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Culture & Politics » soc.culture.china » What RichAsianKid thinks of Human Nature and the Middle East
| What RichAsianKid thinks of Human Nature and the Middle East [message #228652] |
So, 23 Juli 2006 22:49 |
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This is a tough one to read, but....if you have, say, a 3-digit IQ, you
should manage.
Reading the following review (by Caton) is an unsettling experience -
it's exactly the feeling one gets after watching the movie endings of
"The Sixth Sense" or "The Others".
Not as easily digested perhaps, especially for USENET, as the article
is long and academic, and yes you probably have to read the entire
thing through. But still the payoff's decent. Just like those movies.
And it's so timely and so pertinent to the current mid-East conflict.
The clich=E9 holds true - sometimes when you change the world, the
world changes you. Israel (and perhaps eventually even America) may
well find herself in such a position - and will forever be fighting a
losing battle against her neighbors. It's not that Israel or America
are wrong - it's just that they're naive and too idealistic. It is very
difficult for Muslims to really be "indoctrinated" (see article)
against their tribal, religious, and collectivist values. And there is
little those Arabs can be meaningfully taught our (America's)
messianic conceptions of freedom and democracy. Why? Because it may be
fighting the nature of the beast - it may be fighting human nature. The
truth may well be that authoritarianism is the default modus operandi,
and piecemeal democracy can and will only be sustained in very limited
pockets of the world. Again, see book review.
(Of course, it may also be explained by who holds the power & who wins
the war - losers are evil and dead people don't whine - but let's give
America and Israel the benefit of the doubt for the moment.)
At the very core of political prudence in terms of foreign policy is
the recognition of the limits of human malleability, one would think,
and one of the issues is this very persistent and stubborn issue of IQ.
This again is touched on in the book review quoted below.
For those unfamiliar, here's how the various countries stack up in
terms of cognitive endowment. Figures can be found at the bottom.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm
Oh, and don't forget. One of the authors, Professor Emeritus Tatu
Vanhanen, is the son of Matti Vanhanen, Finnish Prime Minister and EU
President. (!)
So what does this all mean? Remember what Jefferson said? If one
expects a nation to be ignorant and free, one expects what it never was
and never will be.
Well, we now know that IQ varies tremendously from nation to nation.
And differential IQ has a direct bearing on differential worldwide
educational achievement, as noted in this very latest study.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=3DArticleURL&_u di=3DB6W4M-4KBX4M3-=
1&_coverDate=3D07%2F07%2F2006&_alid=3D427439457& _rdoc=3D1&_fmt=3D&_orig=3Ds=
earch&_qd=3D1&_cdi=3D6546&_sort=3Dd&view=3Dc &_acct=3DC000050221&_version=3D=
1&_urlVersion=3D0&_userid=3D10&md5=3D4a1fc8d48dd 1d50bef492e582b049d99
-----
Abstract
We examine the correlations between the national IQs of Lynn and
Vanhanen (Lynn, R. and Vanhanen, T. (2002). IQ and the wealth of
nations. Westport, CT: Praeger. Westport, CT: Praeger, Lynn, R. and
Vanhanen, T. (2006). IQ and global inequality. Athens, GA: Washington
Summit Books.) and educational attainment scores in math and science
for 10- and 14-year olds in 25 countries and 46 countries
(respectively) given in the TIMSS 2003 reports. It was found that
national IQs had (attenuation corrected) correlations of between 0.92
and 1.00 with scores in math and science. The results are interpreted
as a validation of the national IQs. They suggest that national
differences in educational attainment may be attributable to
differences in IQ, or alternatively that national IQs and in
educational attainment are both indicators of the mental ability of
national populations. It is also shown that national IQs are positively
associated with national per capita income (r =3D .61). It is proposed
that these have a reciprocal positive feedback relationship such that
each augments the other.
-----
The American founding father is right.
And it boils down to a simple syllogism really: by implications of
Jefferson, it is a doomed enterprise to bring meaningful American-style
democracy and "freedom" to every single last corner of the world.
RichAsianKid
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3DEvolutionary Psychology Review =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Evolutionary Psychology
human-nature.com/ep - 2006. 4: 142-148
=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF =AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=
=AF=AF=AF
Book Review
Evolutionary Constraints on Democratic Nation Building
A review of The Failure of Democratic Nation Building: Ideology Meets
Evolution by Albert Somit and Steven A. Peterson. Palgrave Macmillan,
2005. Pp. 155. ISBN 1-4039-6781-4.
Hiram Caton, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Email:
hcaton2 [at] bigpond.net.
