Thoughts 19 Jan. 2022

 

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

The flow of the universe is always creative, though it has order, and is not random or chaotic; the world is always a matter of responsiveness, though it is equally not a free-for-all. It is a process of creative collaboration, of co-creation.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

Whatever-it-is-that-exists-apart-from-ourselves creates us, but we also take part in creating whatever-it-is. By this I do not only mean the common sense view that I have an impact on the world, as the world has an impact on me: that I leave my footprints. That would lead immediately to the reflection that I am very small in relation to the world, and so effectively my impact is so small that for all intents and purposes it can be ignored. There is, it might seem, an inexpressibly vast universe and an inexpressibly tiny individual consciousness (I’d say that this is the left hemisphere’s attempt to represent spatially and quantify something that is experiential and developed in time, but I hope that will be more comprehensible when we come to the discussion of time and space in Part III). Such a reflection seems to posit an objective position – the view outside of history or geography, time or space – a view from nowhere, in which all can be measured and compared. It implies a Measurer of all the measurers, measuring the other scales and putting each part in its place according to its overall worth. But though that cannot be, the alternative is not just a merely subjective position, either: this very polarity – subjective/ objective – is misleading. In the fado, in the raga, in jazz, it is what it is because of me, and I am what I am because of it. I will have much more to say about the crucial issue of the subjective/ objective ‘divide’ throughout this book.

Four Quartets

T. S. Eliot

A people without history

Is not redeemed from time,

for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments.

Evolutionaries

Carter Phipps

[Don Beck of Spiral Dynamics fame] realized a surprising truth—one that might have seemed nonsensical to the uninitiated but represented a radically different perspective on the political tensions of the country [South Africa]. “Oh my God,” he realized. “This is not about race.” To most South Africans, the societal fault lines were clear. It was black versus white, African versus European. But for Beck, it wasn’t so simple. This struggle really masked a deeper conflict, one between value systems.

Doom

Niall Ferguson

Xi’s panopticon is actually more akin to the dystopia imagined in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1920s novel We.

Fear Itself

Ira Katznelson

IN FACT, the entire New Deal period, lasting until the inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, reflects an unremitting sense of fragility. From the Great Depression to the blood-filled battlefields in Korea, persistent, nearly unremitting anxiety conditioned the era’s “normal politics” of voting, public opinion, pressure groups, federalism, and the separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

The Science of Likability

Patrick King

When people subconsciously begin to associate you with positive moods and emotions, you are going to be the bell that makes people smile without realizing why.

Thoughts 22 Dec 2021

 

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

[Henry, if I'm recalling correctly] Ford was channeling the attitude of [Herbert] Hoover’s recently reassigned Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, who had advocated a response to the Depression that amounted to financial nihilism: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness from the system…people will work harder, live a more moral life.” That had been [Frederick] Hayek’s position in his attack on A Treatise on Money. A bust was the inevitable consequence of a reckless boom, and any government sugarcoating of the necessary losses would only make matters worse.

To wit, burden everyone with a depression to purge the system; pre-Keynesian economics performing the work of 18th-century physicians: don't have a cure? Then bleed the patient! No wonder Hoover (who didn't buy into Mellon's extremism) didn't win re-election with advisors like Mellon! 

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Feedback can be positive or negative. By “positive” feedback, complexity theorists don’t mean that the feedback is always a “good” thing. Instead, they mean that the feedback reinforces or amplifies the initial change, and in the process it creates a virtuous or vicious circle.

Evolutionaries

Carter Phipps

“Briefly, what I am proposing,” [Clare] Graves writes in the article that first introduced [Don] Beck to his work, “is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man’s existential problems change.”

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

A long process of trial and error has weeded out the bad innovations, leaving behind what has stood the test of time. The result may not be perfect, but it is probably the best that can be accomplished with the materials at hand. Evolution or ecology should not be used to justify wealth and privilege or inherited evils, but it does imply a Burkean stance toward change. There is a kind of wisdom contained in the system—biological or social—that we would be wise to study and understand before we launch “reforms” based on our “progressive” ideas.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Even today, now that it has achieved stability and strength (if on the bodies of millions of victims), it is not clear that the leaders in Beijing accept the Westphalian concept of a community of nations in which each country is left alone to pursue its own national interest as long as it does not upset the world order by threatening others.

Philosophical Intimations

James Hillman

Caponigri, Time and Idea, 131: “ ‘Ricorsi’ appears in Vico, in the first instance, as a methodological notion. It designates a methodological device for making effective his discovery of the primacy of poetry and, with this, of the genuine time-structure and movement of history. It consists in the employment of the categories of poetic wisdom for the interpretation of the cultural and social structures of post-poetic times. By this employment there is determined abstract contemporaneity between time-form structures.” In other words: archetypal persons transcend historical limitations even as they manifest themselves in historical time. These poetic figures are the ultimate categories for understanding human existence.

