Original Sin, by Michiel
Coxie (1499-1592). Did the Christian doctrine of original sin create the guilt
cultures of Northwest Europe? Or did the arrow of causality run the other way? (source: Wikicommons)
By
definition, gene-culture co-evolution is reciprocal. Genes and culture are both
in the driver's seat. This point is crucial because there is a tendency to
overreact to cultural determinism and to forget that culture does matter, even
to the point of influencing the makeup of our gene pool. Through culture,
humans have directed their own evolution.
Take
the ability to digest lactose, commonly called milk sugar. Among early humans,
only babies could digest it because only they made the enzyme that breaks it
down. This enzyme was lost as one grew up, with the result that milk
consumption would cause indigestion, abdominal gas, and diarrhea. This is still
the case in humans from much of Africa and Asia.
Then
some cultures began to domesticate cattle, initially for meat. In times of
famine, they turned to milk, and those who could better tolerate it had better
chances of survival. So there was now natural selection for individuals who
could produce the necessary enzyme not only in childhood but in adulthood as
well.
The
resulting evolutionary change was both genetic and cultural. With more and more
adults being able to digest milk, it became possible to develop various dairy
products, like cheese, and use milk as an ingredient in a wide range of foods.
It also became possible to select for cattle that produce more and better milk
(Beja-Pereira et al., 2003). A new way of life developed and thus brought about even more
selection for this enzyme.
In
sum, a genetic change can open up new paths for culture to follow and thereby
create new paths for genes to follow. But that isn't all. The same situation can develop even when no
genetic change has taken place, at least not initially. We see this, for instance, when a
culture spreads out of one population and into another. The gene-culture interaction
is new even though neither party to the interaction is new.
A fruitful
encounter
One
specific example is the encounter between Christianity and the guilt cultures of
Northwest Europe, which differ from the shame cultures that prevail elsewhere.
The difference is a major one. In a shame culture, your wrongdoings are
punished only when witnessed by someone from your community. In a guilt
culture, they are punished even when there is no witness, other than the one
inside your head.
Guilt
culture is commonly attributed to the Christian doctrine of original sin, and
more specifically to the radicalization of this doctrine under Protestantism
(see Note 1). Yet neither of these presumed causes really lines up with the
presumed effect.
For
one thing, it's doubtful whether this doctrine was even known to early
Christians in the Middle East. True, Paul did write that humans had lost their
immortality because of Adam's sin:
Therefore,
just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and
so death spread to all men, because all sinned. Romans 5.12
This
belief also appears in the Talmud, but it was never understood there as meaning
that people are sinful because they inherit Adam's burden of sin. The Jewish
view, like the later Muslim one, has been that people are sinful because they
are imperfect beings. This was probably also the view of early Christians. Even
today, Eastern Christians reject the doctrine of original sin, preferring the
term "ancestral sin":
In
the Orthodox Christian understanding, they explicitly deny that humanity
inherited guilt from anyone. Rather,
they maintain that we inherit our fallen nature. While humanity does bear the
consequences of the original, or first, sin, humanity does not bear the
personal guilt associated with this sin. (Original sin, 2014)
It
was among Western Christians—Roman Catholics and, later, Protestants—that
original sin developed into a doctrine. We see this in the writings of Irenaeus
(2nd century) and Augustine (354-430), who identified the original sin as
concupiscence, i.e., ardent, sensual longing. Protestantism is then said to
have radicalized this doctrine, as seen in the Augsburg Confession of Lutheranism:
It
is also taught among us that since the fall of Adam all men who are born
according to the course of nature are conceived and born in sin. That is, all
men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers' wombs and are
unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this
inborn sickness and hereditary sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal
wrath of God all those who are not born again through Baptism and the Holy
Spirit.
