It is also important to highlight Greenspan’s phrase “creative destruction.” Obviously I am interested in words and the construction of phrases, and this phrase, “creative destruction,” interests me greatly. These words taken separately evoke contrasting feelings — ‘creative’ evokes hopefulness and newness for a better life; ‘destruction’ evokes rubble, loss, and death. Merging these two words together to form a label for the reality of hundreds of thousands of people losing their paychecks softens the reality of the destruction with the perceived goodness of creative action. It is quite clever. The reader can focus on the creativity part, the advancement of material well being, or the reader can likewise focus on the destructive part of losing one’s paycheck (hundreds of thousands of paychecks). Readers must be careful to observe how words are spun to affect emotional responses toward the negative or the positive when an author is expressing his or her ideas.
As the economic slider on the animalistic vs humanistic sliding scale is moved toward the animalistic side away from the humanistic side, that economic system is less infused with agápē realities. Competition in the world of our ancient ancestral hominids was the competition between the predator and the prey in the quest to survive. The first form, the strongest and most dangerous form, of competition is the eat-or-be-eaten struggle to survive. It is my contention that most, if not all, competition flows from this primal drive to engage in competition. I offer an interesting interpretation of modern movie-making regarding my understanding of human engagement in competition. In all of the action movies that I have watched over the years, there is a chase scene somewhere in each movie. Often there is more than one chase scene, but always at least one. Cowboy movies have a chase on horseback that evolved into the car chase. Audiences seem to have a distinct pleasure in watching a hot pursuit of any kind — a chase on horseback, in a car, in a boat, in a hot air balloon, in flying airplanes, in submarines or divers underwater and so on. Is this fascination with chase scenes the effect of a Jungian archetype of the primal predator/prey battle for survival? Is the joy of victory and the agony of defeat in sports in general and in The Olympics specifically a continued reenactment of humans struggling to survive? “To the victor goes the spoils,” or the adage, “Winner takes all,” are rallying cries to compete. Is competition the way of the world? Is it the only way to survive? Is it the best way?
I played football in high school, soccer in college, and golf for fun. I hunt with firearms and bow and arrows. My sports activities gave me experience in individualized and team-oriented confrontations with opponents. Sports activities like economic forces quite closely represent the competition between predator and prey. The victory or loss determines who was the predator and who was the prey. I clearly understand that we as a society do not speak of sports in these terms; nor do economists explain economic principles with these terms either. Nonetheless, I assert that all human competition stems from the eat-or-be-eaten reality of our ancient ancestral hominids.
My wife and I purchased a collection of documentaries, Engineering an Empire: the Complete Series, put forth by The History Channel. After viewing this complete series with its empire building, engineering advancements, emperors, monarchs and warring conquests, I am left with three strong impressions.
First, all of the great heroes and persons portrayed as outstanding figures were great only because of the vast amounts of human lives and talent that served them. In this series Themistocles is discussed. He lived from c 525 to 460 BC and was viewed as a great figure who saved Greece from a Persian invasion at the naval battle fought in the straits of Salamis. According to this series, 200 Greek triremes faced the massive Persian armada. The victory for Themistocles was decisive. While Themistocles was the strategist who planned the Greek’s response to the most powerful empire of the day, it is critical to understand the human force that provided this victory and fame to him. The trireme was powered by 170 oarsmen and had a bronze ramming tip at the water line. Themistocles did not build each ship himself. Other builders did that work. On the day of the battle, 170 oarsmen times 200 triremes amounted to 34,000 oarsmen. All of these oarsmen had to work as a unified team of 170 individuals rowing in unison at the quickest pace humanly possible. No rower tried to out-row all other oarsmen and every oarsman had to keep up with the team of 170 oarsmen. Such a feat is not just cooperation. It is a highly precise cooperation, all to destroy enemy ships. To my understanding, it is the coordinated cooperation of these 200 sets of 170 oarsmen that saved Greece from the invading Persian naval fleet. Themistocles, however, is given the glory and fame as he was the strategist.
Quarterbacks and most valuable players (MVPs) are given much, if not all, of the glory for winning the football game because the quarterback calls the plays and throws the ball to the players down field, and MVPs get their share of the glory because of their individual performance that led to victory at critical moments in the game. However, the quarterback is powerless if the receivers downfield did not, or could not, catch his pass, and MVPs could not shine if the rest of the team did not block or tackle or run the play as designed. Individual achievements are not without value, but coordinated cooperation by competent individuals will win the day or achieve designated goals that are beyond the reach of a single person.
