I want to know where it comes from -- this desire to hate...this desire to exclude.


It is like a rush?


Is it like an emptiness that needs to be filled?


Or is it like a yearning, a longing, an attraction?


Or is it like a thirst, a compulsion, like a ravenous appetite?


Could it be like fear...mindless fear...that drives you, pulls you as if driven by furies?


Or is it that if you do not hate them, you will hate yourself?

Maybe it is from our biology roots to justify taking resources from non-kin for survival.

But in modern times, I can't explain it except maybe it is related to aggression, susceptibility to form groups, plain human meanness, jealousy and stupidity. We should know better by now.

I love Anne Frank, but I don't agree that basically humans are good at heart. I wish they were more so.

Biology and ethology.

Humans and our cousins, chimps and bonobos, evolved to function in groups of 100-200 individuals. If the population grows to 300 or so, the group is likely to fracture and two or three communities diverge. That made sense as long as humans functioned as hunter-gatherers. but much of human history--not coincidentally because writing was concomitant with more sophisticated economies--has consisted of people trying to harmonize the small-group consciousness with large-group exigencies.

How do you get groups of hundreds or thousands or millions to work together given that their genetic endowments don't fit? By superimposing other structures to canalize behavior appropriately. The state, the military, the police, and religion are all means of encouraging if not compelling people to treat outsiders decently. That's the foundation of modern civilization.

But it does not always work. There is always an underlying tendency, like gravity, impelling people toward smaller groups. That's why Hitler and other fascists, the great socialist leaders like Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, and populist demagogues so frequently manufacture an "other" or "others:" because they know that much of their audience will feel more comfortable if elevated to a morally or violently privileged elite. And if you want to be elite, there must be untermensch of one sort of another.

Perhaps why people hate isn't the right question. Perhaps the real issue is why would we expect a species to adapt seamlessly to an ecological, economic, political, and sociological niche for which they did not evolve.

It's just a rough rule for 1) the critical point at which chimpanzee societies tend to divide, and 2) the observed pattern of ancient and modern hunter-gatherers.

If environmental conditions are unusually harsh, the tippling point occurs at a lower population density but still in the range of 150-250 individuals.

The weird thing is that I think Mormon wards are in a better position if they have over 300 members. The members are not as badly overworked, and there are more opportunities for socializing. Plus those who want to fly under the radar are more able to do so.

That's because the church intentionally created enough busy work to keep everyone in large wards engaged. Most of those jobs are far from essential, and in small wards and branches many of them are jettisoned. The goal is to create the "right" number of "callings" for a given size.

There is definitely a reluctance to acknowledge that large wards have permanently shrunk--embarrassing for God, you know--so the adjustment is slow. But I'd expect more streamlining in coming years and decades.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If environmental conditions are unusually harsh,
> the tippling point occurs at a lower population
> density


My tippling point occurs at approximately 5:00 p.m. every Friday evening.

About now, in fact!

:)

Awesome! Thanks for keeping me in line.

A rare opportunity. :)

"I want to know where it comes from -- this desire to hate...this desire to exclude."

I suggest you look inside yourself for that answer. You know it as well as anyone you accuse of it.

I'm not going to make them wear socks or threaten to destroy their lives if they don't wear socks.

But plenty of people are quite willing to kill if other people don't wear the right kind of ceremonial clothing.

S O C K S tener brillo!

Like not being able to sit at the cool kids' table? I don't know. Some of us aren't cool enough.

The NYT Science section had an article the other night, titled, "What if Believing in Free Will is Just a Choice?" The article was a conversation with Robert Sapolsky regarding his new book.

The premise of his new book is particularly fascinating as it calls into question the validity of Free Agency and Regular Agency as well. "Determined. A Science of Life Without Free Will" by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a biologist and neurologist at Stanford University and a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.

"He contends that we are not free agents, but that biology, hormones, childhood and life circumstances coalesce to produce actions that we merely feel were ours to choose."

After reading it all I can say is I do not have neither the free will nor the agency to disagree with Sapolsky. My biology, hormones, childhood and life circumstances have made it impossible for me to do anything but say Amen to his words. And there was a photo of him with an old golden retriever. But the life circumstances of the writer made them not give the name of the dog which I wanted to know and my biology kicked in and made me irritated at her for that. I love old Goldens.

