Creative Title

Night post, because my suitemates are (as usual) being loud, and I don’t entirely feel like starting my Aristotle readings yet (though I’ll need to get that done by tomorrow night, as it’s due Thursday and I’m celebrating my birthday Wednesday night (a week early, for various reasons)).

Perhaps a month or so ago, my mom posed and interesting question at dinner. I believe it was worded something like this: is freedom inherited?

Well, obviously, that wasn’t the absolute clearest choice of words, but I understood it enough–and let me know if I misinterpret this–to mean, “Can a love of (or need for) liberty be inherited?” Well, this is the oldest question in recorded history: the ol’ Nature v. Nurture problem. Seriously, Plato’s Meno asks this about a closely related topic (virtue), where the great, wise Socrates determines (after 30 frick’n pages), essentially, “damned if I know”.

Well, I tried to be a little more helpful at dinner. I responded with a suggestion that it is for some people, but the idea needs to be implanted into others’ heads from some outside force. Somehow, I believe I related it to intelligence–not IQ, necessarily, but ability to rationally see and understand the world around oneself. Perhaps more like being able to know the difference between right and wrong. Thinking back, though, this relation seems to be missing a certain need that must be present within the person to prefer what’s right (unless, of course, I, myself, have a skewed view of what’s right and wrong and it turns out that oppression happens to be right).

So, now, it seems, I’ve made the question of a love for freedom dependent upon one’s virtue and am covering ground already plowed over 2500 years ago. So, by the Ancient Greek definition, virtue is whatever makes any given thing a good or great [that thing]. They (and we) are talking of virtues of the soul, of which they had four (and, frankly, I can’t particularly think of anything to add to these): wisdom, justice (sort of changed now to morality), temperance, and courage. My current hypothesis, then, is that in order to have a love/need for liberty, one must posess these four things. Wisdom: to be able to know what’s going on in the world around you; justice: to hold a moral system that correctly knows what is right and wrong; temperance: basically, “I control myself just fine, no one else has to”… or something of the sort; and courage: ability to do something to increase one’s own or the general population’s freedoms.

Ehh… scratch that, it doesn’t seem quite right. A soul needs a certain amount of passion and spirit to feel this need. Not to mention, there are plenty of examples of freedom-loving men who lacked in one or more of these faculties (see, for example, Ben Franklin’s time in France or anything about Thomas Jefferson and slaves). Oftentimes, also, there can be some unwise people who love liberty, or some who just won’t do anything about it. Back to the drawing board, then.

Is the need for liberty inherited? See, any nature/nurture debate is difficult to answer because most people are raised by their biological parents, thus, the same people are providing both the nature and nurture for that one individual. Sure, there are friends and siblings and teachers and whatnot influencing the child, but the large majority comes from the parents. Now, of course, there are adoption studies and the like, but those can be somewhat limited and… well, I have yet to find one on this particular issue. Frankly, individuals that feel very strongly about this don’t reveal themselves until freedoms upon the public have been severely restricted, which hasn’t happened in America for, oh let’s see, 230 years or so? Obviously, it’s not that there haven’t been people like that this whole time, but the limit at which they would be willing to risk anything for it had yet to be reached. Thus, it would be hard to do any form of generational study on it.

Theoretically, one could look at the culture of certain countries in an attempt to answer this–I, myself, have often joked that bravery has essentially been bred out of Europe, since all those with that quality have long-since moved to America. But that could just as easily have been cultural influence being passed down through the ages (hah, 200 years=ages. right.)–frankly, I can’t tell. Chances are, though, that it’s a mixture of the two. That’s the way these things typically are found to be: there’s a certain love of independence that is most definitely innate in some people, but a child with even the most extreme amount of that can become a complete slave if taught that restriction is the best and most necessary thing for them.

Of course, I could be wrong one either guess. If either one, though, it’s most likely an inherent trait, for once in a while, if the need is strong enough, the love of liberty can not only be nurtured but thrive and boil over in even the most tyrannical of states. I can’t necessarily say that that person will live very long under that regime, but I’m sure it can happen (unless I’m just fooling myself with hope, which I really pray is not the case). Whether this would be a thing taken genetically or given by God or something, that’s a topic for another post, but I just have a doubt that it can by any means be untaught to an entire population.

