If all politics are local, and evolution is the adaptation to local environment, then is our modern politics today guided and influenced by our evolved mind from our primal ancestors concerning territorial, hierarchical, power dominance, and resource accumulation mechanisms?
(Ultimately, in regards to politics and evolution), "It's about the resources, people." William A. Spriggs, 1995
"It's the economy, stupid" James Carville's advice to presidential candidate Bill Clinton, C. 2000.
"During the course of the 1990s I did my best to keep up with the various lines of grievance developing within the several sects of the conservative remonstrance, but although I probably read as many as 2,000 presumably holy texts,…I never learned how to make sense of the weird and too numerous inward contradictions. [Remember that] How does one reconcile the demand for small government with the desire for an imperial army, apply the phrases "personal initiative" and "self-reliance" to corporation presidents utterly dependent on the federal subsidies to the banking, communications, and weapons industries, square the talk of "civility" with the strong-arm methods of Kenneth Starr and Tom Delay, match the warmhearted currencies of "conservative compassion" with the cold cruelty of the "unfettered free market," know that human life must be saved from abortionists in Boston but not from cruise missiles in Baghdad? In the glut of paper I could find no unifying or fundamental principle except a certain belief that money was good for rich people and bad for poor people. It was the only point on which all the authorities agreed, and no matter where the words were coming from…the authors invariably found the same abiding lesson in the tale - money ennobles rich people, making them strong as well as wise; money corrupts the poor people, making them stupid as well as weak." Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's magazine, "THE TENTACLES OF RAGE," September, 2004 [pp. 40 & 41].
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith, progressive economist, b.1908 to d. 2006
The right to limitless profit-seeking has always been at the center of the neocon (ultaconservative) ideology.
Naomi Klien
Quote from:
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, p. 407.
The 15 most insincere words in the English language:
“I’m from the Republican Party, and I’m here to trickle down my wealth to you.”
Unknown blogger on Huffington Post, C: September 2007
"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."'John F. Kennedy
Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party Nomination
September 14, 1960
"In this book, we argue that both scarcity of resources and unequal access to those resources are the most important sources of conflict at any level of analysis."
P. 3, Quote from the Book, Bare Branches: The Security Implication of Asia's Surplus Male Population,
Valerie M. Hudson & Andrea M. den Boer, MIT Press, 2005.
"Given the popular use and abuse of evolutionary theory, it's hardly surprising that Darwinism and natural selection have become synonymous with unchecked competition. Darwin himself, however, was anything but a Social Darwinist. On the contrary, he believed there was room for kindness in both human nature and in the natural world. We urgently need this kindness, because the question facing a growing world population is not so much whether or not we can handle crowding, but if we will be fair and just in the distribution of resources. Will we go for all-out competition or will we do the humane thing?"
p. 168, Our Inner Ape, by Frans De Waal, Riverhead books, 2005.
To understand Human behavior and one of its "higher" thought processes -- modern political thought -- you must imagine a "behavioral elevator." First, on the "ground floor level," one encounters Social Psychology and intergroup "friction." We are social creatures first, and collectively "political human behavior" is really "group human behavior." It is on this floor that one encounters the "higher" reaches of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: Love (mates, friends, family), Esteem (status, success).
Individual human behavior would be located one floor down from the ground floor, and that is what we call Evolutionary psychology. It is at this "floor" where we encounter the "gene's eye view" of evolutionary pressures. It is the "big picture" of evolution where human behavior is shared by all of us on the planet. It is individual human behavior and how each of us solves the problem of passing their genes into the next generation within the social norms of where their fate has located them on the planet. In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we find Security, (physical safety, stable jobs, retirement, health insurance), Physicological, (air, water, food, sleep, warmth). It would also include, Self-actualization of Maslow's theory.
