I’ve decided I’ll
post each chapter in its first, raw state, and you, Dear Reader, can see if my
later research (probably long after I've finished this first version, in my retirement, should I be fortunate enough to actually get to retire) led to any change. (You
can also think about the points I am making.)
I've come up with an initial structure of the book
(no guarantees it won't change), and will add the links to each
chapter in the latest installment as they are published. Owing to the
size of each chapter, I will have to publish this using the
sub-chapters. Links below, and also
here.
*****
Chapter One – Introduction to Concepts, and On Early Humans
D. Potential criticisms of the idea that decency and fairness are beneficial
Now, moving on, one
of the key challenges I have experienced
(and
I acknowledge that, in other people’s experience, the challenges may be
different
) to the view that groups do better under fairer and more humane conditions
(without trying to define that for the
moment – although the sub-heading I’ve chosen may give a clue to my thoughts,
perhaps . . . maybe . . . ) is the opinion
that matters such as “tough love”
or “the ‘need’ to make sacrifices” are important, or are
also important.
I’ll address that,
and then what I see as the other main challenges to this idea, which are the
notion that being kind is “weak”, and the topic of competition for resources.
This initial
assessment will incline towards my understanding of what applies to gatherer-hunter
societies, and I’ll come back to it in other chapters, when I address other
eras of human development.
Now, to begin with, on the “tough love”
theme there are times when criticism of others is warranted – there are
even times when strongly worded criticism, not only “constructive” criticism,
is warranted. As examples of this, consider someone who, perhaps through
casualness or carelessness, puts others wellbeing at risk – in modern times,
perhaps:
·
a sailor who fails to secure a rope or cargo;
·
a drunk driver;
·
someone who fails to look after a child properly
(assuming this is not because of a major fault such as abusiveness, which is a much
more serious matter requiring professional and legal intervention);
·
a careless person who causes a business to lose a
significant amount of money;
·
a soldier who cuts corners on safety rules
around ammunition or weapons; or
·
a politician who fails to fulfil their duties.
To
speculate about the gatherer-hunter era (remember
that I am not an expert), behaviour warranting criticism could possibly
include things like:
·
failing to store food properly;
·
being distracted during a hunt, or failing to
look properly while gathering; or
·
failing to respect and support the social
cohesion of a group by being selfish or greedy, rather than considerate
.
Similarly,
there are times when being “challenging” (by
the Goddess, that is an over-used, misused word that I have come to largely
detest, predominantly because of the naïve optimists who - wrongly - think it
only has positive connotations) is also warranted. To illustrate that with
more examples from modern times, consider:
·
a child who needs to move out from the parent’s
home (if they haven’t done so by their
early-mid 20s, I have grave concerns for their ability to mature normally);
·
an over-protective or “helicopter” parent who
needs to learn to let their child go so the child can mature properly into a
normal adult;
·
someone whose behaviour is verging into
criminality (if they have become
criminal, it is a more serious matter, requiring legal and professional
intervention);
·
someone whose behaviour is unreasonably
expecting of others (a “friend” who
expects others to bail them out of avoidable trouble, perhaps); or
·
someone whose behaviour is creating a risk of
needless violence – which could include:
o
a vigilante
(they’re
rarely right about innocence and guilt, and they’re never constructive in the
long term, which is one the reasons that the “Cure Violence”
model is so essential),
o
someone spreading fake news
(the recent killings of strangers over false allegations of child abuse
in India are a good example of that
, but the deceptive behaviour of some politicians ahead of the Second Gulf War could
also possibly fit into this category
), or
o
political or other agitators
(which is a topic that goes back beyond POTUS45
and Hitler
, past anarchist violence
, to “pre-history”
).
To speculate about the gatherer-hunter era (remember that I am not an expert), such
behaviour possibly include things like:
·
failing to move from the status of child to the
actions of a mature, contributing adult;
·
disrupting the group or the group’s harmony and
cohesion, possibly by arrogantly trying to impose one’s own version of cohesion
or harmony; or
·
not paying attention when on whatever was their
equivalent of guard duty (assuming that
such has been found before something goes wrong – before being attacked by
predators, for instance).
Having made those
concessions, there are several major “buts”
.
The first
is motivation. The overwhelming majority of people I have found
spruiking the “tough love” message are doing so for self-gain, not for a true
and genuine group need, which is what they claim. Using modern times to provide
a first set of examples again, such behaviour could include:
·
a boss telling workers everyone they need to
tighten their belts, when that might not be the case (or not to that extent) if the boss(es) was (were) prepared to
forego some of their income/share dividends/etc;
·
a politician espousing a policy platform for blind
ideological reasons
(for instance,
climate change deniers whose “policy platforms” are not supported by evidence; more
appropriately here perhaps, an example would be urging economic restraint when
it isn’t needed), or to maintain their grip on power – for instance, the use
of fear
(for example, saying we need to
do “X”, or otherwise “Y” will happen: in my nation, as I write this, the policy
of harsh treatment of asylum seekers – claimed to be justified because it is
allegedly for their own good, to prevent drownings at sea and discourage others
[I consider it is based on promoting xenophobic fear to gain votes] – is one
example
), or distraction away from one issue by another
(such as the notion of having a war overseas to “unite” a nation);
·
someone who, in an interpersonal relationship,
claims that an expectation is necessary, when it is just a stupid test of the
other person – e.g., that they “need” to know the other person can take
criticism.
