International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies
Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 3(4): 299–307 (2006)
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/aps.113
Root Values for a Global One-world:
Darwinian Biology and Social
Etymology*
ELLIOTT JAQUES AND KATHRYN CASON
ABSTRACT
Global terrorism can harm anyone anywhere. It is imperative that we shift to a commonly shared system of powerful primary values which will determine basic behavior
so as to enable us to live together in mutual trust. The untestable belief systems that
have created terrorism and other divisive wars must be replaced by a testable sciencebased, trust-inducing system of values. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons,
Ltd.
Key words: belief systems, evolution theory, global terrorism, social values,
mutual trust, good society
We shall take up the fundamental question of ways in which we value others
and the values (good and bad) we place upon the ways in which we behave
towards each other. Our aim is to get to a scientific foundation for deciding such
values. Our goal was taken forward with the absolute basis provided by Darwinian
evolutionary theory (Darwin, 1859). This is followed by a scientific hypothesis
that is an immediate derivative from that theory, and then followed further by
some recent findings from the behavioral sciences. Such a scientific achievement
being objectively established should help to overcome the widespread social
divisiveness caused by the conflicting values based upon conflicting belief systems
that have always existed all over the world.
The urgent need for such an objective scientific foundation is that scientific
findings are universally meaningful and shareable, and are not influenced by the
religious or philosophical or culture-bound biases and conflicts that cause so
much trouble, especially in the currently emerging one-world. It is fortunate that
* Edited extract from unpublished A Scientific Foundation for Ethics, Economics, and Government
(2003).
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
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DOI: 10.1002/aps
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Darwinian theory and a developing true science of human behavior became
available in the same century as a potentially troubled and troublesome oneworld began to arrive.
In order to discuss these issues we shall have recourse to the following three
concepts because our relationships with the people in the groups they define are
so very different. All of them have to do with relationships between members
of the same species.
•
•
•
Familiars: a concept, the opposite of strangers, for which we have had no
single label, which includes everyone we know: family members, friends,
acquaintances, neighbors, people we meet regularly in the course of our daily
living, associates, etc. This group may include anywhere from a few hundred
to perhaps a thousand or more people.
Connected strangers: people we do not know personally, but with whom we
interact in the course of our daily lives in everything from seeing them from
time to time on the street, or in a shop, or whatever, to members of our
community, or city, or nation, with whom we interact in voting, or hear
about, or know about anywhere.
Potentially connected strangers: people anywhere in the world with whom we
might personally interact, or be affected by, which since the events of 9/11
have come to comprise anyone, anywhere, in the whole world – our present
day one-world.
VALUES FROM RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Up until the nineteenth century the prime formulation of societal values had
been set by the common culture as influenced by the dominating religion or
religions in any given society, and by philosophers. In this sense, prime social
values were literally either god-given or philosopher-given. The gods, of course,
and the philosophers varied widely among themselves. They went from the
anthropomorphic gods of primitive peoples to the more sophisticated multiplicity of gods of the early Greek, Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, and Mesopotamian
civilizations, to the emergence of the single all-powerful world-creating gods of
the Hebrew, Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist religions, which pretty much took
over the world.
It was probably somewhere in the period between 5000 BC and 3000 BC
that the first social values were set out in written documents, of which the first
books of the Hebrew bible are a good example of the process. This early bible
sets out both what would be the appropriate – positively valued – behavior, and
what would now be the legislated laws that set the context for such behavior,
mainly in the form of “thou shalt not” behavioral constraints.
These constraints were of three kinds: those related to how to deal with
familiars; those related to how to deal with connected strangers, this need being
occasioned by the emergence of the large conurbations that developed at that
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 3: 299–307 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/aps
Root Values for a Global One-world
time, along with the development of writing; and, to a very small extent, those
related to how to deal with unconnected strangers, to do mainly with how to
handle captives-in-war, these being the only unconnected strangers they would
encounter.
By 500 BC these religious rules were joined by the written outputs of the
philosophers, who added to the written behavioral injunctions. However, the
main problem then was that the few monotheistic religions not only dominated
the world, but were in conflict with each other, as were the accumulating philosophical belief systems. Nonetheless, it was these conflicting religious ideas
which largely promoted the value systems within which there lived the great
sectors of society made up of their adherents, since the philosophers had less
impact. Among the worst conflicts that occurred were those in which there were
warring parties each of which represented a different religion seeking to dominate the governmental outlook of the same territories. For example, in Northern
Ireland, or as between Islamic and Christian/Hebrew groups in different parts
of the world.
God-given values and philosophical ideas are explicitly founded upon beliefs.