Evolutionaries: Unlocking the Spiritual & Cultural Potential of Science's Greatest Idea by Carter Phipps

 

Copyright 2012. Still relevant; perhaps more so

This book by Carter Phipps is an outstanding work of intellectual journalism. That is, it’s intended for a general audience. It provides basic explanations of key terms and examines thinkers within its field with enough depth to whet the appetite of the curious. (Like yours truly.) The book explores the wider implications of the theory of evolution. Of course, the theory was grounded in the biological insights of Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, but the concept of development, of change through time in response to changing circumstances, including the course of the history of humankind, came before the two biologists. This new way of thinking is most widely known through the writings of the early nineteenth-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. (The full name just seems so appropriate.) Thus, while evolution is best known in the sphere of biology, it’s branched off into other fields, including psychology, sociology, politics, philosophy, and spirituality. Some argue that this is a bastardization of the theory of evolution and that it's fraught with problems (it can be and has been; see Darwinism, Social). But the primary idea of change through time that more often than not reveals a pattern of increasing complexity and sophistication, provides a tonic for thinking in other fields, too. Centering his reporting on (more or less) contemporary figures (with a few backward glances I’ll mention later), Phipps shares how this core concept ignited new and important trains of thought in many fields. 

Before diving in further, I should share Phipps’s definition of evolution: 

Evolution, as an idea, transcends biology. It is better thought of as a broad set of principles and patterns that generate novelty, change, and development over time.

Phipps, Carter. Evolutionaries (p. 27). Harper Perennial. Kindle Edition. 

With this perspective, Phipps goes on to provide his first take on what defines an evolutionary: “Evolutionaries are those who have woken up, looked around, and realized: We are moving.” Id. p. 38. The “moving” here is not so much physical (although it certainly includes physical movement), but it primarily addresses behaviors, actions, ideas, and culture. To borrow from the Buddhists, all is impermanence. But impermanence with an attitude, as it were. And this includes not only all the diverse species of life, but also individual humans, their societies and cultures, and even the Universe as a whole. We’re all dancing a dance to rhythms that only whisper to us and that bring us together and then apart in new, unexpected patterns. But let us return to Phipps’s descriptions of his subject matter. 

Clearly there is much overlap between Evolutionaries and evolutionists. But as I implied in chapter 1, I intend for Evolutionary to mean more than that. Evolutionary is a play on the word “revolutionary,” and I mean it to convey something of the revolutionary nature of evolution as an idea. Evolutionaries are revolutionaries, with all the personal and philosophical commitment that word implies. They are not merely curious bystanders to the evolutionary process, passive believers in the established sciences of evolution, though all certainly value those insights. They are committed activists and advocates—often passionate ones—for the importance of evolution at a cultural level. They are positive agents of change who subscribe to the underappreciated truth that evolution, comprehensively understood, implicates the individual. Indeed, an Evolutionary is someone who has internalized evolution, who appreciates it not only intellectually but also viscerally. Evolutionaries recognize the vast process we are embedded within but also the urgent need for our own culture to evolve and for each of us to play a positive role in that outcome.

He continues: 

With that in mind, I would like to outline three critical characteristics common to Evolutionaries. This is hardly an exhaustive list, but I hope it manages to capture the essential spirit of this designation. First, Evolutionaries are cross-disciplinary generalists. Second, Evolutionaries are developing the capacity to cognize the vast timescales of our evolutionary history. Third, Evolutionaries embody a new spirit of optimism.

Id. p. 40.

It is this final characteristic that makes these Evolutionaries so important: optimism. I’ll shock no one in opining that there's a dearth of hope these days. We humans, as a species, are lighting our own funeral pyre. Even rudimentary issues that shouldn’t create division or fear do so. If we can find legitimate grounds for optimism, we should grab firmly ahold of them. My opinion is that we’re headed for some remarkable and in some (perhaps many) ways severe changes, but can we as a species come out ahead on the other side? Maybe, but any predictions aside, we should set our course for the best possible outcome, and many of the thinkers given voice in his book provide suggestions along these lines. Carter provides a concise description of what he’s asserting: 

