Imagine being the captain of a slave ship. You have hundreds of African slaves chained up below deck, many of them dying of shock or sickness from the stress and travel, many suffering wounds or injuries from trying to escape or fighting back, most are traumatized. How do you justify in your mind what you are doing? Now imagine being a US soldier. You’re scouting out a location that is supposed to house a bunch of terrorists. You spot one of them entering the building and confirm his identity. You are told a missile will strike this building and kill everyone inside, and they need the coordinates. You earlier saw women and children and unarmed men enter this building, but you go ahead and give them the coordinates, and the missile strikes the building and kills everyone inside. Mind you the suspected terrorist has never been tried in a court of law or proven to be a terrorist. You just helped commit an extrajudicial assassination, also known as criminal homicide.
What does it take to do such things? We like to think of people making these decisions as simply flawed. They were wrong. They had the wrong ideas and ideologies. The ship captain was probably an insensitive, selfish, profiteer. But they all started out just like us. What made them think and act differently from us? When you ask that question, the shocking answer you come up with is that society raised them in such a manner that it was EASY for them to do what they did. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t make them think twice or constantly feel shame or guilt. The way society raised them, it became easy for them to do what they did. So when you realize this, you come to the obvious next question. Why does society raise us to be so easily turned into evil bastards?
One answer can be found in a psychological experiment by a psychologist named Stanley Milgram. He convinced subjects that they were giving another volunteer a test in another room, and whenever the other volunteer answered wrong or failed to answer in the given time allotted, they would receive progressively greater electrical shocks. The volunteer in the other room is actually part of the experiment, and after some time, they pretend to complain that the shocks are too much, that they have a heart condition, that they simply cannot continue. Shockingly, most experiment subjects kept going, even when the person in the other room stopped responding at all. They might as well have just killed them. And for what? Not answering a question correctly or within the allotted time. How does society train people to do this?
The answer is quite simply, we are trained for 12 years to obey authority no matter what, to never question authority, to never rebel against authority, to never wonder if authority is corrupt or evil, to never consider doing anything else but what authority has told us to do. We have been trained for 12 years not to think for ourselves and not to act for ourselves. So long as we obey authority and do as they say, we are safe from punishment, scrutiny, humiliation, poor grades, failure, poverty from not graduating high school, and a lifetime of low paying jobs being bullied by uneducated supervisors.
The second answer is that people from the US and Europe, those with fair skin, have been taught for centuries, that they are superior. Humans are divided by a construct called race, which is actually a rather absurd, unscientific way to divide people up based on skin color, the width of one’s nose, eye shape, and geography. They are taught that the fair skinned people of European origin, are ‘white’ and they are the superior race. The book Guns, Germs, and Steel explains how the Europeans were lucky enough to exploit certain external advantages to conquer the world. There were many times other people were more advanced than the Europeans, but for a number of reasons, they failed to conquer the rest of the world or found a need to. China, for example, at one point had the world’s greatest navy and enough power and weaponry to conquer the world, but they simply found no reason to, as their empire was already secure and profitable.
If you were European, however, it’s hard to teach your children that you conquered the world because you were lucky and exploited many external advantages. Rather, the winner always emphasizes internal attributes while minimizing external attributes, while the loser always emphasizes external attributes while minimizing internal attributes. The Europeans conquered the world, because God favored them, and later, when Darwin discovered genetics and evolution, the whites were simply genetically better. The Europeans also needed to distinguish themselves from their victims across the world to justify their crimes against them. The justification was that the victims were subhuman. And sub-humans did not deserve the same kindness and morals as humans.
While many Americans and Europeans have since abandoned white supremacy, if you truly dug deeper, as Trump has, you uncover generational attitudes that haven’t changed. Many white people in the US still believe they are separate and superior. Giving people of color the right to vote and more job opportunities is only lip service to the idea of equality. Deep down, they believe that the white race conquered the world because they are genetically superior or favored by God.
At some point in time, as with racism, people will learn that authoritarianism is a bad thing, and all it really does is allow people on top to get everyone else to commit crimes and atrocities for them. “Why did you do it?” “I was told to. I didn’t want to get in trouble. Nobody told me I could stand up to and question authority.” But just like racism, authoritarianism will be embedded generationally. Even in a truly egalitarian society, there will many people who still can’t stand up to or question authority out of habit.
But imagine what’s going through the mind of a white supremacist or a soldier giving coordinates of a building filled with women and children to be blown up. “Hey, I’m just following orders man. I don’t make the calls. Some four-star general sitting at the Pentagon is giving the go ahead. It’s on his shoulders man.” But he doesn’t even see the building being blown up. Nobody has even told him that there are women and children in the building. Perhaps the soldier told his captain, but the captain didn’t relay that info to the colonel who didn’t relay it to the general. The soldier sees the building being demolished. Sure, he’s troubled. He may even have nightmares and feel guilty. He may even suffer PTSD later after he leaves the military. But in his mind, it wasn’t really his fault. He was just following orders. What could he do?
