The Social Unit of Man

Development of Superior Individuals

Once again, my subtitle is a lie, or what I believe is untruthful. But some do believe it is truthful which is the focus of this article.

If existence is meaningless, as Camus suggested, and if as Hegel & Sartre infer man has broken down his own social unit into master-slave conflicts that separate individuals from each other, then the question must become: was this an evolutionary advancement of human nature? Well for a long time it was supposed to be so. I do in no way mean to suggest that Franz Boas was by any manner the first to challenge that idea, or that he necessarily completely refuted the idea.  But I nevertheless want to examine Boas for a moment in light of the Darwinian notion (not Darwin’s thought, but the development of his evolutionary ideas applied to the social “advancements” of mankind, and specifically western interpretations of such ideas) that man evolved intellectually and socially into higher and lower levels of evolutionary development.)  

Basically the concept of moral relativism in western thought can be traced at least to Herodotus’ histories and Pythagoras’ sophism, and adapted by Plato in the Theaetetus, but then abandons and  thereafter in his ideas of the philosopher leader, or the superior mind that ultimately permeates The Republic.  But it was certainly not only a western concept, and is at least present in the non-objectivist theories of the Chinese mentalist philosopher Zhuangzi .  But overall Greek philosophy was skeptical of relativistic developments that some societies were less morally just and agreed that there was a higher “development” in some than others, at least on an individual level.  The idea takes root in the middle ages, especially   with Duns Scotus,  and the development of religious superiority attained by monotheism.  Of course that in itself can be traced to certain aspects of Samaritan monotheism that became ultimately defined as Jewish uniqueness, the ones who followed their God being morally superior to paganism, that became fully flowered in the post-exilic redefining of Judaism, as being  of much more highly developed and morally superior to other cultures. And I suppose all cultures structured from the top down needed to be supported by some theocratic notions of the superiority of their leaders and the followers of those leaders.  

Montaigne and Hume certainly developed a disagreement on cultural superiorities in their treaties on what morals were.And Hume did not see a proper or better superiority of any moral setting over another. But the increased awareness of moral diversity (especially between Western and non-Western cultures) on the part of Europeans in the modern era is an important antecedent to the contemporary concern with moral relativism. During this time, the predominant view among Europeans and their colonial progeny was that their moral values were superior to the moral values of other cultures. Few thought all moral values had equal or relative validity, or anything of that sort. The main impetus for such a position came from cultural anthropology. Anthropologists were fascinated with the diversity of cultures, and they produced detailed empirical studies of them—especially “primitive,” non-Western ones, as was illustrated by the popularity of armchair anthropologist, James George Frazier’s compilative books on foreign cultures being observed  those who were writing about the behavior of nativist communities in societies being colonized.   And of course once again this thought developed to convince themselves of their right to be masters over the natives of the lands that they conquered, not only that they were culturally advanced but simply morally advanced over those that they conquered. And poor Charles Darwin fit right into this ideology, although he was not totally comfortable with it.  But his idea of natural selection, and a slight of hand  misinterpretation of the meaning of what he called “survival of the fittest”  led to the development of Social Darwinism.  I don’t want to suggest all such thought was uniform, much of it was centered on economic fitness and the natural evolution of those who had more to actually be more “fit” and evolutionarily deserving  than those who had  less and would fall to the bottom of society simply because of less evolutionary fitness (again with roots in Judaism, see some of the discussions in the Book of Job, although, again, not necessarily undisputed, until once again, post-exilic Judaism and the Alexandrian school made it quite prominent inJewish thought until the defeat in 70 A.D. by the Romans, which demanded a new interpretation for a continuation of Judaism as a culture).  This laissez faire economic thought still permeates contemporary society that more or less still defines economic status as a result of the superiority of those that have more economic status being more deserving of that wealth than those who lack it.

Other Social Darwinists took up the cause of individuals being more “evolved” and supported eugenics and the disparagements of other cultures and/or ethnicities of being less evolved.  Probably William Graham Sumner in Folkways, was actually the first to challenge this idea, but it was Boas, and followed by his students, Herskovits , Benedict and others, and then Malinowski and his followers, Sahlins, et al., who began to argue that societies were not evolutionary superior but relative on a parallel level of evolutionary development. So the old idea began to be challenged that somehow some were  superior by virtue of culture and that culture did not define intellectual or moral superiority or an evolutionary advancement of man from primitiveness to higher evolutionary attainment.  

But throughout the 20th century the debate continued amongst philosophers, sociologists, political theorists and anthropologists. Then along came genetic studies and whether everyone in those previously mentioned genres were forced to either deny the validity or accept the results of the genetic studies that should have put to rest the concept of any superior hierarchy of culture.

In 1975 E.O. Wilson published Sociobiology.  Wilson suggested that we needed to combine disciples to fully digest and comprehend much of the rapidly growing knowledge.  If new discoveries in astro-physics were limited only to astro-physicists  and their knowledge of new advances in evolutionary biology were not combined then a full understanding would be prohibitive. But not only the scientific communities needed to become more comprehensive, but historians needed to review history through a scientific lens, as well as economists and sociologists.  Wilson suggests that specialization limits understanding if it is  not combined into a comprehensive interdisciplinary understanding.  He suggests this is not an unknown phenomenon in the development of human knowledge,  Astro-physics developed from uniting astronomy and physics and evolutionary biology and genetic studies by advancing the relationship of chemistry and biology.  Of course chemistry was also important in understanding and furthering our understanding of physics, etc. , etc.

Now I am not expert enough in any discipline to claim to be the interdisciplinary authority for the  comprehensive development that Wilson calls for.  But I dabble in all and I see inherent contradictions that cannot be resolved without a more interdisciplinary approach.  Physicists talk about other life on other planets and technologists talk about exploring and traveling in space and seem blind to how life and evolution actually occur.  Sociologists and economics don’t seem to comprehend the historical and evolutionary  developments of their disciplines and politicians are all mere dabblers like me, but self-proclaimed experts in everything that people need and what they should know.

  Environmentalists rely on technology and  sometimes argue against  technology but seem to be unaware of many physical laws and the difference between natural earth processes and developed processes .  Historians talk about the past repeating itself and point out the resolutions of the past but seem to not understand that evolutionarily speaking7000 years of history is an insignificant  amount of time and rather than repeating itself, it  is still on the same day of developing itself.  The supposed rapid advances in technology that show development are really only showing us that since man has attempted to control the earth’s resources his technological advances have not moved one inch from the political concept of attempting to control the earth's resources; and so history is not a study of humanity’s advancement through history, but a mere study of man’s stagnating pursuit of the attempt to control more and more of nature through political suppression.

And all of this confines the study of the social unit of man into a compressed time frame that cannot possibly comprehend the development of the social unit of man or become capable of answering the question posed at the beginning of this article: was the reorganization of human life from its evolutionary social structure of communities to the state of master-slave relationships actually due to an evolutionary advancement in man’s intelligence?