Evolutionaries are deep optimists. I’m not talking about a naïve optimism, a forced optimism, a superficial optimism, or even a hopeful optimism but an informed confidence in the knowledge that evolution is at work in the processes of consciousness and culture, and that we can place our own hands on the levers of those processes and make a positive impact. It is a subtle but powerful current of conviction that lifts the sails of the psyche and propels it forward into the future. Evolutionaries don’t just believe that the future can be better than the past; somehow they know it—like a great leader knows that she can make a difference; like a great athlete knows that he can compete and win. I would suggest that the unique flavor of this evolutionary optimism cannot be attributed to a mere personal feeling, inspiration, or belief. It runs deeper than that. Evolutionaries evince a confidence that is different from the brashness and bluster that flows out of the personal ego. It carries with it a conviction that reaches beyond any quality found only within the boundaries of the personality. And they transmit that confidence to others. We tend to transmit to others how we feel about life at a fundamental level. When one spends time with a great mystic or saint, there is a quality to the personality that is recognizable, whatever the particular tradition of that individual or belief system—a quality of ease, of deep peace, and of transcendent being that we experience in the company of those whose source of confidence lies far deeper than the individual psyche.

Id. p. 51. 

But lest you conclude that Phipps’s Evolutionraries are simply a bunch of Pollyannas, he quickly disabuses the reader of any such conclusion: 

It is important to note here that the evolutionary optimism I am speaking about does not equate to a conviction in an inevitable positive outcome, or a belief in a miraculous “shift” that is just about to happen. We see this kind of thinking all too often in spiritual-but-not-religious circles—whether it be a Mayan prophecy, the Harmonic Convergence, or some sort of “Earth Change” that will pave the way to the future. Such ideas are often held by individuals with the best of motives, who look out at a world of climate change, terrorism, corruption, overpopulation, and financial disaster, where billions live in poverty, and conclude that things are not getting better at all. Or if they are, they aren’t improving fast enough. And then they pray, hope, meditate—for some event; some change of consciousness; some immanent convergence, emergence, or resurgence of love, light, peace, and compassion to deliver us from the darkness and ignorance that has a hold on our collective soul. And too often, they invoke the term “evolution” to describe this shift in consciousness. Such thinking has nothing to do with evolution as I understand it. In fact, I would suggest that it is not a faith in evolution that leads one to embrace such naïve or exaggerated hopes but, in fact, a lack of faith. It is an insufficient appreciation of the power of evolution and a failure to understand how it works, at a cultural level, that leads some to start reaching for super-historical forces to emerge and save the day. When we begin to appreciate the true dimensions of the vast evolutionary process that we are a part of, our optimism becomes grounded in the slow but demonstrable reality of actual development.

Id. p. 52. 

One should note that no one, Evolutionary or other, can predict the future with any accuracy. Imagine a variety of futures? Yes. But predict accurately? No. But then the outcome of any process arises in part--and perhaps in large part--from the vision of those who act to influence it. (And by "act," I would include imagining a future.)

Following these introductory remarks, Phipps takes his reader through a gallery of Evolutionaries, some via personal interviews and some through explication of their works. Whatever the medium, his tour is a who’s-who of key figures that includes biologists Lynn Margulis, David Sloan Wilson (all-too-briefly in my opinion, but then Wilson has done a lot even since 2014), Simon Conway-Morris, and Rupert Sheldrake; generalists (a term that Carter uses to define Evolutionaries) Robert Wright and Howard Bloom; complexity theorist Stuart Kaufmann; techno-futurists and transhumanists Ray Kurzweil and Kevin Kelly; economist and complexity theorist W. Brian Arthur; lawyer-turned-integral theorist Steve McIntosh and integral theorist Ken Wilber; philosopher and social theorist Jurgen Habermas; Gary Lachman, historian of Western thought; Don Beck of Spiral Dynamics fame; Michael Dowd, fundamentalist preacher-turned-evolutionary teacher; Thomas Berry, Catholic monastic and cultural historian; cosmologist Brian Swimme; and process theologian Phillip Clayton. I've listed only those with whom I had some prior acquaintance (some fleeting; some extensive) and who are contemporary (I think only Thomas Berry (1914-2009) on this list is deceased). And this is only a partial list of contemporaries! Phipps does his homework and pounds the pavement to get his stories. 

But in addition to those with whom he spoke or who are still active among us, Phipps discusses key figures from the past: Hegel; James Mark Baldwin, Henri Bergson; Charles Saunders Pierce; Alfred North Whitehead; Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000!); Jean Gebser; and others. And among the others are two figures who seem to be the guiding minds of the Evolutionary brigade: the Indian independence activist, philosopher, and mystic,  Sri Aurobindo (1972-1950), and the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Indeed, if we were to be compelled to identify one guiding spirit in the train of evolutionary thought, it would have to be that of Teilhard, followed closely by Aurobindo. (Alas, I must confess that I’ve not read the original texts of either of these two giants, even as Aurobindo was recommended to me by a young Iranian-Spanish-Irish chest master at a meditation retreat; and I’ve known of Teilhard since my undergrad years. Perhaps having enjoyed Phipps’s treatment of them, this will be the year!) 

