The Evolution of Delusion (a Thanksgiving Day Message)

Today is Thanksgiving. But it is also the fortieth anniversary of Yukio Mishima’s seppuku.

Yukio Mishima was a Japanese writer who sometimes wrote feel-good novels (e.g. The Sound of the Waves) and very rarely even humor (e.g. the short story Tamago, or Eggs). But he was most famous for writing fiction with angst, much of which was focused on the loss of the spirit of Japan (Yamato damashii). As I understand it, his mind was in the grip of a delusion that Japan had a glorious samurai past, where warriors had total honor and would rather commit ritual suicide than to submit to any loss of face. The ritual suicide was, of course, seppuku, which is the same as harakiri—the former is the fancy, the latter the ordinary, way of saying it in Japanese. He had a small cult of young men who followed him, like a band of samurai, or perhaps like ronin, the wandering samurai who had no home after Japan entered the modern world in the nineteenth century. But this was post-World-War-II Japan, with no room for either samurai or seppuku.

To Mishima, Japan’s defeat in World War II was an intolerable loss of face. And quite possibly he was influenced by his own cowardice during World War II: when he was drafted, he told the doctors at his physical exam that he had tuberculosis, and he was relieved from Army duty. It was not until 1967 that he joined the postwar version of the Japanese army (the Self Defense force; Japan’s constitution, written by the United States, forbade an army capable of international expansion). He considered this army to not be patriotic enough, so he formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society) in 1968, which upheld bushido (the way of the warrior) and swore to uphold the Emperor. However, he did not think that even Emperor Hirohito was patriotic enough, because Hirohito had renounced his own divinity at the end of World War II.

Mishima was one of the last holdouts of the delusions that were widespread in Japan before and during World War II. Such delusions can, as the Hakko Ichiu principle (Japanese world dominion) did, grip an entire nation. But even this was not enough for Mishima and his followers. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his Tatanokai visited the commandant of the Tokyo headquarters of the Self-Defense Force. Once inside, they barricaded the office and tied the commandant to his hair. Then Mishima stood on a balcony and delivered a prepared speech, about returning Japan to its glory, to the soliders who had gathered below. He asked the soldiers to join him in a coup d’etat, but they just jeered him. He finished his speech, went into the commandant’s office, and committed harakiri. After he had partially disemboweled himself, one of his assistants was supposed to behead him, in the traditional manner; but this assistant was unable to do so, and another assistant had to finish the job for him. It is now generally believed that Mishima had not intended the coup to be successful, but had planned his ritual suicide for years, and he had made sure his legal affairs, including money for the legal defense of the remaining Tatenokai members, were in order before his final battle.

Delusions can completely determine what a person considers to be reality. Every piece of sensory information is interpreted as a reinforcement of the delusion. This might seem to be an imperfection of the brain that evolution would have gotten rid of. But delusions can sometimes provide evolutionary advantages to the people who have them and to the societies in which these people live. If you have two tribes, one of which has delusions of being God’s chosen conquerors of the world and the other of which values reason over emotion, guess which one will win the war. If a delusional tribe wins territory and resources, its individual members, to varying degrees, will have greater evolutionary fitness. The human mind is capable of intense delusion, and this is the product of natural selection.

Well, I have tied this story in with evolution and religion. Let me finally tie it in with Thanksgiving. Americans have a delusion, even if only mildly held, that the Pilgrims were heroic pioneers who came to the New World from England for religious freedom. But after leaving England, they mad moved to the Netherlands, where they had religious freedom—but so did everyone else. The Pilgrims wanted the “freedom” to enforce their religion, so they had to form their own colony, in Massachusetts. When they got there, they nearly starved, but were rescued by the welfare provided to them by a socialistic Native American tribe. Later, they showed their gratitude by carrying out genocide against this tribe. Pilgrim leader William Bradford describes the way the colonists surrounded a Pequot village at sunrise. They set it ablaze and killed anyone who fled. Bradford wrote, “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they [the colonists] gave praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully.” They were able to ignore the suffering that they inflicted on their fellow humans because their brains were deluded with the idea that they were God’s chosen people upon the face of the Earth and had the right, even the responsibility, to slaughter anyone (at least any Indian) who questioned their delusion.

