RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
Making a Mountain Out of an Anthill: The Inner Drive for a Social Contract
By Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard
I have been reading Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (NY: Harper and Row, 1975), and gotten as far as his third section, “Thought.” His premise is fascinating, that consciousness underlies all matter. Consciousness is thus omnipresent, and ever-increases with biological complexity. It flows from geosphere to biosphere, then—with the advent of intelligence—the noosphere. On its evolutionary journey it rises from elemental chance to reasoned choice. Père Teilhard attempts to reconcile divinity with evolution, teleologically pointing life towards what he terms the “Omega Point:” a sort of Mobius strip for life whereby all life eventually folds back and returns to its origins in God.
Interestingly, this morning’s NY Times ( July 15, 2008 ) carried a somewhat related story about the Harvard scientist, Edward O. Wilson, who studies ant social behavior and extrapolates lessons for humanity. Wilson is currently writing a treatise on “social evolution,” a controversial argument that connects of social behavior and genetics.
Wilson sees an evolutionary impetus for cooperative, selfless behavior that favors the group over the individual. The Times article states, “In humans, these may include genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior.” It goes on to say, “Morality and religion, [Wilson] suspects, are traits based on group selection. ‘Groups with men of quality — brave, strong, innovative, smart and altruistic — would tend to prevail, as Darwin said, over those groups that do not have those qualities so well developed,’ Dr. Wilson said.”
Wilson and like-minded colleagues have come under fire from others in the Sciences, such as Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene [Oxford U. Press, 1976] and The God Delusion [Bantam Books, 2006]). Dawkins and his camp narrowly see genetics, the “survival of the fittest” and natural selection in individual terms, as an organism’s single minded (”take no prisoners”) drive to survive and reproduce at all costs. Wilsonians, on the other hand, believe that natural selection works on many levels, including “multi-level or group-level selection”: in essence, an evolutionary process favoring the survival of the group over the needs of an individual.
For many reasons, I am most tempted to agree with Wilson’s view, not Dawkins’, as I’ve made abundantly clear elsewhere in other articles, such as “Turtles All the Way Down” and “Krishna’s Dictum.”
I’m not yet sure how closely Père Teilhard’s thesis overlaps with Wilson’s, but if Wilson can prove an evolutionary theory of morality, his work would certainly seem to harmonize with Teilhard’s belief that something greater than mechanical evolution is “afoot in the world.”
When I complete The Phenomenon of Man, I will surely have further observations to add. Stay tuned.
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This item originally appeared in the blog Percyflage.
Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard, Ph.D., is a senior contributing writer & contributing editor of Bread and Circus Magazine and an Independent Scholar of Art History, Specializing in Northern Renaissance and Baroque. Click here to send her email.
Image (above): Cover of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (Harper Colophon, 1976 edition), available at Powells.com and other online booksellers.
SOCIETY
A Shattering of Voices: A Generation’s Silence
By Jessica Miles, contributing writer
When I think of what defines my generation, I immediately think of New York City’s Times Square, splashed with a blur of cluttered confusion, littered with images and words; a statement of where we are in all aspects of our cultural spectrum. It is characterized by a scene of ever-changing advertisements and symbols controlling the wide-eyed society which makes up this generational hub. Below, people flood the streets as if on a roller coaster, in a constant rush and in constant need for more-more action, more modernization, more excitement, and more media-inspired innovation. This overwhelming nature has drastically morphed since my pre-teen years when it was a crime to miss that latest quarrel in the Tanner household on Full House and when Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop were considered celebrities. However, simplicity is no longer momentous in our media-saturated environment, as new demands are constantly being met in the most fixated ways.
Affluenza, an affliction characterized by seeking happiness through materialism, is hypnotizing us into believing this is what we desire, but a growing dependency on consumption does not seem to be getting us any closer to the top. As we relentlessly question our needs and demands we descend in our own trepidation and continue to lack answers. Instead we are falling further into dismay and drowning in our own misconceptions of where we expect our lives to lead. Imagine if Times Square was stripped of commercialization, the lights and the movement that drive us to attain bigger and better things. We would be left to rely on individual uniqueness to paint the scene, instead of concentrated corporations chasing endless profit.
I’m living in a generation characterized by disarray and fabricated, ill-minded emptiness. Unfortunately, this has emerged as the cultural norm. I’d hate to think we are viewed as scantily clad midriffs or uncaring mooks who find some muddled inspiration from the iconic, pop culture “role models” of the world. But my hope may be futile. Image and fantasy have trumped education and literacy. This status quo has become a sort of mutilated yet somehow captivating reality, and with it comes the deterioration of individualism, eccentricity, and voice.
Where have all the voices gone? It may have been somewhat before my time, but I still enjoy the sounds of raw, yet true talent. It is disappointing to think that John Mayer’s, ‘Waiting on the World to Change’ is this generation’s muted version of ‘What’s Going On?’ I grew up looking forward to being mesmerized by my generation’s rising voices and experiencing a real sense of camaraderie that would be inspired by these voices. The bellowing echoes of infamous celebrities flooding media outlets are a far cry from the voices that define past generations.