Second, empires were built upon a huge amount of carnage and blood. Often the character trait of being ruthless or brutal was associated with many of the great emperors and kings. Today we marvel over the Great Wall of China but often we turn our gaze away from the huge amount of human suffering endured by the laborers who broke their backs building this marvel. I believe that the other name for The Great Wall of China is The Long Graveyard. If laborers died while building the wall, they were buried in the wall. This fact is prime reality for a poem. Then there is Peter the Great’s new capital city of Saint Petersburg built with thousands and thousands of Russian laborers of which 25,000 or so died. The narrator of Engineering an Empire: the Complete Series stated that Saint Petersburg is also known as The City of Bones.
Third, this series as a whole reinforced for me the truth of Jacob Bronowski’s observation:
Of course, it is tempting to close one’s eyes to history, and instead to speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and co-operative form of theft. And that form of theft began ten thousand years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus, and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. (Pages 86 – 88)
Ascent of Man. Copyright 1973.
While I agree that warring is not the same as animals stalking and attacking another animal for its dinner or lunch, the instinct to feed, when hunger constantly nags at the individual, might have morphed into a motivation of the have-nots to rise up against those who consolidated the resources for themselves. Was it not the repression of monarchies that moved the have-nots to rise up and strike a devastating blow to the aristocracy? Was this not what happened in the French, Russian and American revolutions? However, the rationale for the Europeans to take from the indigenous tribes of America was not a reaction to a repressive regime. It was more of an organized theft, I think.
As consciousness expands, naiveté diminishes. Consciousness is comprised of both the yin and the yang, of the plus (+) and the minus (-), all of which compose the realities encompassed within that consciousness. Malcolm X’s learning in a public diner about the art of persuasion occurs because of the juxtaposition of opposites — a pristine glass of water and a glass of water used as a make-shift ashtray. Asking Malcolm the simple question, “Which will you drink?” etches the lesson in my memory. The lesson learned was that an individual does not have to berate the make-shift ashtray that was once a glass of water. All Malcolm needed to do was to put a pristine glass of water next to it and others will instantly know which glass of water to consume. Deep understanding occurs when all sides of a reflection are understood; this includes all of the negatives as well as all of the positives. See a thing for what it is, nothing more, nothing less.
Additionally, experiences of hunger moving the individual to hunt for animals to eat and the ensuing stalking, victorious attack, and death would become a complete experience to be contemplated in its entirety. Having reflected upon numerous experiences, the veteran hunter would transmit the fruits of those reflections to the beginner and novice offspring hunters. It is not too difficult to surmise that as language developed and ideas were transmitted, the experience in cooperative hunting strategies could easily be adapted to life-protecting strategies. Strategizing offensive maneuvers is a small side step from defensive strategies. Therefore, while I agree with Bronowski that hunting and organized war are unique realities, I believe that learning and consequently consciousness is a cumulative growth. Hunting and organized war are related. While hunting was require of our ancient ancestral hominids, I question the necessity of war if cooperative actions overruled competitive winner-takes-all attitudes. Humankind has yet to evolve out of the competitive winner-takes-all attitude.
Is not greed the consuming of more than is needed? Gluttony is greed in food consumption. Greed is not instinctive to humans. Greed is learned behavior. Self-discipline is its antidote. However, what is desire? Is desire for food stimulated by hunger? When puberty strikes, does the urge to procreate move the individual to seek a sexual partner? Does this sexual urge stimulate a desire for a mate or sexual partner? Is a desire different from a drive? Are human desires nonbiological expansions from human biological drives? Reflection upon desires and drives is a matter of language and a matter of advanced development of the consciousness of modern humans as opposed to the consciousness of our ancient hominid ancestors. War is also a matter of consciousness of modern humans especially at our advanced levels of destruction even to our eventual annihilation. War is the dark side of modern human consciousness. But this dark side brought about empire-building and those empires improved the living of those inhabiting that empire. Is this also an example of Greenspan’s phrase “creative destruction”? The humanistic point of view would ask the question: If society is advanced via creative destruction, are all citizens or all humans residing in that society recipients of that advancement? Are some individuals excluded or minimally impacted by those advancements? Is slave labor an economic tool or economic structure that allows for the advancement of a relatively small portion of humanity at the expense of a greater portion of the humans occupying that economic system? What slave receives the same benefits as their masters? Added to this reflection is the reality that today’s modern world is rife with human trafficking (slavery in the shadows). Are masters predators and slaves prey? Juxtapose these questions with Agápē Reality.