On 'Original Sin'

There are four 'scientific' claims that original sin exists and they are worth noting [1]:-

* The Selfish Gene hypothesis states that "a predominant quality" in a successful surviving gene is "ruthless selfishness." ... "this gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior."

* Psychologists who find a "selfish" trait in children from birth, a trait that expresses itself in actions that are "blatantly selfish." [Horreur!]

* Sociologists who claim that "fraud, corruption, ignorance, selfishness, and all the other vices of human nature." One such, Sumner, enumerates "the vices and passions of human nature" as "cupidity, lust, vindictiveness, ambition, and vanity." He finds such human nature to be universal: in all people, in all places and in all stations in society.

* Then there is the psychiatrist Thomas Anthony Harris who observes that "sin, or badness, or evil, or 'human nature', whatever we call the flaw in our species, is apparent in every person." Harris calls this condition "intrinsic badness" or "original sin."

Well, think about the assumption at the root of this. It is that 'being selfish' is a bad thing and 'being self-sacrificing to the community' is a good thing but this does not stand up once you abstract yourself from the pre-set valuations of the Judaeo-Christian West.

On the contrary, a righteous self-centredness is the basis not of 'sin' but of 'virtue' (an older pagan idea). An intelligent self-centredness, however, understands that the self is served better by a well ordered society and by co-operation than it is either by solipsism (which simply results in isolation) or by submitting to the power relations of other selfish individuals who just happen to have seized the commanding heights of culture and society.

The Christian obsession with sin simply cuts the ground from under those who would challenge the order of things by asserting their own rights and being against the claims of those who are in control of the definitions of good and evil. Let us look at the absurd language of these scientists, psychologists, sociologists and psychiatrists - all representatives of the commanding order.

Is not gene 'selfishness' the evolutionary order of things that scientifically cannot be valued as good or bad in itself but simply as a fact on the ground. Evolution has contructed a being that can undertake compassionate and altruistic acts, define itself and do 'good' things because it chooses to do 'good things'. In other words, far from being 'original sin', the 'selfish gene' is the basis for all that is termed 'good' in the world as well as 'bad'. Its existence requires no attempt to derive the good from outside materiality and the evolutionary process.

And that children are 'blatantly selfish'?! Excellent! So they should be. They have to struggle for their existence as the future. They cannot rely on the competence or concentration of 'nice' parents or other kids. They learn by doing and usually learn co-operation and 'goodness' in doing so. We should worry if they were not starting out as selfish little beasts. An unselfish small child is an evolutionary dead-end.

As for our sociologist, he speaks only of the variation in our evolutionary state that includes examples of all these things that are apparently 'bad' but also examples of everything that is apparently 'good'. There is no flaw in our species that is not a flaw in materiality itself. That materiality is flawed is the most absurd of essentialist propositions once you have eliminated the magical thinking of absolute idealism. The whole language of flaws is sloppy thinking, an external imaginative imposition on the complexity of material reality.

What we see is not original sin against which we must struggle to create some idealistic perfection but a complex and fluid evolutionary reality with maximum variation in which we all have to struggle and live. It contains neither good nor evil in itself or better, given our human perspective, contains all forms of good and evil now and in the future.

This is not 'sin' unless all reality is 'sin. While it is perfectly permissible to take that Gnostic line, any analysis that sees reality and materiality as merely 'sin-based' and our magical thinking as somehow redemption from 'sin' is sending us way up the garden path of anxiety-driven and cowardly evasion.

We are not intrinsically bad or intrinsically good. The desperation in certain personality types to define our species in these terms speaks more to personal neuroses and fears than it does to our reality. The point is that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people not because of original sin but because we are disordered and have not ordered ourselves internally and externally.We have not progressed rather than that we have 'fallen'.

Instead of understanding our nature and creating systems of order that are based on diminishing harms from a close observation of 'what works' (a technology of living in the world), we think that the exhortations of the propertied and powerful on the frightened will somehow change reality itself into something better. When it does not do this, we whine and moan that it is all 'not fair' instead of doing something about it or recognising an occasional truth - that we cannot do anything about it. It is not good or evil but just life. We alone are responsible for our own failures in managing the technology of power to protect ourselves and those we care about. And protecting ourselves and those we love is not 'original sin' but who and what we are.