I would be remiss, I think, not to note that much of Phipps’s work with this book was in connection with the periodicals What Is Enlightenment, later re-named EnlightenNext, for which he served as executive editor from 1999-2010. (I was a frequent reader of those periodicals and will attest to the quality of their product.) The periodical was associated with the teachings of Andrew Cohen, an American spiritual teacher, whom Phipps describes as his “friend and mentor.” Phipps discusses Cohen and his relationship with him in the book. However, the book was copyrighted in 2012. In 2013 Cohen withdrew from public teaching amid criticisms from students (followers) who accused him of abusive and authoritarian behavior, and he issued a public apology for his actions in 2015. (In distinction from many self-styled “enlightened” teachers, these allegations didn’t involve sexual misconduct so far as I can tell.) However, having noted all this, I don’t believe that it negates the arguments Phipps makes in this book. And while I suspect that Cohen's fall may have had caused some personal consternation for Phipps, his work has continued to prosper. He went on to become the co-founder and Managing Director of the Institute for Cultural Evolution, a nonprofit social policy think-tank based in Boulder, Colorado inspired by the insights of Integral Philosophy. And via The Institute for Cultural Evolution, he became associated with the Post-Progressive Alliance, an off-shoot of the Institute for Cultural Evolution (and of which I am a member). The Post-Progressive Alliance seeks a path out of our current “culture wars” and its attendant political dysfunction via a better understanding and appreciation of current world views and envisioning new sets of values that incorporate the best of existing values with new perspectives. (For a complete consideration of the thinking that prompted the Post-Progressive Alliance, see Steve McIntosh's Developmental Politics: How American Can Grow into a Better Version of Itself.) Also, in 2020 Phipps and co-authors Steve McIntosh and John Mackey published Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business. So whatever disruption Phipps may have suffered from the downfall of Cohen, he seems to have come out ahead. 

Before closing, I should also note that Phipps steps from behind the authorial curtain on many occasions, all to my delight. His comments and revelations (of personal experiences and beliefs) allow the reader to better know their guide, where’s he’s been and where he might be headed. His questions, doubts, and experiences enhance the narrative and serve as a contrast and commentary upon the ideas considered in the book (valuable as they are). For instance, Phipps notes his change in demeanor during Sooner football games while discussing Don Beck and Spiral Dynamics: 

[W]hen I watch football, especially University of Oklahoma football, I undergo a rather startling personality change. Temporarily, I leave behind my mild-mannered exterior and a whole subpersonality comes to the forefront of my consciousness. It’s as if I’m getting in touch with my tribal roots, with warriorlike values of power, will, and domination that are not so prominent in my everyday personality. A whole new attitude emerges in my consciousness, which I suspect is more related to ancient tribal wars than anything I’m engaged with currently.

Id. p. 202

As someone whose wife fears for her safety because of my sometimes wild gesticulations and verbal outbursts during Hawkeye games, I can relate. His report impresses me with a point about Spiral Dynamics that's more visceral (and therefore more memorable) than it otherwise would have been.

The only shortcoming of the book is that it ends, in a manner of speaking, in 2012. What's gone on with Evolutionaries since 2012? Who has joined the ranks? What new developments are there? Have the ideas of Evolutionaries gained wider acceptance in academia and other fields? And how do the Evolutionaries see themselves in relation to other contemporary trains of thought? Of course, every book must end and all knowledge arises over time. We can't blame an author for an inability to escape the constraints of time. But that being said, it does provoke in me a desire to further explore the thinking of those that Phipps has identified and to consider who, present or past, may have a place in this pantheon of exploratory thinkers. An intriguing project to consider!

(The ALL NEW) Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff

Be honest: didn't you just picture an elephant?

The ALL-NEW Don't Think of an Elephant:  Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff (2014) is a timely read. Lakoff is a linguist and cognitive scientist who is also a committed political progressive. In this book, he applies his extensive learning in linguistics and in cognitive science to analyze how we think how this knowledge can help progressives better convince voters of their cause. Even for those not interested in politics, the book is instructive because it provides a quick, accessible overview of Lakoff’s work. In essence, Lakoff argues that we think through metaphors, that all of our thinking arises from our body and its nervous system. That is, we're embodied beings whose thinking is conditioned by our body and our physical surroundings. For learning and arguing, this means that we think in schemas (outlines, models, patterns), metaphors, and narratives.

