Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Fallen Angel becomes the god of Nature
Post 106.February 16, 2020 continued . . . .
The Lucifer Principle
Evil Is Natural
Howard Bloom, being trained as a scientist, took the latter course, and looked for the cause of Evil in our current under-standing of the physical evolutionary process, and of socio-logical human history. Hence, the physical embodiment of evil in his history is Genes, while the metaphysical media are Memes3. The carriers of those natural agents are individual organisms (including humans) and collective super-organisms (tribes, nations, corporations). Ironically, his chosen metaphor for those natural forces was drawn from biblical sources. He noted that, “Marcion the heretic said God was responsible for evil.” Yet, “Mainstream Christians absolved the almighty of responsibility by blaming all that’s wrong on the Prince of Darkness and on man.” In this book though, he sides with the heretic, saying “Evil is a by-product, a component, of creation.” However, his Lucifer Principle is not all bad. He goes on to say that, “Nature does not abhor evil; she embraces it, She uses it to build. With it, she moves the human world to greater heights of organization, intricacy, and power.” And that is also the view of my own Enformationism thesis : natural evolution is on an upward arc, emerging from chaos, and gradually organizing into a complex system of living organisms with minds that ask “why?” questions.
The author begins by giving some historical examples of natural and human evil. Then, he dispels Rousseau’s popular notion of the “Noble Savage”, presumed to live a peaceful idyllic life in an Edenic state of Nature, until corrupted by civilization4. Even the American Psychological, Sociological, and Anthropo-logical associations issued a manifesto stating : “violence is neither in our evolutionary legacy nor in our genes”. Which may be what inspired Bloom to write this book to prove that the opposite is true. Those counter-cultural liberals of the 60s blamed the evils of their current world on “modern Western culture — with its consumerism, its capitalism, its violent television shows” and so forth.
At about that same time though, primatologist Jane Goodall was surprised to discover that her loveable little almost-human chimps, far from modern human influences, were innately capable of murder, war, and cannibalism. Anthropologist Richard Leaky used the primitive hunter-gatherer tribes of !Kung, to demonstrate that “war didn’t exist until men invented agriculture and began to acquire possessions”. Only a few years later, though, studies showed that “among the !Kung the homicide rate is higher than that in New York City.” So, it seems that the Garden of Eden story is a wishful fantasy of human innocence — until deceived by an evil lesser god into disobeying the natural laws of the good God of the Jews.
Next, he presents evidence of evil tendencies in the most essential feature of evolution : reproduction. “Under the impulse toward violence often lies the simple urge to have kids. Which leads us to one of the fundamental forces behind the Lucifer Principle : the greed of genes.” Citing Richard Dawkin’s metaphor of the “Selfish Gene”, Bloom says that our mindless genes are using our bodies as vehicles for their own program-med purposes. “For genes are infected with an overweening ambition to over-run this world.” Hence, all living organisms are driven by subconscious instincts to replicate, even at the expense of other similar organisms.
Post 106 continued . . . click Next
Counter Cultural Revolution Young people in the 1960s were rebelling against a specific form of human culture : Modernism. Although, they idealized the Noble Savages, they were not actually opposed to Civilization, but to the emphasis on war-like Materialism to the exclusion of peace & love Spiritualism. As adults, most returned to conventional roles in the dominant Capitalist culture of Western Civilization. Just as organisms must adapt to changing conditions, it is necessary for civilizations & cultures & Superorganisms to evolve.
3. Memes : A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme. __Wiki By analogy with bio-chemical genes, Richard Dawkins proposed that metaphysical memes could replicate and evolve in human minds. Bloom says that socio-political memes, in the sense of belief systems, “are the glue that holds together civilizations”.
4. Corrupting Civilization Steven Pinker reached the opposite conclusion from his study of history : primitive humans were rude & crude like chimpanzees, who can be vicious and murderous. Yet, we are gradually improving morally, precisely due to the constraints on impulsive behavior provided by civilized laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature
The Lucifer Principle
A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History Howard Bloom
NEXT
BACK
Forum