Belief systems can be argued about endlessly, with no hope of resolution, because
there are no objective testable criteria with which to establish the advantages
of one set of beliefs above another. Our argument is that our societal arrangements now need to be founded upon scientifically established criteria of the good
society, criteria that can be shared globally.
Given a scientific foundation for establishing worldwide testable and shareable societal values, it would no longer be the role of religion and belief in God,
and philosophy, to set the standards of behavior for the world. Having churches,
belonging to churches, having different religions or different philosophies, would
become a matter of individual faith, interest, and concern. Every individual must
have the continuing right and freedom to believe in and to worship the God of
his or her choice, or not to do so, or to adhere to a particular philosophical or
political outlook. But no such beliefs must be allowed to displace the worldwide
system of scientifically established values found to be necessary for the achievement of a secure and peaceful one-world. No church, no system of beliefs must
be allowed to have priority over scientifically established unconditional world
values which can be applicable to a one-world, because they are testable.
It would appear then, that the ways in which familiars should value each
other, have been well-laid down in the evolving genetic development of all
species. This finding includes humans, in whom there is a further elaboration
in terms of the sophisticated understanding which we can bring to our formulations of these values. Our values are displayed not just in behaviors but in statements about the ethics and morals and appropriate behaviors that we expect
from each other, even though we do not always behave in those ways.
Thus everyone knows that children and parents should love each other,
behave warmly and helpfully to extended family members. Friends should respect
and be helpful to each other. Acquaintances should treat each other politely and
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
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helpfully, and so on. It is not always possible to carry out such behaviors, or
under various circumstances, even to want to do so or feel like doing so. But we
do not need legislated laws and regulations to require us to behave in these
positive ways. Unless abuses are involved we do not need the police or a judge
to decide that we have not carried out the optimum positive behavioral “requirements” and therefore to set punishment.
THE BASIC VALUE OF SPECIES SURVIVAL
Let us begin with the fundamental unconditional, absolute, scientifically given,
prime value, from which all other values may be scientifically derived in the
sense of being objectively stated and testable:
All of our regulated social arrangements will set a context for ensuring that any behavior
if universally applied will enhance the survival of the human species, in accord with the
Darwinian principle of the survival of the fittest.
This value applies to all living species. It is played out in a social context in that
all species function in terms of clusters, or colonies, or swarms, or hives, or flocks,
or herds, or families, or extended families, or in humans, more extended tribes,
or cities, or nations. It is in these social arrangements that individuals collaborate
to ensure the survival, if not of everyone, at least of enough, and especially
enough of the best, to keep the species in existence.
In the evolutionary development of non-human species there has been a
persistence of genetically inbuilt mechanisms that prevent them from harming
each other. Thus we find in wolves, elks, goats, and others, when there is a
combat for leadership of a pack the loser will show the neck, or turn and run
off, as signs of giving in, and preventing the fight from ending in the death of
the loser. Of the same ilk are the methods that a pack leader will use – urinating, or marking trees, for example – to mark off his territory and prevent fighting
with other packs of the same species.
Humans somehow have lost, or perhaps never had, such automatic behavioral
mechanisms. Instead, we have learned to use our higher levels of capability,
especially our ability to communicate in disengaged intangible language of high
orders of complexity, to formulate laws in the form of constraints against such
harm backed by legal punishments if we behave outside the limits that they set.
The universality of such laws would point to a strong genetic foundation for their
establishment once population growth reached the level where families no
longer lived together and controlled behavior in small family or extended family
groups. Instead, in large populations – conurbations – where members of family
groups become dispersed across wide areas, behavioral constraints must be legislated, backed by legal punishments, in order to protect all world citizens from
the tyranny of fear of harm. In all of these arrangements, it is in no way necessary to assume some kind of genetic source of altruistic self-sacrifice for familiars;
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 3: 299–307 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/aps
Root Values for a Global One-world
just ordinary good loving, or at least compassionate and mutually sustaining
behaviors.
This general value of species survival is all very well. It does not, however,
tell us what these socially collaborating individuals are phylogenetically driven
to do in order to achieve the foundation goal of ensuring species survival.
What values must individual members of these social communities have that
will enable them to live and to collaborate to overcome any forces that might
undo the ability of the species to survive, especially against the depredations of
other species who are also engaged in the competition to survive? Let us turn
to some of the clues we sought in our examination of the underlying primitive
roots of the language of prime values.
INDIVIDUAL VERSUS SOCIAL VALUES IN HUMANS
Humans, too, are genetically endowed with what are regarded and valued as
good behaviors with familiars. Even values such as freedom and liberty are not
freedom and liberty from others, but freedom and liberty with others, despite the
fact that we often formulate them as individual values, as, for example, in the
right of free speech.