In politics, Lakoff argues that progressives and conservatives have different fundamental models (or metaphors) by which they view the world. Lakoff describes this as the difference between a “strict father” family metaphor and a “nurturant family” metaphor. (I'll discuss the use of this governing dichotomy later in the review). From these fundamentally different worldviews flow political positions that allow seemingly diverse issues to coalesce around central worldviews. For instance, how anti-abortion attitudes are related to pro-gun attitudes in the conservative understanding of the world.

In Lakoff’s view, conservatives, following the strict father metaphor, adhere to very defined in strict hierarchies. As he writes:

Here is the hierarchy: God above man; man above nature; adults above children; Western culture above non-Western culture; our country above other countries. These are general conservative values. But the hierarchy goes on, and it explains the oppressive views of more radical conservatives: men above women, Christians above non-Christians, whites above nonwhites, straights above gays.Kindle Edition 357.  

In the nurturant parent model, progressives are much more empathic and more egalitarian. (Lakoff doesn’t address how progressives deal with hierarchies, as some extreme forms of progressivism tend toward the anarchic and radical egalitarianism.) As to those who might be considered “moderate” or  “middle-of-the-road" in their political opinions,  Lakoff argues that there is no third between his two defining models (or metaphors—Lakoff is unclear about which is the appropriate term to describe this dichotomy). Thus, those in the middle, whom he dubs “biconceptual”, are just that: they entertain both models at once, giving voice to one or the other at various times or regarding various topics. With repetition, however, one voice will often grow stronger than the other. Thus, one might be using a nurturant family metaphor at home yet adhere to the strict father metaphor in the workplace or in forming some political opinions.

In the more functional area political communication, Lakoff argues that progressives have been outfoxed by conservatives. Lakoff argues that conservatives have been driving home their message for decades through the generous funding of institutes, think tanks, and the media that allow them to define – or in Lakoff’s technical term “frame” – the public debate. Thus, we think of (or frame) “tax relief" as if taxes were simply a burden rather than the dues one pays for living in our civilized society. Lakoff also argues that conservatives appeal to values. Progressives keep thinking that facts and policies are what drive voters’ decisions, but Lakoff says that the progressives infatuation with facts does little to persuade. Progressives, he argues, need to promote their values. Lakoff describes these values as rooted in empathy:

Progressive/liberal morality begins with empathy, the ability to understand others and feel what they feel. That is presupposed in responsibility—responsibility for oneself, for protection, for the care of those who need care, and for the community. Kindle 1856.

Lakoff makes a strong argument that progressives need to increase their voice, address values, and refused to enter into the frames established by conservatives. Conservative masterminds, like Frank Luntz, have created a linguistic environment that puts progressives at a disadvantage from the beginning. Thus, the title of Lakoff book and one of the primary takeaways from it: when you tell someone not to think of an elephant, the first thing they will do is think of an elephant! Accordingly, if you frame an issue as one of, for instance, “tax relief", you’re immediately framing taxes as a burden instead of a cost of membership a vital community organization. After all, our tax dollars allow our governments to provide roads, airports, schools, communications systems, scientific research, law enforcement, national defense and so on. Here, Lakoff is certainly correct. The millions of dollars that the Mellon, Scaife, and Koch families have poured into universities, think tanks, and the media have significantly changed the terms of the national debate. Progressives need to get with it and start broadcasting their message in frames that work from their point of view.

On the issue of political communication and messaging, Lakoff makes a persuasive argument. The book intrigues me, and it frustrates me just a little bit on the following particulars.

