Self-Reliance

When I speak of alienation I am speaking about wo/man’s alienation from his or her nature. I am speaking of the fragmentation of the individual. I am speaking of the fact that part of what we are is being defiled and rejected by the manner in which we live in our society.

A general theory of alienation would be a body of knowledge about how human freedom and responsible choice is constricted. Evil is that which makes it impossible for sapiens to realizing their potential; this knowledge would be an expression of what are responsible human powers and how society limits the expression of those powers.

Emerson, considered by many as the top moralist in American history, understood these facts when he stated the important challenge to all wo/men to be self-reliance. He felt that self-reliance was the “keynote of American democracy”. Whatever should limit human self-reliance works against the nature of wo/man. The great challenge to education was to develop a comprehensive theory of the limitations of self-reliance and to teach this to all Americans.

To achieve such a goal demanded that science comprehend what all humans strive for. Emerson was convinced that sapiens strived after meaning and the creation of meaning. The crux of self-reliance then was how to advance the self-creation of human meaning.

Science informs us that greed and destructive behavior are not in our DNA but in the society we create. Evil is created by our natural propensities to use our fellow sapiens to satisfy our search for meaning. Human evil is often proportional to human weakness.

“Weakness for man means shallow and narrow meanings, and lack of critical awareness of who one is, and what he is striving for…By developing his critical reason, man can free himself from a large measure of the evil that exists in his social world…It results from the fear of free choice, from the inability to assume responsibility for unique actions and meanings. On the individual level this means that the weak man is the empty man, the manipulated one, and the manipulator of others—the masochist and the sadist. On the social level it means the frightened scapegoat, the warmonger. On both levels it means clumsy, shallow, uncritical, rigid aesthetics, destructive ways of satisfying one’s striving, ways that take a toll on one’s fellow men.”

Quotes from “Beyond Alienation” by Ernest Becker

Self-Reliance

Science informs us that greed and destructive behavior are not in our DNA but in the society we create. Evil is created by our natural propensities to use our fellow sapiens to satisfy our search for meaning. Human evil is often proportional to human weakness.


The first two sentences here seem to contradict each other. The first positing evil as outside us in society - faulty systems or organization, perhaps? The second referring to evil coming from our natural propensities, which could very well come from our DNA, or...? I personally do not think thinking in terms of DNA in such a context is fruitful, nevetheless if we are going to refer to scientists, many of whom do think in precisely those terms, I think you are contradicting yourself. The third sentence adds to the oddness.
In the second sentence Evil comes from our natural propensities. In the third it is proportional to human weakness.

Do you mean inversely proportional?
How does our weakness lead us to follow our natural propensities?
Or is it a weakness in our ability to control ourselves?

If it is this last, I disagree, of course.
This makes it sound like the best amongst us are those who can control themselves. But the passionate, the passionately curious, the unstoppably outraged - say, abolitionists or suffragettes - the wildly compassionate, those who could not simply control their feelings and be objective have contributed much of what is best in modern society.

Not to mention the artists.

But, perhaps you meant something else. In any case I found that little section confusing.

Grantywanty

My wording may be confusing. What I wish to say is that science has come to the conclusion that our history of brutality is not because of our DNA directly but is a result of the society that we have created. This is an important consideration as we try to create a better world.

Our ego tends to control our behavior and in so doing causes us to behave in many ways that science has finally discovered. We must comprehend these behaviors so that we can make proper changes in our society to accommodate them.

Perhaps this example of confusion about human behavior will help clarify matters.

Hannah Arendt analyzed one the important figures in the Holocaust horror, Adolph Eichmann. Arendt called her work a study in the banality of evil. The world reacted to the claim that such evil can be called banal.

Arendt’s work described how evil “is a function of the impersonality of bureaucracy”.

“The sacrifice of the Jews…was a great ritual purification that gave to the Germans their drama of unity and brotherhood. Hugh Duncan, in his important work “Communication and Social Order”, showed this with clarity and precision.” Hitler adopted the role of cheerleader; he hypnotized the German masses into a great national drama. There arose a fever of brotherhood on a great scale. Like a primitive tribe the nation was drawn together in a ritual to cleanse away the impurities of blood that held then apart, the Jews were the ritual scapegoat that carried off the impurities.

All this satisfied the tribes need for unity. “Man needs critical reason, but he needs a social myth also, since the heart of life is the dramatic creation of meaning. The problem, then on an ideal level, is clear: What is the cost in human life and suffering, of man’s social fictions?”

Quotes from “Beyond Alienation” Becker.