Thursday, March 31, 2022

Beyondism - The Eugenic Religion Of Raymond B. Cattell

 

The Religion Of Beyondism 
Eugenic Religion Of The Future 
The Works Of Raymond B. Cattell


A New Morality From Science - Beyondism (PDF)
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Beyondism - Religion From Science (PDF)
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See Chapter Summaries (Here)


The Beyondist Catechism

1. That evolution is the prime process visible in the universe, to which we have to conform, and should do so in good will. 

2. That human evolution proceeds ultimately by natural selection among groups, which determines and is determined by natural selection among individuals, genetically and culturally 

3. That natural selection among groups and individuals requires as a precondition adequate variation among groups and individuals, genetically and culturally. 

4. That one important factor in group survival resides in the laws that govern its internal structure and the desirable mutual behavior of individuals. The evolution of the best interindividual ethical values is therefore based finally on the processes of intergroup differential survival, the competitive conditions for which must be maintained. The ethics of a particular group are fixed, additionally, by aiming to survive in relation to its particular aspirations and circumstances. 

5. Historically, "revealed" religions are attempts to congeal the naturally, evolution-derived ethical systems and to aid their practice by priesthoods, rituals, and imaginary after-life rewards, etc. Historically, they made the imperialist mistake, however, of extending the within group derived values of any single group to universal values among men, thus conflicting with (2) above. 

6. The spiritual life of Beyondism arises, in part, like that of the other religions, from genetic urges unsatisfied in everyday life, unavoidably in any culture with genetic lag. Beyondism differs in shaping those desires explicitly to logically indicated evolutionary needs rather than, as in revealed religions, inventing subjective beliefs to meet and fit the accidental frustrations. 

7. Beyondism necessarily regards many beliefs and practices of revealed religion as inadequate or misleading. For the notion of a loving father God, it substitutes faith in the purpose of evolution. It regards mankind as no "apple of God's eye," but as one species among millions, in a universe that is neither favorably nor unfavorably disposed to us. Our individual immortality is also restricted to what we pass on to the life of our group. This greater emotional austerity of Beyondism will slow down its universal acceptance, but develop a new sense of spirituality. 

8. There are six main entities to which an individual's ethical values can be functionally oriented: fellow group members, the group government, other group governments, members of other groups, individuals committed to a Beyondist Ethic, and, above all, the Evolutionary Purpose. Each of these objects calls for precise alignment of its loyalties, in a situational hierarchy among them. For example, a man's ethical loyalty to his own group exceeds that to members of "mankind" generally. However (a) the injunctions of the different "object" ethics are different, mostly, in kind, and (b) circumstances put emphasis on the primary survival of all groups, if the total existence of man is threatened. The rose diagram of ethical values (Figure 8-1) should answer many ethical questions now troubling teachers and religious-political parties. 

9. The only ultimate test of the fitness and progress of a group's culture-genetic make-up is whether it survives, historically. However, just as individual eugenics avoids the cruelty of in-life selection of failures, so the disasters of cultural death and genocide among groups can be lessened by foresighted changes based on objective health measures understanding the comparative morbidity of cultures and races, akin to a medical watch on individuals. 

10. The cultural and genetic evolution of groups are alike in that variation-largely inaccessible directly as to evolution of desirability-must occur in both, followed by natural selection. The process is well understood in genetics, but has new, as yet unorganized, principles in the evolution of cultural elements. Culture changes by the mechanical and social inventions of leading persons, and by borrowing (willing or forced) from other cultures. As Graubard (1986) points out, "exceptionally radical inventions are the work of exceptionally gifted individuals." In addition to the direct molding effect of inventions, there are side effects from their interactions with economic, population, meteorological, etc., material pressures. Cultural elements survive on their own merits, independently of the genetic group using them, and show continual elaboration, though there is interaction of survival with the genetic suitability of the group, and the group's situation. 

11. Being the work of superior intelligences, culture, as a whole, is likely to demand more complex adjustments from the general population than they are genetically suited to make. This discrepancy we call genetic lag. it has some correspondence to the difference between the instinctual reactions of the old brain and the adjustments made possible by the cortex. Genetic lag is the cause of many social problems. 

12. The saying that "man adapts his environment to himself instead of suffering selection from environment, " is a half-truth since his cultural adaptations are to environment. His cultural developments, however, are of two kinds: "p-culture" which adapts as outlets for his frustrations, as in poetry, music, and drama, and "r-culture" which actually fits him to environment, as in engineering, medicine, and science. The convolutions of p-culture may be training for r-culture, as well as for temporary emotional adjustment; but it is primarily by r-culture that he survives. 

13. Eugenic measures seek to reduce the genetic lag; but the adjustment sought is partly to the universe generally and partly to a particular culture and its situation. The discrepancy of genetics and culture arises largely from the movement of culture by "inventions" (mutations). An adventurous society will deliberately create genetic mutations to see what they will do toward creating a new culture. Evolution is thus an interaction of genetic and cultural mutations, each shaping, by survival contributions, the other. Genetic advance on a broad front is dependent on man's adventuring beyond horizons. The spirit of adventure is therefore a central value in Beyondist ethics, and contrary to many "universalist" revealed religions. 

14. Beyondism calls for an examination of the internal rules of progress, and concludes first that a substantial freedom for individuality is required. In revolution, advanced and atavistic groups (detesting culture) operate together. In reaching the same "revolutionary" changes by evolution, lesser genetic lag is probably a precondition. When ethical rules are scientifically derived from social research, egoistic, antisocial individualism can be treated in distinction from creative individualism. The id constantly chafes for "human rights" rather than duties, and rights are not "God given," but, truly, contractual and situationally fixed by the conditions of group survival. 

15. Beyondism calls practically for a vast increase in social research, with such objectives as making national comparisons, defining ethical systems, clarifying the ethical and cultural values of each group, and so on. For each group should follow its own divergent adventure, racially and culturally, in cooperative competition with a world federation of groups, each with its own sociobiological research institutes. 

16. The spirit of Beyondism is one of common human adventure, of risk taking, and of an austere acceptance of nonsentimental values, and the constant existence of tragedy. Our situation in the universe is more precarious than we commonly accept, and it behooves us to evolve in intelligence, and secure command of possible environments at the fastest possible pace. With every gain of security, from science, much of the gain has been socially lost to further support of science by expenditures in sentimental support of trivial id demands. We have to control suecorant behavior, just as every instinct needs control, away from unbounded "social welfare" into knowledge-producing support. If survival is the final test of ethics, our ethical values, and the political practices resulting, need serious re-education, e.g., toward a simple even income tax, and the acceptance of direction by qualified elites, democratically watched. 

17. Since Beyondism sees survival to be as dependent on genetic as cultural bases, one change of present values indicated is in an altogether more enthusiastic pursuit of eugenics. This involves the acceptance of genetic individual differences, without envy or malicious obstruction, and of better education for the gifted. Probably a positive eugenic condition could be most simply established by an ethic of more children from the socially more successful. The mechanics would require some economic laws, since a bright child, going to college, is decidedly more of a family economic burden than one of average intelligence. The particular goals of eugenic selection can be democratically set by the needs of each society and its ideals. One of the main sources of antieugenic thinking and dysgenic practice is the absence of school education of the voting body particularly in biology and statistics. 