So, away with this talk of 'original sin' and the attempt to find 'scientific proofs' for our intrinsic 'badness' or 'goodness'. We are neither. We are what we are. In general, it is best for us to do what we will as a balanced self-centredness and harm no one because we have no need to do so. The bulk of us can then organise ourselves to deal with those whose nature is to do harm and perhaps, equally usefully, restrain those who are under the illusion that it is their task, because of their nature, to go around doing unwanted 'good'. 

[1] The original citations for these views are at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature

The Eysenck Personality Test and Self-Criticism

My version of a New Year's Resolution is a bit of 'quiet time' and some self-reflection for the re-calibration of the 'self' for the year ahead (unlike post-modern philosophers, I have a very firm sense of the Self and feel sad for those who do not). I usually try and find some tool, something outside myself, to trigger reflection and then note down what I think I discover. It is part of an on-going process - like Petrarch's construction of himself as a living work of art carried through by time to its natural end.

About a quarter of a century ago, I did the Eysenck Personality Test which, without taking it over-seriously, was quite useful in defining onself against what it is to be a 'normal' (aka socialised and habituated) human being, albeit with adjustments to account for its mild American bias. I found the results again this week and recognised the continuities in my character and some minor differences. Out of curiosity, I searched the internet and found an adaptation of it which covered 32 basic attributes of personality under five categories (introversion/extraversion, emotional stability, mastery/sympathy, sexuality and social and political attitudes). I did the test (which took about forty minutes) and recorded the results.

Basically whatever I was twenty-five years ago is pretty well what I am today but with more maturity so there were no surprises there. The analysis struck me as fair and I was painfully honest in my answers (as you should be if you try it). However, this was not a test of who one is but of who one is in relation to the rest of the species so what interested me was my deviance from the norm rather than who I was (since I know who I am and there were no major surprises).

What is it that makes me (or you) significantly different from normality (within which there is still a fair range of personality differences) and so often misaligned with the social (for the record, a position where I am more than happy to be found)? What does this tell us about our 'adjustment to society' and what about our perceptions of the maladjusted nature of society to what it could be rather than what we are? So, this test is best regarded as just a statement of difference that tells us where we are within our species, where we are as 'rebels' whether on the cusp of normality or actually 'abnormal'.

In my case' abnormality' applied to 14 out of 32 attributes (of which six were 'on the cusp' and so possibly within the bounds of 'normality). Five (the full list) were related to social and political attitudes. In other words, a chunk of my 'abnormality' is socio-political (which will be fairly obvious to regular readers of this blog) and I am around 30-40% 'abnormal' to some extent. I am more than relaxed about this. I am interested only in the insights of the test into one's position in the world and why one acts as one does.

The non-socio-political abnormalities are pretty easy to summarise: A risk-averse (meaning physical risk), cautious (in terms of action), highly responsible and undogmatic (though with a few fixed ideas that I shall never shake off) personality with high self esteem and virtually no sense of guilt. My attitudes to risk, my cautiousness and my level of dogmatism are 'on the cusp' so the key difference markers are self esteem, responsibility and lack of guilt - all very existentialist! This implies that most people I deal with are going to be less responsible (which may explain my disappointed distrust of others) and suffer from less self-esteem and have more overhang of guilt (which explains my frustration with people's inability to get a grip of their lives). This may also explain my almost crusading zeal to help others realise that they are better than they have often been labelled by family and society and that they almost certainly have no reason for the vile vestiges of Judaeo-Christian or familial or sexual guilt in their lives. I would arrogantly like to pull my fellows into my territory so that the 'normal' could be changed to one of a higher self esteem and 'joy' in the complexity of existence, something our culture seems actively to discourage.

The socio-political differences arise from this possibly foolish mission. My different take on the world seems to derive from an aspiration for a better world that is probably not possible given 'the crooked timber of humanity'. In this area, I am foolish and not wise but it is who I am. I am highly sexually and socially permissive which does not mean I am myself anything more than a rather dull vanilla person when it comes to sex and social behaviour (I am, in fact, very dull nowadays). I am strongly committed to a broadly libertarian position on individuals in society and the choices they make. Indeed, my attitudes are classically anarcho-socialist to the extent that I am on the edge of (possibly the foolish part) denying the necessity for aspects of the social order required precisely because normality contains a majority of people with lower self-esteem and problems with guilt of some kind (and who are likely to be more dogmatic, more neurotic [in terms of guilt] and less responsible).