But let me end with something to be thankful for on this day. Evolution has given our species the ability to create, in our minds, a beautiful world based upon the sensory information that those minds receive—brilliant color, wonderful scents of food, beautiful music. They are illusory creations of our minds, but let us enjoy them anyway. They are more beauty than we, the products of natural selection, have any right to have expected.

This essay also appears on my evolution blog.

Darwin, Science, and Bias

Scientists take great precautions against bias. Scientists, like all humans, have a tendency to see what they expect to see rather than what is really there. But scientists are very careful to design research and experiments in such a way as to exclude bias. For example, in testing drugs, the patients who receive the placebo (“sugarpill”), which does not contain the drug, are not told that the pill is a placebo, otherwise they would assume it will not work and they will report themselves as still being sick. But scientists go further and make sure the assistants who actually administer the placebo do not know that it is a placebo, lest the attitude of the assistant influence the patient’s attitude as well. The placebo usually has a bitter chemical in it, or even a mild sedative, so that the patient will believe that it is the real drug. A large amount of the design and expense of scientific research is to avoid bias.

Charles Darwin had to deal with bias also. His evolutionary theory gave nature, rather than God, the creative role. It is the ideal theory for someone who wants God out of the picture. Was Darwin such a person? Well, not at first; his wife Emma was a moderate creationist, and Charles was sensitive to her opinions, as you might guess. But after their daughter Annie died at a tragically young age, both Charles and Emma were devastated. This deepened Emma’s dependence upon Christianity but pushed Charles into agnosticism. This was years before Charles wrote the Origin of Species.

So Charles must have been biased against creationism and in favor of a theory that would make God irrelevant. But he worked very, very hard to make sure that his bias did not influence his scientific judgment. He spent years gathering information about the variability of traits in populations, and about natural selection, as well as about fossils, biogeography, and other evidences of evolution. The Origin of Species is full of numerous lines of reasoning, each with its own evidences, which lead to an undeniable conclusion. That is, he spent years amassing evidence that would prevent his bias from influencing his results. This is the mark of a true scientist.

Creationists are just the opposite. They hate evolution, and will grab at any shred of information that they can twist into evidence to support their view. They even bring together so-called evidences that contradict one another. For example, they present information that they claim proves the Flood of Noah, then they present information that they claim shows gaps in the fossil record. But if there was a flood, there could be no order in the fossil record in which gaps might appear!

Charles Darwin is an exemplar of the heroic scientist who disciplines him or herself to pursue the truth even when bias presses upon the scientist from his or her personal experience.

This essay also appeared in my evolution blog.

A Christian View of Creation

There are many Christians today who view the natural world as God’s glorious creation, worthy of protection from human plundering. Unfortunately, this view seems rare in Oklahoma. I want to tell you a story about a much more common view in my home state.

I recently got a water heater installed, and I had to listen to the two plumbers preaching at me during the installation. It was a lecture, not a discussion; they frequently prefaced their statements with “I don’t know what other people think, but here’s what I think.” Then they would tell me Biblical things that may or may not actually be in the Bible.

Somehow we got to talking about trees, particularly the largest ones such as the giant sequoia trees in California. One of them told me exactly what would go through his mind as he stood at the base of a giant sequoia. He said that his mind would be calculating the number of board feet of timber in the tree and how much he could sell it for. That, to him, was the major inspiration stirred in his heart by the tree. Many other Christians have thought that large trees were wonderful expressions of God’s greatness. But not so for Oklahoma fundamentalists.

