Musings

As a child, studying biology, I had a teacher who once suggested that each and ever living creature has some natural form of defense, keeping it alive through time. Later, I learned a lot more about biology, but this statement stayed with me. It helped me understand the field, and shaped how I looked at every new animal. In my mind, I used to try to crack the code on new animals, trying to figure out what each animal's special defense is. I imagined that dogs and cats were able to make us take care of them, a partial result of my mom only allowing me to have small pets, small breed dogs and cats. Inevitably, this line of thought leads to the human creature. Most would suggest that the primary human defense, or naturally developed power, is our cognitive reasoning, the ability to think. This answer seems so obvious that it's almost not worth questioning. We think, on a cognitive level, while other animals react with only pure instinct.

This line of thought runs into problems though, the moment you begin really considering the human creature. While it's true, humans are capable of an amazing amount of cognitive thought, most of us use our cognitive thought as a backup plan to our instinctual operations. Think it about this the next time you drive somewhere. How often do you think about the basic operations of driving a car, the direction you're driving to get to where you're going or even make the cognitive choice to follow traffic laws, or do you just let your instinctual thought control these actions? Generally, cognitive thought is triggered, a response to some form of stimulus. This may be a new situation, a deep question asked by a loved one or when you confront a real problem in your life. Even the process of learning is largely an instinctual process, where students listen to a teacher and hope that some of the information is retained. Cognitive learning requires an interaction with material, studying and a personal choice to commit the information to memory. While some students do approach learning in this manner, many don't, and both ultimately can graduate.

Now, we do have proof of our cognitive ability. We, as a species, build impossibly large buildings, create a web of information to connect the world and constantly harness tremendous amounts of energy from our environment. My contention is that each of these things were created by a cognitive process, which began from the most natural of all biological processes, need. The question becomes, if our cognitive reasoning is not our biological defense or strongest ability, is there something more fundamental to being human that is, and that is capable of fueling and sparking the cognitive process?

We know, based on the research of Carol Gilligan and Lawrence Kohlberg, that a fundamental part of our personal development relates directly to our moral growth. Taken together, they suggest a moral progression, from birth to death, wherein each individual develops along certain moral lines. While they also determined that these moral lines are different for women and men, with women developing morally based on a sense of caring and men based on a sense of justice. Carol Gilligan's research also showed that this moral development crosses gender lines, with some women developing based on a sense of justice and all women developing a strong sense of justice as well.

This research suggests that morality plays a significant role in our development. Now, to discuss caring as a moral topic is difficult, but less difficult if we examine the idea of caring as a basic and fundamental respect for life. This line of thought is only furthered by the idea of evolutionary ethics, the idea that each individual is born with certain moral concepts. In a sense, an infant is born with a sense of law, respect for life, need for socialization and desire for truth. It may seem wild to consider these traits in an infant, unless you also consider Gilligan and Kohlbern's research, which suggests that the infant, would have these moral ideas at their most base and unmatured level.

Think of an infant. Why does an infant cry when you take something away? Could this be a sense of justice, sorrow for having lost something, which the infant believed was owned? Further, parents often discuss the "mine" phase of a child, the stage of growth where a child believes he owns everything he touches. From this base sense of "mine," could an infant grow to understand the need for fair laws? Developmental scientists explain that an infant requires love, and direct parental attention to grow up, emotionally healthy. Is this all that different from the basic human demand for socialization? From these base need for attention, could an infant grow to learn the basics of social interaction? An infants search for truth is natural, as an infant is the basic definition of a learning creature. From the infant state, a human learns constantly. Does that sense of growth stop at some point, or does it mature into a deeper desire for truth and desire to learn? Carol Gilligan defined the earliest sense of caring as a desire for the preservation of one's own life, the infant's natural desire to survive. This is a biological imperative, where an infant's system fights off diseases, grows stronger and tried to survive. Gilligan continues to explain how this sense of life preservation eventually grows into a deep respect for other people's lives.

What I find amazing is the possibility that this basic sense of morality can lead to cognitive thought. Think about it, if you respect human life and want to see it thrive, you face a cognitive responsibility to seek methods of furthering your life and the lives of others. If you respect law, you have to develop cognitively in order to create a society that respects law. If you respect your human need for socialization, you have a cognitive responsibility to create social principles, which further your social opportunities. If you have a respect for truth and learning, your cognitive development of thought is essential. In this way, the human cognitive development may be a natural biological response to our inborn moral principles.

So what does this mean? Well, the first possible conclusion would be that perpetuating a moral understanding and furthering our moral understanding is paramount for our continuing growth. Additionally, we could surmise that if morality is our biological foundation, we should work to protect and positively influence the world around us. In a sense, our possession of morality requires us to be good stewards of our morality. Of course, possibly the most important conclusion to be drawn from this line of thought is that students should start studying philosophy in high school and that philosophy should be a mandatory part of all educational programs at a college level.