18. Races formed in the past, due largely to geographical isolation, are of only transient and esthetic particularity and importance. The genetic groupings (races) of the future will arise from self-conscious selection by each cultural group. Their development requires regard for the efficiency of language barriers and for migration control considerations. In a long term view, the genus homo sapiens would be wise to split, by conscious segregation of ideals, into more than one species. This may involve "genetic engineering" or become achieved as a side result of solar system colonization. 

19. The main cultural development that Beyondism requires is a quite unprecedented increase in support of socio-biological research. Many ideas in this book are "promises" of advance, and it is hard, for example, to substantiate such views as that the advance of culture occurs through restriction of sexual activities, by any indubitable present evidence of relation. The research institutes that need to be set up are both national in roots-attending to the particular national adventure-and international, obtaining laws of social effects by cross comparison of national cultures. The issues to be investigated are as mind-boggling as the most sophisticated problems in, for example, modern physics. Scientists in sociobiology will only rarely, with special selection for truly genius level of talent, be able to make the needed progress. 

20. Beyondism is a coherent system of beliefs that scientists can be expected to understand and, in the main, support. At this point in history there has been a startling increase of interest in the bearing of psycho-biological discoveries on human organization. If a sufficient body of scientists and others can be brought together, in sufficient accord, the time has come for the development of an actual Beyondist organization to begin affecting political, educational. and economic decisions. An appeal is accordingly here made for Beyondists to get together in a fellowship of discussion.


Chapter Summaries:

 A New Morality From Science - Beyondism

Three Gateways to the Understanding of Life - Beyondism Summary Chapter 1










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Chapter Summaries - A New Morality From Science - Beyondism

 

Chapter Summaries:

 A New Morality From Science - Beyondism

Three Gateways to the Understanding of Life - Beyondism Summary Chapter 1









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Tuesday, March 29, 2022

The Integration ofthe Emotional Life with Progressive Institutions - Beyondism Summary Chapter 9

 (1) Psychologists recognize that the conscience or superego has a dynamic unity; and a strength in individuals partly contributed to by innate components and partly by the moral strength and affection of upbringing, especially in infancy. But in the complex modern world it needs to develop various specialized emotional attitudes, and will encounter different value conflicts, in some three main areas: man to man within the culture; society to society; and man to his cosmic environment. Such behaviors as personal affection, hostility, conformity, frankness, compassion, self-assertion, will receive quite different values in different settings. In this respect the education of conscience is today relatively primitive. Actually, when the full roster of role relations for the individual in connection with the above three areas is worked out there are over two dozen different "relations-of-obligation."

(2) Corresponding to the internalized values in the branches of conscience there are in the external world group institutions and their contractual requirements and legal forms. The latter include relations to government, to fellow citizen in the same culture, to fellow citizen under federated world government, and to a united nations organization. Finally there is what we have called the transcendental conscience which is to the individual conception of cosmic purpose as it exists outside any human group. Both social organization and education still have to sort out these obligations.

(3) Since the value system in each is in need of continual development a necessity arises, not yet recognized in any formal establishments, for research centers devoted to interpreting evolutionary goals in terms of the specific mechanisms of interaction discovered by social science in each.

(4) This would indicate the need to inaugurate (i) research institutes for which the individual national or other community is a trustee and supporter, and which concern themselves with the most desirable moral behavior of individuals within a group (a) with respect to any group whatever, and (b) with respect to the particular experimental goal values of the given unique group. (ii) Research institutes attached to the world federation of united nations, and concerned with discovering the best rules (for evolutionary purposes) governing the relation of group to group. These would also coordinate comparatively the data from the numerous specific group research institutes and offer advice and direction on the specific interactions in what we have called the Grand Experiment. (iii) Independent research institutes, depending on private capital, free to work out theoretical positions in relation to the transcendental conscience.

(5) Since such institutes cannot exist in an anarchic world, this description of research implies a corresponding political power structure. The central federated world power structure will facilitate data gathering (since both within and between countries official support will be needed to obtain data otherwise reluctantly given) and the implementation of recommendations for international adjustments. The United Nations, and its auxiliaries, e.g., U.N.E.S.C.O., do not at present extend to the conceptions here proposed. Their conceptual span is limited both by taking a legalistic aim of preservation of the status quo rather than a dynamic view of adjusting to growth and in not having reached the conception of a very great emphasis on research here proposed.

The research institutes in morality - the king of sciences in its complexity and breadth of required knowledge - must not be viewed as routine, civil service, bureaucratic organizations, but as recruiting individuals of genius to pursue pioneer trails in research in social psychology, economics, sociology, genetics, social medicine, etc. For progress in social thought still depends on individuals, though they are not able as in previous times to achieve their creations alone in a garret, but need teams of helpers, computers, and laboratory facilities. It is vitally important that so far as research on the values of the transcendental conscience is concerned, such equipment, and the finances to maintain it, shall not prohibit the complete freedom of the single investigator possessed of genius.

(6) By any historical standard of what constitutes a cultural revolution, Beyondism is revolutionary. However, both in its inauguration and in its running it introduces mechanisms which make revolutionary degrees of change possible by peaceful, though vigorous evolutionary steps, which begin in scientific, intellectual progress at the top. These mechanisms are, first, that a research institute in the socio-moral area, needs to be linked to the legislative-executive political government of each society, thus assuring that change starts from above. Secondly, that secular education needs to deal more extensively with social science, providing a means for educating public opinion to a continuously rationally changing verdict of science.

Nevertheless, if reaction in religion (which now holds the endowments) should prove too obstructive, an evangelical force for a Beyondist viewpoint may become necessary. The energy of youth here needs to be enlisted, though realistically one must recognize that its revolutionary idealism is always dangerously mixed with reaction against normal, socially-inevitable restraints. In the complex world of today evangelical youth has to drop those whose persistence extends only to "instant satisfaction" and to cultivate that gifted fraction which carries its activism into a mature, scientific, technical examination of issues. This youthful group is indeed the Vanguard that will carry Beyondism into effect.

(7) The problem of authority is confused by popular stereotypes, e.g., that since creativity is deviation, deviation must be creativity. Toleration of deviation is partly justified by the need to experiment partly by our ignorance of precisely true moral values. As far as the latter is concerned, the only logical justification for "liberal" permissiveness is ignorance. If morality becomes a branch of science it has the authority of truth; and then should be enforced in practice as "tightly" as the degree of approximation at that point of scientific advance of the subject permits. The objections frequently raised to authority are actually to a dogmatic, nonexplanatory and unprogressive authority, and these vanish if authority itself has a built-in machinery for research movement and is more closely in touch with scientific advance than is the general public. Authority connotes the possibility of censorship or restraint which, though resisted by mass media in the name of "freedom of the press" constitutes the as yet missing "frontal lobes" in the institution we call the press and T.V. Either an internal or an external censorship has as important and legitimate a role here notably in relation to misrepresentation of fact, biased choice of what is news, and pollution of young minds, as it does already in respect to other professions and other goods supplied to the public. The press has no more right to be free of democratic "quality" controls than education, medicine, the legal profession or business. In the end an objective evaluation of a questionable deviation in manner of life consists in asking it to prove its capacity to maintain a viable, non-parasitic, experimental splinter culture composed solely of persons with those beliefs.