This slender book challenges the long-term commitment of the United
States to promote the spread of democracy. The sharp end of the stick
is the authors' challenge to the doctrine of pre-emption, announced
by President George W. Bush in June 2002, according to which the United
States reserves the right to intervene wherever necessary to protect
national security. That objection has, since the authors wrote, become
a chorus that includes some neoconservative pundits who supported the
Afghanistan and Iraq interventions. What makes Albert Somit and Steven
Peterson's approach special-and relevant to readers of this
journal-is indicated in the subtitle. The good sense the authors
would bring to remedying foundering policy is inspired by what
evolutionists understand about human sociability. We share with the
higher primates a strong propensity to social hierarchy and associated
dominance and submission behaviors that make it difficult for human
populations to transcend what they declare to be 'the default' form
of government: authoritarian hierarchy.
The authors bring strong qualifications to their task. They were among
those who initiated the effort to bring biological and evolutionary
factors into political science. They helped establish the Association
for Politics and Life Sciences and its journal, Politics and Life
Sciences in 1980. They have edited a number of books investigating
'biopolitical' themes and wrote Darwinism, Dominance, and
Democracy: The Biological Basis of Authoritarianism (1997). True to
this background, The Failure of Democratic Nation Building is, in the
first instance, a political science essay, but one arguing that our
heritable behavior as social primates provides critical evidence for
interpreting a major political issue-assessment of the drive for
democratic nation building. Those opposed to any suggestion of natural
constraints on our aspirations (most social scientists) pre-emptorily
dismiss this argument: if one-fifth of humanity enjoy free government;
why not the remainder? The short answer is that with the exception of
republican polities in Greco-Roman antiquity, authoritarian government
has prevailed everywhere until recently. Special enabling conditions
are required, they argue, if democracy is to work, and, moreover, the
threat of lapse into the default position is ever present.
Evolutionary Constraints on Democratic Nation Building
Indeed, this threat is proverbial wisdom. Libertarians decry the
curtailment of individual liberty by excessive taxation and
bureaucratic interference. The equal opportunity chorus finds insidious
discrimination everywhere and would liberate those oppressed by gender
and racial discrimination. The conception of the public as an
equilibrium of individuals each acting for his or her benefit may be
apposite for markets, but it doesn't approximate the complexity of
interacting hierarchical organizations-business, professional,
bureaucratic, religious, ethnic-that makes things work. The authors
believe that today these things are not working so well. They argue
that 'the long-term prospects for democracy worldwide...would be much
better served by using our human and financial resources to strengthen
democracy here at home rather than by squandering them...in almost
assuredly fruitless "nation building" ventures abroad. This, in
essence, is the case we try to make' (p. 4).
The authors organize their evidence as follows. A chapter is devoted to
discussion of heritable human sociality and its implication that
culturally expanded associations, from tribal alliances to empires, are
authoritarian by default. The discussion includes comment on our
species' unique culture-making capacity. A chapter is devoted to the
definition of democracy and establishment of a checklist for deciding
at what point a nation can be said to be a free government. Another
chapter expounds the enabling conditions that must be in place for
democracy to be viable. It is followed by a study of the statistical
data on the incidence of democracy in today's world, including
assessment of America's nation building efforts, 1945-2005. The book
concludes with a conspectus on America's internal problems and a plea
for repudiation of the drive to reform the world's evils.
Let us first consider the exposition of human sociability with respect
to dominance competition and the social hierarchy that is an
interactive cause and effect of competition. Their leitmotif is
inclusive fitness. Since members of a reproductive band are kin,
inclusive fitness approximates group selection. This resolves the
problem of the evolutionary sustainability of unequal distribution of
benefits, including reproductive advantage, because down-hierarchy
individuals benefit indirectly from subordination and compliance. The
authors note that sociability patterns vary among social primates, and
vary within particular species in different ecological settings;
nevertheless, linear and coalition hierarchies endure (p. 12).
Competition integrates with cooperation to produce a relatively stable
group dynamics that confers benefits, albeit unequal, on all members.
