Note: This essay comes from a Facebook post I wrote shortly after the essay “Leaving Meta in Fascist America“. I had been contemplating how America’s experiment with Authoritarianism was likely to end and it seemed likely to be violent. I wrote this post to express some of my thoughts around that.
There is much to admire about us. Humans have been endowed with these amazing gifts of intellect and cooperation. Curiosity and ingenuity. Humans have built a globe spanning social machine called civilization. We work together across time and space; each generation builds upon the achievements of the previous. Together, we have uncovered the secrets of the universe and have created technologies indistinguishable from magic. And, together, we bring death and destruction on a scale far beyond the recognition of all other Earth dwellers. This talent for both construction and destruction is wrapped up in the human soul, inextricably linked. Cooperation and Subjugation. Freedom and Slavery. Democracy and Despotism.
There’s more in the shadow of man’s heart. Hubris, narcissism, and megalomania are all mixed in. There is not a single entity on Earth with more entitlement, more arrogance, or more self-importance than the human. Dolphins are not bothered with explaining the hows and whys of creation. An elephant has never claimed to have a personal relationship with the Creator. Octopuses1 have the intellectual capacity to build a civilization2 and simply choose not to3.
Not us. We dream. And we dream big. It doesn’t embarrass us. We consider the Earth ours to do with as we please, with little regard for our fellow occupants. After all, deer didn’t organize a protest when we were building cities. Chimps didn’t speak up when we started burning fossil fuels. If whales are so smart, why do they keep getting hit by our harpoons?
We started out like other mammals. We lived in simple shelters made from the environment. We possessed the instincts for hunting, foraging, trapping. We had all of the great mammalian survival techniques. But through a fluke of evolution, we were a bit too smart for our own good. We didn’t just hunt, we could create strategies. We could share strategies with others. And then, game changer, we figured out how to write down strategies. We could share information with people we never met. We could educate future generations from beyond the grave. Once we had the written word, we were unstoppable. Human knowledge became cumulative. No one person had to understand everything. The machine of civilization emerges as people could be slotted in and out of various positions. The roles of the chief and the healer are defined independently of the human performing the role. Any with the appropriate skill may fill the position. And thus allow the machine to self repair as people die and new ones take their place. The Engine of Cooperation hums, amplifying the achievements of man.
But we still have our basic animal instincts, don’t we? Many people feel a strong urge to procreate. We like to nest to provide a safe place for our family to live and grow, and we protect our nests fiercely, like a mamma bear. We have a strong self preservation instinct which floods our bodies with adrenaline and shuts down much of the neocortex so we can focus on survival. Hoarding is a survival behavior for many animals, like squirrels, that we see in ourselves.
All of these instincts are reflected in civilization like a fractal where the emergent behavior of the system is similar to the individual behavior of the components. They are not identical, but they rhyme. Hoarding becomes magnified by human greatness into planet spanning greed. The wealthiest 1% control more resources than the bottom 95% combined. Our urge to procreate is so strong, that we sometimes feel justified in forcing it on others. We don’t just build nests, we build mansions. We build skyscrapers. And we don’t just defend ourselves, we take the fight to our enemies, real or imagined.
The ethics of violence is something we struggle with. It’s paradoxical. If it’s never right to kill, why do we have capital punishment? Why are police allowed to break into our homes and shoot with reckless abandon, but standing up to them will send you to prison (or the grave). If you have a particular talent for killing, you might become known as one of humanities great evil serial killers with your own Netflix special. Or, join the military and become a hero for the same thing. What’s the pattern here?
Ethical violence is violence sanctioned by civilization. It’s an ever changing standard influenced by the history of an area and the culture of the people who live there, but there are some common themes. The first is that we ban most forms of individual violence. We know that things like sociopathy and psychopathy can lead to dangerously violent individuals. Trauma can keep the mammalian survival instinct running in high gear, causing people to lash out at others in desperation. Such people threaten the stability of the global machine, so we evaluate the individual use of violence on a case by case basis with a bias for condemnation. We assume you are not justified unless you can convince us otherwise.
So, the right of violence belongs to civilization at large. Governments have a monopoly, delegating that power to the police and military. The police can use violence to ensure individuals do not threaten the operation of civilization. Militaries can use violence to settle disputes with fellow governments that threaten the world order. Here, we see the fractal. Governments deal with governments in the same way that tribes deal with tribes. And in the same way that individuals deal with individuals. Fractal hierarchy is the structure of human civilization with each successive layer subject to the same flaws and biases as the previous layers.
If this is true, what happens when the higher rungs of the civil hierarchy become infected with sociopathy, psychopathy, and trauma? What are the consequences when man’s megalomania turns from discovery to conquest? Violence escalates. History has known brutal leaders. Vlad the Impaler, Ghengis Khan, Hitler. Individuals who ruled through fear and violence. I have been long confused by how such people slip through our defenses and transform cooperative societies into war hungry murder machines. When the highest levels of societal organization become focused on using violence as a tool of subjugation, we have the ingredients to unleash mankind’s awesome destructive power upon ourselves.