(8) The arts, being based like revealed religion upon intuition, cannot offer the reliably checked inferences and inventions in moral values that a scientifically-based Beyondism can do. In the process of adjustment including moral adjustment - feeling must adjust to reality thinking not thinking to feeling. The role of the arts toward Beyondism remains what it has been to other moral systems accepted with authority, namely, that of subtly and sympathetically educating the emotions of the common man to the new and better adjustments demanded. (Not that this is the sole function of the arts, the roles of which cover catharsis, consolation, and condenser action also, these being present, for example, definitely in the functions of "art for art's sake.")

Unfortunately, though drama, music, art, architecture and literature have had their historical golden ages of harmony, powerfully interpreting great spiritual value movements, their activity in this role has become enfeebled in the last century as the credibility of traditional religion has declined. Although they have been given no chance as yet to discover how they would interpret Beyondism, since its creed has not hitherto been expressly developed, their relation to science, which is the parent of Beyondism, has so far been inauspicious. Glancing at science without any real education therein, they have been able to see it only as "mechanical knowledge," whereas in fact science has brought into the world a spirit previously absent - an austere spirit, commanding a basic integrity of thought; a patient spirit demanding a loving respect for factual realities; an undaunted, adventurous spirit conferring faith in the future of mind, and a generous spirit responsible for most of the improvement in man's lot in the last five hundred years. The arts of the present century have hitherto failed to tune themselves to this new message; but the work of a few pioneers now gives hope that they will soon create the emotional education and insight needed to enrich a Beyondist adjustment.

(9) The emotional life which Beyondism offers is very different from that of the traditional religions, which are concerned more with palliating failure and supplying consolations for frustrated instinct, by what are often intellectual illusions, e.g., of personal immortality and a personally loving deity. By contrast, Beyondism, while offering consolation to misfortune, gives emotional support to aspiration for human advance, supplies the means for an engrossing group adventure, and presents us with the deep satisfaction of an integrated vista ofthe universe, and our true part therein. The two main contrasts: (a) Beyondism's argument that a gross love of man is not the whole ofreligion , and (b) its occupation ofthis extensive new world of evolutionary endeavor-more than compensate for the loss of an illusory type of immortality and the dangerously misleading concept of a Providence in the universe benevolent to man. As to the first, some revealed religions, it is true, have had an inspired perception that "love of God" is as important as love of man; but they have not been able to find operations, as in science and evolutionary social experiment, whereby this concept can be given service, other than by love of man. Although the individual needs to move from self love to love of mankind, the latter  has to be intelligently interpreted in a Beyondist framework, else it is mere mutual narcism and subject to many hedonistic perversions. Indeed, here is almost as much need for research, education and control regarding agape as of eros or even of such perennially destructive emotions as pugnacity and envy. Yet more refined research is needed to find what the Beyondist position should be on extending love and succorance (as Christianity feels it should) to the deliberate, planful parasite and criminal.

(10) The passing of the individual human life, as well as that of noble races and great cultures, though not a meaningless tragedy, is yet an ever-grieving loss to the human heart. The abstract splendor of man climbs toward the empyrean, but the rose that scented a June night, and the face that meant for us the depths of human understanding sink back into the dusk into which all precious particular human memories crowd and fade. All that our present understanding permits us to see is that each individual has his rendezvous with life, in which he succeeds, according to his aspirations, in linking with the immortals of the past, participating in the drama of his hour and contributing by the immortality of his acts to the ever expanding racial and cultural stream. Meaning and emotional warmth are given to his life as it is lived by what he can share with equally dedicated companions in the adventure of Beyondism, passing the present horizons of our world.




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The Impact of Evolutionary Values on Current Socio-Political Practices - Beyondism Summary Chapter 8

 (1) Although most of the varieties of government that the nations of the world have inherited miraculously "work," through an empirically derived realism that makes them immune to much individual irrationality, yet they work extremely inefficiently in comparison with conceivable machinery which modern social science could suggest.

Five conditions are necessary to effect changes if need be, of revolutionary magnitudes, by evolutionary methods: (a) A democratic basis for evaluating "wants" broadly, but a machinery to satisfy them by technical means decided by a democracy of specialists. (b) The setting up of a "'ministry of evolution," directing change from the top instead of the bottom of society. (c) An abolition of the archaic stereotypes (under terms like left, right, liberal, fascist) which now catch affiliates to particular parties under the conception that an individual must be "radical" or "reactionary" in his allegiances. (d) The psychological selection and social science training of political leaders. (e) The acceptance of evolutionary ethics values in place of dogmatic religious values in social legislation.

The impact of Beyondist ethics upon existing socio-political practices can take place partly through what have been called "the policy sciences" (Lerner and Lasswell, 1951) which may be defined here as the applied social sciences such as economics, city planning, education, in which value judgments are necessarily implied by every decision. Economic laws, "natural" and legal, illustrate this, though they embrace only a part of the principles governing the life of a society. Nevertheless they are geared to biological and psychological realities which govern group survival and can be flouted only at peril of loss of adjustment. This needs to be heeded particularly in international politics where one vote to one country is a travesty of democratic principles.

(2) A major change which Beyondism calls for in the function of government is an extension of moral concern to the genetic quality of the population. It is as democratically appropriate for a nation to define its ideals in genetics as in education - in eugenics as in euthenics. Although psychology and medicine will gradually move toward a capability of making a direct evaluation of mental and physical traits, in respect to both creative and restrictive eugenics, yet today a reasonably efficient, self-acting machinery, based on total adaptation and contribution to culture, exists in economics. If earnings are allowed to be the index of social demand, a wise government will need to adjust earnings of the small set of occupations (in teaching, religion and research) not directly evaluable by supply and demand on the market. Under these conditions, instituting a positive relation of family size to earnings, throughout society, would suffice to bring about a positive eugenic trend.

A new moral goal always creates new legislation and new possibilities of dereliction and delinquency, and in the genetic field these defaults are constituted by failure of the able and well-to-do to have children and of those on public welfare irresponsibility to multiply. Legislation must support morality here as in any other field, and we should have the courage to face the need for sterilization (when social work attempting to introduce contraception completely fails). In the case of the well-off who decline to raise children, heavy taxation (or large child allowances in income tax) should help the situation. However, the failures of reproduction in the upper income group at least act as natural selection automatically eliminating those of low superego sensitivity.

(3) Natural, inherent economic laws, i.e., those not depending on government manipulation, must be respected in evaluating adaptation, since they reflect realities in a group's adjustment to its cosmic and human environment. Economists have recognized in general that the best functioning system is one with certain group regulations superimposed on a basically free enterprise, self-adjusting market (see also Bagehot, 1873). But they have variously hesitated, on account of traditional or Communistic moral values, to follow Ricardo in the implication that a man of a particular ability and education is also in the economic sense a commodity. A theory of human supply and demand distributions suggests that this law is nevertheless operative, and that it should be respected as a guide for genetic and educational policies.

(4) Although the greater taxing of those who earn more is recent, it has become uncritically widely accepted. As far as temporary misfortune or inadequacy of Type A is concerned (childhood, accident, old age) this is a defensible "charity," but the argument from envy and threat is wrong. Those societies will be most successful whose morale and purposefulness is such that optimum differentials can be tolerated. These differentials motivate educational improvement, spread of more effective values, and a eugenic balance in family size differentials. Within the central range of earning the differential income tax, upsetting the ratio of reward to effort, may seem a minor burden, but in biological groups even a small handicap, over a few generations, can bring extinction to the sub-group subjected to it.