The media may be the source of what seems to be our generation’s bewilderment. It fascinates me that in spite of the vast spectrum of media sounds and images, we still struggle to find substance in content. Our choices are limited to exaggerated headlines suggesting inappropriate sexual content consistently splashed across magazine covers like Cosmopolitan and an endless number of disgraceful reality shows based on everything from celebrities to fear tactics, sports competitions to dating shows, and makeover shows to renovation shows. Furthermore, headline news has turned into a baffled mix of sensationalism. Should the daily lives of celebrities be deemed important information? In our endless desire for sensationalism have we given media moguls justification in further developing what Newton Minnow termed “the vast wasteland?” I don’t believe these are the stories for which society tunes in. It seems unlikely that mass media can become a serious, trustworthy, honest form of communication because of the tabloidism that bounds our generation.
Reality is no longer based on truth; it is based on convergence, profit, perception, and hyper-commercialism, which are overwhelming all means of communication available to us, and because of this, there is by no means any sort of control or solidity holding this generation together. We have successfully blinded ourselves from realism and authenticity and allowed a failed sense of idealism to dictate our existence. This has led to a fragmented culture with no common goal, a remote comparison to previous generations who upheld democratic principles and stood together to fashion a voice. So what will ultimately define us?
With such variability it seems our generation will continue on this cycle of pursuance - waiting for the world to change, instead of proactively changing the present for the sake of the future. The shallow insights which perpetually influence our generation’s way of life have eroded our sense of dignity. We continue to be dependent on a deficient media structure instead of using our own voices. This is my generation, where lessons will not be learned until our children are even more embedded in this artificial culture than we are. Only then will we realize what we have failed to say.
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Jessica Miles currently attends Bryant University as a junior majoring in Communication and is preparing to act as Assistant News Editor for the Bryant University newspaper, The Archway. She is working toward a future in the Journalism field.
Image (above): Cover of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, by John deGraaf, et al. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005)
WORLD POLITICS
Russia, Still Rising
By G. Arnold
American news media have not paid much attention to Russia for many years, but developments in that nation do occasionally get noticed. National Public Radio, for example, recently reported about Russia’s apparent efforts to reassert itself among the world powers. A new NPR Morning Edition story takes particular note of the Kremlin’s renewed attention to its military. As the story suggests, many people see this as evidence that Russia is determined to return, in some way, to the glory days of the Soviet Union, when it was clearly a superpower. The NPR story is largely dismissive of such views, however, and makes generous use of quotations from Pavel Felgenhauer, a well known critic of the Russian government and a writer on military issues for Novaya Gazeta, an opposition paper in Russia. After hearing the piece, one does not get the sense that there is much cause for concern. Indeed, Felgenhauer is quoted as saying, “This [Russian] system is unworkable, and this military is not very good for anything at all.”
The NPR piece is respectable journalism, and stories such play an important part in bringing developments in Russia to national attention. Still, the way the story is presented may unintentionally dampen what little American interest there is in Russia’s quickly changing place in world affairs. And that would be unfortunate. (See a previous Bread and Circus story here.)
Americans are not exactly overflowing with knowledge about Russian affairs. Indeed, the picture that many Americans have of a chaotic, beaten, and toothless Russia from the period immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union has not been very accurate for some time. To the contrary, there seems little doubt that Russia has the capacity to assert itself much more than has been the case since the early 1990s. It has infrastructure, highly developed research and development capabilities, enormous (and largely untapped) gas and mineral wealth, and a population with a strong sense of national identity. And what’s more, published reports indicate it still has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads that are still operational. (The United States has just over 4,000.)
Still, Russia is not the Middle East and it is not China. So it receives scant attention in the news. I suspect that Americans know far, far more about Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears than they do about the vast Russian nation.
Perhaps Americans largely ignore developments in Russia because they feel secure in the knowledge that it would be difficult for any other power to catch up to the U.S. in military terms. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recently concluded that the United States alone accounted for roughly 45 percent of the world’s total military spending last year. The Institute calculated that total worldwide military spending was $1.34 trillion (that’s $1,340,000,000,000 ). That’s a lot of cash. The breakdown, as reported in Forbes, listed American spending on weaponry at $547 billion, compared to Russia’s comparatively paltry expenditure of $35.4 billion on weaponry.
But Russia is on the move, and appearances can be deceiving. Considering that the American press pays practically no attention to Russia these days, I wonder if the few recent news stories about Russia will shed much light on what little discussion there is about the topic in the United States. It is surely seems true that the Russia military machine has many problems. But it seems equally true that the Russian government’s emphasis on its military in recent months — combined with its ongoing assertiveness in foreign affairs in Europe and the Middle East, its abundant resources, and its national will — represents more than a casual development.
But the United States remains focused on other things. There’s a strong sense of complacency with regard to thinking about Russia. Too many Americans seem to think that nation is only a concern of the past. But what is needed is more, not less, awareness of Russia’s evolving place on the world stage. The time for the United States to develop and articulate a better way of interacting with Russia is now, not later when some unanticipated new crisis presents itself.
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G. Arnold is an editor of Bread and Circus on-line magazine. A version of this article appeared in his VCB blog.
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