Viking Bankers

Like the Vikings, Bankers see themselves as noble warriors, providing for their OWN (families) – and without shedding a drop of blood . . .

Excuse me picking on bankers again. It is because they are currently the most visible example of those, not just serving, but also excessively exploiting society as an ENVIRONMENT.

I call them Vikings, because it is the same (subconscious, Darwinian) motivation for the survival, advantage and “success” of their own families, that is driving them – and everyone else, of course.

Human nature is a product of Darwinian evolution (what else?), which drives us to exploit our environment, and now includes human society itself.

The basic unit of human survival and reproductive success, until the advent of civilisation, was the TRIBE, which sometimes organised themselves into a NATION, to facilitate their protection against, or exploitation of, other tribes and nations.

The Vikings were a NATION, which, instead of fighting amongst themselves (although I’m sure they did that as well), went out and exploited the resources they found on foreign shores. Those they plundered (Anglo-Saxons, for example) saw them a evil pirates, but from a wholly subjective perspective. A few generations before, Angles and Saxons themselves had been the pirates, taking land and booty from the Celts.

The primary purpose of civilisation is to regulate human self-exploitation, which those in power, of course, did (and continue to do) to their own advantage. Only, you need more than a strong arm to impose order on a population (of exploitable human resources); you need brains as well, which resulted in nobles and clergy cooperating in the creation of the STATE.

Within the state, individuals in a position to do so, spontaneously organised themselves into quasi-tribes, i.e. classes, professions and other shared interest groups, in order to secure the best possible advantage for themselves in the social environment, which, of course, also had to be maintained: like a shepherd looking after his flock, which he tells them is for their own good, so that they behave and do as they are told (this is where religion comes into its own; and being dumb sheep, they believe and obey him). But, of course, the shepherd’s real interests are his own (and/or those of his employer), which is the meat and wool the flock provides and can be exchanged at market for money.

Social scientists should be telling you all this, rather than me, but being themselves an interest group, wholly dependent on the state and status quo, they are blinded to the Darwinian reality of our situation. So I keep going on about it, in the hope that some of them will eventually take notice.

Darwinian Ethics

It is contrary to everything we have learned is good and true (just as Copernican cosmology once was), but Darwinian ethics is what we need to save our civilisation, which produced Darwin and his theory of human origins, from extinction.

Applied to our understanding of life on Earth, Darwin’s theory of evolution is considered fundamental, which, of course, it is; but as soon as anyone attempts applying it to human society, which is surely as much a product of human nature, as human nature is a product of Darwinian evolution, they are confronted with a high, barbed-wired topped wall, which a strip mine-field prevents them from even approaching.

The reason given for the wall, the barbed-wire and the mine field is that beyond it lies the horrific world of social Darwinism and Nazism.

Don’t ask me how I managed it, but I’ve peaked over the wall, and although its true that beyond it there are paths leading to the aforementioned horrors, there are other paths too, leading away from them and, most interestingly, also leading away from the perverted Darwinian situation we are actually in at the moment, but don’t recognise, because of its familiarity and our rationalisations, on this side of the wall.

Recognising the perverted Darwinian nature of the existing socio-economic order would necessitate questioning its very foundations. This is what we – especially our powerful, wealthy and privileged (including academic) elites – are really scared of.

We cannot escape the fact that human nature is a product of Darwinian evolution, or that this in turn has shaped the power structures (social, religious, political and economic) of our civilisation. So what we do, is ignore, rationalise and deny it.

Interestingly, even evolutionary anthropologists and biologists, like Richard Dawkins, don’t seem to recognise what’s really going on, blinded, at a subconscious level, I can only assume, by their own apparent self-interests in preserving the status quo.

However, we urgently need to recognise and develop an understanding of the perverted Darwinian nature of our civilisation, because otherwise there is no way that we can possibly find solutions to the problems (social, political, economic and environmental) now threatening to put an end to it.

Central to these solutions will be a Darwinian ethics, i.e. ethics based on a rational and humane understanding of our own Darwinian nature, rather than – as currently – on demonisation or denial of it.

It is not for me, or anyone else, to lay down what these ethics should be, but for us collectively and grass-roots-democratically to work out. It’s going to take a while, because at the moment, very few people even recognise, let alone understand, the perverted Darwinian nature of our civilisation.

I’ll come back, either here or in another post, with some of my own ideas on the form a Darwinian ethics might take.