It could reasonably be argued that a society built on dogmatism, short term self interest and neurosis can only be managed with an element of the whip and the jackboot and, to be self-critical, I am probably far too soft on this score, expecting more of our species than may be possible. I add to this foolish belief in the possibility of a better world (which I cannot shake off) a set of progressive attitudes that seem stronger in me than in the 'norm' - anti-racism and, to a lesser extent, pacifism included. Like the pacifism, my 'socialism' is 'on the cusp' so the personality 'abnormality' really lies in my radical libertarianism. This explains my love/hate relationship with the British Left which strikes me as more riddled with authoritarian prescription than I am comfortable with and yet still the better hope for a better world if only 'normality' could be shifted a degree or two towards an emotionally stronger and more intellectually flexible electorate (and activist base). The modern Leftist activist is almost the epitome of dogmatic neuroticism.

However, this belief in a better world is not a belief that can be seen as more than a sentimental prejudice since I score very highly on scepticism - that is a belief in my own logic, observation and intelligence gathering rather than the claims of authority or others (basically, I do not trust the 'normal' very much). My analytical side sees the world and knows it for what it is - hence my outbursts of clinical rationalism that appear to sound a classically conservative note about the human condition. I know my core belief in a better world is absurd but I am true, in this respect, to my only remaining 'faith' - that of existentialist choice, if necessary for an absurd proposition such as this one. I also distrust the State (though consider it necessary) in particular because it is run by 'normal' people for 'normal' people and normal people, as we have seen, tend to lack self esteem, be neurotic (in terms of guilt feelings) and be dogmatic. Ergo, the State is likely to react to these aspects of normality - playing on peoples weaknesses and neuroses in order to manage them better yet without any aspiration to lift them out of their situation in order to create something better. I have little respect for authority for the same reason - authority is generally not logical and based on evidence but is based on dogma and the neuroses of the authoritarian.

So that is the 2015 self-criticism over with. I quite like me and I hope everyone else gets to like themselves too but I know I am a little out of kilter with the way my species organises itself socially and politically. It is bigger and more powerful than I am. My radical libertarianism might be regarded as a defensive manouevre, maintaining my small bit of territory against the encroaching empire of authoritarian neurotics. Conservative pessimism and social progressivism are the thesis and antithesis whose internal contradictions require a new synthesis.

Text of Presentation at the TEAM EU Counter Summit London, November 7th, 2015

I am on the Advisory Board of the Democracy Movement which is a long standing critic of the anti-democratic nature of the European Union and I attended the first meeting of the Leave.EU Advisory Board last month. This was a contribution to the discussion on the coming British Referendum of whether or not to leave the European Union which was held at a useful one day Summit [1] convened by TEAM [The European Alliance of Euro-Critical Movements] on Saturday. 

First of all, I must make clear that, today, I am speaking for the Democracy Movement and not for Leave.EU. The difference is important as I shall make clear. 

I am going to try and do three things in the limited time at my disposal and I will welcome questions later.

First, I want to inform you of what the Democracy Movement is doing in the great cause and re-cap a little on its history to explain how it has got to where it is.

Second, I want to give my impressions of what Leave.EU, one of no less than two [major] euro-realist or euro-sceptic organisations that have emerged in recent weeks and months, is and why I think it is potentially very important.

Third, I want to thread the two themes together as I speak and show why the Democracy Movement is minded to support Leave.Eu while not yet having made its absolutely final decision although it is a decision expected very soon.

I cannot emphasise enough that not only DM but Leave.EU and the socialist and democratic organisations operating in this space consider themselves internationalists and true Europeans.

To be a true European is to stand for democracy and the self-determination of the European peoples collaborating as nation-states on equal terms. This is the legacy of the European Enlightenment and is also resolutely anti-imperialist.