Given the critical importance that the authors assign to primate
sociability for the justification of their thesis, I found this
discussion a little too brief. There is need for contrasting
descriptions of the social behaviours of various species, for example,
chimpanzees and bonobos, as well as descriptions of how behaviours of a
group may change with circumstances, as Stuart and Jeanne Altmann have
vividly shown of baboons in Kenya. It would also have been helpful to
comment on the ingenuity, including intrigue and faking, that macaques
and other primates use to possess a territory, exploit resources, trick
human hosts, and one-up rivals. Acknowledgement of such labile behavior
is an instructive reminder that some human leadership skills
Evolutionary Psychology - ISSN 1474-7049 - Volume 4. 2006. - 143 -
Evolutionary Constraints on Democratic Nation Building
are significantly overlapped by simians. Finally, the account would be
strengthened by a discussion of the medium of primate sociability:
non-verbal communication. It would be an opportunity to show readers
that primates express some emotions commonly assumed to be peculiar to
ourselves; and that simians and great apes are adept at communicating
subtle mood variations as well as emotional states signalling
significant likely behaviour, such as that associated with threat,
fear, or submission.1
Social hierarchy implies status difference, subordination, conformism,
and obedience. Many evolutionists have commented on these attributes
and the authors assemble a repertoire of apposite quotations. But the
centerpiece of their evidence is Stanley Milgram's obedience
experiments, together with replications and variations on the original
experimental design. In Milgram's now-classic research, experimental
subjects were told that they would participate in a scientific learning
experiment. Their role was to administer an electric shock to another
subject situated in an adjoining room. The shocks were ostensibly
calibrated up to 450 volts. The authority-a psychologist in a white
coat-instructed the subject (who was given the role of 'teacher')
to administer shocks to a 'student' as part of a purported learning
experiment. Subjects could hear and see the student's (in reality, an
actor) vocal reactions to the shock. As the supposed voltage increased
and the student's pained responses grew more intense, subjects
expressed their own pain through sweating, trembling, lip biting, and
protesting the harm. The authority responded with instructions that the
shocks must continue. Most subjects (sixty-five percent) complied even
when they believed that the shocks were 'very strong' and
'intensive'. No subject abandoned the lab in protest and none
reported Dr Strangelove's incitement to aggravated assault to the
police.
Milgram was surprised, and dismayed, by 'the extreme willingness of
adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority'
(p. 19). Subjects abandoned their own principles, and acted contrary to
their feelings, to comply with an authority whose sole mode of
persuasion was the gravely delivered counter-factual command: 'you
have no other choice, you must go on'. Somit and Peterson endorse
Milgram's assessment that the experiments strongly suggest that
obedience is an innate capacity, like language capacity.
Among the extensive commentary on obedience experiments was the 'Ho
Hum' reaction. Yes, the design was brilliant, but the outcome only
repeated what happens in everyday life (including university teaching).
Willingness to submit to instructions and to authority simply express
the hierarchy capability. Even termites do it. This I thought was the
authors' sense, so I was surprised when they purport to discover,
immediately following the obedience discussion, a 'small Darwinian
window for democracy'. The window is our species' unique capacity
for culture, which enables us 'in some instances...[to] triumph, at
least temporarily, over nature'. By the use of discipline,
indoctrination, and other formative practices, we 'often willingly
undertake actions and pursue goals that may be strikingly different
from those to which our evolutionary history has otherwise predisposed
us' (p. 21f). Examples are asceticism, celibacy, and dedicated
altruism inculcated by religions.
Evolutionary Psychology - ISSN 1474-7049 - Volume 4. 2006. - 144 -
Evolutionary Constraints on Democratic Nation Building
Other examples are the dedication and subordination inculcated by
secular ideologies and charismatic leaders. Here is the window for
democracy: we may escape nature-the natural impulse to authoritarian
hierarchy-by effective indoctrination into the principles and
practices of democracy. The authors write: 'propaganda and
indoctrination may account more plausibly for the occasional emergence
of democracy than for the acceptance achieved by authoritarian beliefs
and modes of rule' (p. 22). With this statement the authors march
boldly into paradox. Democratic apologists reject indoctrination as the
antithesis of the self-activating individualism that they take to be
the core belief and the practical engine of democracy. Authoritarian
apologists, by contrast, scorn individualism as the illusionary freedom
of puppets on the strings of capitalist domination, or as bourgeois
decadence, or as narcissistic self-indulgence inflated by fashion. But
if culture is an escape route from nature, why may not the species
tendency to authoritarian hierarchy be overcome by all? Perhaps even
ultra-sociable participatory democracy, or ultra-libertarian
individualism, are possible. A beginning toward an explanation of why
this is unlikely may be found in Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen's IQ
and the Wealth of Nations (2002), which shows the strong correlation
between a nation's average IQ and it's wealth accumulation.