Considering Sapolsky, how much hate is really hate? Such an easy word to toss around when we disagree. How much is linked to something more primal like survival of the fittest or simply finding ways to fight back against bullies? How many other things play in? Like your formative years.

In my young life the hot Mormon topic of the day was Foreordination vs Predestination. Satan didn't want us to have a choice. But, Yay!, God gave us free agency (to either do as he said or go to the lower kingdoms and weep and wail). Sapolsky makes hash of all of that.

In the end I don't see any "single source" for hate that you are looking for. There isn't some section of a gland we could remove and have it all gone.

The opposite of hate isn't love. It isn't even empathy. The opposite is understanding.

"The opposite of hate isn't love. It isn't even empathy. The opposite is understanding."

That's brilliant, D&D. Thank you.

Having read much of the voluminous literature on free will, including the many works of academics like Sapolsky who deny free will, I will note the following:

All those who deny free will do so based upon a foundational materialist assumption. This assumption holds especially in the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, and cognitive science generally. The assumption was articulated by Francis Crick, famously as 'the Astonishing Hypothesis':

"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

There is no room for free will within the context of this hypothesis. Moreover, this hypothesis is supported by much (but not all) of classical and modern physics. In short, it is a hypothesis that is dictated by science. As such, there is no 'room' for free will in science, neuroscience, or cognitive science -- if, in fact, one clings to the above materialist assumption. (Never mind the obvious fact that science itself progresses only because of a commitment to free will!)

Yet, as I have noted many times (too many for some) free will is an obvious human cognitive capacity that is demonstrated repeatedly in daily human life. It is the foundation of all human intuitions, human actions, humanistic values, and science itself.

As such, when considering the tension between free will and materialism, in the context of science generally, or in the context of Crick's hypothesis, what has to be abandoned is NOT free will, but the materialist assumption that rejects it! The universe is a big place. It has properties that are 'metaphysical' but nonetheless real. This includes mind, consciousness, and, yes, free will. Science is not the master of what is or is not real, it is its servant.

I will end this rant with a quote for one of the world's leading Neuroscientists, Antonio Damasio:

"At the outset I made my view clear on the limits of science: I am skeptical of science's presumption of objectivity and definitiveness. I have a difficult time seeing scientific results, especially in neurobiology, as anything but provisional approximations, to be enjoyed for a while and discarded as soon as better accounts become available. But Skepticism about the current reach of science, especially as it concerns the mind, does not imply diminished enthusiasm for the attempt to improve provisional approximations. Perhaps the complexity of the human mind is such that the solution to the problem can never be known because of our inherent limitations."

(Antonio Damasio, *Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.* p. xxii) (Unfortunately, Damasio himself often loses sight of this humbling observation.)

Not again.

A 1994 book disproves science conducted decades later?

A 2007 book by a Nobel-winning physicist disproves work done later in fields in which he has no expertise?

Your personal musings about "social justice, the promotion of humanistic values," etc., call into doubt the work done by a MacArthur Genius whose scientific and popular publications you have never read?

David Hume described your epistemology when he wrote that "reason is the slave of passion."

"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

Which brings to mind:

"It’s almost as if science said, “Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.” The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it."

Rupert Sheldrake

Whenever there is serious reflection on the origin of hate, it is tempting to turn to evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology in search for an explanation. In other words, the explanation supposedly lies in some evolutionary story of human nature, often provided as a fanciful or imaginary "just-so" story. (see Kipling, *Just-So Stories*, and Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002); See also, e.g. LW's post in response to this thread.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

Such made-up explanations are without merit for two principal reasons -- besides the fact that they lack scientific rigor, scientific verification, and scientific falsification. (See Robert C. Richardson, *Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology (2007))

(1) Such explanations generalize to human nature without accounting for the fact that what needs to be explained is often (as here) an aberration of general human attitudes and behavior. Individuals and groups that espouse hate are the exception, not the rule to be explained. In short, there is no *universal* propensity for humans to "hate" other humans. As such, there is no *universal* biological explanation that can be extracted from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology as some evolutionary "adaptation". (I cannot explain why some people have red hair by suggesting that red hair is a biological adaptation favored by evolution, when the vast majority of humans do not have red hair!)