1. Lakoff uses the strict father versus nurturant family model (or metaphor) as definitive. I'd read some of Lakoff years ago and was put off by this metaphor, but now I want to explore it further. If this dichotomy is “only” a metaphor, it does provide a great deal of explanatory value. But Lakoff seems to be using this distinction as more than a metaphor, and this raises questions. For instance, is the strict father family model a cause or correlation to a conservative outlook? If it is causal, how does one escape it? For instance, I was born in the 1950s into what I would consider a traditional “father knows best" family. I would describe my father is somewhat strict but not abusive and not authoritarian. My parents had fairly traditional gender roles for that time.  I would describe my upbringing as fairly typical for a small-town, white, kid with college-educated parents. Some friends I grew up with had blue collar parents with less education, and an even more traditional strict father family upbringing, and yet me and some of these others are very much political progressives today. I emigrated from a young Republican to a Democrat (in Lakoff’s terms, a progressive). How did this happen? How did my fundamental metaphor change from that of a strict father family to a nurturant family metaphor? How did I and my wife come to practice a nurturant family model in raises our children? How does this change take place? How does this change in fundamental models relate to the larger cultural environment? Thus, while I think that Lakoff’s metaphor (if that's what it's limited to) is instructive and useful, it's thin on explanation. Lakoff’s model has to be compared to the conception of conservatism versus liberalism that Jon Haidt makes in his writings, or the more comprehensive theories of cultural and personal change found in Integral Theory, which adopts the work of Clare Graves and Don Beck in Spiral Dynamics and incorporates that model into the wider Integral Theory established by Ken Wilber. Perhaps because this is a book intended more of a handbook, Lakoff provides answers elsewhere. (He’s also the author of weighty and significant academic works.)
2. Lakoff emphasizes that many of the phenomena he discusses are hard-wired in the brain. Again, I don't want to be too harsh because this is a book intended as a political handbook for progressives, not an academic tome, but much of what he says necessarily raise some of the most challenging and fundamental issues about the relation between the material world and consciousness. In Lakoff’s model, the mind arises out of the body (I’ve no problem with that contention), but it's unclear how a change of consciousness comes into this. His emphasis on neural circuitry shared by many of his colleagues in cognitive sciences provide some interesting insights and accounts, but I sometimes  think it is oversold and may have the effect of wedding us to perspectives that are not justified
3.  Lakoff argues that there is no third position between the strict father family conception and the nurturant family conception. Those who are moderate or in the middle of the road politically he labels biconceptuals. These individuals hold both metaphors in their minds, with one or the other of the two dominant in particular situations. Lakoff’s scheme seems accurate in some sense, but it serves to beg the question. Is it simply the linguistic environment—more conservative or more progressive talk—that tilts the mind one way or the other?  Lakoff classifies conservatives according to different demographics and interests, and he does the same for progressives. His family metaphor doesn't explain those interests or how they are developed and refined within individual contexts or larger political classifications. As someone who migrated from being a young Republican to Democrat, this issue intrigues me. And there are some conservatives (more and more rare) with whom I have some sympathy. Lakoff seems a little too eager to suggest that any conservative position is simply a failure to migrate all the way into one dominant metaphor. For instance, the issue of trade. Trade is a political issue about which I’m conflicted. The basic economics of trade suggest that overall, society can become better off with trade. However, I know that when trade is liberalized and expanded, there are going to be winners and losers. American manufacturing jobs have migrated overseas, and the cost of this migration to many individuals and communities has been devastating. My position on the trade, thus, has shifted from a free trade position to one of very skeptical of further trade agreements that could ship jobs overseas. I don't think I arrived at this the because my family metaphor flipped at some particular moment, but because of my increasing awareness of the evidence that the immediate and local costs of trade begin to outweigh the benefits to the nation as a whole and to posterity. In other words, what may be a progressive position may not be the best view when viewed from a different perspective. In other words, there a lot of facts and nuances and taking a position on something like trade that does family metaphor doesn't account for. It seems that Lakoff with the family model dichotomy creates a Manichean worldview that doesn’t rest comfortably with me. There are more nuanced theories with better explanatory power out there, perhaps some that provide a scale instead of a such a stark dichotomy.
4. Lakoff argues that voters vote values and not interests. True, mostly, but I think that this oversimplifies the topic. Of course, we have the “what’s the matter with Kansas” phenomena to account for, but voters’ motives are complex, an amalgamation of values, beliefs, perceptions, and downright ignorance or faulty logic. So, values, yes, but interests and beliefs (quite dependent on values), too, play more a role greater than what Lakoff suggests.

As the reader can discern from the length of my review, Lakoff’s book has prompted me to think a great deal. By my measure, that always suggests that book was worthwhile. Progressives shouldn’t ignore Lakoff’s  practical political suggestions. Meanwhile, I'll be off trying to explore Lakoff’s understanding of biconceptuals and the role of the family metaphor more closely. But whether further exploration of these issues brings me to a closer agreement with Lakoff or to a greater disagreement with him, Lakoff has performed a valuable service by his work on these crucial and fascinating topics.

For a good introduction introductory summary of Lakoff work and the one that led me to read this book (and that is quite timely in light the politics we’re experiencing right now, read this by Lakoff from Evonomics online magazine (an excellent resource itself).

Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, by Peter Turchin

In Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth,  Peter Turchin has another book that translates his sophisticated models of historical dynamics into a prose exposition that non-specialists can enjoy. As in his previous work,  War and Peace and War, he has succeeded in his task by mixing accounts of historical (and pre-historical) incidents and epochs with lessons about the science of evolution. Having admired his accomplishment in War and Peace and War, I held high expectations for this book. He has met and exceeded those expectations by addressing a set of topics of even greater and wider import than those of his first (popular) book. He does this by following the course of most academics whom I admire: they transgress departmental boundaries to explore new connections and arrive at new insights. In his case, he moved from an academic specialization in population dynamics to helping found the new science of Cliodynamics, the study of history using large data sets to create mathematical models of historical dynamics. Although already a fan (and thanks to the internet for allowing groupies like me to follow along with new thoughts and trends between books), I almost shouted “Amen!” aloud when I read:

The situation [of competing theories] is made worse by the division of social science into “tribes” of anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and economists. Each discipline tends to emphasize its own set of theories while disagreeing with others (and even among its own adherents). Social scientists are the blind men touching different parts of an elephant and drawing different conclusions about it. -- Peter Turchin, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, Location 567.

The thesis of Ultrasociety is simple: over the course of human evolution, we humans have become the most cooperative species on the planet, outpacing our nearest rivals,  the more numerous and highly cooperative ants. As Turchin points out, several factors account for this distinction, including two factors that take humans beyond the biological. First, in addition to biological evolution, which is slow and random, humans developed culture, the transmission of information via representation. The transmission of information by culture from generation to generation allows changes in human behavior to occur much more rapidly than any change in the human genome would allow. As a practical matter, the lives of humans, especially in the last 10,000 years (since the advent of agriculture) have changed by orders of magnitude far beyond anything that biological evolution by itself could have allowed.  

Mild-mannered look belies intriguing thoughts: Peter Turchin

Turchin identifies a second crucial spur to changes in human ways of life, and it may come as a shock to readers. It’s war. Especially in the last 10,000 years, war is—for all its horrors—the most potent source of cultural evolution. War compels change and change occurs through cooperation within groups. As humans developed societies beyond those of hunter-gatherers, as they developed civilization (a society based on cities), war became more organized and pronounced, and increasing competition for survival ensued. The seeming paradox is at the heart of Turchin’s analysis.

By the way, Turchin notes that the idea of the "noble savage" leading a bucolic, pastoral life is a fantasy; in fact, hunter-gatherers have shockingly high rates of violent death from warfare and other forms of homicide. Note that Turchin is not a war-monger. He concedes the horror of war and that it entails destruction—often vast destruction. He is not, as some--especially during the period before the First World War--who think war a fine tonic for whatever ails society. Not at all. However, he recognizes war as a competitive environment that spurs intra-group cooperation.

Competition between groups and cooperation within groups, whether hunter-gatherer tribes or highly developed and coordinated nation-states are traits that evolutionary theory explain. The controversial (but increasingly accepted) theory of cultural multilevel selection is a key concept for understanding the dynamics involved in these competitions that require so much cooperation. To explain this, Turchin provides a brief history of evolutionary biology and the controversy about whether groups can evolve and undergo a process of natural selection. As recently as the 1970s, with the publication of Richard Dawkins's book,  The Selfish Gene (and more recently in some of Steven Pinker’s work), mainstream biology believed that evolution occurred only on the level of individual genomes and not among groups. Turchin points out that there was an early, naïve theory of group selection that did not hold up to scrutiny. However, in work conducted by by David Sloan Wilson and colleagues, the theory of multilevel selection became more sophisticated. This theory now provides a persuasive—albeit not universally accepted—theory of how groups compete and evolve.

Part of what makes Turchin's work fascinating is that he translates the highly theoretical and mathematically modeled work of evolutionary biology (his native field) into commonplace examples taken from anthropology and history. For instance, he draws upon his academic home at the University of Connecticut, which has a phenomenally successful women's college basketball program (and a successful men's program as well) to frame the problem of cooperation and competition within a group. He uses examples of sports teams as a microcosm of the problem of cooperation and competition. As a member of numerous sports teams and now as a boys varsity basketball coach, this issue has long intrigued me. How does one promote competition within the team to draw out the best individual performances and determine playing time, while requiring those same individuals to coalesce and cooperate unselfishly at the highest level to defeat an opponent? To the extent the team succeeds in cooperating against an opponent, the team will likely win. Maximum success depends on individuals putting aside their selfish interests (glory, pay) for the benefit of the team. Moreover, what applies to something as inconsequential as sports (at least at bill level of high school sports), applies to the level of intergroup competition in something as deadly serious as war. (Of course, this leads one to speculate on the relationship between war and sports, but that's a subject for another time). Turchin explains the dynamics involved and provides some revealing information about how relationships and status among members of a team affect team performance. Studies have shown that wide disparities in pay between professional players correlates with poorer team performance. Those teams with the greatest equality of pay tend to be the most successful. Although Turchin does not mention this directly, one has to wonder how this applies to society as a whole. With an increasing awareness of a growing inequality in American society since the 1970s, one can't help but notice the increasing social and political polarization that occurred during the same period. We have become an increasingly less cooperative polity and society as inequality has grown. Turchin also notes the triumph of individualist philosophies espoused by Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek (which is a selective reading of his total work by some proponents), and others who emphasize a highly individualistic and laisse-fair ideology. Turchin quotes the "greed is good" speech by the fictional character Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street as an exemplar of the ascendant selfish ideology that began running amok in the 1980s. Turchin makes clear that an undue emphasis on individual accomplishment and selfishness hurts the society as a whole.

