The Rise of the Mutant Ego

By John Faupel

We still seem to believe in the ‘the ascent of man’ and that we are superior to all other species, so surely we must be in charge of our destinies. But is it any more valid, believing a man is superior to a butterfly because he is cleverer, than believing a butterfly is superior to a man because it is more beautiful? It has been suggested that our unashamed vanity has been dealt three serious blows. The first was cosmological, dealt by Copernicus in 1543, who showed that we were not at the center of the universe; the second was biological, dealt by Darwin in 1859, who showed that we were just one small branch of the evolutionary tree of life; and the third was psychological, dealt by Freud in 1900, who showed that the unconscious mind had a far greater influence on us than we had ever thought possible. To these might be added yet a fourth blow to our vanity. It is a blow that is gradually being exposed by the inquiry into what makes us feel and think and act the way we do and how much our heredity and environmental experiences influence our behavior. Perhaps we’re not quite as in charge of our destinies as we thought we were. Most of us think we learn from our experiences but perhaps we can do so only retrospectively and that this process is less about learning than conditioning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Books
• Release date: Apr 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370881444

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THE RISE OF THE MUTANT EGO

John Faupel

Open Books

Published by Open Books

Copyright © 2017 by John Faupel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside me remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sand stretches far away."

'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Although these essays are the culmination of a long and solitary search, they began in 2000, when Robert Kane, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, very kindly promoted my enquiries concerning the subject of 'free will', so I would first like to express my appreciation to him. I would also like to show my gratitude to the parapsychologist, Susan Blackmore, whose encouragement concerning that same subject and its relation to 'consciousness' was of great help. My writing these essays however, began in 2007, when I set up a philosophy group at our local U3A organisation. About 12 of us met at regular fortnightly intervals, and from these meetings many enjoyable and stimulating discussions followed for the next seven years. I am therefore deeply indebted to each and every one of those members for all the ideas, suggestions and critical appraisals they offered and which have, no doubt contributed to my writing of this book. I am also indebted to the authors of the numerous publications referred to in my text, but especially to Leonard Katz, who edited the Evolutionary Origins of Morality, to V.S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-tale Brain, to Steve Taylor, who wrote: The Fall, The Insanity of the Ego in Human History, and to Ian McGilchrist, for his The Master and his Emissary. I should especially also like to thank my faithful friend, Mark Thackeray, for his continued help and encouragement in the editing of these essays, for Brian Barban for his IT advice and unfailing support over many years. My profoundest thanks however must surely go to my long-suffering wife, for her non-judgmental counseling and guidance, and with whom I persistently tested out many of these ideas, surely to the limits of her patience, kindness and understanding.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. WHO'S IN CHARGE?

2. CAN PEOPLE LIVE PEACEFULLY TOGETHER?

3. WHAT IS THE GOOD LIFE?

4. IS THERE A GOLDEN RULE FOR HOW TO LIVE?

5. HOW DO WE PROCESS DATA?

6. DOES CAUSE EQUAL EFFECT?

7. HOW CAN MATTER BECOME MIND?

8. COOPERATION OR COMPETITION?

9. WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN?

10. CAN WE KNOW BUT NOT EXPERIENCE?

11. DO WE LEARN OR ARE WE CONDITIONED?

12. ALL THE WORLD A STAGE

FOOTNOTES

REFERENCE INDEX

SUBJECT INDEX

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INTRODUCTION

Each of these essays can be read autonomously but there is a common theme running through them.  They are all premised on the belief that we are evolving neurologically in much the same way as we are physiologically, and that the whole course of human history has been an indeterminate process of trial and error.

Many believe they are in charge of their destinies but perhaps that's only because they have been conditioned to think they are.  In other words, it is our thoughts that determine our beliefs, but maybe it's our feelings determine our thoughts. We may think we're free but we're not free to think we are. We seem to believe in the 'the ascent of man' and that we're superior to other species because we have the ability to think, but is it any more valid claiming we're superior to, say, a butterfly because it can't think, than it is claiming a butterfly is superior to us because we can't fly?  Since comparisons are often chosen to validate our beliefs they can be misleading.

It has been suggested our unashamed vanity has been dealt three serious blows.  The first was cosmological, dealt by Copernicus in 1543, who showed that we were not at the center of the Universe; the second was biological, dealt by Darwin in 1859, who showed that we were just one small branch of the evolutionary tree of life, and the third was psychological, dealt by Freud in 1900, who showed that the unconscious mind had a far greater influence on us than we had ever believed possible. To these might be added yet a fourth blow to our vanity.  It is a blow that is gradually being exposed by our continued enquiry into what makes us feel and think and act the way we do and how much our heredity and environmental experiences have shape our behavior.

