The Big Picture

In Galileo’s time it was the heliocentric controversy which sent religious institutions reeling while today it is, among other things, evolution. But demonstrating that the sun is at the center of our solar system was a much simpler proposition than elucidating the step by step process of evolutionary progression over billions of years.

For this reason the opponents of evolution find it easier to remain blind to the facts than those opposed to the heliocentric view of the solar system in Galileo’s time. All kinds of nonsensical arguments can be used in support of their position. In spite of all the evidence supporting the process of evolution, especially in the field of molecular biology, absurd comments, from those who vehemently oppose the idea of evolution, can make perfect sense to those unwilling or unable to accept the reality of their origins. The fact that human beings were and still are subject to the forces of natural selection just like any other life form is anathema to those insistent upon holding on to traditional beliefs and they will grasp on to any commentary which supports their view no matter how insubstantial it is: erstwhile, conservative radio talk show host, Barry Farber, made a comment about evolution on one of his programs saying, Solomon-like, “I’ve never seen a chimpanzee turn into a man!” as if with one salient triumph of reason he discredited the whole theory of evolution once and for all.

For people in Mr. Farber’s camp, equally opposed to the very idea of evolution as he, and equally uninformed about the subject, such statements, no doubt, resonate in their minds as perfectly sound arguments. The Barry Farbers of Galileo’s time accused the scientist of somehow rigging his telescope in order to make it appear as though the earth revolved around the sun. But the enhanced ocular evidence seen through the telescope eventually overrode the ocular illusion of the sun revolving around the earth and the Church had to find a way of existing within that reality.

Today the ocular evidence on a macroscopic level tells us that the differences between humans and chimps are astronomical. On a microscopic level, however, the differences are infinitesimal. But the microscopic view of anatomical processes doesn’t produce the same demonstrative power in relation to evolutionary process as the telescopic view of heavenly bodies did in reference to the configuration of our solar system. Looking at charts and slides representing genes and chromosomes of a chimp and a human and noting their similarities doesn’t begin to demonstrate anything about how the actual process of evolution works - a process that in some areas still eludes a full understanding by evolutionary scientists themselves. So, it is very difficult for us to appreciate the relationship between the processes of life on a micro level and the resulting life forms on a macro level. Which, again, for those who categorically dismiss the very notion of our evolutionary emergence, makes it very easy to discredit.

Those in the oxymoronic Creation Science camp perpetrated an outright fraud in an attempt to have their point of view validated. They have claimed on more than one occasion that they had found the fossilized footprints of a dinosaur and a human side by side at locations in Texas. Upon investigating these claims they were found to be bogus. In at least a couple of the cases it was found that the footprints claimed to be human had been tampered with in an effort to make them appear that way. One wonders what the perpetrators of such a foolhardy act could have been thinking. Did they really think they could get away with such a hoax? Did they believe such a hoax to be within the moral code of their religion? Did they think such a hoax was justified because they thought it to be in the service of some higher truth? If a higher truth is in need of abysmal falsification is that not a negation of it?

Creation Science morphed into the more sophisticated Intelligent Design camp. They rely on the complexity of evolutionary science and the general public’s ignorance of the subject to mislead people into thinking that evolution is not valid science. There are, of course, things yet to be explained in regard to the science of evolution, but to use what we don’t know about the evolutionary process to dismiss it in its entirety is tantamount to dismissing the concept of religion because of its own inherent mysteries. Be that as it may the proponents of creation science are engaging in the dissemination of misinformation and outright falsehoods to disparage evolutionary science in an attempt to make some form of creationism the more credible scenario.

One of the original proponents of intelligent design, Michael Behe, wrote a book called, Darwin’s Black Box, which attempted to make the case for god as intelligent designer by illustrating the meticulous workmanship on the molecular scale of life. All the tiny components that fit so well together and display such exquisite functionality could not have come about all by themselves. They just had to have been the work of a master designer.

That Behe lacked scientific integrity and wrote Darwin’s Black Box with a biased perspective was evident in the absence of any mention in his book of spontaneous construction with respect to life on the molecular level, like the physicist turned microbiologist, Jacques Monod, writes about in Chance and Necessity. Monod illustrates how molecular structures take shape with respect to their specific chemical properties alone and are in no way in need of a designer. He explains how it is possible to take a molecular structure apart, a protein, for instance, without damaging it, “In this state,” he goes on to say, “the protein will in general have lost all its functional properties, catalytic or regulatory. However – and this is the important point – if the initial “normal” conditions are restored (by eliminating the dissoctiating agent), the subunits will ordinarily reassemble spontaneously, reforming the original “native” state of the aggregate: The same number of protomers in the same geometrical arrangement, accompanied by the same functional properties as before.” Furthermore, “…ribosomes which are the essential components of the mechanism that translates the genetic code, that is, of the protein-synthesizing machinery. These particles, whose molecular weight attains 10,000,000, are made up by the assembly of some thirty thousand distinct proteins plus three different types of nucleic acids…it has been found that, in vitro, the dissociated constituents of ribosomes spontaneously reassemble themselves into particles having the same composition, the same molecular weight, the same functional activity as the original “native” material.

