by Bill Creasy
Human beings seem to have an innate
urge to form groups. It is safe to assume that there has been
evolutionary selection to be a member of a group, since groups
provide safety and security (when they work right). Most people seem
to be willing to form groups for all sorts of purposes.
There has been a long history of
humans in groups, much of it unrecorded and prehistoric. The
rules of group evolution allow a reevaluation of the rules of
morality that seem to have arisen from that history. D.S.
Wilson and E. O. Wilson summarized group evolution rules:
"Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups
beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary."
I will give some commentary with minimal references except my
general impressions, which could be subject to revision. Morality
takes constant reexamination for particular situations. But at
times, it is worth taking some philosophical overview of what we
should expect. I will try to raise some interesting question, even
if there aren't simple answers.
The first big question is, Why do
people form large groups? For most of human existence, people have
primarily lived in small tribal groups of perhaps no more than 100
people. There is evidence that people are most comfortable with
groups about this size. But with the rise of civilizations, cities
of thousands to millions of people formed. People can feel loyal to
a country with billions of people. Is there an upper limit on the
size of a group that people can feel attached to?
There
may not be a limit, because there was never a need for people to set
one. Even when people lived in small groups, they may have found
advantages in forming the largest possible temporary alliance to
fight military confrontations with other groups. But the existence
of large groups was limited by food, communication, and other
resources. There might have been a way of thinking that "if big
is good, bigger must be better." There may be some truth in
that goal, but ultimately the problem was limited by how to feed the
army (or other large group), and that problem automatically limited
the size of the group regardless of what people wanted. The large
groups probably broke up automatically under that pressure. The
relatively recent formation of permanent large organizations was
because technology has given a way to overcome the practical limits.
That doesn't guarantee that large countries will last forever. In
fact, history is full of large empires, countries, or governments
that ended. It just doesn't occur to most people to wonder if the
group is just too big.
If people tend to be comfortable in
groups, they must have developed the best ways to behave in a group.
We can classify the interactions between individuals and groups into
these categories, again following the rules of group evolution:
1. Prosocial actions: actions that
keep the group going for the benefit of all the members. These
actions benefit the actor in the sense that the actor benefits from
group membership. But the actor may be at a disadvantage to someone
else in the group who doesn't expend effort to do these kinds of
actions. (Some researchers call these "altruistic" actions
for that reason, but that word also has other connotations that can
be misleading.) One way that these kinds of actions are encouraged
is that the actions are regarded as virtuous. Anyone in a human
society who gets a reputation for prosociality can benefit from the
reputation of being virtuous. Other people often feel a need to
reciprocate. But be careful! There's nothing that keeps you from
being unfairly taken advantage of, if you are prosocial for the wrong
people.
2. Individual actions that keep the
individuals healthy and motivated. Any member of the group has to
take care of self preservation, like eating, drinking, and sleeping.
This is necessary for individuals and not specifically good or bad
for the group, but of course the group will disperse if the members
aren't able to get what they need to survive while they are in it.
3. Antisocial passivity: not doing a
prosocial action, or stopping doing a prosocial action that had been
done regularly. If too many people take this approach, the group
will fall apart. It can happen for many reasons, from simple
laziness, underestimating the value or importance of the action, or
annoyance about unfairness because of other people who don't want to
be bothered.
4. Antisocial action: actively trying
to end or disperse a group, or doing actions that the group has
forbidden. Morally, these actions are usually called immoral or
illegal, or even evil. But the motives of the actor can be complex.
(That's the reason that villains in stories are more interesting than
heros.) For example, whistleblowers may think themselves as good
employees or citizens, and just don't like a policy of the
organization that they belong to, so they want to stop a policy
without ending the group. Alternately, the actor may intentionally
decide the group isn't good and act to end it. Or the actor may be
trying to take advantage of prosocial people for personal benefit.
Why should anyone be prosocial and
help a group? What is a group, and what is it for? A group is just
a collection of people who may like each other, may work well
together, or may depend on each other. But they won't be in the
group forever, and they could decide to leave anytime. Some of the
people may do better without the group, or in another group.
But the reason groups exist is
because they evolve and they get better. They are actual things or
real creations. They have a real existence based on the people in
them, but also based on the rules by which the people interact that
are separate from particular individuals, that make up the "culture"
of the group. The rules can be hard to grasp, because sometimes they
are not verbal or they are unwritten habits or patterns. There are
certain obligations and expectations that each person has for the way
the others will act. These qualities make groups very fluid and hard
to characterize. They are constantly changing. They are difficult
to objectively quantify. But they are real.
Is
opposition to a group really evil? There are times that lives
depend on a group's existence and support. If so, then a threat to
the group is a risk to life, and it is evil in the view of the
members. But other groups can be trivial or only for entertainment.
Criticizing a group of football fans should be treated as perhaps an
insult, but not as an evil. So the use of the term "evil"
with regard to groups depends on the function of the group and who
relies on it. It depends on the group and who belongs to it.
As examples, we can consider the
promises of Donald Trump during his campaign. He made several
promises that serve as convenient examples, whether or not he meant
them. (I won't use exact Trump quotes because the quotes would be
too "fantastic" and "incredible," or "disastrous"
and "SAD," so I'll only paraphrase.)
One example is that he promised to
decrease military support for traditional American allies like NATO
unless they contribute more money. This action can be classified as
passively antisocial. It ends an action by the U.S. that is
prosocial for the groups of countries in the international alliances.
The actions may put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage due to
the expense of our defense spending. But it is good for the U.S. to
be a member of the groups, and the actions give the U.S. the
reputation of being virtuous. It is possible that the U.S. may have
gotten its money's worth from increased trade and global security.
Also, there is the question of whether Trump opposes NATO because he
is doing what Russian president Putin wants him to.
Trump promised to control the border
and deport illegal immigrants. The interpretation of this action
depends on whether one considers the 10 million illegal immigrants as
part of the U.S. Most of them work hard and pay taxes that they
won't benefit from. But they are illegal. So eliminating them from
the U.S. economy may improve it for citizens. It may or may not
benefit the trade alliance under NAFTA. The immigrants won't like
having to leave, and the effort to identify and deport 10 million
people could create a police state. So, again, Trump made an
argument that border control is a good thing, and it sounded good to
some voters, but it is not clear that he is right.
Trump promised to cut taxes, mostly
for wealthy people and corporations. This action has the appearance
of helping Trump's social group of rich businessmen. He claims, as
Republicans have claimed for decades with little evidence, that tax
cuts will help the economy grow faster.
Finally, Trump has financial
conflicts of interest between his and his family's business interests
and the country's interest. As a family man, Trump will be tempted
to make deals to benefit his family group. Will he be able to put
the country's interests above his own?
Trump's way of looking at groups is
different from that of an experienced politician, as demonstrated by
his campaign. He claims he will give the interests of the country
first priority. But as a businessman, he has put his interest above
anything else in the past. His life's work has been making money
for himself. That doesn't automatically imply that he will try to
dismantle larger cooperative organizations in favor of his family,
his social class, or his ethnic group. But we should be very
suspicious and skeptical that he might not change his old habits.
So it will be the responsibility of
the citizens of the country to make sure they aren't being excluded
from Trump's preferred group. And if we happen to be included, we
will have to stand up for those who are left out.
For
additional articles about group evolution, see the Evolution
Institute website:
This article was previously
published in WASHline, the newsletter of the Washington Area Secular
Humanists.
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