In these cases, the
“tough love” message is about the speaker’s gain – it is not genuine, and
therefore should be ignored.
The next objection I have to the “tough
love” approach is that – again, this is
in my experience, and other people may well have different experience – some
people are adopting that approach because parents, peers, or respected
authority figures have said that “tough love” and similar approaches are
“necessary”, and they have accepted that without, or without enough, critical thinking.
As I’ve indicated
above
, there are times when “tough love” is necessary, and times when it is not.
“Tough love” should, IMO, simply be regarded as
one of the many
tools that can be brought to bear on a situation, and what one does is select
the best tool for any given situation, rather than automatically trotting out a
tool that may be counter-productive.
(Of course, one of the problems – and it is a biggie - here is that the
teaching of “tough love” as the sole or predominant approach may have been
passed down through several generations of a family [or “generations” of
students who then become lecturers at Universities], and thus the “parents,
peers, or respected authority figures” may not actually know anything else –
which is a terrible indictment of
those suffering that problem in higher education, the business world, and life.)
Kindness and fairness
are, also IMO, more intrinsic to being human, but, if you must, you could at
the very least, dear managers, project managers, and supervisors, admit that
they are tools of equal validity to
any other.
Then there is the
issue of those who think –wrongly – that promoting fairness and/or kindness or
failing to use “tough love” is a sign of some sort of weakness.
The notion of caring
emotions being undesirable, and subject to the epithet “weak” relies on a world
view that considers non-emotional strength and domination “valuable”, or
“good”.
There is, I consider,
little doubt that people with such views have always existed, but whilst such
characteristics can be effective at
establishing domination over a group, the very fact that such domination exists means the skills, characteristics
and attributes of others in the group are -
to some extent - being suppressed, and thus the group is inherently below
its capacity – no matter how closely the suppressed group aligns with the
dominator’s view of how the group should function.
Furthermore, going
back to my idea of the centrality of being humane to being human, someone who
is dismissive of emotions that are key to being humane is, I suggest, an
inherently flawed human. In fact, based on my life experience, I would suggest
a significant number of such people are what I can only describe as emotional
cripples – but not all: many are simply victims of the social engineering
performed by elites over the millennia since humans were gatherer-hunters (which I will explore in the next two
chapters).
It should be
carefully noted, as I have already stated, that such worldviews can be
inculcated by parents, peers, and respected authority figures.
To explore this further, note that at least
two national psychologists’ associations are recommending development of
evidence-based, “gendered guidelines” for psychologists working with men and
boys
, on the basis that:
“. . . traditional masculine ideology has been
shown to limit males' psychological development … and negatively influence
mental health.” . . . “The guidelines support encouraging positive
aspects of 'traditional masculinity', such as courage and leadership, and
discarding traits such as violence and sexism, while noting that the vast
majority of men are not violent.”
So, not only does the “tough love” approach
cripple the group it is applied to, it also cripples its advocates
. . .
My suspicion is that the
flawed “tough love” approach has been used throughout much of history, perhaps
from the time human evolved, but certainly from the time early Empires were
evolving. It is thus hard, now, as with the challenges a fish is faced when
trying to recognise water, for us to recognise that the “tough love” approach
is imposed by social engineering, and not innate.
As an example of a
more constructive approach, I recall reading an article in the 2000s examining
why the Australian women’s swimming team had started to outperform the
Australian men’s swimming team. The change was associated with a change in
culture in the women’s team away from the male-imported competitive niggling to
a more supportive, mutually encouraging atmosphere. Training still continued as
before, but the results were improved – at least with that group of women.
Even today, what I
have seen of women in gatherer-hunter societies – and many other situations – suggests that a more nurturing
approach is better (“more effective”)
than the toughness admired in business and politics.
(Incidentally, I tried to find a link to that original article about
the Australian swimming team without success, but I’ve put a few others in the
footnote
.)
I mentioned
“male-imported” above. I would like to explore that further, beginning with
unwitting biases in experiments on stress. Because the rats used in those study
were all male, the conclusion reached was that responses to stress were either
fight or flight. However, when female rats were included, another response was
identified:
“network and nurture” (or “tend and befriend”)
.
The problem of
ignoring sex differences in medical research extends to other areas – in
particular, responses to medicines
(“drugs”)
.