So, perhaps we're not quite so much in charge of our destinies as we thought we were. Most of us think we learn from our experiences but this process is usually retrospective, and less about learning than conditioning.  This would undermine the very foundations upon which civilized society has been built, namely that we are responsible for our behavior and should be held accountable for it.  So it's assumed those that conform to the standards that society approves of should be rewarded and those that don't should be punished.

If, however, it could be shown that this ten-thousand-year old experiment in social conditioning is based upon one of the most wide-spread and long-lasting delusions in the history of civilization, we might eventually begin to come to terms with the fact that we're evolving by chance alone and without any overall direction or purpose. The realization of this would cast a very different light upon, not only our understanding of consciousness but upon how we relate to one another and the nature of ourselves within in the World. If any prescription for corrective action were possible, it would be a consequence of your appreciating the exploration of these problems in the following essays.

1. WHO'S IN CHARGE?

On May 1st 2011, Osama Bin Laden, 'the glowering mastermind' behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, was hunted down and killed.  When the news broke, a jubilant crowd gathered outside the White House and the U.S. President announced: 'justice has been done'.  This type of reaction is not unusual.  Societies everywhere believe that those who have committed anti-social acts need to be punished; yet don't seem to think it necessary to delve too deeply into the reasons why such acts have been committed. In courts of law, case histories and mitigating circumstances are sometimes taken into account, even questions of insanity are occasionally raised, but retributive justice is premised upon the belief that adults are free to choose whether they are going to act in a socially acceptable way or not and should be held accountable for their actions.  As it is assumed we are all free agents, we ought to behave responsibly and if we don't we must be prepared to accept the consequences.  Law and order can only be maintained through fear of punishment.

In fact, ever since spiritual and secular codes of conduct were first laid down in writing thousands of years ago, no other method of social control has ever been seriously tried and tested.  Everyone believes they are free to choose between what society believes is 'good' and should be commended, or what society believes is 'bad' and should be condemned.  Consequently, in an attempt to establish conformity and order, authority-figures everywhere, and at all levels within societies have been applying this method of social control for the last ten thousand years or so.  Reward for 'good' behaviour usually results in credit, praise, even adulation, along with all sorts of rewards, prizes, honours and promotions, whereas punishment for 'bad' behaviour usually involves various forms of retribution, ranging from fines, imprisonment, to unbearable torture and death; even of mass slaughter and the extermination of whole towns, cities and nation states. Although such attempts to control the way people think and act, both within, and between societies and countries, may sometimes help to create order and conformity, it is questionable as to whether they actually make people any more responsible for their actions.  Indeed, such rewards might only encourage pride, arrogance and hypocrisy, whereas punishment may only create low self-esteem, resentment and revenge.  It's possible punishment might inhibit vice but it certainly won't promote virtue.

Nevertheless, we still feel sure we have the freedom to choose how we behave, even though we never seem quite so sure what made us choose.  Why some people do bad things while others radiate goodness, is far from obvious.  From time to time, we've all said or done hurtful things to one another, then afterwards felt regret and wondered why we ever said or did them in the first place.  We often don't know why we're bad tempered at certain times and companionable at others.  In fact, we don't seem to have much control over our mood swings at all, even when they seriously affect our behaviour.  Most of our work and pleasure pursuits, along with our preferences for food, fashion and entertainment are often hard to explain; their origins might go back a long way, even to infancy or earlier.  And why some people just go with the flow, or turn out to be loyal patriots, while others become committed terrorists or freedom fighters or just social misfits, is far from obvious. 

Although we like to think we are rational human beings who exercise common sense in our decision-making, all sorts of unidentifiable feelings, superstitions and prejudices shape and influence the way we live our lives.  We automatically perform many mannerisms, gestures and rituals, while being quite unaware that we are doing so, and many of the things we believe in that affect the way we feel and think, and subsequently act upon, turn out to be quite misguided or fundamentally erroneous.  

Without realising it, much of our behaviour is culturally conditioned, while the origins of many of our social practices have been traced back even further.[1]   The reason why we eat together around dinner tables, for example, may be because our distant ancestors ate communally together around fires thousands of years ago.  Many of the things we do instinctively, nudge us one way or another through life and can mould whole patterns of social behaviour and change the values, practices and beliefs of communities, societies, cultures and even nation states.