But
this radicalization was already under way before Protestantism. An English
Catholic, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), was the one who first separated
original sin from concupiscence and defined it as "privation of the
righteousness that every man ought to possess" (Original sin, 2014). Within
Western Christendom, pre-Protestant England was likewise the epicenter of an
intense penitential tradition that dated back at least to Anglo-Saxon times
(Frantzen 1983). This tradition can be summed up as follows: "it is better
to be shamed for one's sins before one man (the confessor) in this life than to
be shamed before God and before all angels and before all men and before all
devils at the Last Judgement" (Godden, 1973). The English abbot Aelfric of
Eynsham (955-1010) described the need to do penance for all shameful acts, even
those that are witnessed solely by spirits of the dead:
He
who cannot because of shame confess his faults to one man, then it must shame
him before the heaven-dwellers and the earth-dwellers and the hell-dwellers,
and the shame for him will be endless. (Bedingfield, 2002, p. 80)
Conclusion
As
evidenced by the doctrine of original sin and the penitential tradition,
Northwest European guilt culture was not a product of Christianity in general
or of Protestantism in particular. It seems to have its origins in pre-existing
tendencies that were absorbed into the new spiritual environment, much like the
Christmas tree and other formerly pagan traditions. It thus grew steadily more
important as the geocenter of Christianity moved steadily west and north.
This
is not to belittle Christianity’s role. The new faith created ideological,
social, and physical structures that were better at enforcing moral norms than
anything beforehand. These norms may have had pagan antecedents, but they were
now being enforced much more thoroughly.
We
see this in the Medieval Synthesis that took hold from the 11th century onward,
when Church and State joined forces to defend the Christian world: externally,
through military campaigns against Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, southern
Italy, and the Middle East; and internally, through vigorous efforts to pacify
social relations, either by increased use of capital punishment or by the Pax Dei—a Church-led movement to limit
the scope of war in feudal society (Peace and Truce of God, 2014). Finally,
guilt culture was strengthened through confession of one's sins, particularly
after this practice became mandatory with the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).
All wrongdoings had to be atoned at least once a year, however private or
personal they might be (Sacrament of Penance, 2014).
Medieval
Christian culture favored the survival and reproduction of people who
previously would not have survived and reproduced. Conversely, by criminalizing
personal violence, particularly in cases where the offender felt no guilt or
remorse, this culture was now eliminating people for behavior that had once
been admired.
It
is often believed that Europe took off from the 15th century onward, when it
expanded into Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Actually, the takeoff began
earlier, particularly during this period when Church and State teamed up to lay
a new basis for social relations. It was this new moral order that enabled
Europe to get ahead (Frost, 2012). As Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote, no
advanced society can develop where men have no "other security than what
their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal."
In
such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is
uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of
the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no
knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no
society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent
death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. [The Leviathan, 13]
Note
Missionaries,
for example, point to the relationship between Christianity and guilt culture:
There
is a lack of a sense of sin in African thinking for many reasons: (1) there is
a belief that God and the ancestors are unconcerned about private and public
morality. People believe more in this life than the next life; (2) there is
more of a shame-culture than a guilt-culture. People are more afraid of public
opinion than of God; and (3) there is a focus on communal living where people
look at who caused a problem. (Tittley, 2001)
See
also Lebra (1971) and Carroll (1981).
References
Bedingfield,
M.D. (2002). The Dramatic Liturgy of
Anglo-Saxon England, The Boydell Press.
Beja-Pereira A., G. Luikart,
P.R. England, et al. (2003).
Gene-culture coevolution between cattle milk protein genes and human lactase
genes, Nature Genetics, 35, 311-313.
http://www.bioquest.org/summer2007/sessionA/ng1263.pdf
Carroll,
J. (1981). The role of guilt in the formation of modern society: England
1350-1800, The British Journal of
Sociology, 32, 459-503.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/590129?uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21104745207513
Frost,
P. (2012). On global inequality, Evo and
Proud, August 25
http://evoandproud.blogspot.ca/2012/08/on-global-inequality.html
Frantzen,
A.J. (1983). The literature of penance in
Anglo-Saxon England, New Brunswick (N.J.): Rutgers University Press.
Godden,
M.R. (1973). An Old English penitential motif, Anglo-Saxon England, 2,
221-239.
Hobbes,
T. (2010). The Leviathan.
Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Lebra,
T.S. (1971). The social mechanism of guilt and shame: the Japanese case, Anthropological Quarterly, 44, 241-255.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3316971?uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21104745207513
Original Sin. (2014).
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
Peace and Truce
of God.
(2014). Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_Truce_of_God
Sacrament of
Penance.
(2014). Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Penance_(Catholic_Church)
Tittley,
M. (2001). Book summary of The Primal
Vision: Christian Presence amid African Religion, by John V. Taylor, SCM
Press, 1963.
http://www.ymresourcer.com/Summaries.php
I don't want to come off confrontational but I've been meaning to say this. You have a clearly biased agenda. You're obsessed with the idea that everything "north European-like", western-like, Christian-like etc. is young, weak, created by an establishment who only wanted selfish gains but is treated as moral and Godly by their "dominions", etc.