This commitment to being European but firmly against the European Union is something that must be stated again and again in British contexts because the lie being perpetrated about the ‘leave’ camp is that it is anti-European, xenophobic or ‘little Englander’ (a very useful lie when mobilising our Celtic brothers and sisters). [2] 

Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the modern British Eurosceptic craves a deeper and firmer cultural connection with Europeans.

What he or she will not accept is being dictated to by Eurocrats when we have a perfectly good sovereign Parliament and ancient liberties at home.

I will go further and say that, while some Eurosceptics are stuck in the old Atlanticist model, the modern British Eurosceptic is very much an internationalist at a much more global level.

If he is a Eurosceptic of the Left, he wants to ensure that global trade and Western power are used to better the lives of the vast majority of humanity that still lives in dire conditions across the world.

If she is a Eurosceptic of the Right, the emphasis may be on global trade and the betterment of humanity through that means.

Both Right and Left will disagree profoundly on means and, in some respects, ends but what they have in common is that freedom can only be offered by example, by a free people freely determining its laws through sovereign institutions.

Having given that cultural background, let me move on to the Democracy Movement which has one of the longest continuous records as defender of national sovereignty from a non-partisan point of view in this country.

It was founded as all-party, as the voice of those who wanted to have the risks to democracy of technocracy brought to public notice. Over subsequent decades it came to link traditional right of centre concerns about the European Union with those of the Left.

It was central to the creation of the People’s Pledge, a non-partisan movement which included both Euro-sceptics and Euro-philes, which demanded and got a Referendum – something the elite of our country would happily have denied us.

Tony Blair himself clearly loathed the very idea of the people making a choice for themselves about the future destiny within the European Union.

He said in his Durham constituency in April: “Think of the chaos produced by the possibility, never mind the reality, of Britain quitting Europe.” 

Well, I see no chaos in the streets or the markets but I am too polite to endorse Boris Johnson’s assertion that Blair was an ‘epic, patronising tosser’ for making his remarks.

The point is that the Democracy Movement and People’s Pledge helped to make a Referendum happen against the massed ranks of the old elite. Now that the Referendum is assured, we will see the same determination to see the matter through to final victory – to leave, leave, LEAVE!

The strategy of the Democracy Movement in recent months has been to husband its resources which include its substantial mailing list and campaigning experience and ensure that those resources are used correctly and to maximum effect when the time comes.

This is an asset that must not be wasted and the activists on its lists must be treated with the utmost respect as fellow soldiers in a shared battle.

But the most important aspect of DM (to use its shortened acronym) is that it has long acted as clearing house for contacts between otherwise mutually suspicious Left and Right Euro-sceptics. This now becomes invaluable in ensuring that the two wings remain united as we get closer to the vote.

The obvious tactic of the Eurocrats is to try to set Left and Right Eurosceptics off against each other in the street.  This must not be allowed to happen. 

For the Eurocrats, given their base-line of centre-right, State and big business support for the pro-European position, the game is to silence the Left and have the old pre-Corbyn elite of the Labour Movement and the Labour Party speak as one voice for the European Union.

But it is not going to happen like that for a number of reasons.

The first is that the numbers of Euro-sceptical left-wingers are much higher than the mainstream Press would like you to believe. They have simply been overwhelmed [in the past] by the group-think of those who purport to speak for them. They simply need leadership and to know they are not alone.

Some became frustrated enough that they drifted across to so-called ‘Red UKIP’ as working class people who felt their concerns were not being addressed by New Labour.

I am reliably informed that many of these people – who are not racists or xenophobes – are now going home to Labour with the arrival of a new Leader, in Jeremy Corbyn, who is clearly more open to the concerns of working people and to open debate on difficult issues such as Europe, TRIDENT and even migration.

However, I am not here to speak of the Left since our Chairman, John Boyd, and Brian Denny of CAEF can do so with more authority than I can.

The Democracy Movement has, however, been helping to prepare the ground for a resurgence of Left Euroscepticism in very difficult times and now the Left can be assured that they are not alone and need not be embarrassed (or as little as possible) by the more rabid nationalist elements on the Right who can sometimes lose more votes than they secure in British contexts.

I am personally very much of the Left with a long track record of activist organisation in the Labour Movement. My long two decades or more association with DM has caused me no problems whatsoever.