Below Evolutionary Psychology are the various specific sub-behaviors under EP, i.e., Evolutionary Feminism, Evolutionary Masculinism, Darwinian medicine, etc.. Then, if you go even lower in the "elevator shaft," and want to explore deeper, you arrive at the chemical source of brain and body activity working together located at specific locations on the planet. This would be Maslow's Physicological, (air, water, food, sleep, warmth).
Oh, yes, I didn't mention the "top floor" of the elevator, and that is the "transdental" or "Godly" direction that the individual takes in her or his "spirtiual voyage." What is always constant is the passage of time and effect that it has on all of us every minute of our lives (think --"developmental," "social gender identity,"rebellous years," "hook up stages," "mating ages," "mate selection," reproductive windows," "empire building years," retirement planning," and "exit strategies" - thoughts of death, etc.). This would be Maslow's theory of Self-transcendence.
Below is a chart of political philosophies that have evolved throughout our western civilization and the men (notice that they are mostly male up till now) who mused on their political views which ultimately were based on their knowledge of human nature at their time and location on the planet. William A. Spriggs July, 2005, updated, February 2008
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A BROAD BRUSHSTROKE OF POLITICAL THOUGHT IS EMERGING
FROM EVOLUTIOANRY THOUGHT COMBINING NATURE (40% ROUGHLY) AND NURTURE (60%
ROUGHLY) AS THE BASIC UNDERPINNING OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR, AND THUS, MOTHER
TO POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS, INSTITUTIONS, VALUES, ETHOS, AND POLICIES
--THIS ENVIRONMENT IS PRESENTLY CALLED THE BIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE. |
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Forward
Away From Primal Behaviors |
| 1637, Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method | |
| 1687, Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principle of Natural Philosophy | |
| 1690, John Lock, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding | |
| 1734, Voltaire, Letters on England | |
| 1748, Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws | |
| 1754, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality | |
| 1784, J.G. Herder, Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind | |
| 1789, The French Revolution, - "Rights of Man and Citizen" | |
| 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France | |
| 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman | |
| 1802, Rene Chateaubriand, Rene | |
| 1807, J.G. Fichte, "Addresses to the German Nation" | |
| 1812, Lord Byron, Childe Harold | |
| 1817, David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy | |
| 1819, Benjamin Constant, "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to That of the Moderns" | |
| 1820-1830, Robert Owen, Henri-Saint-Simon & Charles Fourier, "utopian socialism" | |
| 1822, Hegel, "Philosophy of History" | |
| 1831, Stendhal, The Red & the Black | |
| 1834, Honore de Balzac, Pete Goriot | |
| 1837, George Sand, Lettres d' un Voyageur | |
| 1840-1844, Jules Michelet and Adam Mickiewicz, "messianic nationalism" | |
| 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and Heroic in History | |
| 1844, Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts | |
| 1849, Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death | |
| 1856, Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution | |
| 1859, John Stuart Mill, On Liberty | |
| 1859, Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species | |
| 1864, Fyodor Dostevsky, Notes from Underground | |
| 1869, John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women | |
| 1869, Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy | |
| 1871, Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man | |
| 1880-1900, "Social Darwinism" used to justify emperical expansion | |
| 1884, Herbert Spencer, The Man versus the State | |
| 1886, Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil |
The behavioral theory was inspired by the 2001 lecture, "Euopean Thought & Culture in the 19th Century,"
given by Professor Lloyd Kramer from The Teaching
Company
The links below are selected essays, book reviews, and snippets focused on politics with an evolutionary perspective.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
The
Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War
by David Livingstone Smith
Book review by William A. Spriggs, Dec. 27, 2007
Posse
Comitatus 2.0
Part two of "Rethinking Posse Comitatus in
an Era of Muslim Suicide Bombers..."
