Guilt...Envy....Indignation

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The Stone Age Trinity

 

By Max Borders :

 

 

The late philosopher Robert Nozick pointed out that when people

compare themselves to one another, they are disposed to feel one of

two emotions -- guilt or envy. Guilt when someone has a lower station

than you; envy when someone has a higher station than you. I would

add a third to this mix: indignation. That's when you compare someone

of a higher station to someone of a lower station, and feel that

something is wrong. I refer to this complex of emotional responses to

unequal life-stations as the " Stone Age Trinity. "

 

 

Egalitarian Hard Wiring

 

 

Why do we have these egalitarian emotions? Religious folks would say

we have egalitarian feelings because a benevolent God wants us to be

charitable; or that greed is a sin. Moral philosophers might give us

grand theories about guilt, envy and indignation that have to do with

the " moral law " or some other high-falutin' rationale -- arguing,

perhaps, that these feelings are a psychological complement to more

enlightened reflection.

 

 

But I (and some others) think it has to do with the wiring of the

brain -- a neural circuitry configured over millennia in our

evolutionary past. In other words, I agree with the likes of some of

the original evolutionary anthropologists Leda Cosmides and John

Tooby who, in their Primer on Evolutionary Psychology, write:

 

 

" The environment that humans -- and, therefore, human minds --

evolved in was very different from our modern environment. Our

ancestors spent well over 99 percent of our species' evolutionary

history living in hunter-gatherer societies. That means that our

forebears lived in small, nomadic bands of a few dozen individuals

who got all of their food each day by gathering plants or by hunting

animals. Each of our ancestors was, in effect, on a camping trip that

lasted an entire lifetime, and this way of life endured for most of

the last 10 million years. "

 

 

Hence: " Stone Age. "

 

 

Cosmides and Tooby go on:

 

" Generation after generation, for 10 million years, natural selection

slowly sculpted the human brain, favoring circuitry that was good at

solving the day-to-day problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors ...

Those whose circuits were better designed for solving these problems

left more children, and we are descended from them. "

 

 

We carry with us all the equipment required to survive on the ancient

steppe. Which brings us to egalitarianism: think of how it might have

been important for our ancestors to behave in terms of hoarding and

sharing. From an evolutionary perspective, it made perfect sense to

behave in an egalitarian manner within the tribal band. For in the

absence of refrigeration or other preservation practices, food

spoiled, so hoarding made little sense. Most hoarders would have

failed to pass on genes. Agriculture was absent until about 10000

years ago, so survival of the Stone Age group rested on sharing,

reciprocity and division of labor.

 

 

In The Origins of Virtue, Matt Ridley writes:

 

 

" Private property or communal ownership by a small group is a logical

response to a potential tragedy of the commons, but it is not an

instinctive one. Instead, there is a human instinct, clearly

expressed in hunter-gatherers, but present also in modern society

that protests any sort of hoarding. Hoarding is taboo; sharing is

mandatory. "

 

 

Again, hoarding behavior would probably have been a disadvantage to

survival in the environs of our ancestors.

 

 

One Hundred and Fifty

 

 

Now, folks who've encountered Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point

may recall the " Magic Number 150. " This number seems to be a kind of

cut-off point for the simpler forms of human organization. Gladwell

reminds us that communal societies -- like those our ancestors lived

in, or in any human group for that matter -- tend to break down at

about 150. Such is perhaps due to our limited brain capacity to know

any more people that intimately, but it's also due to the breakdown

of reciprocal relationships like those discussed above -- after a

certain number (again, around 150).

 

 

A great example of this is given by Richard Stroup and John Baden in

an old article about communal Hutterite colonies. (Hutterites are

sort of like the Amish -- or more broadly like Mennonites -- but

settled in different areas of North America.) Stroup, an economist at

Montana State University, shared with me his Spring 1972 edition of

Public Choice, wherein he and political scientist John Baden write:

 

 

" In a relatively small colony, the proportional contribution of each

member is greater. Likewise, surveillance of him by each of the

others is more complete and an informal accounting of contribution is

feasible. In a colony, there are no elaborate systems of formal

controls over a person's contribution. Thus, in general, the

incentive and surveillance structures of a small or medium-size

colony are more effective than those of a large colony and shirking

is lessened. "

 

 

Interestingly, according to Stroup and Baden, once the Hutterites

reach Magic Number 150, they have a tradition of breaking off and

forming another colony. This idea is echoed in Gladwell's The Tipping

Point, wherein he discusses successful companies that use 150 in

their organizational models.

 

 

Had anyone known about this circa 1848, someone might have told Karl

Marx that his theory could work, but only up to the Magic Number.

Turns out, we had to go through 150 years of misery, totalitarianism

and broken humanity to learn the limits of communism. And even though

we've grasped many of these intellectual and practical lessons, Folk

Marxism persists -- and so also does the Stone Age Trinity. And these

likely reinforce each other.

 

 

The truth is; we live in highly complex societies of millions, not

bands of 150. Agriculture, the division of labor, and other human

developments have changed our social arrangements faster than we can

evolve.

 

 

Liberal Societies and Stone Age Baggage

 

 

So what does all this mean for a truly liberal society? A society of

freedom, private property, and markets? Of complexity, pluralism, and

personal responsibility?

 

 

It means we are likely to remain in a protracted struggle against

Paleolithic instincts -- which, of course, translate into the zigzag

of everyday politics. None of this is to argue that guilt, envy, or

indignation are emotions we would always be better off without in

contemporary Western society. But I would suggest that we'd all be

better off localizing these urges in the confines of family and

community. And we should continually ask ourselves in precisely what

contexts these emotions are appropriate.

 

 

Given the tremendous good that is brought about by self-interested

market exchange, it seems we'll have to teach ourselves time-and-

again the intellectual lessons of prosperity in a complex economic

order. We will also have to fight turf wars with those who think the

sentiments of Stone Age Trinity can be wrapped up in intellectual

claptrap (like Marxism), force fed to our students in the ivory

towers, sold to us on the evening news, or foisted upon us inside

marble domes.

 

 

Max Borders is Managing Editor of TCSDaily.com.

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