Are we then to suppose that we are the only living organisms who have a
sense of things being worth more or less, or perhaps nothing at all? Not unless
we assume that we are the only living organisms that have intentions. And we
are assuming precisely the opposite; namely, that the prime distinction between
animate and inanimate is that animate “things” are intentionally goal-directed,
whereas inanimate things move only under the impact of external physical
forces. And you cannot have goals or intentions without having a sense of the
worth of everything, in the process of deciding what it is worthwhile to intend
to do or not to do, and then to do or not to do it.
From this point of view then, we are justified in describing the values of all
living organisms in terms of what they choose to do. Richard Dawkins’ (1990)
“selfish gene” does not take us far enough. As he recognizes, selfish genes can
survive only to the extent that they are organized into successfully surviving
organisms. We would add that these organisms must be organized into successfully functioning and mutually supportive social groups and organizations. There
must be a strong genetic underpinning to all of these arrangements. In the
context of this argument the sociological concept of the selfish gene as explaining all living behavior is an emaciated concept for describing and explaining
the behavior of living organisms in relation to familiars in well established permanent social groups.
THE KEY SOCIAL VALUES: HYPOTHESES
We have been emphasizing that the operative basic values that are necessary
for species survival should be stated in terms of constraints and objectives that
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
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leave us free to behave however we choose within the limits set rather than in
terms of wide open unlimited freedoms that allow unrestrained license. Are
there then any specific values that are absolutely fundamental in the sense of
being directly connected with species survival? We will put forward the hypotheses that there are two such basic sets of constraints and objectives that we
derived from the outcome of our etymological analysis. These two sets of values
are hypotheses. They are stated in terms of concepts that are rigorously and
unequivocally articulated and labeled so as to constrain propositions that allow
for objective testing.
The two values are first, fundamental survival constraints that apply to relationships between everyone in the world, strangers and persons known to each
other alike. And, second, evolving genetic development of behavioral objectives that
apply only to those whom we know, whether related in kinship, or friendship or
various degrees of acquaintanceship. The constraints that apply to absolutely
everyone, from worldwide strangers in distant foreign lands to our closest kin
and friends are that:
No person or group of persons acting on their own behalf and not as agents of government carrying out governmental policies and programs should intentionally injure or
cause injury or do anything injurious to anyone else.
The foundation of this new value system can be readily stated: universally
accepted criterion for judging our primary social constructions – our laws, political organizations, economic policies and regulations, social arrangements, educational systems – will be constructed in terms of a common basic context,
constraining our behaviors regardless of our personal values and beliefs.
In order for the human species to survive successfully, we will have to design
international, national and local laws, regulations, and practices that we can all
rely upon. Meaning being able to trust that no one, including utter strangers,
will do you intentional physical, economic, or psychological harm or injury, and
indeed will do their best to help you if they see that you are being harmed or
injured, or at risk of being so threatened.
Because we have lost much of our genetic endowment (30 000 or so genes
found in both genome studies rather than the expected 90 000–100 000 genes),
the human species is required to substitute the creation of universally applicable
laws and regulations that we can rely upon to substitute for genetic instinctual
behaviors. We have failed to do so until now because we have always been
divided by religious and philosophical differences. Recourse to scientific, or at
least testable, global constraints, might just make it possible for us to better work
with our global neighbors through organizations such as the United Nations.
The scientific route is the best and really the only route to take to a credible
arrangement of secular values that we can rely upon in our global one-world,
and yet allow everyone to engage in their own interests with respect to religion
and philosophy.
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 3: 299–307 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/aps
Root Values for a Global One-world
VALUES IN OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE WE KNOW
Here we come into the world of enriched language and a multiplicity of relationships based upon positive requisite obligations. They range from the IndoEuropean and Greek, Latin, and Germanic word roots, concerned with
obligations spanning love for family and kinship relations; compassion, warmth,
and concern for friendship; good feelings and positive regard for colleagues,
acquaintances; and the wide variety of others whom we know.
At bottom, of course, even in these relationships, we must be able to rely
upon well established and effective constraining limits to our behavior to enable
us to trust each other not to do us harm. Without that all possibility of relationships is erased. Thus, for example, if the members of a family cannot rely upon
each other not to do harm to any other member, then the family will cease to
exist.
The difference between the two groups is striking. We value being able to
trust everyone in the world, far-off strangers and those we know, not to take it
upon themselves to injure us. And in addition, if there is anything they can do,
to do what they can to help us if we are in danger of being injured – but not
the altruistic self-sacrifice called upon by some sociobiologists. On the other
hand, our constraints in relation to those we do know are in various degrees of
personal values and obligations that have been instilled in us, to do good things
for them, depending upon the closeness of the relationship, but not upon the
requirements of legal constraints.