When someone like Edward Snowden told his superiors that he was troubled by what they were doing, he was blown off. When he went around them and leaked info to Wikileaks, the US government went after him as a traitor. If he refused to provide those coordinates, he would have been punished, an Article 15 at least, a court martial at worse. His military career would be over. Perhaps a dishonorable discharge to boot. People who don’t obey commands get punished. People who question authority get labeled as troublemakers and never get promoted and often get demoted. We live in a hierarchical pyramid scheme society. You don’t piss off people above you.
I’ll never forget hearing a story about how these parents abused their daughter but spoiled their son. You would think the son would feel guilt and shame for how they mistreated his sister while they treated him so well, but surprisingly, he sided with the parents and blamed the daughter for how poorly she was treated. Likewise, when white people see how poorly other races are treated, it’s hard for them to deal with the shame and guilt, so it’s easier to believe that people of color just deserve how they’re treated. When black people get shot and killed by police, a lot of white people invariably ask, well, did he resist, was he armed, was he committing a crime? They’re looking for some out, some rationalization for why they don’t get shot and killed by police as much as black people.
Maybe it’s poverty, they rationalize. Maybe if they lived in better neighborhoods, they wouldn’t be mistaken for all the thieves and troublemakers in their neighborhood. Maybe if they just studied hard and worked harder? They forget the centuries of discrimination and lack of opportunities. What is the point of studying hard when you’re barred from going to college? What is the point of finally getting to go to college when you’re barred from most lucrative careers and can’t get bank loans to open your own business? What is the point of saving money when banks refuse to do business with people of color, and if you put in under your mattress, your house gets broken into, and I’m not talking about other people of color breaking into your house and taking your savings, I’m talking about the police. Even today, the police will confiscate your money and accuse you of being a drug dealer if you have a large amount of cash on you, in your car, or in your house.
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Besides authoritarianism and racism, there are other beliefs which keep us obedient and stupid. One is the cult of civilization, the idea that civilized people are good and uncivilized people are bad. It is the idea that without civilization, we would all be bad people. It is the idea that humans were born evil, and humans need to be trained to be good people. Isn’t that convenient? While you’re training people to be ‘good’ people, you also train them like circus animals to be obedient and racist. The greatest lie is that northern Europeans conquered the world, because they were the most civilized of all humans on the planet. Quite the contrary, at the time, northern Europeans had been the least civilized people on the planet compared with the Native Americans, southern Europeans, Africans, Asian Indians, Chinese, Southeast Asian, etc. In fact, they were referred to as barbarians by the Romans.
When you look at the height of people around the world, it’s often a good indicator of how long their ancestors AVOIDED civilization and the shorter people are, the more likely they lived in civilizations longer than anyone else. For hundreds of generations, their ancestors were only fed grains and occasionally meat causing them to shrink in size. The Mongols are a perfect example of how northern hunter-gatherers tended to be larger, stronger, and greater physical specimens than their southern counterparts. When people wonder how a small group of Spaniards conquered so much territory in South and Central America, you just need to look at the Mongols and how easily it was for them to conquer the ‘great’ civilizations of India, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
Only now have civilizations become more formidable than hunter-gatherers with weapons technology. In fact, Europeans embraced technology more than most other civilizations, because their civilization was young and not encumbered with the traditionalism and conservatism that civilizations ultimately succumb to. Keep in mind, for a while, European civilization succumbed to religious fervor which condemned science and technology during the Dark Ages. Imagine if Europe had never left the Dark Ages. This is exactly what happened to many civilizations of South America, Africa, India, and China. They succumbed to their own Dark Ages and never left until Europe conquered them. Civilization invariably spawns conservatism and antipathy toward discovery, exploration, and intellectual curiosity. When you think about today’s technological boom, it’s coming from the Western US, where civilization has had the least amount of time to manifest on the continent.
I’m not saying hunter-gatherers are better at technology. But they do have a better mindset that is more open to discovery, exploration, curiosity, adaptation, innovation, and trying all types of new things out. However, in order for industrial and information technology to work, you need a combination of both civilization and people who behave more like hunter-gatherers. For this reason, perhaps Europe was destined to become the first industrialized region, as their northern hunter-gatherers with their open minds settled down into southern-style civilizations. It is also notable that the northern Europeans, specifically the British and Germans, rejected the southern-style dogmatic, conservative, traditionalist, authoritarian rule of the Catholic Church while southern Europeans embraced it. It was the perfect storm for technology to blossom, civilization at its foundation for stability and occupational specialization wedded with hunter-gatherer minds that were curious, exploratory, flexible, adaptive, and open.