Turchin can claim to be the founding father of Cliodynamics, a discipline that works to discern patterns in history and prehistory based on the quantification of data through mathematical modeling. Attempts of this sort in the past have been failures. Through the lens of the philosopher R. G. Collingwood (of whom I've been reading a great deal lately), this endeavor doesn’t qualify as history properly understood. For Collingwood, History is the history of thought and not the history of behavior. But Turchin's work and the work of others in Cliodynamics demonstrates the weakness of Collingwood's position. When Collingwood emphasizes history as the history of thought, including the thoughts behind human actions and choices, he limits history to examining the tip of the iceberg. Just as humans are the result of eons of evolution layered one upon another to arrive at our current state, with most of the functions of our bodies running involuntarily and without our conscious knowledge or decision, so with many of the actions of society. Many actions seen together, aggregated over large groups, display behaviors that are not the result of a conscious decision. Often they are the aggregate of individual decisions that reveal a larger pattern. We deal with this every day when considering market "decisions." (But note our personification of markets often leads to poor analysis. The “market” is not a conscious individual; it’s an abstraction of many individual actions aggregated for the convenience of analysis). Turchin analyzes data from the past to better understand the past. (Note: the only source of knowledge is the past!) To me, Cliodynamics is a welcome addition to the field of history. Although I retain my prejudice for history as the history of thought, with an emphasis on political and intellectual decisions, we simply cannot ignore the fact that human beings are both a part of Nature and apart from Nature. To understand the totality of the human past—the highest intellectual endeavor—we need to take advantage of all the tools available. Looking at history through different lenses provided by of social and natural sciences is a resource that we are foolish to ignore. 

Indeed, in this book, Turchin suggests that perhaps we humans can move another step forward on our evolutionary journey and make war obsolete. The massive improvements in warfare and killing efficiency epitomized by atomic weapons make this more than a utopian dream. It's a practical necessity. The next logical—even necessary—step in cultural evolution must be increased cooperation, or we run the risk of regression to a less cooperative, must more barbaric (in the worst sense of the term) reality. Turchin uses the international space station as an example of the level of cooperation that nations are capable of attaining. He suggests that perhaps economic competition can replace war as a means of spurring cultural innovation without suffering the horrors of war. Paul Krugman, another social scientist inspired by Isaac Asimov’s vision of “psychohistory” outlined in his Foundation books, suggests we need an attack of aliens to foster an economic growth and cooperation, which is much in keeping with Turchin’s direction of thought. I believe that with the imminence of global climate change, we—as a species working through nation-states—will either ratchet-up our levels of peaceful cooperation to combat (by abatement and adaptation) what will become an increasingly alien environment—or we will suffer an increasingly deadly level of social and political conflict.

One mark of a successful book is that it leaves you wanting more. You hear yourself saying, “telling me more about this and that.” So it is with this book. The number of issues that it raises, the number of possible areas of explorations it suggests, are too numerous to list completely. But to name just one area of where I’d like to know more:  Turchin describes the idea of “cultural evolution” as a scientific theory “based on mathematical models [that] are empirically testable.” Id., Location 330. Moreover, there is a tradition within sociology of social evolution and development theory, as well as theories of history (addressed by Turchin in War and Peace and War). However, I’m wondering about connections with theories of cultural evolution (or change) based on language and other symbolic systems, such as the work of Owen Barfield, Walter Ong, Jean Gebser, William Irwin Thompson and Ralph Abraham, and Clare Graves and Don Beck (an eclectic list, I admit). None of these thinkers, I believe, would necessarily disagree with the biologically based theory of cultural evolution espoused by Turchin, but it would be interesting to determine where they mesh and where they conflict.


So, I’ll stop here. With an outstanding book, the temptation is to go on and on about it. I’ll not. Go read it yourself.