Yay, quick 2-hour nighttime post! Later, guys, I did the best I could for the moment on this one.

In my Abnormal Psychology class–which I suspect will come up in here a number of times, seeing as my fellow students are (for the most part) complete idiots and I rarely get called upon in class–we all have to participate in a debate on some issue in the field of Abnormal Psychology. The first took place last week, and was on whether or not forced treatment of seriously mentally ill individuals was justifiable.

I began on the “yes” side, for reasons I now can’t quite figure out–I was most likely thinking only of severe Psychosis or Schizophrenia, and even then must have been assuming that everyone with these shows dangerous behavior. However, I rather quickly switched positions once it became apparent what the debate was actually about (plus, the “no” side was rather convincing in their argument–interestingly, the primary debater was the “devil’s advocate” from before).

I seem to have been the only one.

After the two groups had gotten out their points and counterpoints, it was time for questions and comments from the “audience”. The first couple questions were relatively run-of-the-mill, but things got a bit interesting when one guy spoke up with a case that he had personally observed of a homeless, schizophrenic guy who was (or, at least, so he said) perfectly happy as he was, selling stories and magic rocks. This guy had apparently been homeless for a long time, and had never hurt himself or anyone else. From there, the “yes” side continued defending their position rather regularly, and the “no” side elaborated on that point; it wasn’t until the girl sitting in front of me spoke up that I got to really thinking.

She immediately went on a tirade about how no seriously mentally ill person knows they have a problem (even though many do–read up on anxiety disorders) or would want treatment, and that the aforementioned schizophrenic homeless guy simply can’t be truly happy the way he is because he’s “trapped in his own body” (if I may interject: the guy’s been homeless for just about his whole life. If he were to be treated, he still has no education, job experience, money, friends, family etc. Personally, I might be happier selling magic rocks rather than starting life in the middle of adulthood). It was all interesting, listening to this girl rant about how we must force these people into therapy (surely, they can’t possibly have any choice in the matter–I mean, they’re crazy!), but it was the girl herself in relation to this topic that is really relevant to my interests. See, this girl comes into class late every time she does come to class, always smells rather strongly of cigarette smoke, always shakes her head aggressively to any point made in the class, and tends to talk rather loudly.

The whole thing brought back memories from my child/pre-teenagehood, and an interesting hypothesis my sister thought up back then. My cousin had just finished explaining to me just how beaten up she’d make me if I ever did X (X is most likely smoke, drink, or have sex. I just can’t remember which one was the great evil that particular time). I told my sister about this, and she said that she (my cousin) is just one of those people who can’t control themselves, so they turn around and control other people to make up for it. This turns out to probably be an extreme case, as my cousin has since been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (and about time, too. The stupid doctors wouldn’t make it official until she had a major depression stage after turning 18).

Now, is this always the case when one wishes to control other people? I don’t know; probably not. Is it always the case with people with little or no self-restraint? I can’t be sure, but there seems to be a possibility. If I may digress somewhat to gun-control debates–as I seem to be doing with increasing frequency–one argument I’ve heard used is, basically, “I wouldn’t even trust myself with a gun.” It implies that a lack of one’s own control permeates throughout all of humanity. I can’t be trusted with this, so why should anyone else be? It’s an assumption that “I” am either the pinnacle of humanity, or exactly the same as every other individual on the planet. To be nice, I’ll assume that it is the latter.

Also to be nice, I’ll not completely change the topic of the post to delve into that right now.

So, are those who are incapable of practicing self-control more likely to try to force others to do things than those who are? Well, I still don’t know, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me, with yet another possible cause. The first (actually thought up by Freud, of whom I’m not usually much of a fan) is the defense mechanism of projection–and actually, what I’ve been describing is about the exact definition of the mechanism: attributing one’s own unacceptable motives or desires to someone else. For the textbook example, a man who is attracted to a woman at work accuses his wife of cheating on him.

Yet I still feel that my first thought–that they simply assume that no one else has any more restraint than they, themselves, do–is more accurate. They’re simply trying to provide for others what they, themselves, need, and more than likely lack. I suppose it’s–again–something we all do. The particular situation in which an uncontrolled person attempts to force others to do things or act a certain way just happens to stand out, I suppose, at least in my mind.