(There appears to be a similar problem
with the bias in using predominantly Europeans.
)
Include better
observation, as well as more diversity, and the range of stress responses extends
further to:
fight, flight,
freeze, or network and nurture.
Now, a very major
limitation on what I have been writing so far is my use of gender. I’ve started
alluding to a non-binary approach to gender when I introduced gender diversity,
and I’ll come back to those issues down the track. However, for now, I would
like to suggest that an appropriate way to view secondary physical, emotional,
and mental “characteristics” of gender is to consider that, for each gender,
there is variation – a range that goes from, in the case of male and female,
from stereotypical extreme at one end, to people having characteristics of the
other gender at the other.
To be clear on this,
I am
NOT referring to gender-diverse
people
(such as transgender people,
including transsexuals ) when I refer to
“people having characteristics of the other gender at the other” –
nor does this even cover same sex attracted people, who are often assumed by
uninformed and actively bigoted
(even if
the bigotry is due to misinformation, it is still bigotry) people who
assume that, for example, gay men are all effeminate
(the macho gay sports stars show that to be a load of rot) or
assume that all effeminate men are gay. Similarly not all lesbians are butch,
and not all butch women are lesbians.
The truth is that
every gender (yes, I do consider there
are more than two, and no, the sub-group of gender diverse people often
described as “transsexual” [or “transgender’] are NOT members of a third gender – they are
members of the gender they identify as) can be represented what is commonly
called a bell curve, and that these bell curves all overlap.
In fact, one of the
problems I have come across in the business world when arguing for diversity
and inclusion to address a lack of women is that some reprobate may well say
“oh but we’ve got women here, and they’re coping OK, so why do we need to
change?”
(actually often expressed more
succinctly, and with profanity J ). Well, the
answer is, you’ve got the minority of women who are the end of the “female”
bell curve which overlaps the male enough for them to cope – or perhaps
flourish – with that macho environment, but if you want to start accessing the
rest of the bell curve of women, and thus start to increase your chances of
diversity of thinking, you need to make changes so that that group won’t feel
uncomfortable or unwelcome.
Conversely, you don’t
want to make the atmosphere such that men feel unwelcome: things like allowing
variety of workspaces while insisting on politeness everywhere is probably the best
approach.
To take this back to
the early gatherer-hunters, there is also a balancing act going on there. Some
skills need to be passed on – for example, learning to recognise safe and
dangerous foods, and techniques for stone working. Those require the imposition
of a certain amount of “sameness”. However, allowing flexibility is what enables
new foods to be added to diets, new ways of working stone to make tools to be
developed, and so on.
If those groups had
been
rigidly compelled into uniformity, improvements would not be
possible. In my view, the flexibility that comes through the diversity that
human rights enable
promotes survival and a better quality of life for all people. As
an example, consider a widely acknowledged genius
(my description) like Stephen Hawking
: people with his disabilities in the past were possibly expelled from the
tribe
(although there is evidence of
older people receiving extra care
), and almost certainly would have been killed or exiled from
empire-building groups. Well, where would we be now, as a species, if we had
kept and utilised their abilities? The Ancient Greeks had ideas including
democracy and jet engines – what if that inventiveness had received extra
boosts from people wrongly discarded? Would we be in a more sustainable
position now? Would we be living amongst the stars
(no, not Hollywood – astronomical stars)?
By the way, I suspect
the topic of gender diversity could be explored further, by those able to do
so, who are able to look at various gatherer-hunter groups’ attitudes towards
intersexed and gender diverse people. Modern sensibilities on this were, until
the work of many advocates in the 20
th Century, warped by the social
engineering imposed in recent millennia
(in
the West – I don’t know what the situation was in Australian indigenous
culture, for instance, which had already been in existence for at least 45,000
years when European “civilisation” started developing) by social elites,
which reflected their biases – including the biases of the neochristian churches
. However, I have read suggestions that pre-colonial societies were far more
inclusive and tolerant.
An example of that is
possibly India, where the British imposed their anti-LGBTIQ biases during their
colonial occupation of India, and it took almost seven decades for India to get
around to repealing that law (hmm
. . . something else I’ve read, in the context of transitioning from conflict
to peace, is that cementing that change may take three generations – around 75
years by most definitions of “generation” in the modern context that I’ve come
across).
So: the advantages of being tolerant and
inclusive are:
·
you keep the numbers of your group up (which is not always an advantage – it is a
disadvantage if food or water is limited);
·
you avoid the weakness of mistaking
uniformity for strength. That is fairly clear when considering
genetic issues, but having a range of ways of thinking is fairly key to the
business benefits of diversity and inclusion - and who’s to say it wouldn’t
apply to gatherer-hunter societies also?; and
·
you get a diversity of perception and thinking
and being that leads to innovation and, through trial and correction
, a better life for all.