It seems to me that in saluting the power of culture to overcome
nature, and overlooking such studies as The Bell Curve and IQ and the
Wealth of Nations, the authors bow to the great iconic credulity of
modern culture.2 It's the very credulity assumed by the Standard
Social Scientific Model. The model rejects evolutionary and biological
causality because they imply heritable traits, such as sex differences,
that set limits to high aspirations, such as the elimination of
discrimination. However, numerous evolutionary accounts of natural
hierarchy are based on male social dominance and female commitment to
birthing and nurturing. Males compete because competition is
invigorating (fun), because dominance status is glory (what the fun is
about), and because it gives marginally (or as the case may be,
prodigiously) better access to resources, leading ultimately to
enhanced fitness. Since the primary social group is the reproductive
group, each is (by inclusive fitness logic) in competition with other
groups. This is the evolutionary basis for ethnic competition, which
has sometimes been extremely destructive in the past and which
continues today in many varieties, including the radical Islamic
assault on Eurocentric democracy. Islamic radicalism ('terrorism')
is consciously androcentric and hostile to western notions of gender
diversity. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ostentatiously
condemns western liberalism, and only two of some fifty Muslim nations
are democratic.
I put these jarring contrasts on the table because the authors avoid
them, presumably as a concession to political science colleagues. I
doubt that will work. We evolutionists talk as if the SSSM model were a
conceptual error that can be dispelled by evidence. This overlooks the
potent bias driving the model, since it incorporates the enabling
conditions of the democratic impulse that flowered in the French and
American Revolutions. Consider the United States circa 1850. Although
Evolutionary Psychology - ISSN 1474-7049 - Volume 4. 2006. - 145 -
Evolutionary Constraints on Democratic Nation Building
national ideals resonated with liberty and equality for all, the facts
were somewhat different. Millions of blacks were in slavery. The
Amerindians were being driven onto reservations, usually with
considerable loss of life and almost complete loss of quality of life.
The rights of women to vote, to own property, to divorce, and enter
vocations and professions were extremely limited. Asian workers were
tightly controlled and homosexuals stayed in the closet. The voice of
American democracy at that time was almost exclusively male and proud,
so proud that it passionately believed that it was the aspiration of
all the world's people.
And what happened since? The then scarcely audible voices of
abolitionists and feminists have become dominant. The rights of
indigenous peoples are now inviolable-putatively at least-and
gender diversity is fashionable. These and other profound cultural
changes define democratic beliefs today and administer sharp rebukes
('sexism', 'racism', 'homophobia') to any limitation
allegedly based on human nature. And now for the hard question: was
American society of 1850 consistent with an evolutionary explanation?
The answer, let us admit, is Yes. In the 1870s Darwinism became flavor
of the month and the New York Times Darwin obituary (1882) deemed his
survival of the fittest doctrine to be the scientifically revealed
truth about historical social dynamics. Just months after the national
display of reverence for Darwin, Herbert Spencer arrived in the United
States for a tour hosted by leading academics and by his celebrity
admirer, Andrew Carnegie, who preached the free market practice that
made him 'king of steel'. 'While the law of competition may be
sometimes hard for the individual,' he was fond of saying, 'it is
best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in
every department'. This was the worldview that progressives fought
and defeated in the universities and in countless social contests,
thereby entrenching the SSSM model by about 1920. However, the model
was vulnerable to rapid advance of genetics in the 1960s, especially in
its medical and commercial applications. This created a space for the
revival of evolutionary theory, but as the authors and this reviewer
know from experience, it was a precarious perch for those of us in the
social sciences.