ReplyDeleteYou're well known for your theories about the origins of specifically north-European pigmentation. That fact alone is evidence you have some special interest in learning the origins(whatever type of origin) of westernism.
Your posts in the last year about the ancient DNA finds about the pigmentation of European's stone age and bronze age ancestors reveals your agenda.
"Did Europeans become white in historical times."
http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2014/03/did-europeans-become-white-in-historic.html
That title alone is border line raciest. Your first sentence in that article clearly shows your agenda and interests.
"A new study shows that Europeans underwent strong selection for white skin, non-brown eyes, and non-black hair … during historic times!"
Your explanation mark shows that you expect people to be like "Ah ah, no way!" as if your proving Europeanism is young, etc. and people should be excited about that. You're about agenda and emotion not logic.
BTW, most of Europe entered pure historic times in the middle ages, the copper-bronze age is thousands of years deep in prehistory especially for eastern Europe.
You keep pushing your ideas of "white woman and dark man" and everything unique about Europeans physically is female and or from female-selection. That's extremely offensive, and not purely logical. After the find that Mesolithic Europeans were mainly light eyed you still insisted their light eyes could have come from early farmers in south-east Europe, despite the fact they showed no signs of farmer admixture. That shows your assumption that everything European-like has to come from people who were non-native, advanced but weak, and or effeminate.
I've noticed most of your posts are about philosophy and or western social issues. In everyone of your posts you show the same agenda as with posts about ancient history.
You constantly try to find a way to contradict western moral norms and expect people to be amazed and enlightened while reading your writings. You're interiged by the idea that logic is cruel and heartless, that sympathy and morals were invented by some evil man with a big beard thousands of years ago(or maybe that's to old) to control people or have some other unjustifiable origin completely completely contrary to common believe.
You're not totally unique in the way you think. You obviously learned many of these ideas from others. Just saying.
Reality usually doesn't go by the rules of our agendas.
I find this a very interesting idea.
ReplyDeleteI have been recently musing that certain parties are manipulating this guilt trait among Northern European derived people to push things like Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Peter,
ReplyDeletewe can expect that the actual cultural paraphernalia that take hold in any human gene pool to be dependent on their mental landscape and the subsequent gene-culture coeval path taken.
This then suggests that there were/are genetically mediated mental traits governing social outlooks and modes of behavior between these gene pools and that there were differences in these gene pools at the boundaries of many religions. Of course, they have probably been obscured now because of, say, the conquest of much of Arab Christian lands.
I also suspect that the mental makeup of Arab Christians is closer to that of Northern Europeans than, say, that of the Persians/Iranians who seem to have birthed several very different religions, including Islam if Emmet Scott is correct.
Phantom Time Hypothesis is a provoking idea but it really can't be true because of the astronomical events that are known to have happened in history. Halley's comet etc.
ReplyDeleteBesides there are too many documents at least in Europe for those centuries that "didn't exist."
As evidenced by the doctrine of original sin and the penitential tradition, Northwest European guilt culture was not a product of Christianity in general or of Protestantism in particular.
ReplyDeleteThe doctrine of original sin didn't originate from Northwest Europeans as you yourself point out by citing Irenaeus and Augustine, who were both Mediterraneans, Greek and North African, respectively.
Perhaps you might want to look into pre-Christian, Northern European paganism since that isn't going to be tainted by Mediterranean influences.
It's a moot point because any feelings of guilt appear able to be overridden by powerful memes. The Rotherham rapes are an example.
ReplyDelete"Those running the apparatus of the state think they are our masters, not our servants. Too often they attack the very people they are paid to protect. We’re in the sorry state where we cannot rely on them, or indeed trust them half the time.
People can see the instigators of the political correctness that has cost, and is costing, misery to thousands of people – in the case of those girls rape, abuse, pregnancies, abortions, suicides and attempted suicides – have expressed no remorse and no intention to take responsibility."
There is no guilt, no shame, no conscience. If guilt is an evolved trait, why is it not apparent?
Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (1839), Chapter II
"I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike him; for instantly, with a frightened look and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a great powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow, directed, as he thought, at his face. This man had been trained to a degradation lower than the slavery of the most helpless animal."