“However, the most spectacular example…of the spontaneous construction of complex molecular edifices is without doubt that of certain bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria). The complicated and very precise structure of the T4 bacteriophage corresponds to this particle’s function, which is not only to protect the genome of the virus, but also to attach itself to the wall of the host cell in order to inject into it, syringe-like, its DNA content. The different parts of this microscopic precision machinery can be obtained separately from different mutants of the virus. Mixed together in vitro they assemble themselves spontaneously to reconstitute particles identical to normal ones and fully capable of exercising their DNA-injecting function.”

So, “…complex structures possessing functional properties develop from the stereospecific, spontaneous assembling of their protein constituents. Order, structural differentiation, acquisition of functions – all these appear out of a random mixture of molecules individually devoid of any activity, any intrinsic functional capacity other than that of recognizing the partners with which they will build the structure. The structure of the assembled molecules itself constitutes the source of “information” for the construction of the whole.”

Behe purports to be a microbiologist but does not engage us with authentic discourse. He is trafficking in dogma - a cleric in scientific clothing.

Another such masquerading cleric is intelligent design proponent, George Gilder, who says things like, “Just as quantum theory overthrew Newtonian theory the theory of information is going to overthrow biology.” Now, in the first place, there was no overthrowing involved in quantum theory with respect to Newtonian theory. So, the overthrowing of biology by information theory cannot follow from that. It was Einstein’s theory of relativity that showed Newtonian physics was not relevant to the cosmos on a large scale. However, Newton’s formulas were discovered in reference to our little corner of the universe and they are just as viable in that respect today as they were when an apple first fell to the ground. Furthermore, Newtonian physics has to do with what physicists call the classical world, the familiar world of objects that we live in, while the physics of quantum world particles is entirely different. To state that the latter overthrew the other is like saying apples overthrew oranges. Also, even if the one theory did overthrow another theory how does that equate with a particular theory, information theory, overthrowing a whole body of knowledge, biology? That statement by Gilder is just nonsensical however one may care to parse it.

Another ridiculous statement this self-proclaimed scientist came up with was, “Assume a book…Finding life in traces of protein is like trying to find the contents of a book by a chemical and physical analysis of the paper and ink on which it’s produced.”

To Gilder “life” means information and, according to him, analyzing proteins is not going to reveal its content. He wants to believe that that information is totally separate from, and precedes, any anatomical material.

Now, if proteins are the book of life, then, DNA is the printing press. But, in this case, the printing press does not impress code onto some extraneous material, the printing press itself is the information that puts together a book whose material and content are one.

It is all physical, there is no content, no information over and above the physical material. As Monod noted above, “The structure of the assembled molecules itself constitutes the source of “information”…”.

So, there is no need for a designer. There is no need for an idea to precede the process. We can posit that need, we can posit a designer if we so desire, but the self-contained process does not necessitate one.

Of all the factions vying for ascendancy in the culture wars, the battle between science and traditional belief systems is probably the most crucial. This battle has been going on since Galileo and has been considerably escalated by, among other things, the advance of Darwinian Theory. The battle lines in this conflict have been purposefully blurred by some defenders of religious beliefs. In an attempt to enfeeble science, religious authorities have accused it of being “just another Faith”. That is, to say the least, a curious comment. It seems to belittle Faith in general, as if to say, science is just another fanciful belief system. On the other hand, religious authorities also claim that science can prove their beliefs to be a reality. This flip-flopping not only erodes the concept of Faith itself but also lessens our ability to form as truthful a picture of the world as we otherwise might through the development of a clear understanding between Faith and Reason. Trying to accommodate contradictory positions as mutually viable is a no win situation. But that is the insidious nowhere land our psyches have been inhabiting in recent times. As a result religious and scientific views are both rendered less than meaningful and neither can present a fully cogent vision. What we need to do is examine religion in an objective manner and identify its roots in the natural world. Placing religion squarely within the nature of things could serve, perhaps, to put humankind in its proper perspective.