I could have told him something of practical value: not just how awe-inspiring sequoia trees are, but how much financial benefit that living trees provide for us. As I have often said in my blog and website entries, trees put oxygen in the air, remove carbon from the air, prevent floods and mudslides, build up the soil and allow water to percolate into the soil. That’s just a start. I’ve written a whole book, Green Planet, about it. Of course I did not say this to him, because he had proceeded on with a story about how fast he could cut down a big sycamore tree like the one in my back yard, and then went on to tell me how much God hated Obama’s health care plan.

And then he was done. At least he did not charge me extra for the time he spent preaching at me.

Walking in the Woods with Mahler

Thoughtful agnostics continually experience intense emotion about the beautiful things, and the tragic things, in the world. It is with this thought that I introduce the following essay, which will appear soon on my website. It is about Gustav Mahler, an agnostic Jewish/Czech/Austrian composer who lived at the turn of the previous century. I used to say that I believed in God because Mahler, with his intense insight into the world, believed in God (he joined the Catholic Church). Then I found out that he did not, or at least was not sure. (His conversion to Catholicism was to deflect anti-Jewish prejudice.)

The autumn colors in Oklahoma are not as amazing as those in New England, but they are still beautiful—yellow hickory leaves, red red-oak leaves, and bronze post-oak leaves. On a sunny warm autumn day, it seems like a time of rejoicing. And, in part, it is.

But it is also a time of death. For the trees, it is senescence, not death; the leaves die as part of an orderly breakdown, and the buds already contain next spring’s growth. Many smaller plants die, as well as small animals such as insects. Death is part of the cycle of nature. Many of the red oak leaves on the Oklahoma hillsides are covered with parasitic galls and powdery fungi, but since the leaves are going to die anyway, it doesn’t matter. Autumn is a time to accept death as part of life.

It is also a time to rage against death, to feel intensely that it is a tragedy that all of the beauty, constructed so carefully during an organism’s life, should come to an end and simply be decomposed. This is especially true in humans, where a human brain has built up a lifelong structure of knowledge and wisdom and emotions, and then simply stops working and rots. Autumn, therefore, is a time to come to grips with death, to accept it but also to despise it.

The perfect companion during a walk in the autumn woods is the music of Gustav Mahler. Perhaps no other composer has written music with such an intensity of sensation, as intense as the reddest leaf of autumn. His emotions were nearly always intense. Before going to his cabin each morning in summer to write his symphonies, he would swim across the lake and back; writing music was an athletic exercise for him. His music embodied the joy of nature (e.g. his Third Symphony) but also rage against death (e.g. his Second Symphony).

Even in the first movement of the Third Symphony, when Mahler depicted the coming of spring, the conflicts were unresolved. A bright and cheerful march (which he called “Summer Comes Marching In”) alternates with the tragic chill of winter. Spring is a time when winter keeps coming back, at least in northern Europe, until summer has fully arrived.

Mahler never came to grips with life and death—the conflict always renewed itself in his mind and music. This is the way of the world: rebirth every spring, senescence every autumn, eternally unresolved.

If you want to know more, I suggest the new book by Norman Lebrecht, entitled Why Mahler?

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (13). The End.

Today’s Bible reading. Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12, 11:1-5.

After all of this—raging against injustice, and mourning the death that awaits all animals, human or nonhuman—both Solomon and Schubert’s Winterreise wanderer found something. It is companionship.

“Two are better than one, because they can appreciate one another’s work. If one of them falls, the other can lift him or her up, but woe to him who falls alone! If two lie together, they are warm, but how can one be warm alone? A man might prevail against one who is alone, but cannot overcome two men who work together, even if they are not strong. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” There has hardly ever been better poetry of friendship than this.

Solomon also makes another, and more surprising, discovery. It is opportunity.

Whatever happens, happens. “The tree falls to the south, or maybe to the north, but wherever it falls, there it is.” So what should we do? Solomon says, take a chance! Do something enjoyable and good! If the fate of good people is no better than that of evil people, neither is it worse! “Cast your bread upon the waters! Have a feast for seven people—why not eight? For if you are always worrying about the wind, you will never sow, and if you are always worrying about the clouds you will never reap.”