But then again, I surely can’t say. There’s a reason Psychology hasn’t been practiced by simply thinking in a few thousand years.

I need to think of a name for myself for my psychological/sociological musings. It’s not quite Hazel, but somewhat similar…

I was raised as a Catholic. Not a particularly strong one, mind you, but my mom took us to church every week, and we said a blessing at dinner each day (and, of course, I can still recite the Hail Mary, Our Father, and that blessing for meals). We stopped going to mass when I was about 9 under the guise of my mom’s Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, though I’ve recently learned that she just didn’t want to go anymore (plus, she really did have Carpal Tunnel). She doesn’t much like being told how to live her life–especially by an organization of some sort. I believe she just wanted us to grow up with morals of some sort–something for which I’m incredibly grateful, as I have come to personally believe in living morally… despite certain songs and shows I enjoy.

Fast forward a few years, and my friend (hereafter L… and unfortunately, not the guy in Death Note) invites me to start coming to her youth group. Her church was more or less non-denominational, and it was there that I was introduced to the protestant type of church which, suffice to say, is far more interesting and energetic than what I was used to from my childhood. I went there for, perhaps, two years or so, and even went on a couple of their trips. During that time, I grew incredibly close to another friend of L’s (let’s call this new one N). Through a series of some oddly coincidental circumstances–honestly, it was like fate–N and I started looking into Wicca and decided to follow that religion instead.

Ironically, this is also the time I was introduced to shooting and began becoming interested in politics. Naturally, I felt like a bit of an outcast in both the gun-loving and the pagan sides of American cultures. Since that time, I’ve gotten to know libertarians better and that stereotype has been mostly pushed from my mind, though I have yet to meet a Wiccan who shoots (I have pretty much disengaged myself from that community, though).

This conversion remained a secret between N and myself, frankly because we were afraid of losing our current friends (like L, who was incredibly religious–hence, her taking us to the youth group to begin with. Plus, the Ouija board told us they’d reject us for it). As with all secrets, it eventually came out and our fear was falsified in its entirety. The feeling that whole time, though, was that of being under a constant barrage of attacks from all of Christian society (unhelped by our discovery of internet forums and the fact that we both continued going to the youth group the whole time). Likewise, the youth group constantly felt the need to defend against the general immorality that is (admittedly) ever-present in American culture.

What I gather from all this is an interesting phenomenon in human nature, which I know has already been discovered and surely studied to some extent–I guess I just like figuring these things out for myself. In homeschool, I took a “course” in psychology, for which I read this book. In there, Baumeister breifly mentioned the “us vs. them” mentality (or something along those lines… not sure of the exact wording), though he never really went into too much detail.

That’s what I’m here for. Too much detail seems to be my specialty, actually.

Through my experiences with these various religions (and, of course, the different sects within Christianity in particular), I’ve come to find that they all are afraid of persecution of some sort. The Wiccans fear the Christians, who for the most part don’t seem to care at all about the Wiccans; the Christians seem somewhat worried about perhaps the Atheists and, really, anyone, including other versions of Christianity, and, well… the feeling is mutual. The thing is, they all believe themselves to be in the defensive position in whatever sort of “battle” may actually be taking place in reality as opposed to everyone’s mind.

For the record, I’m doing some mad-crazy generalization in here. When I say, “all” at any point in here, it never means every single individual in that group. Just in case that couldn’t already be gathered from you having actual intelligence.

Yet in any sort of battle or game, even when on the defensive you must make offensive moves against your opponent. You can’t just block; you have to throw a punch. If you refuse, your failure is as sure as taxes. The problem comes when everyone gets a–often imagined–feeling that they are under attack from another group. That’s the kind of occurrence that starts wars.

It should be noted that that’s surely not the only thing that starts wars. Oftentimes, there is, in fact, a definite aggressor who almost exclusively desires power. This was once the Christians–technically, the Roman Empire, but they used Christianity to unite the people, and a whole, huge, millenia-ish-long mess ensued–and is now, perhaps, communism and communists (see: Soviet Union, North Korea, China, North Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). Of course, the radical Muslims are coming into play a great deal and surely may also be one of these forces/people/whatever, but I try to generally shy away from that topic for the time being, as I have yet to study the history of that religion in detail. The Nazis were almost certainly one of these powers, though Germans in general all felt under attack from everyone due to the unfair treaties from WWI, so that’s a rather complicated subject of which I’m not entirely sure of all the details.