That scientific findings run contrary to some of our traditional beliefs can, of course, be a cause for anxiety in people. Those beliefs form the very foundation for the structures of meaning that house our vulnerable psyches and they have passed as factual knowledge for millennia. Then science comes along and reduces their stature to that of myth and fantasy. A catastrophic conflict is created between what we want to believe and what science reveals as fact. Movements such as Creation Science are a desperate attempt to merge Faith and Reason in favor of religious beliefs. But such confusion of terms, like Creation Science, merely fills the gap between science and religion with nonsense. The gap between what science is telling us and what we want to believe can best be dealt with through a better understanding of what science is actually saying and realizing what it has to offer in the way of human values.

It is believed, however, that science can have nothing whatsoever to offer in terms of human value systems. Science can elucidate theories about the human need for value systems and for meaning in life over and above a merely natural existence but science cannot provide for that meaning. It is thought that science can only undermine what is meaningful. It is true that this has been an inadvertent aspect of science since its inception but it need not be a permanent condition. In extrapolating values from science some of our preferred scenarios, inspired by religious faiths, must, of course, fall by the wayside. The relationship of science and values will be fully elucidated here further on. For now it is important to keep in mind that altering our beliefs in accordance with knowledge does not mean the end of religious concepts altogether.

Our unwillingness to relinquish our preferred scenarios of the world runs deep and presents a formidable stumbling block to establishing values based on anything other than those scenarios. The human penchant for preferring fantasy over reality is well documented and can even be an occasion for enthusiastic applause.

The play, M. BUTTERFLY, produced on Broadway in 1988, is a case in point. It dramatizes the story of a married man, Rene Gallimard, who falls in love with someone he believes to be a woman but who is actually a man posing as a woman. Gallimard believes the object of his desire is a woman all through their initial platonic encounters and, quite remarkably goes on believing it throughout a long and intimate relationship.

The female impersonator is able to sustain the illusion of being a woman by, for one thing, claiming an extraordinary modesty and never disrobing in Gallimard’s presence. Even so, one may ask how could this be? How could a man not be capable of discerning the difference between having sex with a male as opposed to a female? This is not just an academic question about a playwright’s invention, for M. BUTTERFLY is based on a true story. One might suspect that the man in question was, at the very least, a semi consciously willing participant in the ongoing illusion and found the relationship with the person he was in love with as all to gratifying to be disturbed by any minor tactile differences he may have been tenuously aware of during their intimate encounters.

Be that as it may, the audiences of M. BUTTERFLY, during its Broadway incarnation, seemed to relate to the lead character’s peculiar situation with a strong sense of empathy. But why? It is, after all, not a typical experience for people to find themselves in love with someone pretending to be a member of the opposite sex. So, what was it about this play’s bizarre relationship that struck a chord in its audiences? It is certainly a more common experience to be attracted to and have a relationship with someone only to find out they were not the person you thought they were. And this may have been the connection with the play and its audience. But even after being presented with the naked truth about his lover’s gender Gallimard refused to acknowledge that “she” was in fact a “he” and created his own inverted version of the fantasy he had been inadvertently involved for so many years.

Interestingly enough, this stubborn refusal to accept reality did not dissuade the audience from its empathy for the play’s protagonist but rather seemed to intensify it. One would think, on the face of it, that such obstinate behavior would not serve to illicit anyone’s applause. Nevertheless, there it was.

So, what was it that caused the outpouring of empathy demonstrated in the audiences’ reaction? What was there to identify with so strongly?

Perhaps what audiences found to applaud in this provocative drama was the universal compulsion to believe what we want, or need to believe, even though such beliefs may fly in the face of reality. The audiences’ empathy might have consisted of a spontaneous recognition of the age old conflict between our precious illusions, the reality which continually encroaches upon them and our stubborn insistence on holding on to our illusions as long as we can by willfully denying whatever facts might threaten them.

Indeed, what we want to believe about our world and ourselves doesn’t always mesh with reality and when presented with evidence that our beliefs are contrary to the facts, either we accept the reality that our illusions have been shattered or we turn away from the facts and become fanatical about believing in our illusions. Threats to our illusions can, of course, cause grave conflicts within ourselves, as threats to belief systems in general can cause grave conflicts within and between institutions. Religion, for instance, has been wrangling with the disillusioning aspect of science for centuries.

