Truly insightful writing. Thank you Samuel. In my career in the Navy I have traveled far and wide and had the opportunity to observe human nature in many diverse scenarios. Our capacity to act in extreme ways is often shocking. Unsurprisingly, the individuals taking extreme action are often damaged as much or more psychologically than those they acted upon in the first place.
Thanks for the kind words, Matthew. A career in the military sounds like fascinating and challenging waters in confronting the complexities of the "humanness of cruelty." Did you find throughout your career that there were baseline elements that applied across the human spectrum in regards to basic ideas of "right" and "wrong"? I can't help think about the Levi Strauss essay about incest and its nearly universal human taboo.
Samuel - I appreciate the follow-up on this topic. Certainly a career in the military afforded me opportunities to see aspects of the world and humanity that I would likely not have been exposed to had I remained on my parents farm in rural Missouri.
I wish that I had observed some universal rules that transcended all scenarios. In my experience, most cultures maintain certain standards of conduct during peaceful times. Nicholas Christakis discusses some of this in his book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origin of a Good Society. Certain foundational aspects of our being are considered "right" such as treating a spouse and children with love, building supportive communities that treat others with kindness and respect, recognizing the inherent value and dignity of each person, etc...whereas other actions are almost always "wrong" such as murder and rape.
The universal cultural rules tend to be what most people gravitate towards but in societies where basic structures have broken down, or in the case of war, then the rules are thrown out the window and often those things which we consider absolutes are then weaponized and used to terrorize.
I think over the past 24 years I visited around 40 countries. In almost every place I could find stable cultures where the universal rules were acknowledged, respected, and applied to at least a certain degree. But at the fringes of those same cultures were individuals who live by a different set of rules outside society. In countries dominated by war or where those fringe parts of society have taken control (Iraq, Iran, Somalia, etc...), then universal norms are no longer universal. In fact, in those places sometimes an entirely different set of norms is applied.
Probably a little longer than you wanted but it is a fascinating topic. I think that at the end of the day life is really simple. Treat other people how we want to be treated. Kindness, respect, gratitude, dignity, etc... It isn't so hard. But people are complicated and come with lots of baggage so it gets messy.
Thanks for this response. It really does seem so deceptively simple--do unto others ...--but power is truly a wicked thing, and we're confronted with opportunities to grasp for it daily. And to your point, given the psychological baggage we all carry, arriving at the destination of serenity that we all hope to find requires a lot of self-work, therapy (in all of its many forms--I think people should dance more, a LOT MORE) and general community building. Here's to trying and to believing in the possibility of an incrementally better world.
Thanks for your concern, JD. This is an excerpt from a novel, which has its own internal logic and isn't meant to be an objective analysis of human behaviour. The point is less that any of these examples are still at the forefront of social theory (as I make clear, they all took place 50 years ago or more), but rather to illustrate how quickly human beings can slide from one side of the "moral" spectrum to the other. Part of the goal of writing fiction is to also introduce subjects to folks who then can draw their own conclusions about the research; clearly, you have your own opinion, which is great! But I do not believe I falsified the basic description of these studies in any way (my analysis of them was academic enough to earn an MA dissertation, if nothing else) but as far as I can tell, I've simply written a brief summary of each study in favor of uniting them by a narrative throughline in a work of fiction. Sorry you didn't enjoy it.
Truly insightful writing. Thank you Samuel. In my career in the Navy I have traveled far and wide and had the opportunity to observe human nature in many diverse scenarios. Our capacity to act in extreme ways is often shocking. Unsurprisingly, the individuals taking extreme action are often damaged as much or more psychologically than those they acted upon in the first place.
Thanks for the kind words, Matthew. A career in the military sounds like fascinating and challenging waters in confronting the complexities of the "humanness of cruelty." Did you find throughout your career that there were baseline elements that applied across the human spectrum in regards to basic ideas of "right" and "wrong"? I can't help think about the Levi Strauss essay about incest and its nearly universal human taboo.
Samuel - I appreciate the follow-up on this topic. Certainly a career in the military afforded me opportunities to see aspects of the world and humanity that I would likely not have been exposed to had I remained on my parents farm in rural Missouri.
I wish that I had observed some universal rules that transcended all scenarios. In my experience, most cultures maintain certain standards of conduct during peaceful times. Nicholas Christakis discusses some of this in his book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origin of a Good Society. Certain foundational aspects of our being are considered "right" such as treating a spouse and children with love, building supportive communities that treat others with kindness and respect, recognizing the inherent value and dignity of each person, etc...whereas other actions are almost always "wrong" such as murder and rape.
The universal cultural rules tend to be what most people gravitate towards but in societies where basic structures have broken down, or in the case of war, then the rules are thrown out the window and often those things which we consider absolutes are then weaponized and used to terrorize.
I think over the past 24 years I visited around 40 countries. In almost every place I could find stable cultures where the universal rules were acknowledged, respected, and applied to at least a certain degree. But at the fringes of those same cultures were individuals who live by a different set of rules outside society. In countries dominated by war or where those fringe parts of society have taken control (Iraq, Iran, Somalia, etc...), then universal norms are no longer universal. In fact, in those places sometimes an entirely different set of norms is applied.
Probably a little longer than you wanted but it is a fascinating topic. I think that at the end of the day life is really simple. Treat other people how we want to be treated. Kindness, respect, gratitude, dignity, etc... It isn't so hard. But people are complicated and come with lots of baggage so it gets messy.
Thanks for this response. It really does seem so deceptively simple--do unto others ...--but power is truly a wicked thing, and we're confronted with opportunities to grasp for it daily. And to your point, given the psychological baggage we all carry, arriving at the destination of serenity that we all hope to find requires a lot of self-work, therapy (in all of its many forms--I think people should dance more, a LOT MORE) and general community building. Here's to trying and to believing in the possibility of an incrementally better world.
Thanks for your concern, JD. This is an excerpt from a novel, which has its own internal logic and isn't meant to be an objective analysis of human behaviour. The point is less that any of these examples are still at the forefront of social theory (as I make clear, they all took place 50 years ago or more), but rather to illustrate how quickly human beings can slide from one side of the "moral" spectrum to the other. Part of the goal of writing fiction is to also introduce subjects to folks who then can draw their own conclusions about the research; clearly, you have your own opinion, which is great! But I do not believe I falsified the basic description of these studies in any way (my analysis of them was academic enough to earn an MA dissertation, if nothing else) but as far as I can tell, I've simply written a brief summary of each study in favor of uniting them by a narrative throughline in a work of fiction. Sorry you didn't enjoy it.
I guess I missed the context that these summaries were being quoted from a fiction novel. Thanks for clarifying.
No worries, I appreciate you taking the time to read in any case!