[MD] Social Ants?

[Ham Priday]

S.A., Gene, Steve, Platt --

Platt said:

> We have seen Nazi and Communist societies in the 20th
> century commit the most horrendous biological savagery
> ever recorded.
>
> What makes the individual level superior to the social level
> is the recognition by individuals of society's role in keeping
> criminal biological elements at bay.

Steve objected:

> These savage behaviors were committed by individuals.
> As the NRA says, guns don't kill people, individuals kill people.

Gene also:

> You seem to ascribe any and all evil to biological patterns
> of value. It's crap.
>
> Fascism is as much an intellectual pattern as a social pattern.
> Nazi Germany was engineered by great minds to be the way it was.

S.A. quotes RMP as suggesting that Hitler had "intellectual conflicts".

> One individual is anti-intellectual and that individual is Hitler.
> The other individual is intellectual and that individual is Phaedrus.
> Of these individuals one, named Phaedrus, is capable of having
> an idea about a conflict within another individual named Hitler.
> That individual, named Hitler, has a conflict inside of himself.
> A conflict between society and intellect all wrapped up together
> inside of the skin of an individual capable of having a social and
> intellectual conflict inside of himself, this one person, an
> individual named Hitler.  That's what "Phaedrus thought".

I think S.A. has a valid point that the xenophobia and paranoia of a
dictator like Hitler are symptomatic of internal conflicts.  But that is a
psychological disease, not a cultural or social malady.  Moreover, since
Hitler had great admiration for Goethe's poetry and the music of Wagner, I
don't see how we can conclude that he was anti-intellectual.

Gene's complaint that it's illogical to make biological values responsible
for savage behavior is also well taken, as is Steve's assertion that "guns
don't kill people, individuals do."  I think these arguments illustrate the
futility of trying to "objectify" values by social/biological/-intellectual
levels.  Human behavior is observed objectively, but the values that incite
it are internal or subjective.

The fact that some people behave badly is not an indictment of biology or
evolution.  Lesser creatures who are dependent on biological instinct for
their behavior rarely, if ever, exhibit the kind of savagery that Platt
attributes to Hitler, Hamas and Al Qaeda.  In fact, mass cruelty applied to
one's own species would appear to be peculiar to humans.  Should we then
condemn intellectualism?  Should we hold society responsible for the crimes
of its tyrant dictators?  Or are we to conclude that because some values
inspire evil acts, value itself is immoral?

We tend to forget that values come in all flavors, and evil is just as
powerful as goodness.  I've always suspected that what Platt really means by
"a moral universe" has more to do with balance and order than with goodness
or betterness.  The simple truth is that, for various reasons, some people
are bad.  If we willingly yield to them the power to control our lives we
are complicit in their badness.  Likewise, if a nation is not committed to
defending itself against attackers, it will perish.  That is not a fault of
a biological or social or intellectual level.  It's what happens when people
take values like individual freedom and national sovereignty for granted and
become irresponsible.  It is a fact of human history.

Regards,
Ham