When Galileo was able to demonstrate that the Earth was not at the center of all things, the Church, no longer able to disavow Copernicus’ heliocentric view of the solar system, branded Galileo a heretic and sentenced him to prison. The Church’s reaction was, of course, perfectly understandable. Such knowledge severely challenged the whole concept of God and Man. Human beings were, according to Church doctrine, the central purpose of God’s design. This doctrine also included the belief that mankind’s home, the Earth, occupied the very center of the universe. Displacing the Earth from that eminent position threatened the very foundation of the Church’s teachings and, thus, its complete authority over its subjects. So, like Gallimard in M. BUTTERFLY, the Church refused to accept the naked truth it was presented with and chose to continue to believe in its version of things even though that version had clearly been shown to be a fantasy.

Eventually, of course, the Church had to accept the heliocentric reality of our solar system. However, if it could have found a way to continue to live in ignorance of that reality it seems more than likely that it would have done so as evidenced by the Church’s long refusal to accept mankind’s place in the evolution of all living things.

Resistance and skepticism with respect to new perspectives that challenge the status quo do serve a purpose. They create a demanding screening process through which all claims to scientific discoveries must pass. But when new ideas are bolstered by an overwhelming body of evidence in their favor, such resistance becomes absurd.

For the traditional believer, however, such willful resistance to evidence is second nature since one has been well accustomed to accepting on faith certain things that are antithetical to reason. Evidence that contradicts religious beliefs can even serve as a spur to go on believing. As Tertulllian, an early Christian, said about believing in all the things in his particular faith that challenged one’s sense of reality, “I believe because it is absurd.” - a sentiment that can be useful for any number of strange beliefs that a man is actually a woman, for instance.

In spite of the abysmal historical record regarding the ability of any particular ism to deliver a generally viable society there are those who still remain transfixed by one or another of them. Various factors are involved in the attraction that one may feel toward a particular ism, but one thing for sure, it is not a rational choice. One cannot choose one ism over another in an objective manner. There is just no way to objectively decide which is the better between capitalism and socialism nor liberalism and conservatism. That is because; (1) when left to themselves they will all fail and (2) they all have a legitimate part to play in a social organism. So, any notions about the ascendancy of one ism alone fly in the face of the real world.

It‘s impossible to objectively choose between capitalism v socialism, self-interest v collective-interest, individuality v commonality, conservatism v liberalism, competition v cooperation, because in reality these are not opposing contentious issues. There can certainly be tension between them. And that tension is made contentious by ideologues who, extremely attracted to one set and totally repelled by the other, hype their ism as the one and only and eschew all others as hostile pretenders to some idealized throne.

We also have a mind-set that defines the world in terms of opposites. Take our notions of competition and cooperation, for example. We have separate definitions for them and tend to see them as opposites while in reality they form a dynamic and cannot exist in total isolation from one another. There cannot be a society or an organization of any kind based solely on competition or cooperation. What we call competitive sports, for instance, are more about cooperation; it’s teamwork that wins the day. As far as the possibility of total cooperation is concerned, I was once part of a group that was all about cooperation. It was the order of the day every minute of the day. Competition, it was believed, had been eradicated from the premises. What I observed, however, was that people were in fact surreptitiously competing to win the unspoken title of “most cooperative”.

The mistaken Hobbesian view of primitive man as completely solitary and absolutely competitive is still, perhaps influential here. But try to imagine each and every individual engaged in total, absolute, ruthless competition with every other as a natural precept and I think you will find it to be a futile exercise. For one thing, such a condition would make the transition to aggregate states impossible.

When we see that each and every individual operates from a standpoint of self-interest it’s understandable to conclude, like Hobbes, that, without the authority of a state apparatus to oversee and control people’s inherent “selfishness”, primitive people living in the wild state of nature would be engaged in a brutal continuous free-for-all. It was, however, the advent of civilization that required the control and manipulation of individual self-interest, which was, up until then, managed quite nicely by the strictures imposed on people by the state of nature. The self-interest that serves to set us apart in the civilized world is the very thing that accounted for the formation of collectives in the primitive world and held groups together.

As far as the A/R dynamic is concerned self-interest attracts us toward that which enhances our survival and repels us away from that which threatens it. Living in the wild our self-interest is first and foremost concerned with survival. The way one survived in a primitive setting was to belong to a group made up of other individuals with the same self-interest. In the natural world self-interest to survive creates collective interest. So, we have an innate attraction to belong to a group in order to enhance our survival prospects and we are repulsed at the prospect of being severed from it.