(2) All such explanations completely ignore the role of human choice, agency, and/or free will, which reality is also evident from the data of human nature. "Hate" in both individuals and groups of individuals can and often is 'broken,' or overcome, through understanding, empathy, and withdrawal from a hateful group identity and 'group think.' What that means is that that free will is an important part of human nature -- whatever it might amount to metaphysically -- that can promote deliberate efforts to understand one's adversary and move human attitudes and behavior away from hate and towards tolerance.

So, then, if not evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology, what then is the explanation for all this hate we are seeing today? Personally (IMHO) I think the primary cause is the desire for human associations that offer meaningful social relationships and causes in order for a person to establish and sustain a meaningful life. This often results in a tribalistic mentality, which is reinforced by group identity, group think, and commitment to group causes. In addition, the local social order often represents both real and imagined 'victimhood' which fuels hate and violent behavior contrary (in my view) to natural human dispositions. Of course, it would be silly to suggest that biology and environmental context has *nothing* to do with human behavior. But hate is an emotion of individuals, not groups, which ultimately can be addressed and controlled by human will.

The above is a positive account. Tolerance (the lack of hatred) is enhanced through social justice, the promotion of humanistic values, and a fierce rejection of those academic "geniuses" that stupidly deny on materialist grounds the most obvious trait that humans possess, free will.

"Tolerance (the lack of hatred) is enhanced through social justice, the promotion of humanistic values, and a fierce rejection of those academic "geniuses" that stupidly deny on materialist grounds the most obvious trait that humans possess, free will."

That does not mean free will is real. It means that pretending that free will is real buttresses Platonic values. But believing in God does the same thing. It doesn't matter if God exists, only the belief. There are also sunk costs. If you have practiced law, you have little choice but to believe in free will.

> "Tolerance (the lack of hatred) is enhanced
> through social justice, the promotion of
> humanistic values, and a fierce rejection of those
> academic "geniuses" that stupidly deny on
> materialist grounds the most obvious trait that
> humans possess, free will."

That is an interesting passage, no? It is polemic, substituting insults for argument. It does not strengthen Henry's position.


-----------------
> If you have
> practiced law, you have little choice but to
> believe in free will.

Have you read Sapolsky? I ask because while generally saying he has "no clue" what determinism means for people's everyday lives, he thinks the ramifications for the criminal justice system are profound--as you obviously see.

For if there is no free will, no free agency, there can be no guilt. What is interesting is that the current definition of guilt in US jurisprudence is based on a case from the 1840s which was informed by the science available then. The legal basics have not changed in nearly 200 years, meaning that the rules are closer to those of the witchcraft trials than to the science of the 21st century.

Sapolsky does testify as an expert witness in cases of impaired cognition. What he thinks must happen is that we update our legal definition of "guilt" or, better yet, dispense with the concept altogether. What does that mean in practical terms? Not much. The basis of punishment ceases to be retribution and becomes that of societal safety. Violent people must be removed from society so they cannot hurt innocents. Perhaps capital punishment is no longer justifiable in the absence of guilt, but life in prison remains necessary in most if not virtually all cases of repeated aggressi*n; and there's a case for ensuring that the imprisonment is more human than it presently is. But no one is advocating opening the prison gates.

There is a partial convergence with Michel Foucault at this point, for his approach was always to look at the change in meaning of words over time. In Discipline and Punish he documents the way that society and its legal systems have viewed the purpose of imprisonment, corporeal, and even capital punishment over the centuries. There have been times and places where the focus was on societal preservation rather than vengeance, then other times when vengeance reigned supreme. Sapolsky is simply arguing that the pendulum should swing back some distance.

How well does that argument work in criminal courts? Not very. The last time I heard him discuss his legal career in an interview, he laughed that he had lost nine of the ten cases in which he testified. He says that jurors are willing to listen to him until the crime scene photos are shown.



Edited 11 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2023 09:24PM by Lot's Wife.

when god kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden just for eating fruit from, and get this, the "tree of knowledge."

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