Various experiments[2] have shown how group conformity can convince people that their own sound judgements are misguided if they realise they differ from those of other group members and sometimes people can even be persuaded to inflict pain on others, simply because they have been told to do so by authority figures,[3 ]and, of course, the hidden powers of persuasion are demonstrated by advertising, upon which corporations spend vast amounts of money in order that they might be profitably reimbursed from increased sales revenue.  The average American is exposed to over thirty thousand adverts on TV every year, each of which has to be paid for by the consumer, so it's evidently an effective method of mind-bending. 

Curiously enough, we don't seem to mind being told what to buy and are even prepared to pay to be told, because the cost of marketing is included in the purchase price.  In one extreme case, a seventeen-year-old, who had shot dead another youth, admitted he had done so out of jealousy, simply because he had seen the fashionable shoes his victim was wearing advertised on TV. Our heads are full of all sorts of mythological beliefs that can unwittingly affect our actions and how we interpret them.  Things like dowsing, telepathy, astrology or Ouija Boards that many people believe in but can't explain, might turn out to be far less mysterious than they thought.[4]   Even our love of mystery and the paranormal might reveal a deep-seated bias against rational explanation.   

Propaganda, based on the flimsiest of evidence and often of a more emotional than rational kind, can influence whomsoever we vote for, the spiritual and secular leaders we follow, or the celebrities we most admire and try to emulate.  History is plagued with political and religious despots whose ideologies have indoctrinated the minds of populations of people throughout whole nations and empires, who might otherwise have lived more peaceful and happier lives. 

In times of threat from invasion, when self-aggrandisement and posturing are believed to enhance the chance of winning, 'the first casualty of war is truth'.  In fact, entire populations can be persuaded to kill or be killed by people of other nations or ethnic groups, about whom they have no personal knowledge, simply because they have been told to do so by charismatic leaders, or from loyalty to ideological beliefs they might have only arbitrarily acquired because of their location at birth.  Although we might be inclined to think 'murderers should be punished' rather than helped, it has been found that some have inherited a 'warrior gene' which, when evoked, can make them uncontrollably violent,[5] while others who 'kill in large numbers to the sound of trumpets and flag-waving, are usually honoured, rather than punished.' [Voltaire]    

It is perhaps easy to accept how these things affect other people but are we so very different?  Let's start at the beginning.  Because we don't choose our parents, we have no say in the genes we inherit from them.  All our pre- and post-natal experiences are beyond our control too, even though there is increasing evidence that they can play a significant part in shaping the rest of our lives.[6]   There is, for example, a risk of mental illness in later life when children experience serious adversities such as bullying or other forms of abuse.[7] Decades of research has given us robust evidence that the risk of developing schizophrenia goes up with experience of childhood adversity. [8]

Many sexually deviant crimes are committed by adults who themselves have suffered sexual abuse in childhood, and crimes of violence are often committed by those who have been exposed to violence or bullying during their early upbringing.  Even acquisitiveness or vanity in later life may have their genesis in basic feelings of insecurity or low self-esteem because of a poor or emotionally deprived childhood.  As that great observer of human nature, Henrik Ibsen said: 'What we inherit from our mothers and fathers haunts us with all kinds of defunct theories and beliefs... it's not that they actually live on in us; they are simply lodged there and we cannot get rid of them'.

Then, as we grow up and mature, all those friends, colleagues and acquaintances that influenced us, for better or for worse over the years, were probably the result of an initial chance encounter or some common interest or mutual attraction, rather than because of any premeditated, rational or objective choice.  How otherwise could we have known the effect they were going to have on us?  Any advantages or disadvantages that resulted from those we knew personally were acquired only retrospectively from our experiences of them; first from the influences of our parents and siblings, then later on from our education or as a result of chance conversations, the books we'd read, the films or plays we'd watched, the events we witnessed, and so on and so forth.  This is how our inherited biology and neurology allow us to interact with each other and with our environment and in the way we process the data we accumulate from these experiences.  It shapes the way we feel, think and act and is changing unpredictably all the time.

