Meet Prof. Konrad Lorenz, a World War II-era Nobel laureate in the evolution of animal behavior, most notably humans. Why is an unknown professor of some strange science in Hitler’s heyday of interest to us today? Why else?
Donald Trump’s “America First” and the nationalism it’s sparking worldwide is reversing eons of human evolution from cave-dwelling tribes into complex societies living in cities and such. This devolution from globalism to tribalism via nationalism puts America First at the center of studies Lorenz pursued in the aftermath of WWII. Lorenz’ particular interest was aggression, a behavioral handmaiden to nationalism and the modus operandi of tribalism.
The problem with America First is that it means others must be second, third, fourth and last which means mutual respect and compassion for all people is sidelined in favor of same just for “your” people. That breeds resentment from the “other” people and that breeds aggression and it’s clear Trump’s America First is pissing off the entire planet and more than half the country he’s ruling. It’s shades of 1935 only we’re the bad guys, according to all the lessons lingering from the last attempt at global racial purity.
In this issue of NBN we posit that the real problem isn’t the isms, rather it’s that beloved behavior we all relish called competition. This is where Lorenz comes in. When the carnage of WWII laid bare the dangers of nationalism, Lorenz suggested the aggression it naturally fostered could be curbed by promoting sports.
Nice call, Prof. Lorenz. Since your time, sports have grown into a $1.3 trillion industry.
However, NBN thinks channeling our God-given instincts to kill each other into the thrill of victory by other means just adds fuel to a fire which humans as a species must tamp down, if not put out completely, if we’re ever to achieve our full potential. What is that full potential? And what about football season? Competition vs Cooperation in NBN’s Fall 2019 Blog. Thanks for reading and if you enjoy it, please share.
Fall 2019 Competition Vs. Cooperation: How to Play the Game?
Imagine a world where the spectacle of sport replaces the woe of war. Where raw, unrestrained animal aggression is channeled into pitting your best effort against your fellow man, or woman, in friendly competition. No more senseless slaughters. Super Bowls every Sunday.
That’s what famed ethologist and otherwise unknown German scientist Konrad Lorenz suggested in the aftermath of WWII. A bit of a Nazi himself, Lorenz was a firm believer in genetics determining later success in life, aka eugenics. Nonetheless, he was dismayed to see the downsides when such sentiments are embraced by a sociopathic leader of millions who want desperately to believe him. So, Lorenz suggested sport might be an effective means of diffusing our God-given aggressions as we strive to elbow aside the inferior as per natural order.
Lo and behold, Lorenz was one prophetic professor. Sports spending has skyrocketed since WWII, while deaths resulting from war have dropped precipitously. But before we start rededicating our $600 billion defense budget to The Wide World of Sports, let’s consider: according to some studies and endless anecdotes, despite the drop in war deaths, world-wide aggression is going up. Even women are getting into the act. Why are we humans still compelled to exercise our anger when we can vicariously exhaust such impulses with a game of hoops or, better yet, by cheering on an endless array of highly paid professionals to play for us?
According to Lorenz and many a modern day military enthusiast, some aspects of human behavior, most definitely among them aggression, are as natural and inevitable as breathing. How else to explain the still inexplicable carnage of WWI, and the stumbling slaughters of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I and II? (The jury is still out on WWII.) It’s tempting to say the nobility of dying for your country is so ingrained in every culture that millions can be marched to their deaths at a moment’s notice without fully understanding why.
However, NBN thinks veiling our innate aggression under the virtue of competition significantly greases the skids for all our questionable conflagrations. The problem is, competition usually comes at the cost of a far more accomplished human virtue: cooperation.
It’s only logical that as natural resources diminish and world population climbs, stoking sentiments of superiority runs afoul of the need for increased global cooperation. So, should society double down on sports spending, as Lorenz might suggest, to allow these contrary forces to continue to co-exist? Can we compete our way out of our innate desire to kill each other as we divvy up a dying planet? NBN has another suggestion: exalting competition in a world of 7.7 billion and climbing is maybe, perhaps, possibly not such a good idea. We know, we know. Pretty much anything that’s fun involves competition. What’s the point of making an effort if you can not measure it against the effort of others, right? Right?
Sadly, we’re not just talking about Nick Foles Superbowl win over the Evil Empire, inspiration enough for generations of last-picked-in-dodge-ballers to believe in themselves. We’re talking about the notion that individual accomplishment only matters as it’s measured against the efforts of others. On one hand competition seems to validate our efforts as a standard by which to measure ourselves. On the other hand, it opens the door for enormous waste: Waste of individual effort, and worse, a waste of public resources and NBN hates waste.
Fortunately for late night TV, a perfect example of the problems with choosing competition over cooperation is running the most powerful country in history right now. Unfortunately for the rest of civilization, this is an extremely dangerous time because of the circumstances cited above. The U.S. is truly exceptional but only in that it was founded on the concept that all people are equal. Our history and our European heritage, on the other hand, have always been driven by profits at any cost to others, all under the guise of philosophically stitched together rationales suggesting in one way or another it’s the natural order of things.