THE RELEVANCE OF MELANIE KLEIN’S PSYCHOANALYTICAL
THEMES
There has been a post-Freudian development in psychoanalysis connected with
the work of Melanie Klein that can give some scientific support to the two sets
of values: legal constraints against harm, on the one hand, and positive personal
obligations, on the other.
Mrs Klein’s clinically based conception of early infant development sets out
two phases, which she calls “positions.” The first is the phase, roughly from birth
to six months of age, which she calls the “paranoid-schizoid position.” During
this period, the infant is not mature enough to handle ambivalence and mixed
feelings. If it experiences a good breast feed, the breast is idealized as a “good
breast,” that is, pure perfection. If, on the other hand, it experiences a feed as
unsatisfactory, it feels persecuted by a “bad breast”, is in a rage, and projects into
the breast its own rage and destructive impulses, and experiences a relationship
with a bad breast split away from the good breast, that is, the essence of the
worst kind of persecuting and damaging object. Strangers anywhere in the world
arouse such feelings if we do not create shared constraints that prevent any and
every stranger from doing harm to anyone else.
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
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There is a sense here that because the infant is engaged in dealing with
split-apart objects and is unable to deal with the breast and mother as whole
objects, they become potentially persecuting strangers. These primal fantasies
and anxieties are re-awakened in a world of strangers who cannot be relied upon
not to injure you. Nothing can be more frightening.
On the other hand, as the infant matures into the second half of the first
year, it matures into what Mrs Klein has called the “depressive position,” that
is to say, to the point where it can experience and deal with whole objects – with
the whole mother, and the whole breast – partly good and partly bad, but no
longer split into good and bad part objects, with a persecutory undertone. It is
able to deal with the ambivalence of love, of good experience, and depressive
reactions when the same good mother or breast turns out to do frustrating or
bad things.
We now get to the foundation of obligation for feeling and expressing positive
feelings, for overcoming the feelings of ambivalence, and for maintaining a good
loving relationship with a mother whom the infant is now able to know as an
integrated whole object, a real person, no longer idealized, but it is hoped with
a preponderance of good feeling. It is this position that underlies the personal
obligation to behave with varied strengths of positive feelings and behavior
towards those whom we know.
TRUST AND PARANOID MISTRUST UNDERLIE LOVE AND
HATE IN HUMAN RELATIONS
In the early development of human beings anxiety about being harmed by bad
objects and idealization of the good in relation to a breast and mother is experienced as good and bad parts. The whole mother, still perceived as a stranger,
precedes and underlies the ability to experience ambivalence in love and anger
for a whole recognizable mother and other family members, to whom there are
experienced obligations to express good feelings.
Against this background, in order for the human species to hold together
and to be among the fittest for survival, we must arrange for the most primitively
grounded experiences to be catered for; namely, to eliminate the paranoid feelings that are generated with inability to trust strangers in the absence of internationally agreed and reliable constraints or harmful and injurious paranoigenic
behaviors. An important but developmentally secondary requirement is to
provide for a sense of personal obligation on family members to love each other,
on friends to have compassion and mutual support for each other, on colleagues
to be able to rely upon each other for mutual support, on acquaintances or those
we encounter in day-to-day relationships for a reasonable regard and polite
treatment.
The difference between the consequences of the two sets of values is a matter
of interest and considerable importance. The more primitive and paranoigenic
relationships that include countless millions of strangers worldwide need to be
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 3: 299–307 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/aps
Root Values for a Global One-world
made the subject of internationally legislated constraints that constrain individuals from behaving in ways that can harm others, strangers, and non-strangers alike. Without such clear social constraints the human world is driven to
tear itself apart because we lack the genetically instinctual constraints possessed
by all other living organisms against such behaviors.
Besides the obligations to have positive feelings and to carry out positive
behaviors of various degrees of intensity toward those we know, it seems to be
left to the individuals concerned to feel free to decide upon the nature of their
obligations to possess and express good feelings and behaviors to anyone else in
the world at large. Externally imposed constraints against harmful behaviors to
everyone and cultivated personal values inducing personally determined positive
behaviors in relation to those we know seem to be the order of the day for the
one-world species of humankind to rank high in the survival-of-the-fittest
competition.
REFERENCES
Darwin C (1859) The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. London: Senate, 1994.
Dawkins R. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Kathryn Cason
Requisite Organization International Institute
1101 St Paul Street, Suite 1112
Baltimore
MD 21202
USA
(Kcason@requisite.org)
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies 3: 299–307 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/aps
307