There are issues, of course. This is politics. Many on the Left will not sit on a platform with some on the Right. Democratic socialists will not always sit with democratic nationalists but issues like TTIP, the incompetence of the European External Action Service in Ukraine (which has exposed the lie of the European Union as instrument of peace) and the appalling treatment of the Greek people are bringing activists together for this critical vote.

Without a functioning representative democracy answerable to the people, a people with a common history and struggle, there is no opportunity for Left and Right to contest a constitutional space if the only constitutional space available is one dictated by lawyers and technocrats.

Which leads to the final independent initiative of DM alongside maintaining its campaigning asset and increasing understanding between Left and Right democrats –the promotion of the ideal of democracy itself.

What happened in Greece and is now happening in Portugal is a sharp reminder that we are faced by a post-modern Imperial Power that hides its brute corporatist economic force under a velvet glove of liberal ideology.

DM is actively pulling together a second wave of British groups on the theme of national sovereign democracy. These are wholly committed to a ‘leave’ vote when it comes.

Now, at last, let me speak of Leave.EU. As you know there are two ‘leave’ organisations in Britain. I can characterise ‘Leave.EU’ as the mass-orientated one that seeks to mobilise the street to reach the people who really matter here, the voters.

The other ‘camp’, originated by Business For Britain, is a far more elite operation dominated by Members of Parliament of all parties and conservative business interests.

My own view is that there is room for both. Although they may be rivals for funding and attention, there is room for the elite and the mass to have their own organisations.  I see no virtue in public quarrels.

We are on the cusp of a major change in politics where power shifts from the old elite politics to the new politics represented by the power of social media and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.

The radical new politics straddles party lines – Labour’s Tom Watson is matched by the Tory Zac Goldsmith – and both Douglas Carswell and the Bennite Left see the Levellers, the radicals of the old English Republic, as part of their inheritance.

Yet the old politics still has strong residual power. Some people will still be persuaded to their position by the leadership role of ‘big beasts’. The elite is still part of the game.

So which way will DM jump?

Leave.EU is much closer to the new politics model and DM was a pioneer of this approach. DM shares with Leave.EU a belief in the ultimate wisdom of the people and the need to communicate with them in a two-way dialogue. 

Although no final commitment has been made (since DM, perfectly reasonably, wants to know that its carefully acquired campaigning asset will be managed appropriately and effectively) DM, like so many radical democratic organisations in this country, is minded to give its wholehearted commitment to Leave.EU at the right time.

At some stage, the Eurosceptical arguments are going to have to be put to the people within the funding and other restrictions of the Electoral Commission.

We trust this body. It is not partisan. In our judgment, faced with an elite or a mass offer where the latter has a significant track record of campaigning over decades, it must, if it is to be fair, go with the people and not the big beasts. 

But what I personally like about Leave.EU is that it is not allowing itself to be the rabbit in the headlights of officialdom and not relying on that outcome.

It knows that the pro-European Union lobby has been planning its campaigning for years, has accumulated massive resources and will have the same devious forces working for it as those who stole the first Referendum vote in 1975.

There is no advantage in hanging around until everything is perfect. Battle must be joined sooner rather than later. Leave.EU has simply decided to by-pass the old system of what it calls the ‘Westminster bubble’ and go into the struggle regardless. And we think that is entirely the right strategy.

Notes

[1] Delegates included, in addition to the host nation, Danes, Germans, Greeks, Irish, Norwegians and Slovenians amongst others with a supportive statement from Austria.

[2] A question from the floor by an Irish member of the international delegations raised the point that many of our Celtic brothers and sisters would not mind so much a 'Little Englander' approach if it meant that the people of England would free themselves of an imperial mind-set and commit to their own self-determination alongside that of the peoples of Eire, Wales and Scotland. However, the point stands because, in an English context, the phrase is used by critics of the 'leave' campaign to suggest that their opponents have no understanding or empathy with European culture. Having just finished reading a short story about hope under conditions of institutionalisation by Wolfgang Borchert written in 1947 just before writing this note, I am confident that we can argue that it is our love of Europe and European culture that makes us determined to resist its bureaucratisation, corporatisation and institutionalisation.