The equal tax for all, required by the fact that all essentially get the same services from society, cannot be rejected on any sound principle but only on the expediency that it is assumed impossible to collect from all. The inability to meet this debt should be one criterion of assignment to the perhaps one-tenth of the population considered dependent or "'hospitalized." An enormous bureaucratic saving would in any case be made by a uniform tax. Other economic customs which need to be considered in terms of ethical value implications are insurance, migration for employment and upset of the natural market for workers, managers, goods and capital by political power. But these are realized and discussed whereas the income tax question has some features of being under a taboo. It is not asserted here that the equal tax in its simplest sense is a proven desideratum, but only that it deserves serious study in the light of new principles.

(5) Current discussions of ideal population size have (a) neglected the arguments earlier (page 366) for the greater survival and evolutionary value of larger populations, (b) extrapolated in too simple a fashion from present cultures and populations, neglecting what scientific invention is likely to do in radically changing problems of food supply and pollution, (c) completely ignored the question of population quality. A monster population could be a healthy and vigorous organism. The beaming of hysterical calls for population reduction on the advanced societies, and specifically on the middle classes, is, most unfortunately, calculated to convert world society into a headless monster.

(6) As to the structure of society Beyondism indicates no extreme position such as the abolition of classes or the institution of elites. As far as evidence can at present be read, fractionation of society into cultural and genetic sub-classes has some valuable functions, provided it is on an underlying basis of political and spiritual democracy. Such groups lessen genetic regression to the mean and permit try-outs of diversified sub-cultures, but if carried too far seem to impair morale. Research urgently needs directing to the problem of optimal within-group diversity.

(7) The type of scientific inference from evolutionary goals that may be needed in the aspects of ethical decision that depend on psychological dynamics can be illustrated by the presently much debated field of sexual morals. Here the discrepancy between genetic endowment, in this case in the sex erg, and its realistic adaptive value - the CAG discrepancy - is extremely great, highlighting the problem in all such discrepancies. Rationalism, in the form of modern Humanism, has taken altogether too limited a view of the "'effect on others" involved in sex behavior. The need for restriction on sexual freedom is complexly determined, but is indicated especially by the economics of psychological energy, and the dependence of cultural creativity upon ergic sublimation. Though our emotional imagination is inadequate to conceiving that a change could occur in our preoccupation with romantic love it is likely that, in terms of millennia, comparatively rapid transformations will be brought about here, perhaps with initial aid of biochemical reduction of sex drive, opening up new spectra of cultural-emotional expression to replace this domain of expression.

(8) Apart from the technical advances which learning theory and psychological testing are likely to bring to education, Beyondism needs to emphasize three things: (i) the need for a far more comprehensive and realistic biological education giving perspective on man's place in the universe; (ii) a training essentially in emotional balance and character, ensuring a fair-mindedness and objectivity, without which advances in reasoning are merely dangerous, and at the same time a capacity to defend oneself against the emotional arts of psychological warfare. (Especially, education should avoid a negative correlation of intelligence and character.) And (iii) the extension of the technical development of education toward defining what is ideally needed in the "raw material," i.e., euthenics and eugenics, need to be geared into more positive mutual connection.

(9) Mass media of communication have been allowed to grow up haphazardly apparently with no other principle than that they are free to say what they like and to cater to whatever public tastes are profitable to them. No other institution in organized civilized societies has been allowed to grow without internal and external controls, and it is only by their mesmerizing popular opinion with the obsolete slogan of complete freedom to comment on policies that they have persisted in this immature structure. Granting the mass media complete political freedom should not be construed as granting them absolute license to undo education and to vulgarize and trivialize the minds of young people. Their unregulated power to put out information selectively, to make more educated viewpoints invisible, e.g., in the interests of advertising, and to destroy reputations, is an anachronism in societies otherwise supplied with the necessary checks and balances of a complex organism. In the recent action of the British, American and other governments on tobacco advertisements, and in some other ways a beginning of the necessary control by social conscience and non-party government has appeared. Until something akin to the accountability in the parallel "information service" of educationnappears, however, no remedy is visible to the more subtle problem of transmitting mere noise.

(10) Injunctions from Beyondism for practical social action studied in this chapter are to be taken more as illustrative of the kind of steps of inference possible from this approach than as final suggestions. The chief differences of the innovations suggested by Beyondism from the well-entrenched habits and positions which it opposes reside in the fact that it begins with doubts, with a search for more explicit basic principles and with systematic (statistical) factual investigation. However, since it takes the duty and the ultimate goals of investigation seriously it does not propose to remain lost in doubts. For it follows the scientific philosophy of Bacon that "If a man begins in certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."


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The Departures ofBeyondism from Traditional and Current Ethical Systems - Beyondism Summary Chapter 7

 (1) To clarify and enrich the meaning of Beyondism, so far presented only in logical abstractness, the present chapter brings out some illustrations of departures from the familiar values ordained by currently predominant and traditional moral systems. Its bearings are here given with respect to revealed religions such as Christianity, Humanism, Existentialism, Communism, and the implicit secular values in the economic customs regulating society. (This chapter restricts to more general values since the next chapter proceeds to actual social measures and mechanisms.) Nevertheless, because dependable inferences for social progress require that the already explicit basic principles be brought into conjunction with particular facts, and because scientific laws have not yet been established clearly connecting principles and facts in these areas through social science research, the conclusions and illustrations here must be considered quite tentative. Even so it is illuminating to see how strikingly different the new conclusions regarding social values frequently are from the stereotyped answers of either "conservative" revealed religion or "radical" social writings.

(2) Explicit differences from the principal revealed, universalist religions have been constantly brought out in passing, but as we definitely focus on them here we note four main departures: (i) that Beyondism plans for a constant revision of values by scientific research; (ii) that the universalistic religions are imperialistic in their universalism, seeking an homogeneous and identical set of cultural-moral values, whereas Beyondism calls for a distinct ethical value system "federated" in universalism, in which the only common tenet is a basic assertion of brotherhood in supporting whatever persistent competition is necessary to evolution (as an agreement to disagree, while maintaining mutual respect and goodwill); (iii) that there is a sharp difference in attitude to the treatment of poverty and misfortune. For Beyondism proposes a compassion so directed as to offer elimination of the problem, not a perverted compassion which ensures its continuation; (iv) that Beyondism must decline to gain acceptance at the cost of making largely illusory emotional "deals."

(3) In the third respect an important difference is that whereas universalistic religions laud love as a motive, and consider that universal love of man by man can do no wrong, Beyondism (while agreeing that love as agape [compassion] is normally in short supply in human relations, and a rarer commodity than love as eros [passion]) recognizes that any emotion can err, since our past genetic emotional development is inadequate to modem needs. One of the defects and dangers of love (as agape) is that it can be more concerned with human freedom from stress than human achievement and adventure in evolution, and that its aim can slide without any definable stopping point from concern with man's happiness to concern with his pleasure and indulgence.

