Places where the Enlightenment Never Happened…

That would include Iran. And who can blame them, after all. According to the Holy Qu’ran,

How shall God guide a people who, after they had believed and bore witness that the Apostle was true, and after that clear proofs of his mission had reached them, disbelieved? God guideth not the people who transgress.
These! their recompense, that the curse of God, and of angels, and of all men, is on them!
Under it shall they abide forever; their torment shall not be assuaged! nor shall God even look upon them!…

The rulers of Iran are but acting according to what they honestly believe. They cannot be “evil” for having such beliefs, because no one can voluntarily disbelieve that which they honestly believe to be true. If, then, we would not have similar laws, it would behoove us to maintain the wall of separation between religion and the state.

Astroturf, Democracy, and Doublethink

Logically, it’s impossible to simultaneously believe in democracy and the notion of “astroturfing.” Democracy assumes free will and belief in the ability of individual citizens to act responsibly on their own behalf. Belief in “astroturfing” is based on the assumption that any organized opposition to one’s own point of view must either consist of evil political puppet masters or mind numbed robots who obey them thoughtlessly like so many Pavlov’s dogs. Belief in “astroturfing” logically excludes the belief that “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” is legitimate or even desirable if extended to political opponents.

Similarly, it’s logically impossible to believe that all of one’s political opponents are morally bankrupt demons and simultaneously accept the principle, inherent in democracy, that opposition to one’s own opinion is legitimate. The two points of view are mutually exclusive.

Orwell was right again. Doublethink is real. We do live in a world where two plus two equals five. Our political landscape is crowded with those who actually simultaneously believe that all organized political opposition to their opinions is “astroturfing” on the one hand, and that they genuinely support “democracy” on the other. We also suffer from an overabundance of pious peacocks who strut about on the “moral high ground,” shouting down anathemas on the evil ones who don’t agree with them, and simultaneously honestly believe they are genuine supporters of “democracy.”

It’s encouraging to see that these “defenders of democracy” are not only playing into the hands of their political opponents, but making themselves ridiculous in the process.

Another Paradigm Shifts: The Hunting Hypothesis, Ardrey, and “Pop Ethology”

In 1976, Robert Ardrey published the last in a series of books about the evolution of human nature, entitled “The Hunting Hypothesis.” Ardrey was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. Unfortunately, his thoughts were not politically correct at the time. They posed a direct challenge to any number of the ideological sacred cows of belief systems ranging from behaviorist psychology to Marxism. They implied that human nature was not infinitely malleable, but based on innate predispositions that rendered mankind unsuitable for the various and sundry utopias the ideologues were cobbling together. In a word, Ardrey had positioned himself squarely in the out-group of all these ideologically defined in-groups. A great collective shriek went up. As usual in such cases, Ardrey’s challenge was not met with dispassionate logic. Rather, he was vilified as a “fascist,” ridiculed as a “pop ethologist,” and denounced as a dilettante playwright who dared to invade the territory of “real scientists.” One would do well to go back and read his books today, because, as it happens, Ardrey was right and the ideologues posing as “scientists” who vilified him were wrong.

In particular he was right about the hunting hypothesis. The best argument his opponents could come up with against it was the absurd claim that, other than a few tortoises and other slow-moving animals, our early meat eating had been limited to scavenging. The idea that the rapid growth of brains with ever increasing energy requirements could have been fueled by the scavenging of four-foot tall, slow moving creatures who had somehow managed to beat sharp-eyed vultures and speedy hyenas to their feasts was really as absurd then as it is now. Ardrey demolished the notion in the first chapter of his book, but, like a dead man walking, it staggered on for years, propped up by the bitter faith of the ideologues.

I suspected at the time “The Hunting Hypothesis” was published that Ardrey and thinkers like him would eventually be vindicated, assuming free research could continue without ideologically imposed restraints. I never imagined it would happen so soon. It’s still hard for me to believe that we’ve passed through such a thorough paradigm shift, and I’m continually surprised when I see articles such as this one, entitled “Pre-humans had Stomach Cramps,” that appeared on the website of the German magazine “Der Spiegel” today. Among its matter-of-factly presented paragraphs regarding the meat eating habits of Australopithecus afarensis, a hominid that lived more than two million years ago, one finds,

The question of when meat consumption began is important because of its association with the development of a larger brain in pre- and early humans. In fact, the human brain is three times as big as that of a chimpanzee. In order to build up an organ of such dimensions, a very large and continuous supply of nourishment must be guaranteed, and that requires meat.

Hunting is the only way of systematically bringing down animals, and this, in turn, assumes a bigger brain. As with the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg, one can’t be sure what came first, meat eating or a larger brain. However, anthropologists assume that, in the beginning, there must have been at least occasional consumption of meat, because, without it, the brain could not have expanded in volume for purely physical reasons.

All this is presented in dead pan fashion, as if no other opinion could ever have prevailed, or the subject could ever have been the subject of the least controversy. Sad, that Ardrey could not have lived to see it.

And the moral of the story? Perhaps we should recall the words of T. S. Eliot from “Little Gidding,”

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

We live too much in the present, breathlessly awaiting the latest news from the worlds of science and politics. Occasionally, we would do well to recall that some very bright people, with a very different perspective, not to mention very different standards of political correctness, actually lived before our time. It would behoove us to learn from them if we really want to understand the time we’re in now. Never accept the moral certainties of today. Go back to the sources, and find out for yourself.