Recognising Anti-Social Behaviour

The police are right to stop children picking daffodils, is the title of a Telegraph article which I pretty much agreed with and commented on.

The anti-social behaviour (which is what it is) shown by these parents, who allowed their children to pick whole bunches of flowers in a public park, reminds me of those people who don’t bother to pick up the mess their dogs leave on the pavement for others to tread in.

It also reminds me of bankers bonuses and the kind of grotesquely unfair (and thus also anti-social) income differentials they represent.

“Picking” millions annually from the economy, it seems to me, is no less anti-social than picking daffodils in a public place. It’s just that the former is perfectly legally (because the state “traditionally” favours power and wealth), while the other is not.

I don’t have a problem with income differentials, provided they are fair and proportionate, any more than I have a problem with someone picking a couple of flowers in the park. But when they pick a whole bunch of flowers in the park, or take millions from the economy, that is no longer proportionate or fair and undermines social cohesion and solidarity.

Picking “just a couple” of flowers in the park can be a problem too – if there’s a limited number and a lot of people picking them, which also serves as a good analogy for sustainable/unsustainable human behaviour on our finite, vulnerable and overpopulated planet:

When a few million (even 10s of millions) of people want to drive their own cars and fly off on holiday once or twice a year, it’s not a problem, since quite sustainable. However, when a few billion people want to do the same there is a problem, because unsustainable.

On Celebrity Salaries

In response to an article, “Today presenters to take pay cuts”, in last Saturday's Telegraph:

There’s so much confusion and hypocrisy surrounding this issue – which is hardly surprising, because it goes to the very core of human “prime ape”, i.e. Darwinian, nature, which, having always denied or demonised it, we are compelled to rationalise.

Notwithstanding all the other attractions of as large an income as possible – and all assertions to the contrary -, psychologically and socially it is by far the most important measure of social rank and personal worth. Nothing is more important to a tribal “prime ape” like ourselves than that.

I imagine that most – certainly anyone who has any knowledge of evolutionary anthropology or psychology – will agree with me, nod, maybe smile, but then move on, without really taking it seriously, or appreciating just how important it is: the fact that we, and society at large, are still so completely dominated by emotions and behaviours which evolved long before the advent of civilisation, and are thus inappropriate (ill-adapted to long-term survival) in our present, very different, situation.

We fail to recognise this, because man is not so much a “rational animal”, as a “rationalising animal”, our brain having evolved to “interpret”, maintain or modify reality (its environment) in accordance with preconceived ideas, social norms, as well as narrow and short-sighted self-interests (such as drawing a very large income).

There is hope for us, however, because evolution has indeed produced a rational side to our nature. It’s just far less developed than we think it is. If we were to recognise this (the fact that we currently rationalise more than we recognise reality), our rational nature might slowly get on top of our inclination to rationalise, and thus guide us towards a more rational, just, humane and sustainable future.

A Tough Year for Households

In response to David Cameron’s warning of “tough year” for households:

Thanks for the warning David, but even on just half your PM’s salary (£142,000, and notwithstanding your other sources of income), I can manage very nicely – thank you!

Your warning may be of more relevance to those on just half my income, although that still puts them well above the average, and of more relevance still to those on an average income or less.

It will be most relevant, I image, to someone on the minimum wage, which is less than half the average wage (or 1/12 of your PM’s salary).

Although, I guess that you personally must feel undervalued and underpaid when mingling amongst banker friends, CEOs and others with 10 time or more your salary. You’re to them, what someone on the minimum wage is to you: ein armes Schwein!

But, I’m forgetting that we are a NATION, a Big Society, and all in this TOGETHER . . .

P.S. The reference to my own salary, I regret to say, is just a literary device and wishful thinking.

Income Differentials: A Darwinian Perspective

This was written in response to a recent article about the “relatively” high salaries paid to BBC executives.

The BBC justified the salaries with the standard argument that it has to compete for “talent” with the private sector

Even so, the ca. £140,000 per annum involved seems pretty paltry compared with the millions that some bankers, CEOs, film stars, and others make.

Here a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, view of the situation:

Evolution adapted us (emotionally and behaviourally) to the “natural environment”, as it existed (on the African savannah, or wherever) long before the advent of civilisation, which represents an “artificial environment” where the intra-tribal and extra-tribal environments that once comprised our natural environment are conflated and confounded.

Thus, what we call “society” represents both our TRIBE (which, in the interests of our collective survival, as a tribe, evolution intended us, to put before our individual self-interests) and the extra-tribal environment, which included other – friendly, rival, enemy or simply unknown – tribes, and which evolution did not hard-wire us to put before ourselves, but on the contrary, to put ourselves and our own tribe first.

Economically, our own tribe has been reduced to just ourselves and immediate family, with the rest of “society” serving as an extra-tribal environment, to be exploited to one's own (family's) advantage. Originally, it was just the aristocracy and clergy (as substitute tribes) which cooperated, through the power structures of the state (which they created), in exploiting the rest of society, but over time other self-interest groups (acting as substitute tribes), especially certain professions, managed to secure advantages for themselves and their members (laid down in the legal power structures of state and economy) in exploiting their extra-tribal, i.e. social, environment.

What this view reveals is the perverted Darwinian nature of our situation and civilisation, which represents an evolutionary cul-de-sac. Unless we can find a way out of it, the relentless self-exploitation of both our natural and human environments will inevitably lead to our self-destruction.