(4) The incompatibility of Beyondism with revealed religions (which latter many modern intellectuals and Humanists consider obsolete) turns out, as regards conclusions (rather than ways of reaching them) to be less uncompromising than with a mass of modem writing which some "intellectuals" embrace in "Humanism," "Existentialism," and some ill thought out varieties of "liberalism." Humanism now has the quality of a social value movement (no longer restricted to the academic meaning of Humanistic studies) which, like other secular religions, claims to contrast itself as "free thinking" and "rational" with the "dogmatic" basis of revealed religions. Actually, however, it is not one iota less intuitive and a priori in the source of its values. Indeed many of the values in Humanism and Existentialism are a digest of fragments eclectically and uncritically absorbed from various religions over two thousand (and particularly the last four hundred) years of Humanist thought. In some cases their emotional inheritance from dogmatic religions has favored more the comfortable illusions than the austere truths.

(5) Lacking any doctrinal precision and dogma these "secular" religions are open to steady attrition of values. Also they continually tend to discard restraints that are onerous or exacting, by the intellectual rationalizations based on the pleasure principle and narcism as studied in the last chapter. Especially this shows itself in an unwillingness to entertain concepts of guilt or sin, and to retain the functions of retributive justice and the concept of contrition that psychologically belong therewith.

(6) These are some among many consequences of the basic difference of Beyondism from Humanism, Existentialism and secular moralities generally. The basic difference is that the former begins with the inexorable standards inferred from the nature of the outer world, in relation to survival and progress, whereas the latter start with human felt needs and intuitions. This does not mean that Beyondism ignores the inner depths of feelings. On the contrary it recognizes that the complexity of the external adjustment requires an educated complexity of inner emotional life, particularly in sharing the tragic sense of our adjustive tasks in human destiny as we see it. Thus it appreciates as much as the humanities do the need for moral values to be enriched and explained in art and literature, but questions only the nature of the values. Part of the basic difference indicated by this rejection by Beyondism of naive anthropocentrism appears in the Humanistic ascription to man of godlike capacities, certainties and virtues. Here Beyondism is closer to traditional religions in recognizing his meager status, while yet it exhorts him to the Promethean adventure.

(7) In relation to Communism, and some socialist philosophies the progressive nature of the Beyondism position is apparent in (a) its recognition that any "Utopian" pattern is born static and dead; (b) an emphasis on the indispensableness of individuality of thinking in producing progress, which is unlikely to reach its full independence without being sustained by economic freedom and social independence; (c) perceiving both differences of earning and saving to have, over and above their social motivational value, a function in maintaining genetic progress within the group ("To each according to his needs" is an inadequate philosophy); (d) recognizing that any lack of within-group selection is likely to throw the burden on between-group selection which is less efficient, and (e) regarding the removal of poverty by "spreading it thin" as merely sweeping the real problem under the mat-the real problem being a partly genetic, partly motivational inadequacy in a section of the population which unless dealt with will debilitate the total group and weaken its chances of survival.

In relation to capitalism the problems are (a) the inadequacy of adjustment of rewards to contribution in activities lacking marketable value (basic research, moral enquiry, education) (b) a possibly excessive persistence of inheritance of property in relation to biological inheritance; (c) a poor direction of reward by the free market, e.g., in the encouragement of trivial amusements and material luxuries, relative to wiser production which some direction by a moral, foresighted elite government or church might foster and (d) probably a greater demand on morale in that it has to accommodate to appreciable individual difference in reward without destructive levels of envy being generated.

(8) In considering the relation of the values in current social economic measures to Beyondism one has to evaluate separately (a) the correctness of the present science (alas, still infantile) of economic laws in being able to reach assigned goals, and (b) the implicit values in the manipulations which both governments and socio-economic doctrinaire reformers now introduce. Any confident dependence on either the science or the entangled values would at present be ill-placed, both because economics as so far developed bears the defects of incomplete relation to social psychology, and because no serious attempt to state its implicit values has ever been made.

(9) Probably the maintenance of a fundamentally free and competitive economy, with the added government controls necessary to integration, and acceptance of the Keynesian aim of a steady, full draft on the furnace of the economy will prove to be basically consistent with Beyondism. But the latter also requires in principle that the genetic and educational supply of people should be made responsive to the market, and this involves clashes with present values. As much adaptation to economic laws as Beyondism advocates does not mean acceptance of economic requirements as final arbiters, but only the recognition that economic laws belong to, and reflect in human society, the realities of man's relations to his environment. For economic manipulations should have more than economic goals, and in fact current economic practices are ignoring the necessary subordination of immediate economic "desirables" to the ultimate evolutionary goals involved in group survival, genetic selection, scientific discovery, and cultural experiment.

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Psychological Problems in Human Adjustment to the New Ethics - Beyondism Summary Chapter 6

 (1) The gap between any existing human genetic endowment and the adaptive behavior potential required in some fairly remote future is unspecifiable, because the latter is still latent in the complexity of the cosmic environment. But, man's culture is an intermediate term, produced by reconnoitering the demands of environmental adjustment some way ahead (as a rule) of the genetic variation. The cultural anticipation of the true future is not entirely correct, and the genetic development will not therefore, entirely follow it - and should not try to do so slavishly. But the culturo-genetic adaptation gap existing between culture and "human nature" can be conceived as an expression of how far human nature itself lags behind the level of moral perception already achieved in the culture. Thus culture exerts a pressure on human nature in what is largely a morally desirable direction, and the concept of "original sin" (as the extent of the innate inadequacy to reach the given moral standards) has an operational meaning.

(2) Revolutionary forces occasioned by the conflict of citizens with their existing culture contain two very different ingredients; one caused, as just stated by (a) the inadequacy of human nature to the existing level of cultural demands, and another by (b) the poor structure of the culture as it becomes visible to the most genuine and intelligent reformers. Because of the temporary alliance which ensues between rebels of the first type, against cultural restraint in any form, with the true reforming minority of the second type, seeking insightfully perceived improvements, the tragic cost of violence - of war and revolution - is often substituted for intelligent evolution. Means can be devised by social science for far better separation of these incompatible forces, especially through machinery for a scientifically guided evolution.

3) The problem of adjustment of human nature to a moral system, considered here first for religio-moral systems generally and then more specifically for Beyondism, has two aspects. First, man may ask what his genetic make-up can do in bending down the moral system degeneratively to itself. Second, he may ask what wise psychological education and genetic selection can do to bring about the greatest movement of human nature toward meeting the demands of the ethical culture.

The greatest discrepancies, and those most prone to "bend" the moral system, are man's over-endowment in pugnacity and sex (relative to present cultural needs), his narcism, his limited capacity to endure "deflection strain" of instinctual satisfactions, the mental weakness of "autism" (notably his ready falling from the reality principle to the pleasure principle) and the still rudimentary, arrested development of the superego.

(4) Following the standard paradigm of adjustment process analysis, we see that the pleasure principle, and the defenses of rationalization, autism, projection, phantasy, etc., which emerge after extended conflict, are capable of powerfully warping intellectual understanding. Indeed, they are likely to develop, (in the rationalizations of social interaction of individuals attempting to avoid frustrating moral demands), numerous philosophical and institutional defenses too elaborate and tangled for logic alone to be able to compel recognition of their fallacies. The possibility is raised of psychologists developing a dynamic calculus o cognitive warping, which could be combined with logic machines to evaluate the extent of evasion of the reality principle in social theories. Historically, this becomes a new development of dialectics. It is most needed for theories on paper, for when they are actually worked out in social life, experimentally, unpleasant natural and social consequences, inevitably, correct errors. The "bill" for behavioral maladaptations is exact and inexorable. But in literature, philosophy and political theory - as distinct from the empirical and disciplined area of science - both traditional rationalizations and new, group-sanctioned phantasies, can easily survive.