Let us look now to the authors' discussion of democracy's enabling
conditions. As I have noted, the 'Darwinian window' of escape from
the default authoritarian position is indoctrination in democratic
beliefs and principles. A key element of the 'civic disposition' is
acceptance of rules for the conduct of life's business and the
rejection of violence and intimidation as instruments for settling
differences (p. 52). These rules differentiate as freedom of speech and
assembly, government assemblies that canvass fact and opinion fairly,
selection of representatives by free elections, a free press, an
independent judiciary, military, and police. Implied by these
conditions are others: the existence of a working government,
broadly-based prosperity, broadly based literacy, and good health.
Since authoritarian governments do not foster the 'civic
disposition', how is the transition made? An authoritarian government
committed to building a democracy is needed. The classic cases are the
transformation of West Germany and Japan into democracies following
World War II. (Another spectacular success, India, whose
Evolutionary Psychology - ISSN 1474-7049 - Volume 4. 2006. - 146 -
Evolutionary Constraints on Democratic Nation Building
transition was fostered by British colonial rule, isn't mentioned).
Latin American governments have, for a century and a half, oscillated
between democracy and military dictatorships rescuing democracy from
collapse.
The main impediments to democracy, the authors say, are religious,
national, ethnic, racial and tribal differences (52f.). They stress
that these differences are often expressed through valorizing group
histories of bloody xenophobic struggles. Thus, the newly independent
India soon lost much of its Muslim population in a war that created
Pakistan (which at that time included Bangladesh). They also stress the
appalling carnage generated by these antagonisms. Mass murder, torture
and torment, humiliation and vilification, property destruction and
genocide are often inflicted to cries of glory, without a tremor of
conscience, despite the media filming the carnage. The authors say only
enough about these disturbing facts to goad readers to awareness of the
demanding pre-requisites of a plausible nation building scenario: we
are not to imagine that our confidence in the all-sided benefits of
democracy will hold sway with peoples whose primary allegiance is to
religious and ethnic loyalties. So be it. But there is an even more
disturbing fact that the authors don't mention. Their proffered
wisdom isn't altogether new. It is understood at senior levels of
government, military, and intelligence establishments. And it has been
known for a long time. Nevertheless, costly nation building
initiatives, such as the liberation of Iraq, continue to be launched.
Why?
Consider U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Governments willing
to ally against Soviet initiatives were supported. For the most part
those allies were authoritarian. Dissent condemned such support as
hostile to aspiring democratic forces. In a few cases, notably South
Africa, dissent eventually translated into policy. In many more cases,
pro-democratic foreign policy undermined autocrats and assisted
revolutions that, in the case of Iran, passed quickly through its
liberal phase into Islamic autocracy. The collapse of the Soviet Union
did not weaken this sentiment. It was expressed in offers to assist
newly liberated East European nations to establish democracies. It was
expressed in U.S. and European Union intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia.
It was expressed in President Clinton's heroic effort to bring Israel
and Palestinians into an enduring peace agreement. This list is long
and affects many aspects of foreign and domestic policy.
The power of the influence is nicely illustrated by recent events in
Australia. In March, the Department of Immigration granted asylum to
forty-three persons from West Papua, Indonesia. Refugee status
recognized that they were subject to persecution. West Papua, which has
long been sought independence from Jakarta, is populated by
Melanesians, as distinguished from the ruling Javanese. The Indonesian
government was so angered by what it interpreted to be implicit
recognition of West Papuan rebel claims that it recalled its
ambassador-a serious injury to diplomatic relations. The startled
Australian government quickly reaffirmed its recognition of Indonesian
sovereignty over West Papua and pleaded that the decision was made on a
non-political, case-by-case basis mandated by Australian immigration
law. The example shows how the complexities of the contemporary world
drew a government
Evolutionary Psychology - ISSN 1474-7049 - Volume 4. 2006. - 147 -
Evolutionary Constraints on Democratic Nation Building
Evolutionary Psychology - ISSN 1474-7049 - Volume 4. 2006. - 148 -
into self-damaging de facto support of a fledgling democratic rebellion
contrary to a major diplomatic policy orientation.
Nor is that the end of it. Human rights supporters in the government
party rallied to the support of West Papuans and condemned Prime
Minister John Howard's compromise on human rights. Ah, the authors
may demur, granting asylum is hardly a nation building exercise. Quite
so, but this forgets that Australian forces subdued violence in the
former Indonesian province of East Timor, which subsequently voted for
and obtained independence. The Indonesian government is determined to
avoid repeating that scenario. Indeed, as I write, Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being feted by Jakarta in a highly publicized
visit featuring cooperation between the two large Muslim countries.