And, I’m sorry to say, we do this over and over. Forever trapped between enlightenment and our baser instincts. Even if we could remove this violent nature from ourselves, I don’t think we should. Our history of violence is a side effect of our hubris. The same instinct that causes us to build the computer also drives us to build the atom bomb. And of course, once we have the bomb, we have to use it. It was the competition between the US and Soviet Russia that drove us to the moon. Not because there was oil there, but because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we are better than them. That space race was a tech boom for both the US and Russia. I do not think you can have that without the violent nature within us. Competition is non-violent violence. It allows us to soothe that dark instinct inside us while also propelling us forward. Violence is as human as compassion.
There are times when violence is morally just, even when it is not supported by society. The human machine is slow to respond to change, just like an individual sticking their fingers in their ears to avoid hearing what they don’t want to. The machine can become miscalibrated over the centuries and need a correction. Ideally, the structure of civilization itself would allow us to enact the necessary changes peacefully. But that doesn’t tend to work for long. Eventually, the government becomes corrupted by the darkness in our souls and begins to serve the few. So then, the people form a new government without the consent of the old government and use violence to swap them.
We are no strangers to this idea in the United States. Indeed, terrorism is the genesis of our nation. Our founding fathers were traitors. The Continental Congress was an illegal government stood up to replace the colonial government. King George III did not authorize us to rule ourselves. We had to force his hand through violence and resistance. Of course, since we won and we write our own history books, this view is not the one that’s typically taught in the US, but this is how things looked from England’s perspective. If the founding fathers had lost, they would be traitors in the footnote of history instead of the celebrated founders of the United States.
For anyone unaware, the constitutional government stood up in 1788 endured until 2025. And we are watching in real time as it crumbles. Like so many empires of the past, corruption and greed are hollowing out our government. Can we save it? Can we put a new one in its place? I have no idea. But neither is likely to happen without violence. Sociopaths do not give control back because they have hurt people or because they have been shamed. Leaders with trauma brain do not see and do not care that their desire for conquest comes from the mixture of instincts in their old mammal brain. Dictators and despots are not known for respecting peaceful transfer of power or honoring democratic processes. They must be forced out at gunpoint.
As I ponder the destructive power of modern weaponry, I’m reminded of a vacation I took last year to Japan. I had always wanted to see ground zero in Hiroshima where the US dropped the atomic bomb. I was intrigued reading about this event in US history books. The narrative we are taught is that the US had to use the Atomic Bomb to end WWII. And ending the war saved lives. Therefore, we were justified. Outside the US, you may be shocked to learn, no one agrees with us. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, a naval base. They sank 8 battleships, destroyed 151 airplanes, and killed 2,393 Americans. In response, we leveled Hiroshima. And Nagasaki. We don’t really know how many people died, but it’s estimated that just from the explosions (ignoring the cancerous radiation that affected survivors for decades), that the death toll was somewhere between 110k and 200k people. Notice how we have exact numbers for how many Americans died, but we have to estimate the death toll for Japan. That’s how assymetrical this attack was. And then we puffed up our chest and had the gall to say, “Look what you made me do.”
Today, near ground zero in Hiroshima is the Memorial Peace Park. A beautiful, somber place designed to inspire peace from this tragedy. You can learn about Sadako Sasaki, a 12 year old girl with leukemia caused by nuclear fallout. As she was dying, she believed a Japanese legend that if she folded 1000 origami cranes her wish would be granted and she would live. She did not. Today children from all over the world make cranes and send them to Hiroshima in her honor. They are displayed throughout the park. I saw cranes from Japan, Australia, and Germany. Then, I walked up to a memorial arch that aligns perfectly to show you the still standing dome of the building directly under the atomic blast. Beneath the arch is a flame that is to never be extinguished as long as a single atomic weapon still exists. And beneath that, a plaque. It has an inscription in several languages, but in English, it reads “Let all the souls here rest in peace; For we shall not repeat the evil”.
I bowed my head in front of this memorial for a moment of silence, out of respect. I considered how I couldn’t find cranes made by US children. I thought about the upcoming election and how we had to choose between the guardians of a broken system and a dictatorship ran by a criminal. I reflected on human nature and our inability to control our most destructive instincts. And then, I thought that about that phrase:
“For we shall not repeat the evil”.
I raised my head, put my pink hat back on, and said to myself: “Fat chance.”
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1Octopuses is acceptable as a plural form of octopus: https://www.dictionary.com/e/octopuses-or-octopi/. So do not come for me on this.
2Well, maybe: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/…/octopuses-keep-surprising-us…
3This is my own personal headcannon. Though, trying to understand the mind of an octopus is like trying to understand the mind of Azathoth4
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