(5) Specific areas in which these defenses of innate and other maladaptations to ethical culture now operate, e.g., "rationalism" on sexual license; permissive attitudes on crime and against punishment, are studied in the next chapter. But among some broad and basic expressions of such defenses examined here are the non-acceptance of genetic and other individual and group differences, and the narcistic demand for rights without duties. As to the former, differences are not superiorities, except in regard to a particular community'S specification of what it most needs. As to the latter, the Beyondist position is that man as an individual in the universe has no rights, any claim to such being a delusion from the anthropocentrism of most traditional revealed religions. As a member of a community, man has such relative rights to benefits, in a contract with the rest of the group, as a group of that type of person can wrest from the environment. These rights, e.g., to a given standard of living when not working, will therefore, vary from group to group, and cannot be abstractly specified by statements of "inalienable or absolute rights" or narcistic, subjective concepts of suitable levels of "human dignity."

(6) The central well spring of human motivation that may aid moral elevation in society is the superego, which can be cultivated by affectionate and morally disciplined parents, but the growth of which also hinges on genetic contributions. As with other traits with appreciable genetic components and under active natural selection such as intelligence, superego endowment shows a wide scatter in the present population. Moreover, because of what we have called the counteraction principle, whereby within-group selection for superego endowment may actually be negative, and counteracted only by periodic elevations from betweengroup selection, progress in morality from this basic source is slow.

(7) Because of this immature development of the superego the elevation of moral levels by religion throughout history has been achieved partly by "emotional deals" in which the necessary dynamic forces for introducing inhibitions or higher aspirations are obtained by ergic exchanges, or by the leverage of natural catastrophes, or the use of illusions, requiring belief in the supernatural, such as a compensated heaven. Beyondism has no such deals to make, partly because it requires the austerity of giving up these same illusions, and partly because its very nature forbids anything but the scientist's uncompromising candor. Thus it offers neither a heaven, nor a Christian escape from competition. What it does offer is the aesthetic-intellectual panorama of science, and the living of a collective adventure less blind and less frustrated by popular incomprehension and uncooperativeness than in humdrum community life in the past.

(8) The narcistic and other forces of defense which seek to evade the challenges of evolution may stop short of disputing the Beyondist goal, and yet deny any urgency in attending to it. Our environment is not inherently designed to present its challenges to human survival in a manner carefully graded didactically to human learning capacity. Thus it may at any time present possibly overwhelming confrontations (as it did with the Ice Ages). Consequently, the question "What level of urgency is appropriate in our plan to advance human evolution?" can only be answered by "The maximum!"

To appreciate the ongln and potency of narcistic motive one must remember that living matter and human nature as part of it have no inherent desire to progress but only to continue, the progress being a secondary result appearing through life being forced into the environmental "labyrinth." Two goals which a Beyondist understanding of the situation suggests are (1) the maintenance of a 4'masochistic reserve"a reserve of spiritual readiness through self-maintained pressures and restriction on direct instinctual satisfactions maintained through the lulls of environmental pressure; and (2) the engineering of an "off-balance environment," to present a continual training demand. These also perhaps have a danger-that the rate of change may show the character of positive'feedback and lead to a complete loss of stability.

(9) When all is said, the greatest danger of distortion of the moral system from inherent action of the pleasure principle, is the possibility of bringing competition itself to a halt, by the "hedonic pact" among all groups.

Although the negative results of attempting to communicate with other intelligent beings in our galaxy are too recent to lead to firm conclusions, they call attention to the possibilities: (a) that the degree of independence required in socio-genetic experiments in different solar systems may benof so high an order as even to demand that there be absolutely no communication among them; and (b) that there is characteristically a high probability of the above hedonic pact occurring at a given level of self-consciousness and technical skill in the evolution of intelligent societies, so that communicating capacity is never reached. This supposes that a well-engineered social pact could bring an arrest of moral and general evolution which only a major (and perhaps, by then, overwhelming) cosmic challenge, could end.


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The Moral Directives from the Beyondist Goal: II. Inter-Group Ethics - - Beyondism Summary Chapter 5

 (1) T'he aim of inter-group cooperative competition is to produce by variation and natural selection group genetic and cultural patterns with the highest survival potential in a changing and indifferent universe. Our purpose in this chapter has been to ask what the value of the various possible forms of group interaction is in relation to this goal and what regulations, if any, need to be developed by a world federation of nations to facilitate the best kinds of interactions.

(2) It is a popular error, notably in universalistic ethics or the common misunderstandings thereof, to assume that between-group ethical rules will prescribe the same behaviors as the within-group ethics do for individuals. The injunctions for (a) inter-individual behavior among citizens, (b) inter-group behavior, and (c) behavior among men at large, derive as an interlocking set of moral laws from the same basic goal, but distinctly differently, as a result of difference of situation. The primary law among groups is outright competition, which is secondarily modified by the groups in the world also being a community and requiring boundary conditions to be set up for the most effective outcome from competition.

(3) An instructive instance of the difference is that whereas mutual charity is the major law among individuals, outright transfer of gains from one group to another frustrates and confuses the feedback of proper reward to good cultural habits and genetic inventions. It thus constitutes not an equivalent of "charity" between individuals but a pernicious and evil interruption of group evolution. The highest inter-group morality calls for goodwill and fair play among groups in a plan of adventurous separate group experiment. These two systems of lawful behavior - individual and group - have to be matched by the development of two patterns of moral injunctions in the individual's thinking, ultimately consistent in goal, but adjusted respectively to individual and group behavior. Moreover, they must be integrated under a single individual conscience.

(4) Nations are in the process of generating new cultures and new races. The two are organically interconnected, in that all cultures may not fit naturally and without modification on all races. Nevertheless, there are good arguments for a group's initiating new developments independently in both fields - genetic and cultural. For cultural innovations may lead to genetic innovations otherwise not directly conceivable, and vice versa. The latter-experiment primarily at the level of planning genetic hybridization and inducing mutations - is especially important. For without independent genetic experiment there is some danger of the genetic development merely conforming in a final equilibrium to the "cocoon" of its own culture. Although the disturbing outer challenges from other groups may prevent an arrest of evolution in such a virtual homeostatic equilibrium of cultural and genetic oscillations, the stimulus from introducing independent genetic innovations may be quite important.

(5) The ways in which the primary principles of competition and the secondary rules which adjust it to best action are to be built into an inter-group morality depends on the type of group involved. Groups need to be specifically defined as here, psychologically. Social classes, religious congregations, professional "'craft" groups, etc., do not meet the optimum requirements for units in a group evolutionary scheme as well as the self-conscious nations that have developed (to the number of more than a hundred) since the Renaissance.