The natural world was the omnipotent presence to which all were subject to. It was nature that informed and instructed human behavior inside and out through genetic programming in relation to the overwhelming omnipresence of the state of nature. Each member of a group felt compelled to belong to the group in order to survive. And not only to belong - it was in each and every individual’s self-interest to contribute to the group’s cohesiveness. For a cohesive and harmonious group increased the chance for the group’s ongoing survival, which in turn increased the survivability of each and every member of the group. Every member of the group was in the survival game together with every other member. Every member played a vital role in the group’s survival. The natural world was the overarching authority they were subject to. It’s what demanded their cohesion. Demanded that they pool their resources and regard each other with respect. Their own subjective survival was objectified in their need of the group through which their own individual subjective needs could be realized. Each individual’s survival and the group’s survival were seamlessly joined. This is not to depict a world of perfect harmony but one where, out of necessity, group cohesion won the day.

Putting the survival of the group over and above oneself as we see was not an act of altruism. One’s interest in the group per se grew out of one’s self-interest. This natural conditioning to group servitude in individuals can be extended into sacrificing oneself for the benefit of the group. But again there is self-interest involved even with sacrificing one’s life in defense of one’s group. For one knows that as long as one’s group is in tact one can pursue one’s personal goals and live the life that one is accustomed to. If, however, an enemy were allowed to overtake one’s group then one’s quality of life would be drastically circumscribed as one would become totally subjected to an alien power and live or die at its whim. So, when one’s group is threatened one feels one’s own back is to the wall and risking one’s life in battle is a matter of personal survival. This is at the root of our civilized feelings of patriotism, which, of course, depend on how closely one identifies with one’s group, one’s society. Such patriotism might be expressed thusly, “If I am not willing to go to my death for my group then the existence of my group is severely jeopardized as is my very own self-interest.”

Today we all need to be concerned about the survival of the planet. Our common identity as earthlings needs to come to the fore and supersede all ideological, cultural, national and ethnic identities. But that is asking a lot. Our cultured civilized identities are so much more attractive to us than the reality of our earthly existence and our real identity as creatures of the earth. The fanciful images of ourselves that lift us above our earthly realm are what we are transfixed by and believe in.

Science looks at Homo sapiens purely as creatures of the earth and because of that some people find scientific knowledge abhorrent. We want things to be other than how science reveals them to be. We want human beings to be purely cultural or spiritual entities, demigods for whom the natural world is a subservient support system. We want to think of ourselves as free of nature’s confinement and able to live our lives without the intrusion of environmental concerns. We become peevish at the thought of such concerns inhibiting our lavish habits of consumption. Such habits, of course, are attributable to a common natural instinct to exploit the environment for one’s own benefit. But we cloak that natural instinct in divine raiment. We claim that human beings operate on a higher level, our extravagant life styles (provided by earthly science and technology) are a testament to our divine origins. We find it necessary to distinguish ourselves from the natural world in whatever way we can -even if it means destroying that world in the process.

Whether we know it or not there is nothing more important to anyone than having a natural environment that is friendly to life. All other issues and causes become absolutely irrelevant on a planet whose life support system is being threatened. This is an issue that requires us, one and all to put our differences aside and focus our collective attention on allowing the planet to become and remain as ecologically sound as possible. Or we can continue to be embroiled in our ethnic conflicts, ideological wars, corporate exploitation and governmental ineptitude until one day we look up and notice that there is nothing more to fight over or exploit because our life support system has become damaged beyond repair. That may seem farfetched to some, perhaps to most people, but as a possibility it cannot be ruled out categorically. And that dire possibility should be enough to seriously amend our thinking.

In some ways our thinking has been amended. How could it not have been in the face of all the changes that we have been subjected to in the last five decades? The question is – has our thinking changed for the better? Perhaps, our thinking has changed into more of a non-thinking. As in the “dumbing down” that has been much talked about in recent years. Perhaps there’s just too much to think about, too much to wrap our minds around. Perhaps we can’t quite figure out how to connect things up sensing that traditional mind-sets don’t fit with how the real world actually operates.

Traditional thinking with its accent on splitting the world in two holds sway, defining holistic dynamics as opposing factions. Wherever we look there is heated controversy with opposing sides stubbornly determined not to budge from their prefabricated positions no matter what. The world in general is riddled with the warfare of opposing factions championing one belief system or another. In the US we see all the talking heads on TV, mainly occupied with fighting culture wars, side with one faction or another, subscribe to whatever half-baked argument favors them while systematically ignoring the big picture that we are all part of.

Francis Fukuyama, in his thoughtful and informative book, THE GREAT DISRUPTION, points out that the vast majority of people are not engaged in culture wars. These conflicts, he maintains, are a matter for activist ideologues only. Everyone else goes about their daily routines unaffected. Well, people can ignore the culture wars but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily unaffected them. As political and cultural infighting becomes more insular and isolated the threat to democratic institutions becomes more prevalent. And if the majority of people have a more objective view of things, i.e., are not shackled by a fixed idea, then their input would seem to me to be a much needed ingredient in the debate.