But I digress. When you identify yourself with any particular group, you tend to automatically believe that group to be better than any others. Hell, I do it a lot: Tang Soo Do > Tae Kwon Do, old Mercedes’ > any other car, gun-owners are nicer than non-gun-owners, and so on and so forth. Patriotism, sort of by definition, is a form of this. Almost the only thing I don’t do that with is my Psychology major–I occasionally get somewhat ashamed of that one.

Now, having groups with which to identify is an important and necessary part of being human. I’m not saying it’s in any way a bad thing. The fact is, though, that for every group, there’s always going to be an opposing group with a different opinion. Naturally, this causes conflict almost immediately between the two, which was pretty perfectly illustrated here. Side one believes that x is better than y, but they then come upon the people of side two, who are absolutely certain that y outranks x by a landslide. Well, side two just insulted side one by implying that x is worse than a lowly y, and that’s just completely intolerable behavior on side two’s part.

That alone explains a large part of what I’m talking about. Anything not on side one is insulting and thereby threatening side one simply by not being for x. Things get even worse if there was persecution of the side ones in the past. If the conflict grew to such a point that side one insults or injures side two so severely that side two starts thinking that it would be easier and make everyone much safer if there were no more side ones and that anyone who likes x more must be inherently evil (since, after all, it was a large group of x-likers that attacked side two). Thus, side two attempts what is essentially genocide against side one.

Ah, but there is no such thing as complete eradication. Hundreds of years down the road, side one and side two are both back to plenty in number. Side two has long since ceased hostilities against side one, and lives in relative harmony with them. Side one, however, has had stories passed down throughout the generations about how side two once persecuted side one terribly. Thus, side one has a deep anger being held down towards side two, who never really got comeuppance for their actions. Yet the stories of what side two once did to side one instills a fear even all these centuries later that side two might return to their old ways. Thus, side one feels as if they need to defend against any minor insult from side two–and that sometimes includes the simple fact that side two looks down upon x.

Escalation sure is a bitch. Perhaps we’d actually be better off repeating history rather than learning from it…

Since humans have such a long, spread-out history all over the world, though, just about everyone has been persecuted and/or conquered by someone at some point. Christians by Pagans, Pagans later on by Christians, Jews by… everyone, Slavs by… someone, Africans by Europeans, Africans by other Africans, Japanese by Koreans, Koreans and Chinese then by Japanese, parts of Europe by Russia, parts of Europe by Germany, Canaanites by Jews, someone by Mongolians, a bunch of people by Persians, a bunch by Greeks, a bunch by Egyptians, everyone by Romans, and the list just goes on and on for ages. Thus, anyone who identifies with any racial and/or religious group feels the aforementioned hostilities.

That history helps them pick out one particular group of which to fear (and fear, of course, leads to fight or flight, and people seem more likely to fight unless immediately threatened. It’s less dangerous to fight an enemy if they’re far away… generally).

I think I got off-track again somewhere. The thing is, when one identifies with a group and really cares about it, it’s hard to imagine anyone not caring about it. It’s odd to me that so many people just don’t care about gun-rights, just as it may be hard for an abortion activist (pro- or anti-, doesn’t matter) to realize that some people are apathetic to the cause. It’s not necessarily that most people actively think, “if you’re not with me, you’re against me,” but it’s a sort of general emotional reaction to getting deeply involved with anything.

Therefore, you get the very small “us” of those completely on your side, and the large and fierce “them” of not only those actively against you, but everyone else as well. Naturally, this is intimidating, and you’d need to be Spartan to feel any confidence when facing those odds. But since we’re animals and have that pesky survival instinct, we feel the need to fight (or fly, but… well, we’ve gone over that).

I believe I’ve gotten into circular logic-territory at this point, which is usually a sign that it’s going nowhere at the speed of light. There seems to be no real conclusion to be drawn from all this; I suppose it’s more for my own benefit, to just try to understand it all. Hope it’s thought-provoking enough, nonetheless–certainly long enough.