONS:

"Our technology is giving us progressively greater power to keep alive our ancestors and their ghosts. First the invention of writing allowed us to preserve their words. Painting and photography allowed us to preserve their faces. The phonograph preserves their voices and the videotape recorder preserves their movement and gestures. But this is only the beginning. Soon we shall acquire the technology to preserve a permanent record of the sequence of bases in the DNA of their cells. This means that we shall be able, if we wish, to carry the magic a stage further, to reconstruct from the DNA sequence a genetic copy or clone of the ancestor. After that, perhaps, will come the technology to read the memory traces that record the experiences of a lifetime in the ancestor's brain. And then, perhaps, the technology to play back the ancestor's memories and feelings into the consciousness of the living. At that point the distinction between living and dead, present and past, will become blurred. It will be hard to tell who is the ancestor and who is the descendant, who is the one blowing on the embers and who is the one lying wrapped in spotted garments in the grave."

That got me about as far from my subject as I care to get; so let's get back to reality and the here and now. This pull-back is what brings me to psychology. In the journal, "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research", Vol. 10 (1949), John Hospers, a former Professor of Philosophy at USC, has a wonderful article entitled, "Free Will and Psychoanalysis". In this article, while trying not to over-generalize, Hospers intimates that most psychoanalysts have concluded that adults have essentially no free-will; that the possibilities for free-will are largely destroyed during early childhood.

Let me describe a few situations that are somewhat familiar to all of us. I think that we all have known people who made us uncomfortable. When questioned about our discomfort, most of us would have replied: "He makes me uncomfortable because his behavior is so erratic, so unpredictable." I'm sure that we all have made a statement such as this, but it is absolutely wrong because the actions of the person we are talking about are absolutely predictable, in fact, they are so predictable that it is correct to say that "he has no free-will"; that he is compelled to react in the way that he does. Let me explain. Generally, a person who makes us feel "uncomfortable" as I just described, is suffering from some type of neurosis or a mild psychosis. Once his particular malady is appreciated; his responses to certain stimuli can be predicted with 100 % certainty; that is, he has no free-will and he can be "read like a book", which is contrary to our initial impression that his behavior is erratic and unpredictable. In the context of my topic, it is reasonable to ask, "If there are situations when a person cannot control his reactions, when he has no free-will, how can we expect his behavior to change society?" The obvious answer is that we cannot expect this; we must first, somehow, find ways to, at least, loosen the constraints on his behavior.

For those of you who are having trouble accepting the fact that the reactions of a neurotic or mild psychotic to stimuli that impinge upon his malady are absolutely determined, let me give two examples.

First, consider a man suffering from a mild paranoiac state. Most of us who are not paranoiac, may be somewhat annoyed when one infringes upon our territory, or steps on our toes, but we either ignore the intrusion as being unintentional, or as being of little-or-no consequence, or we gladly accept the intruder's apology, and, whatever the case, we almost-immediately consider the situation over-and-done-with or closed. On the other hand, a paranoiac cannot pass over the intrusion in such cavalier fashion since he believes that everyone is out to get him. He cannot allow any intrusion upon his territory, no matter how small, to remain unchallenged since this would demonstrate weakness, and, thereby in his eyes, this would encourage others to make similar forays into his territory. Further, allowing any intrusion to go unchallenged would not only demonstrate weakness, but it would, in the eyes of the paranoiac, advertise to the world a weakness within himself, a weakness which he knows is inherent in his malady and which must be hidden from view at all cost. In short, when one understands the paranoia, one can predict every similar paranoiacs reaction to specific situations; these sufferers have no free-will when the stimulus impinges upon their mental condition.

For further illustration, let me quote from Hosper's paper:

"The more of this sort of thing one observes, the more he can see what the psychoanalyst means when he talks about THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM. And the more of a psychiatrist one becomes, the more he is overcome with a sense of what an illusion this free-will can be. In some kinds of cases most of us can see it already; it takes no psychiatrist to look at the epileptic and sigh with sadness at the thought that soon this person before you will be as one possessed, not the same thoughtful intelligent person you know. But people are not aware of this in other contexts, for example when they express surprise at how a person whom they have been so good to could treat them so badly. Let us suppose that you help a person, perhaps a relative, financially or morally or in some other way, so that she is in your debt; suppose further that she is one of the many neurotics who unconsciously identify kindness with weakness and aggression with strength, then she will unconsciously take your kindness to her as weakness and use it as the occasion for enacting some aggression against you. She can't help it, she may regret it herself later; still, she will be driven to do it. If we gain a little knowledge of psychiatry, we can look at her with pity, that a person otherwise so worthy should be so unreliable--but we will exercise realism too, and be aware that there are some types of people that you cannot be good to in "free" act of their conscious volition, they will use your own goodness against you.'

And now to continue quoting Hospers as he gets closer to my topic:

"Sometimes the persons themselves will become dimly aware that "something behind the scenes" is determining their behavior. The divorcee will sometimes view herself with detachment, as if she were some machine (and indeed the psychoanalyst does call her a "repeating machine"): "I know I'm caught in a net, that I'll fall in love with this guy and marry him and the whole ridiculous merry-go-round will start all over again."

