My Response to Walter Rhein
RE: My "Not To Be Pessimistic" post and Walter's "How Christianity Contrived to Bring Authoritarianism to America: A philosophical exploration on what made Americans give up their freedoms"
I am responding to Walter’s post, How Christianity Contrived to Bring Authoritarianism to America: A philosophical exploration on what made Americans give up their freedoms, which you were kind enough to let me post on my blog.
Walter, I might have been misunderstood in my agreement with Immanuel Kant's assertion that "From such crooked timber as humankind is made of, nothing entirely straight can be made." The quote suggests that humans are flawed and make mistakes. Kant's quote has been used by others, including:
Isaiah Berlin
Berlin used the quote in his book The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas to criticize those who tried to force humanity into a straitjacket.
Kant may have borrowed the metaphor of humanity as timber from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote in his book Émile that "everything degenerates in the hands of man."
I was not speaking of individuals per se but rather collective humanity, humans who act in concert with one another, either with intent or haphazardly. Many fine, fine humans are very moral and upstanding, and there are untold numbers of intelligent, intelligent, beautiful people. There can be no doubt about this.
I'm talking about humanity's collective decisions that have left the planet in disarray, from climate change to the gap between wealthy and poor worldwide to the onward march of Authoritarianism. I'm talking about these collective decisions, not individual decisions.
I wanted to clarify that humans are the way they are because evolution “created” us that way.
Think back to Darwin's Survival of the Fittest, when, thousands and thousands of years ago, we lived in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers and feared the group next to us. It was the start of Tribalism, which plagues us to this day. Think of the rule of the time: kill or be killed, and having to hunt and kill all manner of living things just to survive.
It created a kind of bloodlust in prehistoric man and how our brains developed, and it's persisted through to today. So, were they born with sin? No, of course not, if sin exists. The problem happened in the millennium before that, during the evolutionary period of homeo sapiens, hence the problem. If there is any doubt, I encourage one to take stock of the world. I don't think we can offer a credible argument that the world is not fucked up.
One only needs to look at our own country. Look at the—well, we all have eyes; everyone can see what has and is happening. In summary, I'm not saying men, baby human boys, and girls were born of sin. I'm saying that evolution, throughout the millennia, has caused us humans to be the way we are. The world is the way it is because humans are the way they are because they came about through an arduous evolutionary process.
The primordial brain structures are those brain structures that are still present today, when our ancient ancestors emerged from muck and eventually into apes, then proto-humans, and finally, as we are today.
But our brain is still basically the same; all those levels remain there. That's the real problem. I would modify singer Adam Ant's quote, "An 18th-century brain, in a 21st-century head,” to read a prehistoric brain in a 21st-century head and world. It's not a moral issue, a religious issue, or a question of divinity. I believe all people are ALREADY BLESSED. However, as we have seen, we all have the capacity for good and evil. I wanted to state my position clearly.
For doubters, it brings to mind a book I am fond of by Barbara Tuchman. The March of Folly from Troy to Vietnam was published in 1984. It illustrates this perfectly, the bloodlust, propensity to war, and violence that humanity has displayed repeatedly during the long-gone centuries. It continues to this day, and that is what I meant.
Best,
Jeff
Jeffrey David Hines
Dallas, TX
Hi Lux,
I found your comment to Maura genuinely fascinating! I agree; her insights were impressive. I'm new to the idea that the indigenous inhabitants of North America were intricately organized as nations, and it's pretty eye-opening. Is this one of the topics you write about and discuss on your Substack?
Best,
Jeff
Hmmm. There is no way to know how humans who ran into other human tribes behaved in the deep past. Maybe some fought, maybe some bred together instead. We do know that humans bred with Neanderthals, so there may have been more cooperation. After all Neanderthals were a whole other species, not just another tribe. Nature has far more cooperation than competition, in fact life on land started when lichen broke down rocks into soil. Lichen is two cooperating species.
Yes, we do have capacity for both compassion/cooperation or for lack there of. However, humans are built to belong, to work together.
Humans are also story telling creatures. The stories we tell ourselves lead to actions. They are powerful, especially when we believe them.
Why do we put so much focus on sin?
The Catholic church terrorized Europe for 2000 years with its doctrine of sin and authoritarian ways. It traumatized a whole population across the European continent and beyond. Protestants didn’t do better.
Traumatized brains don’t work well and tend to be hyper vigilant and trauma creates stronger neural pathways in the fear system. We don’t know how we could be if we weren’t so traumatized. The Church + colonialism spread this trauma around the world. We live in a great big trauma recycling system. That is how we arrived at this juncture.
There are tribal humans in the world that do not behave like us. It appears many Native American civilizations did not also. I don’t think it is just evolution. It is evolution plus trauma. Trauma that is not being healed. So many of us are in fight or flight and/or collapse states. Trump is definitely a traumatized person and so are his followers.
Personally I think Walter is on to something here! It is about time that the terror of Christianity is called out for what it created here. Our “Christian” nation was founded on a holocaust of Native people and the enslavement of Africans. Sure, some Christians also fought against these evils, but for the most part, Christians think they are chosen and superior, especially the more evangelical and the more devout dominionist Catholics. They deny their trauma and project all their self hatred shit onto to others and justify demonizing them because that is what their belief encourages them to do. It encourages them to hate being human, to hate themselves for not being perfect. It creates cognitive dissonance. They carry this sickness into every relationship. Evolution is not responsible for the mess, even if it plays a specific role in survival. However, we are not surviving, we are dying.
Imagine what the world would be like if we followed a culture more like some of the tribes we did our damndest to destroy.