The First to Fall

Tag: civilization

  • WILL

    I’m considering whether concepts like free will and God’s will function like a civilizational equation for neutralizing the “error signal” of inequality.

    Every society, at every time and place, faces inequality. And inequality doesn’t feel right…does it? And not feeling right, in neuroscientific terms, means error.

    Some people are born poor, sick, or generally shit out of luck. Others aren’t. They’re born fine and seem to do fine. And without any sort of explanation as to why that is…it looks arbitrary and unjust. It’s destabilizing because human nervous systems are sensitive to fairness. (I believe that because it seems to hold true for most people once I get to know them.)

    Civilization flattens errors for its members. That’s what it does. And here we have an error, don’t we? Unfairness. Inequality. But civilization has a two-part story to keep inequality from being experiences as an error by its members.

    The first part of that story is free will. That part tells us inequality is the individual’s fault. You could’ve chosen differently. Your poverty is the logical result of laziness. Your suffering comes from bad decisions.

    But that doesn’t account for all inequality, does it? Some inequality fall through the cracks of that argument.

    That’s where God’s will comes in. Inequality is the cosmic order. God chose your station…or suffering purifies you…or justice comes later for you (in heaven, or via karma).

    Add these two stories together, and you get a closed loop. If you’re disadvantaged, either you chose badly (your free will) or God chose it for you (divine will). In both cases, whatever system you live in is absolved. It’s on you or God. Case closed.

    What’s really happening here? In the brain?

    Inequality is a prediction error. You expect fairness, but you see unfairness. Taken together, free will and God’s will reframe that error as expected, meaningful, or “deserved.” It’s a story that neutralizes surprise for you. It lets you accept conditions that would otherwise feel intolerably incoherent.

    In medieval Europe, you’re a serf because of God’s plan…but also because you don’t have the virtue to “rise.” In Calvinism, your wealth shows God’s favor…but your hard work (free will) proves it. In American capitalism, anyone can succeed (free will), but if you don’t, maybe God didn’t bless you. In communism, even, a secularized version appears. History’s laws are inevitable (God’s will), but you have to freely devote yourself to the case (free will).

    This is yet another example of civilization flattening the error landscape. Otherwise, inequality would feel like raw incoherence. We need to make it explainable…”just,” even. We wrap it in narratives of freedom and divine order.

    These stories are post-hoc rationalizations, of course. They do nothing to solve inequality. They’re explanatory patches applied after the fact.

    Historically, the pattern is clear. The inequality comes first (land hoarding, hierarchy, wealth gaps). People register it as an error signal…it’s unfair. And civilization comes to the rescue…not by reducing the inequality, but by retrofitting a story. Free will (you could have done otherwise!) or God’s will (it’s meant to be this way!). These stories reframe perception so you can tolerate inequality.

  • What IS domestication?

    At its core, domestication is a selection process shaped by control objectives. I want a cow that is easiest to extract milk and meat from. I want a chicken for the easiest scrambled eggs and sweet and sour wings possible. I want a dog for the best companionship or easiest hunting experience possible. When we domesticate a plant, animal, or person, we have an objective. We’re trying to extract something and we want that extraction to be as quick and easy as possible. So what gets favored or suppressed in a breeding program or a training regimen depends on what makes the organism more compatible with our human-defined system of control. And across species (including humans), here’s what that looks like…

    We select for individuals that are calmer, more tolerant of handling, and more willing to defer to authority or hierarchy. We want reduced variability in responses to stimuli (think “calm” dog vs “reactive” dog)…steady, less surprising behavior is easier to manage. We consistently reward (or at least end up with) juvenile traits (neoteny) like playfulness, submissiveness, and prolonged dependency. These make the domesticate easier to mold and keep in a controlled state. Traits that allow reproduction on human terms are also heavily favored…earlier sexual maturity, more frequent cycles, larger litter sizes (or in humans, lineages that adapt to arranged marriages, “concubinage,” follow religious edicts to “go forth and multiply,” etc.). Finally, the ability to navigate symbolic or artificial rules is prized…dogs attuning to human gestures, and humans adapting to bureaucracies or religions.

    There are are a few qualities fundamentally opposed to control. These are the traits that selected against in a domestication process. Reactive aggression and impulsivity clearly disrupts group or handler control. High sensory reactivity and vigilance are problems, as well. Skittishness, flight responses, or overreaction to confinement make animals (and people) harder to control. Next, any overt sign of autonomy / resistance to control is obviously and inherently something that needs deletion. Whether that’s a dog that won’t stay in the yard, sheep that have a habit of jumping fences, or a human who won’t accept various forms of subjugation…it simply can’t be tolerated. Broadly speaking, unpredictability needs to trained / bred out. Any trait that makes outcomes less stable…irregular reproduction, volatile behavior, refusal to follow routine. Excessive independence has no home here. Animals that refuse to bond with humans and humans that refuse to bond with institutions are destined for the slaughterhouse, prison, shelter, behavioral therapy, the streets, the margins.

    Taken together, this suite of traits produces the domestication syndrome. Smaller brains, reduced sexual dimorphism, more juvenile features, dampened stress responses, and greater and greater compliance. It’s clearly a stunting process…but one that optimizes survival inside artificial systems of control.

    So, what is domestication?

    You could say it’s the selection against an animal’s drive to act independently of a system of control.