It is also notable that classical liberalism came from a northern European country, namely Britain and not Italy, not Spain, not Greece. The British people who embraced classical liberalism were simply embracing their heritage as freethinking, freely migrating, exploratory, open-minded hunter gathers from the north. And then it was the British and Germans who took industrialism to the next level, followed by the Japanese, a northern East Asian country. You must wonder why the Industrial Age did not come from a southern, Catholic, conservative, authoritarian nation? Why the Southeast Asians didn’t embrace industrialization like the Northeast Asians, the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and ultimately the Chinese. Could it be that those in southern climates embrace security, stability, status quo, conservatism, and traditionalism while those in northern climates living in scarcity are forced to keep an open mind, to explore, to innovate, to figure out different ways of getting or preserving food, different and more efficient ways of filling their needs with scarce resources, being more adaptable, flexible, relying more on their individual initiate and intuition than the collective.
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Another belief is in progress. Progress is always good and tradition is always bad. People a hundred years ago were stupid, a thousand years ago they were stupider, and don’t even get me started on ten thousand or a hundred thousand years ago. Never mind you that ancient people used plant medicine that had antibiotic properties well before we even knew about penicillin or microbiology. Ancient Buddhists knew about the health and mental benefits of meditation long before Western Europe created the field of psychology. Native American tribes were discussing politics in a much more sophisticated and nuanced manner than the Europeans who invaded their lands. For centuries, Europeans have gaslit the world into believing that they invented everything, and only recently.
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An enfeebling belief is in contracting government to do all your sharing, giving, and helping, that professional caregivers are superior to extended family members. Perhaps they do have more training, but because they have no genes in the game, they are far more likely to be apathetic or even abusive toward the people they care for. While nepotism is hardwired into our brains, xenophobia is also hardwired into our brains, and when a strange person exhibits weakness, our predatory drive overtakes us. Whereas a weak family member causes us to become protective and kind. Without anyone to care for and help, we don’t become more transcendent, compassionate, humane people, quite the opposite, without exercising our sharing and kindness ‘muscles’ they wither away, and we become entitled, privileged, spoiled, selfish narcissists.
Another enfeebling belief is that life shouldn’t be hard, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. Somehow, we can get rid of all that nasty stuff. Right now, if you have enough money, you can hire other humans to do all your difficult, inconvenient things like shopping, waiting in lines, balancing your check book, getting your car fixed, moving your furniture, cleaning, carrying your heavy luggage, etc.
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How ironic is it that we live in a forced collectivist society where much of our wages and profits go to a small group of elites. Then they keep sending us messages that we should focus on ourselves and not others. We should improve ourselves; acquire college degrees to enhance our career opportunities; we should enhance our image with countless commercial products; we should obsess over ourselves with self-help, self-improvement, self-actualization, self-development, self-focus; individuals are glamorized and glorified instead of teams or groups, etc. Far from empowering ourselves, this narcissistic self-love, self-importance, and self-focus only enfeebles us, alienating us from other people who consider us too self-focused and lacking any kind of focus on the thoughts, feelings, needs, and concerns of others. What good does this do us? The answer is none. It does, however, enhance profits for those who feed our narcissistic anxieties. We spend vast amounts of our income and profits on our college degrees, cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, fashion, expensive status signaling objects, jewelry, bottle service, etc., and they get rich off our self-infatuation anxieties.
On the other hand, if we dispossessed ourselves of this self-obsession, we would wake up and discover true happiness, fulfillment, purpose, and meaning. We would wake up and think about others; care for others; help others; consider other ideas, thoughts, feelings, needs, and concerns. Other people would consider us to be enjoyable and fulfilling company. This is how humans existed for over two hundreds thousand years, and our primate ancestors for millions of years before that. We found our purpose and meaning and derived pleasure and fulfillment by focusing on others.
The great irony is that we didn’t need any external institutions, i.e., the state, to make us help other people. It was hardwired into our DNA. The idea of paying taxes to help others, the idea of forced collectivism, is a flimsy misdirection used to rob us of our income and profits. The further idea of paying taxes to alleviate us of our burden of helping and sharing and thinking of others is the biggest deception in history. We don’t need that burden alleviated. We require that ‘burden’ in order to feel meaning and purpose in our lives and to enjoy the feeling of joy and fulfillment when others express appreciation for our kindness. By turning us into self-absorbed narcissists, who feel alleviated from the burden of kindness and compassion toward others, we become disgusting, enfeebled, shadows of humans, programmed to bring huge profits to businesses that prey on our insecurities, existential unhappiness, and life devoid of meaning, purpose, and value to everyone except ourselves.
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