Phantom Time Hypothesis is a provoking idea but it really can't be true because of the astronomical events that are known to have happened in history. Halley's comet etc.
ReplyDeleteHah. Given its period Halley's Comet is not the best phenomenon to rule out 297-300 years inserted.
There are interesting problems, however, with Lunar eclipses. See, for example: PHANTOM TIMES? IS THE LOWERMOST CRONOLOGY OF BABYLON MORE PROBABLE THAN THE EXCISION OF CHARLEMAGNE?
St. Anselm was not English. He was of Lombard stock. The Lombards were a Germanic tribe that had settled in Italy. By Anselm's time, the Lombards had been in Italy for 500 years and thus had been exposed to Mediterranean influences for a long time.
ReplyDeleteSt. Patrick as well wasn't native Irish but was of a Romanized-Briton background.
"It's a moot point because any feelings of guilt appear able to be overridden by powerful memes. The Rotherham rapes are an example.
ReplyDelete...
There is no guilt, no shame, no conscience. If guilt is an evolved trait, why is it not apparent?"
The guilt wasn't over-ridden. Racism was turned into the ultimate sin and so the guilt trait followed.
The guilt wasn't over-ridden. Racism was turned into the ultimate sin and so the guilt trait followed.
ReplyDeleteSo is the "guilt trait" just a content-less mechanism? Like a computer chip brain implant that makes the person with the implant reflexively follow the moral programming of the wider society or authority figures?
Heidegger rejected not only the alleged independence of principles or duties, but the very nature of such principles themselves. Existential anxiety for Heidegger is not feeling guilty for failing to do one's duty and adhere to "independent" "principles". It's the exact opposite. It comes from the fact according to the Heidegger that we are simply Dasein or being-in-the-world, not subjects with consciousness that relate to an independent external world of objects and independent principles.
ReplyDeleteYou can't really just casually shoehorn him in. He's not really compatible with traditional philosophical and ethical thinking or with more deterministic, evolutionary, scientific thinking.
Heidegger was also raised in a conservative Catholic environment and even entered a Catholic seminary. He carefully studied and was well acquianted with Catholic philosophy. Afterwards he explicitly broke from the Catholic faith and religion in general.
ReplyDeleteHeidegger is not an ethical thinker and existentialist guilt and conscience don't consist of feeling bad for failing to do one's duty or for failing to adhere to "independent principles" or for breaking rules or something. They consist of the awareness of the finite nature of Dasein and the anticipation of death.
I don't really see how car manufacturing fits into this. Japan builds good cars as well despite having the opposite culture.
ReplyDeleteAlso German cars have a reputation for unreliability. They're less reliable than Japanese and even American cars, and America hasn't even cared about making cars for almost 4 decades.
Also German cars have a reputation for unreliability.
ReplyDeleteIn what reality???
"Made in Germany" in a car is synonymous to extreme reliability.
And I'm not German just a truth-lover.
Yes, German cars have a reputation for unreliability in the US. They have to be taken to the mechanic a lot and they're expensive to maintain. But people in the US don't buy German cars for reliability. They buy them for luxury and prestige.
ReplyDeleteDarwin, Descent of Man page 113,114
ReplyDeleteThe above case of the swallow affords an illustration, though of a reversed nature, of a temporary though for the time strongly persistent instinct conquering another instinct, which is usually dominant over all others. At the proper season these birds seem all day long to be impressed with the desire to migrate; their habits change; they become restless, are noisy, and congregate in flocks. Whilst the mother-bird is feeding, or brooding over her nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the migratory; but the instinct which is the more persistent gains the victory, and at last, at a moment when her young ones are not in sight, she takes flight and deserts them. When arrived at the end of her long journey, and the migratory instinct has ceased to act, what an agony of remorse the bird would feel, if, from being endowed with great mental activity, she could not prevent the image constantly passing through her mind, of her young ones perishing in the bleak north from cold and hunger.
At the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and though this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men. But after their gratification, when past and weaker impressions are judged by the ever-enduring social instinct, and by his deep regard for the good opinion of his fellows, retribution will surely come. He will then feel remorse, repentance, regret, or shame; this latter feeling, however, relates almost exclusively to the judgment of others.
So that the sparrow the instincts in man will compete for dominance with remorse/guilt only becoming prevalent if he is judged to be morally debased.