Essay by William A. Spriggs
Origin: October 28, 2007
Rethinking
Posse Comitatus in an Era of Muslim Suicide Bombers
and the coming hoards of bachelor males from India and
China:
Are more and more signs pointing to the lack of marriage opportunities
for these surplus males
as fodder for future wars and a threat to our national
security? Part I
Essay by William A. Spriggs
Origin: August 23, 2007
Menstrual
Odors, Dirty Diapers, and the Male Dominated Religious Quest for Purity:
Giving Birth to Misogyny, Ethnic, and Racial Discriminations
Originating in the Human Biological
Emotion of Disgust.
by
William A. Spriggs
June 20th, 2007
The
Mafias: An Evolutionary Perspective
A de-evolved knuckle-crawling Neo-Conservative
by any other name is still
a Machiavellian "strong-man" Alpha male within a defined territory
by
William A. Spriggs
Origin, June 2000
Updated, Feb. 2007
Bare
Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population
By
Valerie M. Hudson & Andrea M. den Boer
Book review by William A. Spriggs
Origin, October 8, 2006
"The masculinization of Asia's sex ratios is one of the overlooked stories of the century…This phenomenon may be only one example of the linkage between the status of women in society and the society's possibilities for democracy and peace." P. 264.
A FILM SCRIPT: BY WILLIAM A. SPRIGGS
WRITTEN, MAY 2005, UPDATED AND PRESENTED, JULY 10, 2006
Special note: This "essay" is a DVD video presentation that is in my achrives. It is a script and is not written in the usual fashion. Hence, you will immediately notice that there are some sections of sentences written in capital letters [as a note to myself to EMPHASIZE that part of the script], and you will see appearances of parenthesized script notes to insert this or this into the video. It was finished in May of 2005 with filming intended to start soon after. But, because of various reasons, mostly personal, I have put off the video production. But, I felt that it was doing no good sitting on my hard drive "collecting dust." I will film the script some day, but I am under no hurry to do so now.
The Original title of the talk is: "UNDERSTANDING THE BEHAVIORAL
MECHANISMS
BEHIND THE FAÇADE OF "MORAL" CONSERVATIVE VALUES.
The
Men From MARs:
Correctly Identifying NASCAR Dads, Blue-collar
workers, Overseers, etc., as Beta Males as Seen From the Evolutionary Perspective
and Their Importance in American Politics from the 1970s to Present.
Origin: August 10, 2003
H.R.
808: An Act to Establish a Department of Peace
Our ancestral male inclination
of aggressiveness may have worked for our ancestors to 'protect' our genetic
base,
and it appeals to the modern aggressive 'neocon' male, but it won't work
in the long term.
Blinded
by the Right:
The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative
A book review
A very primal view of American
Politics written by a man who could no longer stomach the greed,
hypocrisy,
dirty tricks, and outright lies he helped to perpetrate in order to advance
the conservative movement.
Yes, there really is a right-wing conspiracy.
Biological
Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
a book review by Amazon.com of one of the most politically important
books of the 21st Century.
Darwinian
Politics:
The evolutionary origin of freedom
A book review of a book written by an economist.
The
Resource Differential Intolerance Ratio Theory:
The gap between the very rich and the poor; do we see the evolutionary
connection?
Reparations
anyone?
A Reply to A Denver Post Editorial of September 18,
2001
concerning African slave reparations. Updated, September 18th, 2002
Territorial
Signposts
Do humans have an innate territoriality?
The Origin of the Angry White Male: The Jock/Conservative Connection; Falling
Sperm Counts: An Evolutionary Perspective.
(Formally titled: Politics2000: The origin of the
angry white male: the jock/conservative connection: falling sperm counts: an
evolutionary perspective)
A book review of a book of the same title written 1n 1982 found as I search for the primal aggressive male mind as it pertains to modern political behavior, philosophy, and policy.
America's Criminal Justice System and the Resource Alignments: An Evolutionary
Perspective.
(Formally titled: Politics2000: America's Criminal
Justice System and the Resource Alignments: An Evolutionary Perspective)
The School Voucher Systems: Territorial Considerations in the Resource Alignment
Theories.
(Formally titled: Politics2000: The School Voucher
Systems: Territorial Considerations in the Resource Alignment Theories)
Homosexuality/Gays in the Military
Biological Exuberance : Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
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