"We talk about free-will, and we say, for example, the person is free to do so-and-so ---that he can do so IF he wants to--and we forget that his wanting to is itself caught up in the stream of determinism, that unconscious forces drive him into the wanting or not wanting to do the thing in question. The analogy of the puppet whose motions are manipulated from behind by invisible wires, or better still, by springs inside, is a telling one at almost every point."

"And the glaring fact is that it all started so early, before we new what was happening. The personality-structure is inelastic after the age of five, and comparatively so in most cases after the age of three. Whether one acquires a neurosis or not is determined by that age--and just as involuntarily as if it had been a curse of God. If, for example, a masochistic pattern was set up, under pressure of hyper-narcissism combined with real or fancied infantile deprivation, then the masochistic snowball was on its course downhill long before he or anybody else knew what was happening, and long before anyone could do anything about it. To speak of human beings as "puppets" in such a context is no idle metaphor, but a stark rendering of a literal fact: only the psychiatrist knows what puppets people really are; and it is no wonder that the protestations of philosophers that "the act which is the result of a volition, a deliberation, a conscious decision, is free" leaves these persons, to speak mildly, somewhat cold."

It is clear from this reading that psychoanalysts, in general, agree that, at least, for neurotic behavior, an individual has lost the freedom to choose alternatives by the time he or she is 5 years old, and perhaps as early as 3. Since children prior to this age, while their neuroses are being developed, are primarily influenced by their mothers, let's now give some attention to Motherhood.

Doing Crossword Puzzles is a great waste of time, but every once in awhile I come upon a clue that makes me think about more that just the definition of a word. A clue that intrigued me from the first time I came across it is: "a mother's admonition". All you puzzlers know that the answer to this clue is: "No No". Why a "mother's admonition", I ask, why not a "parental admonition"? Don't father's say "No No"? I suspect that the puzzle developers are correct. A father may say "No No" once in awhile, but he is more apt to just say "No". On the other hand, a mother will most likely say "No No" and will, almost never, say just plain "No". I suspect that this comes about because a mother tries to be less harsh, and for some reason I do not understand, a "No No" sounds less harsh to a mother than does a simple "No".

Let's accept the premise that mother's don't want to sound harsh and let's further assume that a woman who became a mother during the last 50 years and who had deep concern for her children and wanted to give them the best mothering possible read and studied Dr. Spock. One thing I am quite sure of is that by reading Dr. Spock she came away with the notion that children should not be overly constrained, that they should be allowed to make their own decisions at an early age, and that, as far as it is possible to do so, they should be asked to participate in the family decision-making process. Now, our caring and nurturing Mother, armed with Dr. Spock, says to her child: Why don't you turn off the TV? Why don't you do your homework? Why don't you take a bath? Why don't you get ready for bed? Why don't you stop teasing your sister? Does our conscientious mother really want her questions to be answered? What do these questions mean? By using these questions, is she really giving her child the freedom to make his or her own decisions? I know that if my Mother had used this questioning technique and had asked, "Why don't you turn off the radio?" and then if I had answered truthfully, "I'm too lazy to get up to turn of the set." I would have received a whack to the side of my head, not from my Mother who didn't mete out punishment in this manner, but from my Father, who believed in setting things right instantly, and I would have known that I had deserved such punishment for sassing my Mother. I would have learned real fast that my Mother never wanted this type of question to be answered; I suspect that all children learn this fact quite rapidly. A Mother never wants this type of question to be answered, an answer can only lead to an argument or to physical punishment. Why don't you stop teasing your sister? "I don't want to because teasing her is fun; I like to hear her screams." The result is Mother yelling for the teaser to stop, or physically pulling the children apart. This is the result because the question is not really a question, it is a direct command; only to a Mother it sounds less harsh than saying "Stop teasing your sister", or whatever. Even though the conscientious Mother is trying to give her child more freedom, as Dr. Spock says it should have, is she really doing anything positive towards alleviating constraint? While this again gets me far from the topic of my talk, it is interesting to note that our conscientious Mother, believing that the questioning technique has been successful, that such a question is more acceptable to another than a direct order, carries the technique over to interactions with her spouse even after the children are all out of the nest. Why don't you fix the toilet? Why don't you mow the lawn? Why don't we eat out more often? Why don't you ever talk to me? Again our good Mother is not looking for an answer to any of these questions because, again, they are not questions but direct orders. "Why don't you mow the lawn?" "Because I don't feel like being a slave to the lawn-mower today." Since our good Mother is really not interested in why her husband is not mowing the lawn, this answer will get a response that immediately changes the subject, like: "How do you think I feel about vacuuming?" Any attempt at answering such a question can only result in argument. This brings me to the most critical question in the series, "Why don't we ever talk?" The poor husband knows, that any attempt to answer a question such a this will result in an argument; yet the question is a direct order to talk. He can obey the command, which can only lead to an argument because the talking will revolve around answering the question; or he

can go to the local bar and hope that the question will be forgotten by the time he gets back home. Before I get off this subject of mothering, I should point out that the questioning technique is used by mothers not only as calls to action, but also to stop certain activities. "Why are you biting your fingernails?" Why are you screwing up your face?" "Why are you picking your nose?" "Why are you teasing your sister?" These questions again are not questions meant to be answered, they are direct orders for the child to stop, whatever he or she is doing. And again, this type of questioning carries over with the husband as the object. "Why are you driving so fast?" "Why are you wearing that tie?" "Why are you watching that TV program?" If you don't believe me, and you are married to one of these good mothers, try answering any of these question and see if you can do it without starting a fight.