So, as we see, cultural as well as natural environments are polluted. We need to take measures to clean up both. There is growing recognition of natural environmental problems and a considerable effort to improve them is ongoing. With respect to cultural environments, however, there is hardly any recognition about the need for drastic, radical and genuine revolutionary change. One must soar above all the ideological smog in order to see the big picture and fashion a cogent worldview that integrates all our differences into a salubrious whole.

At this point we might want to consider the idea of order in general, especially how order can be achieved in nature at all. We might like to think that objective ordering is something special to humankind. That it requires some inspired vision from another world, from an eye in the sky, as it were. For how can unruly subjective natures come anywhere close to achieving objective order for themselves without something like divine guidance inspiring them?

The answer is - it is the nature of things to arrive at objective orderly arrangements through the interaction of a mix of subjective entities. This is true for both living and non-living systems. And it’s the case on all levels from the microcosm to the macrocosm in regard to everything that is. It is the case with subatomic particles, atoms, molecular structures, the language of life itself and the way in which living things organize.

This also has to do with the A/R dynamic. The subjective nature of attractive gluons and repellent quarks create objective nucleons. Molecules are ordered by the way in which atoms can bind together by virtue of their subjective attributes. They become attractive to one another with regard to their electron sharing compatibility. In this subjective way molecules are ordered and become what we see as the objective order of objects. So, we have things behaving as they must according to their subjective natures, interacting accordingly and forming in the process objective entities.

Life forms exhibit objective ordering from the microcosm of individual cells to all the macro organisms cells create. Just as the chemistry of individual atoms decides the ordering of molecules so it is with the building blocks of life. The ordering of the genetic code is decided by the individual chemistry of the substances involved. As a result, the four nucleotides that make up the genetic code correspond with one another via exclusive pairings. Cytosine and guanine link only with each other, as do thymine and adenine. Indeed, all the elements comprising a living cell combine together step by miniscule step with no other purpose than to indulge their individual chemistries. What we see as the objective ordering of a cell is a serendipitous outgrowth of subjective chemical entities interacting in their own particular ways all bound together in a symbiotic compatibility incidentally resulting in the orchestration of life.

It just might be that the first cells of life were chaotic cancer-like cells that briefly produced copies of themselves before quickly dissipating until the orderly formation of what we now know as normal cells was incidentally struck upon.

For an example of this kind of objective ordering operating on a macro level we can look at how songbirds arrive at their particular melody. Without knowing any better one might conjecture that angels from heaven taught the birds their melodies. That flying down from above, upon God’s instruction, they perched upon trees with their harps and the various melodies they played were miraculously transported into different kinds of birds who joyously began to sing. And from this one would assume that nestling songbirds learn their particular melody by imitating the performances of their elders after repeatedly listening to them.

However, this is not the case. It is not merely by imitation that a young songbird learns its melody. For, in a scientific experiment conducted to discover just how a bird goes about learning a particular song, a songbird was hatched and raised in isolation so that it never heard the song of its kind, nor of any other kind, for that matter. Upon reaching the age when it was normal for the bird to begin singing it did so out of its own self. The song, however, did not quite sound like it was suppose to. A sound graph was made of the isolated bird’s song and it was compared to one made from a bird who had been exposed to the song all its life. The isolated bird’s version of the song fit into the graphic patterns of the communal song but fell short in its fullness and range.

So, each bird is genetically programmed to produce varying skeletal arrangements of the same song and the group version, or the objective ordering, is arrived at through a compendium of individual subjective versions working upon one another to create an agreeable arrangement. A group of individ¬u¬als each with their own subjective cacophony interact to form objective harmony.

Human language was once thought to be a pure invention of the mind, a gift from the Gods, but we now know it to be a result of our brain’s programming in the same way as the songs of birds are part of their programming. And, it just so happens, there was an inadvertent experiment performed on human beings that was similar to the one performed on the songbird that showed that the impetus to create language is innate.

I remember a story reported on network television news sometime in the 1970s - twin sisters were found in an old abandon mining town in California where from infancy they resided with deaf and dumb guardians. At the time they were discovered the two girls were teenagers and had setup house in a shack of their own. Never having heard language of any kind they had managed between themselves to create a basic language that enabled them to communicate enough for their own curtailed purposes. It was a language the like of which no one had ever heard before but it was a specific simplistic rendering of complex language in general. So, out of the interaction of their subjective compulsion to talk the two girls arrived at a language with which they could communicate with one another. The twins’ language and that of the isolated songbird’s was a rough sketch of the full version of the vocal expression of their kind.