The model of variation, natural selection and fresh variation which sustains racio-cultural evolution in such groups takes up to a point the same form in the genetic and in the cultural fields. However, the laws of cultural mutation, borrowing, hybridization and differential survival are at the moment not nearly so well understood as those in the genetic field. One important requirement which the model indicates in both domains is the need for a cycle of hybridization or culture borrowing, followed by isolation and inbreeding. The latter is needed to realize the potentialities of harmonious pattern formation from certain ingredients acquired by hybridization and mutation. Any evolutionary scheme has to cope with the inherent fact that most mutations are "bad." But technical means may soon be developed for speeding up mutation, genetically and culturally, while avoiding a high percentage of adult failures by pre-natal detection, in the genetic case and rapid objective social evaluation in the case of cultural experiments.

(6) This chapter proceeds on the above basis to examine the effectiveness - and therefore the morality - of the common historical forms of group interaction, in producing maximum evolutionary advance. These can be brought into a classification of five major processes: (1) Transplantation from one group to another of (a) cultural practices, and (b) genetic strains, by a movement of people. The last means either invasion or permitted migration; (2) increase of political power and control ("imperialism"); (3) growth of wealth and population; (4) warfare, and (5) the development of intellectual-cultural ascendancies, and the exercise of psychological warfare. Some seven primal conditions for evolution, as we shall henceforth call them, must be maintained throughout any of these interactions, as follows:

(a) The avoidance of a world monopoly of power and culture. In business, among competing corporations it has been reliably generalized that complete laissez-faire tends to result in time in a reduction of the number of competitors, and, at least in the U.S.A., precautions have accordingly been taken to draft laws preventing a complete monopoly. The number of automobile manufacturers, for example, fell from a onetime high of forty to the present figure of close to a dozen. However, it is not certain that reduction normally proceeds beyond a certain point, or that conditions could not be easily set up that would allow the defunct to be replaced by new-born entrants to the competition. The monopoly danger is particularly great through the mode of interaction we call war. Force, has tended to obliterate small countries no matter what their efficiency, if they make one small mistake in alliances. (Finland came near to being so obliterated by Russia, along with Lithuania, Estonia, etc. which were. The disappearance of Venice, Savoy, Naples, etc., as kingdoms through Mazzini was viewed as a liberation from Austria, and thus worthy of liberal enthusiasm, and in this case a common language and closely related culture may justify the absorption.) But history has far more examples where war by an imperial power has gobbled up valuably different smaller experiments. Fear of war, as well as war itself, favor coalescence in larger groups (often, however, federal). But this seems to be reversible, with return to separate cultures, as occurred to different degrees at the end of the Roman and British Empires.

(b) The maintenance of the spirit of cooperative competition and diversity. Two dangers beset competition: (a) that implied in the old saying that competition can act like alcohol- initially stimulating but finally bringing a brutish sameness. In short, it must not become a narrow, single track race, self-consciously aimed at one specific goal, but embrace a generous diversity of goals. For example, the fact that the human race has remained one interbreeding species makes this danger of "one track" a serious one in the eyes of a biologist. Muller, who gave way to no man in his concern that there should be "no place left for biases against races or social classes" nevertheless recognized that in regard to the future of human evolution, in relation to the hundreds of thousands of animal and insect species, "It has been intrinsically dangerous for him [man] to have so long existed as just one species" (1966). Rather than move toward coalescence, it is important for man culturally and genetically, to become increasingly divergent in his varieties, to the point where formation of distinct species occurs.


(c) That cooperative planning and recording is desirable. It has been suggested in introducing the factorial design of the "grand experiment" that the blundering, humanly-expensive "experiments" of history could be improved upon by deliberate planning. There is no doubt that by keeping groups at an optimum and more equal size, by planned diversification, and by other ways, results could be delivered more rapidly, without any interference with the rules of competition as such, as discussed in the planning of research institutions in Chapter 9. In this area the notion of correlative competition is important. By thiswe mean essentially that group A, exploring in one direction, may find a valuable new cultural or genetic mutation x, while group B, in a diverse direction, finds a mutation y. These are advantageous enough to put A and B ahead of other groups, but they remain mutually equal in viability by different excellences. It is conceivable next that, unless total pattern effects forbid it, x and y could now be mutually borrowed. Enriched A and B would then start off at a still more advanced level in new divergencies. This we call "correlative" because it supposes a special correlation of effort in cooperative competitive. Its limit is set by the distance or unrelatedness of the two groups.

(d) The avoidance of total genocide. In the interest of perspective one must insist that the danger of mutual annihilation in competition, or of total extinction of some genetic strain, has been much exaggerated in some current emotional discussions. However, in the frustration-pugnacity spiral discussed under (e) below, the danger of such attitudes developing as "Delenda est Carthago," or Hitler's "final solution of the Jewish problem," or Roosevelt's "total surrender or total destruction" IS psychologically very real. Now total disappearance of cultures and races at long intervals is something that a rational ethics has to face as part of nature. Speaking of one of the periods of highest evolutionary effectiveness Haldane (1928) reminds us that Hinnumerable species, genera and families disappeared from the earth" and Darwin (1917), ~~The greater number of [past] species in each genus, and all the species in many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct." (Biologists count that ninety-eight percent of the one hundred million species ever on earth are now extinct.) Tennyson (1908) after ruminating that the death of the individual does not mean the death of the species, reflected yet again that to nature even the species is not immortal: "

"SO careful of the type?" but no, From scarfed cliff and quarried stone She cries "A thousand types are gone. I care for nothing, all shall go. 

"If the earth is not to be choked with the more primitive forerunners a condition of birth of the new is the disappearance of the old. However, it is part of that cooperativeness of competition that an emotional harmony with the total purpose should eliminate the barbarities and emotional misunderstandings which have constituted the brutality of expansion and contraction in past history. Newer and more humane methods must prevail. For the tragedy of the death of the individual is magnified in the death of a culture and a people. Unfortunately, wherever a question of relative reduction of a population is concerned the word ~~genocide" is today being bandied about as a propaganda term. Nature constantly commits both homicide and genocide, and there is no question that both individuals and races are born to die. But at what point voluntary euthanasia by individuals or genthanasia by groups becomes appropriate is a difficult question. As regards animal species, we are today inclined, for aesthetic and scientific purposes, to make sanctuaries and reservations for species obviously heading for extinction, and still more extreme and scrupulous consideration is indicated before allowing a breed of humans - however maladapted - to become extinct. But it is realistically questionable in both cases how much space the more vital species will continue to allow for museum "storage." The maintenance of the status quo cannot extend to making ninety-nine hundredths of the earth a living museum. Clarity of discussion on these solemn issues of rise and fall in culturo-racial groups would be aided if genocide were reserved for a literal killing off of all living members of a people, as in several instances in the Old Testament, and genthanasia for what has above been called "phasing out," in which a moribund culture is ended, by educational and birth control measures, without a single member dying before his time.