I think this shows that mothering is difficult; even when a mother tries, it is difficult to give children the freedom they need to be able to make choices as adults.

One can now ask the question, who or what else affects children at this early age besides mothers, or parents if you will? Let's say the church. In our Christian-based culture, children at an early age are taught that they are born sinners. Fundamentalists lay this one on their children at a very early age, but even children who are never taught this by their parents are exposed to the concept by their peers. So in our society, almost all children are taught, or at least exposed to, the concept that they are flawed from birth; that something inside of them is "bad" and that there is nothing they can do to fix this flaw. To me, teaching this kind of garbage is a criminal act since it destroys our children. It makes them forever dependent on the church or on others, for how can a flawed entity ever be autonomous? How can our

children ever get self-esteem when at an early age they are inculcated with this kind of nonsense? Sure many of us were taught this at an early age, but it did not really sink in because when comparing our parents and our surroundings to others we concluded that being flawed was really not that bad. However, when such comparisons, now to what a child sees on TV, show the child that it is deprived, it can only conclude that, somehow, this is due to the fact that he or she is flawed by this original sin, whatever that might be. I think that you have all heard of current government-supported programs aimed at teaching children, 8 years old and up, self-esteem. I ask you, how many of these programs are aimed at exorcising from the child's Id, the concept of original sin? But probably any psychoanalyst will tell you that there is no way of exorcising such a devil without long psychotherapy which is beyond the financial means of these programs and well beyond the capabilities of the teachers or volunteers. Shouldn't we have programs aimed at parents, telling them not to teach their children such nonsense? I haven't heard this suggestion coming from any State legislator; until it does come, I look at all the self-esteem programs as being window dressing without any serious content.

Now I'm getting near the end of this diatribe. Thank goodness, right? The last things I have to say have to do primarily with our society's priorities, especially, as they influence our economics and, therefore, our ability to compete in the world arena. To start this discussion let me quote from Thorstein Veblen, the American economist/sociologist, from his book: THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS:

"Athletics", he wrote, " has an obvious advantage over the classics for the purpose of leisure-class learning, since success as an athlete presumes, not only a waste of time, but also a waste of money, as well

as the possession of certain highly unindustrial archaic traits of character and temperament."

In short, from an economics standpoint, Veblen has concluded that athletics is a worthless occupation. I like to put this somewhat more precisely by asking the question: If professional athletics in this country were immediately substantially down-played, 5 years from now would we tend to be more or less competitive in the international economic arena? Can we draw the same conclusion relative to a large part of the entertainment business? How about advertising? Now suppose that we ask the question somewhat differently relative to each and every occupation; namely: What fraction of a particular occupation has meritorious economic content; i.e., what fraction of that job might make us economically more competitive in the international arena 5 years down the road? I'm sure that it would be impossible to obtain a consensus opinion for each job. However, if each one of us made these job evaluations independently by thinking about each job for only a few moments and then assigning the fraction that we thought was economically meritorious for each job, we could eventually come to some conclusions if we wrote the occupations that we had considered at the bottom of a sheet of paper, running from left to right, with the left-most having 0 economic content and the right-most 100% economic content. At the left might be NFL football players, rock stars, and TV talk-show hosts; at the right might be farmers, machinists, engineers and teachers. Obviously, the order of listings from left to right would vary substantially from one evaluator to the next. Consequently, I would ask that you place an axis on the left side of the paper, whereon you tick off uniformly-spaced $1000 increments to allow plotting above each occupation what you think is the average annual salary of people having

that job. I think it will be no surprise that, in general, with relatively minor up and down variations between neighboring jobs, the points that you plot will be highest at the left and lowest at the right of the sheet of paper. Our little exercise will show that in this country we tend to pay the highest salaries to the jobs that have the least economically meritorious job content!! Knowing full well the irrational nature of the human animal, I suspect that this has always been true; but I also suspect that the variation from the left side to the right side of the sheet of paper is much greater and steeper that it has ever been before, and that this variation is also much greater than we would see if we were to carry out the same exercise for every other industrialized country. How can we ever expect to successfully compete if we give such little value to economically meritorious occupations? Further, our children are not stupid; they can see this salary-skewing without having to make any analysis, and they also know that it does not take much education to get positioned for the high-paying jobs. If we adults don't place much value on education, as can be seen by the salary plot, can we expect our children to do otherwise? How do we start changing our priorities? How can we get our public servants, even our presidential candidates, to give some serious attention to curing the cancerous condition that is eating at our vital organs rather than to just giving cosmetic treatment to the outward signs of our malady? I can think of many ways to begin the process of altering our priorities; but this would lengthen a presentation which is already too long. So, I'll stop, leaving you to ponder the questions.