Guilt is felt at not subjecting our actions to an independent principle and doing one's duty; what Europeans have felt guilty about depends on how the principles applied in the the era they lived in.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the content is historically and socially contingent.
So is guilt just a content-less mechanism? Would it be analogous to a computer chip brain implant that makes a person follow social rules by making him feel discomfort for not adhering to the rules?
"So is the "guilt trait" just a content-less mechanism? Like a computer chip brain implant that makes the person with the implant reflexively follow the moral programming of the wider society or authority figures?"
ReplyDeleteI think it operates like a kind of computer program which reacts to the data it's fed.
For example if the media is always full of tales of white racism while completely censoring news of non-white racism then that will distort the behavior of people who are like this.
#
I also wonder if widening the circles of sympathy may also make the level of sympathy shallower so you go from a population that cares a great deal about their close kin and not at all about outsiders (if not actively hostile) to a population that is mildly concerned about everyone but not strongly concerned about anyone.
This may make them more malleable.
Personally I think there's likely to be an optimal point and NW Euros may have reached that point in the past but gone past it since.
"Would it be analogous to a computer chip brain implant that makes a person follow social rules by making him feel discomfort for not adhering to the rules?"
ReplyDeleteI think it's similar but not exactly like that because they are *self* judging. The discomfort can't be an external pressure. Manipulating them requires distorting the data they are using to judge but after that then yes the programming follows automatically based on the data.
(imo)
I think it's similar but not exactly like that because they are *self* judging. The discomfort can't be an external pressure. Manipulating them requires distorting the data they are using to judge but after that then yes the programming follows automatically based on the data.
ReplyDeleteRight, but remember that we are thinking in terms of reductionist, materialist, evolutionary philosophy and biology here. So "self" in this context is simply the physical material encased in the skull. Whether the physical material is organic, inorganic, or some combination thereof wouldn't be relevant in terms of the functional and mechanical essence of the trait, and in terms of materialist, orthodox philosophy of science, that's the only kind of essence there is.
I bring up this analogy not because I necessarily think it's accurate, in fact I'm a bit skeptical. I bring it up because it seems to be the kind of mechanism being asserted here.
In pagan Germany, and to some extent in Anglo Saxon England, killing a man was only considered murder if it was the secret killing of an unknown person. Guilt was supposed to do the heavy lifting.
ReplyDeleteAfter medieval Christianity came a number of philosophers to whom guilt was was still central. Kierkegaard was Christian. Subsequent non Christian philosophers like Heidegger were still talking about guilt, as was Sartre with his" bad faith". Levinas with the individual "summoned" by an ethical duty to "the Other," is another one. Why do these ideas strike a chord with Europeans ?
Nietzsche: "God is dead, that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable". Our moral notions are not based on anything, they are like the taboos of Polynesia which King Kamehameha II simply abolished.
As Alasdair MacIntyre asked: "Why should we think of our modern uses of good, right and obligatory in any different way from that from that in which we think about late eighteenth century uses of taboo . And why should we not think of Nietzsche as the Kamehameha II of the European tradition."
The European feeling of guilt has a genetic basis, that is why the European moral order is not vulnerable to disappearance of it's Christian cultural underpinning.
Heidegger didn't talk about guilt as you understand it.
ReplyDeleteLevinas was Jewish
I think most would agree that the European moral order did change in the 20th century with the decline of Christianity.
Anonymous, you are Kevin
ReplyDelete"Right, but remember that we are thinking in terms of reductionist, materialist, evolutionary philosophy and biology here. So "self" in this context is simply the physical material encased in the skull."
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm quibbling over how I think this reductionist biological mechanism works (as I know a lot of people like this).
Nietzsche: "God is dead, that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable". Our moral notions are not based on anything, they are like the taboos of Polynesia which King Kamehameha II simply abolished.
ReplyDeleteSo is the computer chip brain implant analogy applicable?
"So is the computer chip brain implant analogy applicable?"
ReplyDeleteI think so personally - a moral computer program that reacts according to a fixed set of rules and the *data* it receives.
"The European feeling of guilt has a genetic basis, that is why the European moral order is not vulnerable to disappearance of it's Christian cultural underpinning." (Sean)
ReplyDeleteBoth evidences (genetics basis) and the conclusion (not vulnerable) are troublesome.