At the end of Die Winterreise, Schubert’s traveler notices a poor organ-grinder standing in the street, his feet bare in the snow. He waits for someone to put money in his tray, but nobody does. Even the dogs snarl around him. But he does not notice; he is at peace. Perhaps the traveler went crazy at this moment, as crazy as the organ-grinder already was. But for once—for once!—the wanderer thinks about someone other than himself, and sees through another’s eyes. He tells the old man he wants to stay with him, and sing while he grinds his organ. It’s too bad that the wanderer has to stand out in the cold in order to appreciate companionship; he could have saved himself the trip. But he found some meaning in life.

And many of us find plenty of meaning in life, despite Luck being the Empress of the World, and despite God not doing anything in the world. To affirm the good things that we can find to do, even if in the long run the forces of evil erase all of our good work—that is what most of the entries in this blog will be about!

Thus ends, for now, my series of 13 essays in which I explore Ecclesiastes, Die Winterreise, and Carmina Burana, in search of a meaning for life.

Some More Thoughts About Altruism

Today is election day, and I am posting this entry before the results are in. The election forms the backdrop for yet more comments I will make about one of the best human adaptations, the capacity for altruism. Across the country, observers have noticed the overwhelming flood of negative campaign ads. While surveys have shown that the candidates themselves favor positive ads, the “independent” groups that support them funnel a seemingly unlimited amount of money into negative ads. These groups have such names as “Fund for Freedom, Love, Goodwill, and a Bright Future,” or something like that. I might note that, since I do not have television, my own estimate relies on the large amount of campaign mail that I receive in Oklahoma. In this reddest of red states, I am surprised that the campaign mail seems mostly positive. Republican Tom Coburn is running for Senate again, and I have seen none of his ads; but in 2004 his negative ads were really vicious. In general, even if not in Oklahoma in 2010, altruism seems buried by negativity.

Midterm elections usually favor the minority party, and this one will almost certainly be no exception. This means that, at least on the national level, altruistic cooperation will be more important than ever. If Congress goes Republican, it will have to participate in a give-and-take with the Democratic president (direct reciprocity), if anything is to be done; and the reputation of both parties will depend on their display of goodwill (indirect reciprocity). At least, this is my hope. But I remember the government shutdown in 1995, because Newt Gingrich’s Republicans demanded that President Clinton do everything they wanted, and I suspect that something at least this bad will happen again.

Altruism is an instinct, and like most instincts it operates at an almost subconscious level that would be nearly impossible to codify into rules. Imagine programming a computer to be altruistic. Altruism cannot be legislated. Let me give an example. When I sit in my backyard, I can hear the bleating of a goat down the alley. Remember, this is in the city limits of Durant, Oklahoma. I imagine that one goat is no problem: not much noise, not much waste. But how many goats are too many? You could make a law about this but it would be complex: how many goats per unit area could be allowed, relative to waste disposal processes. I can imagine city officials spending hours on a goat ordinance. But altruism makes it simple: don’t have so many goats that it bothers your neighbors. You can probably think of a nearly unlimited number of examples of legal complexity that could be avoided by altruism. No matter how complex the laws may be, a non-altruist can find a technicality around them.

It can get even worse. Yugoslavia, during the Soviet era, was at peace not because of altruism but because of Tito’s dictatorship. As soon as the dictatorship was gone, all hell broke loose. The nearly total absence of altruism virtually ruined that part of the world. An unstable altruistic truce exists in Rwanda, one which totally broke down in 1994. My point is simply that nothing can take the place of altruism.

And in upcoming years, our politicians will need to remember this, especially the Republicans who are clearly less altruistic than Democrats, and who have promised that, if they take power, they will offer no compromise. John Baynor has declared the number one priority of a new Republican majority to be the destruction of Barack Obama’s presidency. I fear that altruism will not just be ignored but be shunned by the hyperventilating Republicans.

This entry also appears on my evolution blog.