The twins managed to arrive at an objective form of a simple language out of their subjective capacity to connect certain sounds with certain things and a subjective need, or attraction to connect with one another. One can only imagine how thrilling it must have been for them when they first discovered a common language for themselves. For a time they would probably have been randomly vocalizing in a way that made sense only to their individual selves. Then one of them might have pointed to a chair, say, and made a sound and after repeating the gesture and the sound a few times the other twin picked up on it and began pointing at the chair with the same sound. What an ecstatic moment that must have been. I am reminded of the film The Miracle Worker when Patty Duke, as the young Helen Keller, finally connects a sound with a thing and the rush of excited pleasure she emotes as she runs around with her teacher, Anne Bancroft, making the language connection with other things.

Anyway, the point is that objective order is arrived at from subjective actors - objective language out of a subjective capacity that we all have in common. Our innate motivations to speak and to communicate with others can be thought of as desires on our part or as attractions. Socializing is attractive to us.

It’s the same with arriving at an objective social order. We all have subjective attractions to an orderly state of one kind or another, strict, loose and varying degrees in between. And it is through the interaction of those subjective attractions that we find an objective order that everyone can participate in. We cannot expect our own particular attractions to be exactly manifested in the agreed upon order, especially when it comes to those with attractions to the extremes on one end or the other. Having one’s subjective attraction to social order exactly reflected in a society is called dictatorship.

We think that our orderly civilizations are what it’s all about. They are what this world was created for. And for the most part we tend to be ignorant of the accompanying disorder created by our imposing order. The means by which we survive are always uppermost in our minds. Any downside is not noticed unless it becomes a threat to our ordered states. Environmental disorder, for example, has only recently become a real concern as we realize its negative impact on our orderly civilizations.

It has recently become a concern even though we’ve known about the environmental cost of our ordered civilizations from the get-go. At the dawn of civilization the City of Ur was utterly dependent on the yield from its agricultural system. Over time abundant yields became less than abundant and eventually, due to soil erosion and depletion of its nutrients the farmlands of Ur could no longer produce anything and the civilization unraveled.

Also, our common understanding of order is, perhaps, illusive. It seems we think of it as something unique in and of itself, something that exists on its own terms, so to speak. And chaos is something altogether separate. But order can be seen and defined as chaos in slow motion. Thus, the second law of thermodynamics where orderly systems tend toward disorder. We don’t really dust the furniture to make it dust free but to start it getting dusty again. Chaos can be seen and defined as constantly changing order. Take a snapshot of any chaotic system and there you will see its momentary order.

It is our attraction to order and our repulsion to disorder that accounts for their exclusivity in our minds. As a result of this polarization we come to think of them as complete opposites and totally separate. And this illusive exclusivity can result in an unwarranted faith in one kind of order or another. One can get the impression that the specific kind of order that one is attracted to makes unconditional sense. So, one comes to believe that a particular order can be imposed on a society and will work exactly as envisioned and remain forever in place. Even though such belief is completely unwarranted given the historical record.

We can take a lesson from the United States, China and the Soviet Union in the 20th Century. Capitalism ruled in the US early in that century and many people were made to suffer under its reign. Workers - men, women and children - were forced to labor in the harsh conditions of unhealthful and dangerous work places for wages that were extremely inadequate. Commenting on the plight of the haves and the have-nots at that time, Andrew Carnegie once reportedly quipped, “I’m in heaven, they’re in hell and that’s the will of God.” Eventually, however, it became evident to a growing number of citizens that changes to the prevailing ideology had to be installed. And, so, in order to address the abuses caused by the exclusive rule of capitalism significant doses of socialism were introduced into the exclusively capitalistic system. Also, in the 20th Century communism reigned supreme in the Soviet Union and the leadership remained absolutely committed to a hard-line Marxist/Leninist approach until this empire, ruled with an iron fist, suddenly dissolved overnight. The rulers of the Soviet Union had absolute power to make the socialist dream of a “worker’s paradise” a reality and they couldn’t do it. The other great communist empire, China, was a very different story. In the 1970’s the Chinese leadership held a conference in their capital (Peking at that time) and these avowed communists, some of whom had fought along with Mao, came to the conclusion that Marxism alone could not provide for all of a society’s needs. And, so, China began the gradual introduction of free enterprise practices into their system, by which it was able to prosper.

