Marilynne Robinson - Absence of Mind - The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self

If I were a practitioner of the hermeneutics of suspicion, I would note here that, despite their pedagogical tone, these preachments are often intended for those who are in the fold already, meant to reassure them as to the wisdom and actual virtue of their being there. Malthus’s Theory of Population took its authority from a formula expressing a supposed ratio of the growth of population to the increase of arable land. His contemporaries saw clearly enough what the implications must be for social policy, that the impulse to intervene in the suffering of the poor, an impulse that was under formidable control among them in any case, could, if acted upon, yield only greater suffering among the poor, given the inevitable limits to population size Malthus had seemed to express so objectively. Darwin, famously influenced by Malthus, made the competition for limited resources an elemental, universal principle of life, and, in The Descent of Man , folded tribal warfare into the processes of evolution, a notion which meshed nicely with colonialism and with the high esteem in which Europeans of the period held themselves. To proceed from Peter Townsend’s observations of overpopulation and starvation among dogs stranded on an island stocked with sheep to the observed fact of starvation among the lower classes in Britain to a formula that makes starvation seem inevitable, as Malthus did — setting aside very practical questions about the distribution of resources, raised by Adam Smith and others — is an instance of parascientific reasoning. To proceed from biological evidence of our origins among the primates and the primitives to an argument for European supremacy is no less an instance of it. Then there are the writings of Sigmund Freud, by far the greatest and the most interesting contribution to parascientific thought and literature ever made. Freud will be the subject of the next chapter. Recent contributors to the genre include Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who have given their ideas the effective authority that comes with successful popularization.

However starry-eyed Comte’s vision of humanity may have been, there is something in experience that relates, however inexactly, to benevolence and also altruism. There is something in the nature of most of us that takes pleasure in the thought of a humane and benign social order. The tendency of Malthus, and of Darwin in The Descent of Man , to counter the humane and also the religious objections to warfare and gross poverty puts compassion or conscience out of play — two of the most potent and engrossing individual experiences, both factors in anyone’s sense of right and wrong. This is a suppression of, and an assault on the legitimacy of, an aspect of mind without which the world is indeed impoverished. It is done in the course of proposing an objective, amoral force to which every choice and act is subject. In light of this fact our own sense of things is shown to be delusional, insofar as it might persuade us that our behavior is not essentially self-interested in a narrow sense of that term. By the word “altruism,” altruisme in French, Comte intended a selfless devotion to the welfare of others which was to fill the place of belief in God left empty by the triumph of scientific positivism. In parascientific literature, the word always appears in a context that questions whether altruism is possible or desirable, or whether apparent instances are real, or what survival benefit might be conferred by it that would account for its undeniable persistence among certain insect colonies.

Herbert Spencer, an important earlier contributor to parascientific literature, is in some degree an exception. In his Data of Ethics , published in 1879, he takes up the issue framed by Comte, defending egoism in one chapter and altruism in the next. His argument for egoism is Darwinian: “The law that each creature shall take the benefits and evils of its own nature, be they those derived from ancestry or those due to self-produced modifications, has been the law under which life has evolved thus far; and it must continue to be the law however much farther life may evolve. Whatever qualifications this natural course of action may now or hereafter undergo, are qualifications that cannot, without fatal results, essentially change it. Any arrangements which in a considerable degree prevent superiority from profiting by the rewards of superiority, or shield inferiority from the evils it entails — any arrangements which tend to make it as well to be inferior as to be superior; are arrangements diametrically opposed to the progress of organization and the reaching of a higher life.” He goes on to make a case for altruism based on his understanding of reproduction among “the simplest beings,” which, he says, “habitually multiply by spontaneous fission.” He notes that “though the individuality of the parent infusorium or other protozoon is lost in ceasing to be single, yet the old individual continues to exist in each of the new individuals. When, however, as happens generally with these smallest animals, an interval of quiescence ends in the breaking up of the whole body into minute parts, each of which is the germ of a young one, we see the parent entirely sacrificed in forming progeny.” 4

Spencer is using two modes of scientific thought available to him in the late nineteenth century, Darwinian evolution and the observed division of single-cell animals, to explain the origins of two apparently conflicting ethical impulses or values. Having in a sense legitimized them both by means of these etiologies, he expounds on the ethical, social, and intellectual benefits and difficulties associated with each one, proceeding in the way parascientific argument typically proceeds. Some allusion to the science of the moment is used as the foundation for extrapolations and conclusions that fall far outside the broadest definitions of science. It is to Spencer’s credit nevertheless that he acknowledges complexity in this instance. Altruism is a classic problem in the tradition of Darwinist thinking, and Spencer is unusual in granting it reality and a legitimate place in human behavior. It is to be noted, however, that in his considerations of both egoism and altruism, the question might be rephrased in terms of justice or humanity, both of which do from time to time entail some cost to oneself. Justice worth the name tends to exact advantage from anyone who might otherwise enjoy the benefits of relative power. This is a cost which most would be ashamed to notice, and for which they might feel they were fully compensated in the assurance that equity is an active principle. But parascience excludes such subjective considerations.

One might think the insufficiency of any explanatory model to describing essential elements of experience might raise doubts about the model itself, but when the problem of altruism is acknowledged, it is generally addressed by a redefinition of altruism which makes it much more conformable to neo-Darwinist theory. Yet altruism as an idea has not been passive in all this. If I may borrow the language of this genre, it has in some cases parasitized other concepts. By the extremely parsimonious standards of neo-Darwinism, it is the proverbial bad penny, liable to show up anywhere. Michael Gazzaniga reports a question raised by Geoffrey Miller, another evolutionary psychologist. “Most speech appears to transfer useful information from the speaker to the listener, and it costs time and energy. It seems to be altruistic. What fitness benefit can be attained by giving another individual good information? Reviewing the original argument of Richard Dawkins and John Krebs, Miller states, ‘Evolution cannot favor altruistic information-sharing any more than it can favor altruistic food-sharing. Therefore, most animals’ signals must have evolved to manipulate the behavior of another animal for the signaler’s own benefit.’ And other animals have evolved to ignore them, because it didn’t pay to listen to manipulators.” Ergo, it seems, we, alone among the animals, have language. Why the complexity of language and our adeptness in the use of it? Gazzaniga says, “Considering this conundrum, Miller proposes that language’s complexities evolved for verbal courtship. This solves the altruism problem by providing a sexual payoff for eloquent speaking by the male and the female.” So informative speech is at peril of presenting the theorist with an instance in which a speaker confers benefit to another at cost to himself. But wait! There is manipulation! There is sexual payoff! Does this answer the question about the cost of sharing information? No. Nevertheless, our nature is defined as if determined by the nature of hypothetical primitives, humanlike in their ability to have and give information, but finding neither use nor pleasure in doing so. 5