More importantly, it contradicts to gene-culture co-evolution theory. If culture is somehow forcefully removed, the genetics will be forcefully affected; and vice versus, if the genes are there, the culture can not be easily removed even with force, but kept on a long leash. In light of this, if one doesn't feel vulnarable even though the culture is certifiablely removed (not due to a sizable natural disaster), the another more likely possibility is also present that there is no such underpinning genes in the very first place.
Make this space:
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day, it will be Protestant strict guilt-based doctrine (not neccesarily interiorly enforced) VS. Confucius strict shame-based ideal (not neccesarily exteriorly enforced) allover again.
Both are the moral compass in its own circle. Both are enforced by a combination of interior and exterior factors.
Well, they run computer simulations in which various strategies compete. The implacably mean strategy (always defect) will get off to a flying start and quickly dominate, but a population of always defect 'players' will take each other out, and a surviving 'tit for tat' dominates. But the problem with a population all using tit for tat is that, when done with micro chip accuracy, it does not allow for mistakes or what is called 'noise'; and in the real world there are mistakes. So (in the real world) you identify someone as having done something to offend you, and you tit for tat retaliate, but so will he. So you can end up taking each other out. Yet what gets it started might be a mistake, he may have done it by accident or you may have got it wrong. This is the problem with acting a certain way in every case like a microprocessor-like. When they factor the aforementioned random errors into simulations, a forgiving version of tit for a few tats will win. And at that point the population starts edging toward being nicer and nicer. 'There is always an incentive to forgive quicker and quicker'. At this point any always defect holdout or newcomer can go through the nicey-nicey population like a blowtorch through butter. One could speculate that guilt is an adaptation to ensure a generous strategy and it has turned Western society uniformly nicey-nicey
ReplyDeleteIn 1970 Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said " Western society is approaching that point beyond which the system becomes metastable and must fall."
@Sean
ReplyDelete"Well, they run computer simulations in which various strategies compete..."
Yes interesting stuff. I wonder how those simulations would go if they included the baility of nicey people to advertise they were prepared to play by a set of nicey rules to others who were prepared to reciprocate.
I think this is another key element in the relevance of religion in all this - not so much religion itself but the formation of congregations with a set of behavior rules in exchange for cooperation - effectively a congregation as an artificial clan.
Sean,
ReplyDeleteThose simulations are interesting, but they don't address the internal mechanism of the guilt function being discussed here.
"The study seemed to confirm the stereotypes that the British have a sense of fair play, while the Greeks thirst for revenge. Players in Athens and Muscat had the highest level of revenge punishments, retaliating against the enforcers..."
ReplyDelete"A version of the ultimatum game is called the dictator game, in which the Proposer simply dictates whether or not to give money and how much. ... German children's most frequent offer was an equal split".
"Experiments conducted in villages in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (American Economic Review, vol 98, p 494). In these tests, two players started out with 50 rupees each. The first could choose to give his to the second, in which case the experimenters added a further 100 rupees, giving the second player 200 rupees in total. The second player could decide to keep the money for himself, or share it equally with the first player. A third player then entered the game, who could punish the second player – for each 2 rupees he was willing to spend, the second player was docked 10 rupees.
ReplyDeleteThe results were startling. Even when the second player shared the money fairly, two-thirds of the time the newcomer decided to punish him anyway – a spiteful act with seemingly no altruistic payoff. “We asked one guy why, he said he thought it was fun.”"
Sean,
ReplyDeleteLike the simulations, those studies would model the external effects and interactions of certain behavioral patterns, rather than the internal mechanism of the behavioral pattern.
Do you suppose the computer chip brain implant analogy effectively models the internal mechanism of the guilt trait?
“We asked one guy why, he said he thought it was fun.”"
ReplyDeleteYes, i think one aspect of this is a spectrum where at one end people feel bad for doing something mean and at the other end they feel good about it like there are two separate chemicals that get pumped out but different people get them in different proportions.
Like a demon gene and an angel gene.
(Gangsta types are often high as a kite after stabbing someone while "normal" (?) people are the opposite.)
(The first kind should be needled into boasting about doing it the second kind guilt-tripped.)
~
"Do you suppose the computer chip brain implant analogy effectively models the internal mechanism of the guilt trait?"
It would be interesting to see what would model it.
My guess is it's related to a kind of calculus of least harm i.e. each action is weighed against the total harm with the aim of minimizing harm.
(As opposed to a utilitarian model.)
I think this is because minimum harm leads to minimum injections of the feel bad chemical from the angel gene.