But what about our conscience, to which theologians or lawyers are inclined to attribute credit or blame?  Doesn't that provide us with a free and independent will that knows the difference between 'right' and 'wrong' and helps us to monitor our behaviour accordingly?  If it were as simple as that it would be easy for the sinner to become the saint.  Darwin evidently struggled with the problem of 'conscience' when he wrote that:

At the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and although this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will far more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men.  But after ... will then feel dissatisfied with himself, and will resolve with more or less force to act differently for the future; this is conscience, for conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, indicating that kind of dissatisfaction, which if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse.[9]

In other words, the feeling that we could have done otherwise comes after we have already acted, because 'at the moment of action' we are not consciously aware of what we are doing.  And, although Darwin doesn't specifically say so, deliberation and conscious choice are not the cause of our actions.  All our feelings about our behaviour are acquired unconsciously at first by example from the way we were treated in infancy and youth, then more consciously as we matured, according to how we were educated, persuaded, conditioned, cajoled or even hoodwinked or brainwashed over the years.  And the process of alteration to the way we feel and think about our actions, for better or for worse, always occurs retrospectively.

Those who still insist they have the 'will' to make choices that are not just their chemistry or chance conditioning, must identify what else it is that allows them to escape these influences, even if only partially.  If they believe they didn't have some chance biological or experiential origin, and that they possessed the independent willpower to freely override such prejudicial influences, they need to identify where else this 'willpower' came from.  They might argue, for example, that they had gradually acquired enough wisdom or reasoning-power from their life-experiences to make wiser choices, in which case they would still need to explain what independent control they had had over those life-experiences that allowed them to do so; or otherwise, what had given them the basic ability to develop that wisdom in the first place.  And surely all those respectable and law-abiding citizens, who are inclined to act in accordance with the spiritual or secular rules of the society within which they find themselves, must have been conditioned thus to abide by those self-same rules.[10]

Moreover, the codes of conduct of every society have themselves only been culturally or politically conditioned over the generations too, and as history has shown, such conditioning has sometimes led to horrible crimes being committed by these law-abiding citizens in the name of obedience to authority.[11] The fact that people in different countries everywhere are inclined to act according to the practices and beliefs of that country's culture or tradition, because they believe them to be the right ones, is surely proof enough of these geographical or cultural biases.  Those who identify with their own race, religion or nationality are unwittingly inclined to feel the rest of mankind is misguided and a threat to their beliefs.  In attempting to view the world less subjectively, it soon becomes clear that no race, religion or nationality has a monopoly of truth or virtue over its rivals, each of which should be recognised as merely one among many. 

So it turns out that we are not quite as free and independent in our decision-making as we thought we were.  From the moment of conception onwards, we become inescapably bound up and influenced by the world around us and there's absolutely nothing we can do to escape from its influences.  Our minds and bodies are interacting with our environment all the time, even though we are only consciously aware of very few of these influences, so most, perhaps all our decisions are made for us. 

In fact, it has been suggested that four conditions are necessary before anyone can even begin to consider whether they are in charge of an action.  These are: That they could fully envisage alternate courses of action; were fully aware of the potential short and long-term consequences of the action; could have chosen to withhold the action; and wanted the results that ensued. [12]

Let's consider each of these in turn. Although we might have some rough idea what the 'alternative courses of action' are, we're almost certainly not aware of all of them.  In any event, we can never be sure that they are all equally available to compare and choose impartially from, nor can we ever know what their 'short or long term consequences' are going to be.  If we had 'chosen to withhold the action', were we fully aware of the reasons why we did so?  Finally, if we 'wanted the result that ensued', were we aware and in control of what had made us want that result?  Evidently there is a great deal more going on in our minds than we are aware of[13], let alone in charge of.

With brain-scanning techniques, neurologists might be able to see roughly what is happening when our minds are engaged in decision-making, but almost certainly not why it's happening. That also requires the services of psychologists, sociologists, ethnologists, anthropologists and other specialists; a multi-disciplinary approach is required before we can even begin to see the holistic picture more clearly.

The common perception we have of ourselves as free agents, trying to steer our way wisely and morally through life to the advantage of ourselves and of those whom we love and care for, is evidently a delusion.  Focusing our attention on what we think are wise choices, rather than on what has made us think they were, should lead us into areas that have hitherto been inhibited by the widely held belief that we have freedom of choice over our behaviour.  So, in an attempt to become more responsible, and law-abiding citizens, we are often persuaded by means of praise or blame, administered by authorities about what they believe we should or should not do, because we assume they are wiser and more responsible than we are in knowing how to live our lives.

However, before venturing into this largely uncharted, and for many, forbidden or unacceptable territory, we need to go back in our evolutionary history to a time before ideas about responsibility, authority