President Ahmadinejad is using his podium to denounce the Iraq war and
to defy U.S. threats against its nuclear facilities.
Recognition of complex commitments pulling Australian and U.S. policy,
willy nilly, toward nation building is not to deny that Iraq-scale
interventions require policy decisions that may be informed by the
authors' evidence and argument. This I warmly endorse and commend. A
valuable sequel to their book would be a study of ethnic conflicts
around the world and their analysis in terms of male dominance
hierarchies, inclusive of charismatic leadership. Who knows, detailed
documentation of our evolutionary inheritance might enlighten some
policy makers after all.
About the author: Hiram Caton, PhD, DLitt, is retired professor of
politics and history at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He
has published extensively on biopolitics and is currently writing a
history of Nineteenth Century evolutionary theory.
Notes
1=2E Of the large literature on primate behavior, readers might consult
Stuart Altmann, Baboon Ecology: African Field Research, University of
Chicago Press, 1970; Bernard Thierry, ed., Macaque Societies: A Model
for the Study of Social Organization, Cambridge University Press, 2004;
and Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, Riverhead Press, 2005.
2=2E This is a large and important subject about which, unfortunately, we
evolutionists are seriously antagonistic. In addition to the titles
mentioned, readers may consider New York Times science writer Nicholas
Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors,
Penguin, 2006, which describes current molecular discoveries about
recent and on-going genetic differentiation of human populations. For a
quick look at current research on the genetic basis of intelligence,
see K. Burdick, et al, Genetic variation in DRNBP1 influences general
cognitive ability, Human Molecular Genetics 2006, Vol 15, No 10,
1563-1568. Of the many critiques of the view that intelligence is
accurately measurable and biologically-based , Steven J. Gould's The
Mismeasure of Man, Norton, 1996, is among the most influential.
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| Re: What RichAsianKid thinks of Human Nature and the Middle East [message #228754 ] |
Mo, 24 Juli 2006 04:51 |
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RichAsianKid wrote:
> ... Muslims to really be "indoctrinated" (see article)
> against their tribal, religious, and collectivist values. And there is
> little those Arabs can be meaningfully taught our (America's)
> messianic conceptions of freedom and democracy. Why? Because it may be
> fighting the nature of the beast - it may be fighting human nature.
Anyone can study and learn
the concepts of freedom and democracy.
However,
practicing freedom and democracy is much more difficult,
even certain people here
in the USA have problems with
practicing concepts of freedom and democracy, e.g.
freedom of expression and democratic concepts like
the right to a hearing and a trial...
It's always tougher
when you have to walk the talk.
The Middle East society has many very smart people.
ISTM the Middle East is not lacking in the IQ department...
> Well, we now know that IQ varies tremendously from nation to nation.
And we also know that educational systems and opportunites vary from
nation to nation as well as region to region within a nation.....
> And differential IQ has a direct bearing on differential worldwide
> educational achievement, as noted in this very latest study.
And the differential educational achievement is more of
a direct bearing on varying nature of educational
systems and opportunities throughout the world.
Life is unfair - so what else is new?
> And it boils down to a simple syllogism really: by implications of
> Jefferson, it is a doomed enterprise to bring meaningful American-style
> democracy and "freedom" to every single last corner of the world.
Jefferson noted that the norms of our American-style
democracy and what we believe to be our "freedom"
changes our society advanced over time. American style
democracy and freedoms is not a static concept
but a dynamic concept - it is a work in progress.
Change is never easy but change comes still.
It's NOT JUST the rules of democracy and freedom
that are dynamic BUT ALSO the rules of the game
and of how the game is play which are changing too!
Being that our (USA) brand of democracy is a dynamic
and fluid concept - it is unfair and technically impossible
to hold any society to follow it faithfully . Rather
- each society should look at other society like ours,
test out any promising idea they think they can use,
and adapt those ideas that work for their social
situations. For it is the society that adapts that
survives. The order of the day is to Trust but Verify
and the test is survival itself.
Democracy by itself is not key to bringing
peace to the Middle East - mutual respect
and a faith in the future is.
> heritable behavior as social primates provides critical evidence
^
bwahahahahaha.
this guy's been watching too many "secret chimps" reruns... :-P
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