Our Garbage

As consumers, we have a certain understanding about garbage. We know we create it when we consume, and we know we dispose of it, as society dictates. After opening a package of food, we consume the food, throw away the package, and our bodies later dispose of the remnants of the food itself. Through this process, very little of that, which we consume, is actually destroyed, or more to the point used. While the green movement works to keep you aware of the life of your garbage after you dispose of it, for most consumers, the act of disposal represents a physical discorporation of our garbage. Rationally, we understand this to be untrue. We know that when we throw away a bag of trash, it doesn't just go away. It remains, in dumps, or it's destroyed and parts of it are recycled. The end result is a process of accumulated trash, and the process of reusable trash.

Are ideas the same? We know that we use ideas, much like we use food. For instance, if you see a loved on in distress. The process of helping them involves collecting information, either through talking to your loved one or thinking back on things they've faced in their lives recently. After collecting a little information, you may test the things you found against your understanding of your loved one, discarding pieces of information, you determine unneeded. The process becomes, collecting various ideas, consuming those ideas you need, and disposing of ideas you don't need. Later, you may choose to incorporation other ideas, such as your understanding of psychology or perhaps your understanding of medical issues, your loved one may face. The information and ideas you collect, which become significant, becomes the substance you consume, and all other information becomes the disposed information. The disposed ideas may seem to discorporate, similar to the way disposed trash seemingly ceases to exist, but we know that old ideas don't really go away. Once you notice that your loved one is distressed, and formulate a thought about her health, the idea doesn't go away once you find out that her health is fine. The act of considering a loved one's health becomes another source of concern. While it may not influence the way you choose to help your loved one, regarding the specific distress they feel at the time, the idea can be remembered later and considered regarding other, future concerns. So, similar to the way large piles of garbage can accumulate, old ideas remain as part of your thoughts and concept of the world. As such, you may even recall these "disposed" ideas later, when faced with another concern. For instance, the next time your loved one seems distressed, you may recall your previous health concerns immediately, and consider them before looking for additional information.

What about other ideas? Each of us is an individual, but we are also a collection of ideas. We possess the political, social and world views of each of our parents, most of our teachers and the friends who've influenced our lives. We possess ideas, given to us through the media, movies, books, music and culture. As a thinking creature, we learn to sort through these ideas, giving some more faith and credence than others, but ideas, once thought, remain. I like to think back to a friend of mine, who, on a double date with myself, once looked longingly into his date's eyes and recanted, "I am the direct descendent of Davy Crockett." I remember laughing at the time, but in that moment an idea was created for me. The idea was that he'd say anything to sleep with a girl. Even without spending much time thinking about that evening, the idea that he'd lie to a girl to seduce her remained as part of my perception of him. The idea was reinforced later when he, age 17, told another girl that he'd flown F-14 Tomcats for the military.

This makes me wonder about other ideas, especially ideas, which are more dangerous. Our American culture has a long history of dangerous ideas, the inferiority of one race to another, the inferiority of one gender to another, the inferiority of one religion to another, the inferiority of one lifestyle to another. As a culture, we like to pretend, like we do with our garbage, that those ideas, which were the foundation of oppression in our past, discorporate and vanish from our minds, once we move beyond them. We like to pretend this is true, but we already know that ideas, once thought, can never be unthought. Of course, we have options. We can, like many southern states have begun doing, pretend those ideas don't exist. We remove them from history books, teach our kids that the civil war was about state's rights and economic disagreements. We remove the parts of history, where women fought for equal rights, and just let our kids think that women were always equal, that slavery never happened or that our founding fathers were actually super heroes. Of course, this seams like the same problem with our land fills, pretending they're not there and just adding new garbage to the tops, when we need. The other side of this argument is that we could dive in to these old ideas, live amongst them and dwell in the filth. Of course, we wouldn't be any more likely to do this than we would to move into the landfills and build our homes. The last solution would be to listen to the green movement ideals, which tell us to recycle our trash. I suppose this would mean diving into the bad idea landfills with both hands, and instead of hiding from the filth in our history, confront it and use it to benefit people tomorrow. Don't hide from the bad ideas of our past, explain them, teach them and recycle them into wisdom for the next generation. Take the reality of gender oppression, and turn it into a lesson for how underappreciated Americans can stand up and demand liberty. Take the painful reality of slavery and turn it into a lesson for how they can appreciate a foreign culture, instead of destroy it, or at least a lesson on how to respect humanity. History books are filled with dark chapters, but between those sections of shame, there are stories of heroism and confrontation, where society learned to change its perspective and grow. When you remove the pieces of our history, which are inconvenient or embarrassing, you also remove the lessons society learned.