The nature of things comes into play here. The ideas of socialism and capitalism are not unrelated to the natural world. It is, perhaps, the way in which they reflect the natural world that is responsible for their being the world’s dominant ideologies. We like to think our isms are all divinely sent, or that they are pure inventions of the human mind. But they are, as we shall see, all immanently connected to the workings of nature.

The human brain evolved in the wild over hundreds of thousands of years. Nature was intently observed and studied as if the human brain’s existence depended upon it, and, of course, it did. Every aspect of nature became indelibly conceptualized in the human brain. And although we have no conscious connection to our more primitive past the comparatively brief time we humans have spent within the bubble of civilization has not erased those indelible impressions from our brains. But we have formed a rainbow of abstractions from them through the prism of our civilized minds.

These abstractions take hold of us and can appear to be something greater than they are. Not only religions but also ideologies like capitalism and socialism are abstractions that appear to some to be absolute truisms.

Depending on one’s predilection one can abstract from the nature of things a Communist or a Capitalist point of view.

For instance, all life on Earth is food for other life. From a communist perspective this can be seen as a cooperative self-sustaining mechanism of life itself. Vegetation generously provides itself as food for the taking. And prey provides food for the predator. That prey tries to avoid being eaten is no exception to their inclination to provide themselves as food. The prey must try to go on living in order to reproduce more of their kind to be preyed upon. Any life form that is not killed and eaten as prey will eventually provide food for the scavengers like vultures, worms, and maggots. Life’s just one big cooperative.

Looked at from the other perspective, predator and prey can take on a capitalistic character of survival of the fittest and individual initiative where it’s all about the predators being on top and exploiting those below them on the food chain.

There are other ways of seeing capitalism and communism in the wilds of nature: In a capitalistic version of the natural world a fruit-bearing tree develops and produces its product. When the fruit is ripe it advertises itself to potential consumers with attractive color and aroma. The consumers partake of the product’s nutrition and deposit its seed back on the earth as an investment in the future. And if conditions are favorable the seed will eventually produce new products and the process continues.

The communist view of this would be: No one owns the means of production, the product is free and the whole process is provided for by the State, the State of Nature.

One supposed feather in the cap of capitalism is the idea of a pin factory that Adam Smith made so much of in The Wealth of Nations. Well, that idea was around long before humankind appeared on the planet.

The definition of a pin factory is - an organism dedicated to the production of multiple units of a single product.

Well, a berry bush, for example, is an organism dedicated to the production of multiple units of a single product. All of the berry bush’s different parts, from its roots to the tips of its branches have a job to do in producing its fruit. And, of course, there is the honey-producing factory known as the beehive to consider.

On the other hand, socialists have claimed that things are naturally evolving toward a socialist ideal. But that doesn’t seem to be bourn out historically where we see that individuality evolves from collective states. In the United States, for instance, the communist society of Amana freely evolved from within itself into a community of private individuals. The tendency toward individuality is not only evident in the macro world of societies, where we see how social evolution has progressed from primitive communal tribes into societies of private individuals, but also in the micro world of life itself where the cells known as eukaryotes evolved out of prokaryotes. The latter is the prototype bacteria whose cells do not contain a nucleus and exist together in a colony of total equality where each and every individual bacterium is exactly the same as every other. The socialist ideal! Prokaryotes were around long before eukaryotes made their appearance on the scene. The cells of eukaryotes do have a nucleus, which enable them to create unique, separate individual life forms. So, the socialist theory concerning the evolutionary processes of social organisms flies in the face of the natural progression of things.

However, this is not to say that communism does not have its place in the world, in the nature of things. The unique life forms created by eukaryotes are not totally independent entities. Life as a whole, or as an ecosystem, is a single organism within which all individual life forms are interdependent. However diverse life becomes it will always be one entity existing as a communist ecosystem wherein all participants cooperate to promote the sum of what they are part of, life itself.

Separate individual creatures, then, arise out of a communal state but are never entirely disassociated from it, are never entirely free from participating in cooperative activities. (A species that exploits environments without participating in their enrichment in some equally significant way had better be a species with a low breeding rate.)

It is the nature of life to be communally and individually oriented. Is it any wonder, then, that socialism and capitalism have become the major ideologies in the world? And that their natural holistic dynamism is attested to in human societies?

The most advanced countries in the world today all have a mix of capitalism and socialism to one degree or another. There’s a reason for that. Nature does not give us a choice between the collective and the individual. To create a viable society the two must work in conjunction with one another, as they always have in the natural world.

We are not free to impose a particular denatured order on our social bodies. Our freedom lies in creating those that reflect the natural order by bringing the individual and the collective into salubrious alignment with one another.