(e) That degeneration of competition into pugnacity must be avoided. In inter-group competition, as in any, if aggression is permitted, the instinctive tendency is to respond with counter pugnacity, and one then often sees a frustration pugnacity spiral. I n some periods of history, notably in that from which Christ sought the escape of turning the other cheek, this can reach impossible levels of hatred, cruelty and destructiveness. Any competitive situation whatever has to be monitored, like a chemical reaction which has positive feedback upon itself, against this degeneration into pugnacity. The modern trend to reduce (socialistically) competition among individuals is likely, incidentally, to increase competition among groups. Not decrease of competition, but avoidance of degeneration into pugnacity, should be the aim of social research. (f) That a humanity-dominated group environment must be avoided. The condition needing attentive monitoring in (e) is actually a special case of certain more general problems that arise when groups begin to constitute too large a part of each other's environment, obscuring at the same time the basic importance of the competition of each group with nature. In these circumstances of a radically altered ecology it has been recognized since the time of Kropotkin (1902), that various cooperative and parasitic relations can develop among members such that they are no longer subject to selection on a "fair" basis as regards independent competence vis-a-vis the environment. As Hardin (1964) has well said,

"The coexistence of species cannot find its explanation in their competitive equality." Indeed, it has obviously been a weak point in our "operational test" of fitness by the criterion of survival that certain lowly types have survived for an enormous time unchanged, e.g., the oyster, the brachiopod, the opossum and the antique New Zealand lizard (Sphenodon). That is why we did not accept this criterion alone. However, as one looks over the broad spectrum of zoological species, from man to amoeba, it is perfectly obvious that they are "equal" in surviving only as long as each has the advantage of its particular ecological niche or geographical isolation or adapted source of nutrition. Put them out in the open arena, and demand that quality of "adaptation to a broader environment" which has been our additional touchstone of evolutionary advance (page 88), and one will find decided inequalities in survival. There is nothing wrong with evaluating evolutionary level by survival and "efficiency," provided the test is applied in a sufficiently broad environment.

(g) Doubts in trusting competition arise when direct inter-group competition begins to account for most "points" in survival. A more subtle difficulty than any faced in the first six processes and conditions above then arises in that a group of groups, in a restricted environment such as the earth, may provide an inadequate testing ground. Any misunderstanding of the purpose and conditions of inter-group competition by this community of nations could set up conditions of inter-group dependency, and striving for artificial, community-approved goals ("best fitted for this company") that would either distort or invalidate the whole experiment.

In summary, there appear some seven limits within the boundaries of which inter-group competition needs to operate if the best conditions for evolution on earth are to be maintained. Before any regulation by a federated group of nations can be safely put into effect, however, intensive research is needed on the full effect of these and other boundary conditions.

(7) An examination has next been made of the specific virtues and possible malfunction of each of the five principal modes of group competitive interaction that have long been in operation. Cultural and genetic transfer from group to group (borrowing, propaganda, migration) probably contribute effectively to evolution only under certain conditions. When groups, for example, borrow simply what is admired, it may turn out to be actually deleterious. On the other hand, relative population gains (with economic level maintained or increased) lead to group interactions favorable to a higher survival potential for the group concerned, e.g., through political influence, stimulation of mutations, survival of major catastrophes.

(8) Although imperialism has slyly become a term of reprimand, the political and territorial expansion of groups has in the past probably been the most rapid and unadulterated of aids to the supersession of culturally and genetically inadequate groups, and to a general evolutionary forward movement. No sound morality of group interaction can take as its goal the maintenance of the status quo; but new conditions and rules for a justice of expansion and contraction remain to be worked out by social science.

(9) Any discussion of the complex role which war has played in the evolution of cultures is difficult because of our intense emotional reactions to it. The central problem in connection with avoiding war is that of keeping competition at a higher level without relapse into what is a degenerative pugnacity, and also in finding alternative expressions for emotional frustration. Contrary to the simple minded stereotype which contrasts the level of"civilization"-(vs-"barbarism") of a country with its proneness to war there is a positive correlation of cultural pressure with frequency of involvement in war, and of level of advance in education and technology with military success. Innovations are suggested which, by performing certain functions which war now has, would have the best chance of eliminating it. War has the dysfunction of diverting development from the conquest of nature, but at the same time it may keep communities braced and adaptive through periods when nature offers no inexorable challenge. However, it counts size above quality and has the constant danger of leading to a monopoly, by conquest. A sudden and complete cessation of the social habits ending in war, which persisted over millennia is unlikely, but development of federated groups is likely to phase war out.

(10) The survival value of intellectual culture ("civilization") as such is hare to see, and it is often disputed that it has any "practical" biological value for group life. The practical survival value of the scientific half of culture is unquestionable; but psychological analyses also suggest real survival value, both vis-ii-vis nature and in rivalry with other groups, from intellectual development in the arts - in literature, music, art and drama. This resides in their assistance in emotional adjustment to a complex culture, in developing loyalties expressly to the culture, in guiding emotional learning, and in creating attractiveness and status for the group relative to other groups.

(11) Psychological warfare, as a special, deliberate and self-seeking form of cultural interference in another group, is repugnant to the scientist in that it aims to go beyond logical argument and use all manner of deception and emotional persuasions. In this, however, it is no different from advocacy at law and from partisan politics. As between groups at least, it makes for the relative success of the more intelligent and disciplined in thinking, though it may deceive both aggressor and victim in time. The design we call a democracy is here at a disadvantage, for in a dictatorship or oligarchic elite, persuasion is examined critically by amagisterium of trained minds, and the average man is shielded from anything but the consistent picture they give him, whereas in an open democracy the average man is more vulnerable to the Machiavellian arts of psychological warfare. However, this has the advantage of producing higher levels of intelligence and emotional education in the general population-in democracies that survive. A model that should not be overlooked in obtaining better understanding of the evolution-generating action of psychological warfare is that of the bacteriophages, which, as Delbruck showed, are parasitic viruses that invade the host and supplant its genetic code with their own, thus using its initial energy resources for a totally different culture. Definite analogies to this exist in business competition and in attempts by rationalist intellectuals directly to capture, for extreme, doctrinaire positions, groups of positive viability derived from experience, e.g., the Eisner take-over of the Bavarian government in 1919.

(12) The above processes of group interaction as they have existed since historical records began seem to our examination to be on the whole positively functional for the goal of evolving higher types of group. However, organization to bring scientific mid-wifery to bear on the process is now called for because (a) the Hfactorial" design could be better applied, and extensive record keeping and analysis would reduce trial and error waste in discovering the promising directions of progress; (b) not all existing procedures - especially those of culture borrowing and migration - are as substantially effective as they could be. Finally, most have degenerative forms needing to be avoided - notably in warfare and some forms of psychological warfare - which threaten to deny the required primal conditions (avoidance of world monopoly, etc.) necessary for evolution; (c) with the approaching crowding of the earth there is risk of conditions arising in which man constitutes too much of his own immediate environment for him to react to the realities of nature. Unless new steps are taken this will tend to result (i) in directions of advance more concerned with adjusting to other group pressures than conquering nature, and (ii) in excessive imitation, uniformity, and failure to branch out into more divergent cultural and genetic types. Here we note that so long as man remains a single species he is vulnerable to any single noxious influence that might destroy a species; (d) also a risk arises in these circumstances that self-conscious man will deliberately, for his own ease, seek to arrest the natural selection process. This issue is scrutinized in the next chapter. Meanwhile, since the group natural selection process is one on which all else hinges - notably the derivation of within-group, inter-individual morality - it needs a volume of study that would make this chapter seem a mere trickling head stream to a Niagara of new knowledge.


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Beyondism - The Eugenic Religion Of Raymond B. Cattell

  The Religion Of Beyondism  Eugenic Religion Of The Future  The Works Of Raymond B. Cattell A New Morality From Science - Beyondism (PDF) (...