No sooner did the Puritans step foot in Plymouth than fur traders and lumber barons moved in, mowing down any God-less “savages” who got in their path. Profits under the guise of paternalism drove plantation owners to convince 1 million poor southerners to die for the right to own other people. It’s why Hitler loved Darwin: Survival of the fittest. Make yourself great regardless of cost to others because you are greater than others. And what about those not so easily swayed? How do you sell ruthless greed as a virtue to those less inclined to profit at the expense of others?
Wrap it in the cloak of competition and pat yourself on the back for being better than others. That usually seals the deal for those with a conscience because deep down it sucks thinking that all people are created equal. That’s why we all love competition so much. It gives the illusion that we are somehow better than the next guy or gal, even if vicariously through the team we root for. But as we said earlier, for every winner there is a loser, and that’s a designation that’s always been reserved for nice guys in this country. And who wants—or can even afford—to be nice when there’s money to be made.
Fall 2019: Our Musings
Who is John Galt? Wrong Question.
NBN was wrapping up its Competition vs Cooperation issue, when three mass shootings in one week got us thinking anew about where this issue started: a futile search for a video showing one person egging on two others to fight. Those shootings have us thinking again about people egging others on to violence. Such people are everywhere these days and so is their handiwork. Political partisanship is at a zenith, hatred of immigrants has hijacked government policy worldwide and Evangelical hatred of Islam has supplanted “Love thy neighbor” for many millions of well-meaning Christians. This got NBN thinking about Ayn Rand’s fictional depiction 60 years ago of similarly seismic societal shifts, that seminal treatise of the modern day conservative movement Atlas Shrugged. Is the proliferation of finger-pointers and the historic levels of hatred today a coincidence? Hardly. Anger is unique among the emotions in that it needs a target: an opponent/cause to be vanquished/championed and ultimately profited from. The eggers-on, Ayn Rand among them, know that. But it’s winner-take-all in a very dangerous game, as per her book and another slightly less apocalyptic work of fiction we kinda like. (See video above.) The question Who is John Galt, became code in Atlas Shrugged for selecting competition over cooperation. But before we choose sides we might want to ask: Who is Leland Gaunt?
Refugees or Immigrants?
This terrific NYTimes piece captures an aspect of the US immigration issue which seems to escape everyone in the U.S., most notably its ruler: It’s not a U.S. Immigration Crisis it’s a worldwide refugee crisis. This get NBN into the murky waters of distinguishing migrants from refugees. There are a handful of useful terms offered by a surprising number of semi-serious websites, but they all seem to draw the line at choice. As in refugees have none. But as with everything in a world desperate to see black and white, we turn a blind eye to the gray. Certainly, the Yazidis fleeing ISIS in Syria qualify as refugees, but what about the Irish escaping the potato famine? Our president thinks those fleeing the world’s greatest gang violence are not refugees. The South Sudanese many not have much choice, but the Somali’s are simply hungry. Does that qualify as no choice, or just looking for a better life? See where we’re going with this?
Trump wants to ‘make Iran great again.’ Here’s why he can’t.
Perhaps what is most un-nerving about Trump is his insistence on using old logic to rule a rapidly evolving world. Here he’s promising to make Iran “Great Again” if they just get on the Trump bandwagon. And of course, by “great” Trump means “rich.” Setting aside the profound stupidity behind using wealth to seduce a theocracy, this is yet another empty POTUS promise for more disquieting reasons. Money is simply a token for public resources and to acquire them others must relinquish them. The more money you have, the more public resources you can access by handing that money over to others who in turn use it to access resources they need. It’s a nice system. However, there is a limit to the world’s public resources but no apparent limit to the number of people looking to access them nor their appetite for them. So, our options become stark: acquire ever more money as the value of limited public resources rises. Or get guns, violence and good ‘ol aggression involved and acquire those rights through “politics”. So we ask again: How is the Orange Einstein going to make a life-time member of the Axis of Evil achieve the former without eventually resorting to the latter? Build a wall, maybe? Hey, everybody’s doing it.
Historian finds German decree banishing Trump’s grandfather
Lorenz was a big believer in the overriding role of genetics in determining behavior and at first blush it might appear the sleaze alleged to run through the Trump Family tree would support this supposition. This article, and others, say Trump Family patriarch Fred was a draft dodger like his son and also a pimp. But as is usually the case, closer examination finds half-truths among the whole. Reluctance to serve in the military appears to be a proud Trump family tradition but sleaze regarding the opposite sex seems to have originated with Donald. His father was married to the same woman for 57 years and his grandfather apparently ran hotels and upscale restaurants, only one of which was also a House of Ill Repute. It’s nice when the son outshines the father. The questions is: Would Fred be proud? We suspect, very.
