INTRODUCTION
With
a few exceptions, Nigerian politicians and bureaucrats are corrupt. Few things get
done in Nigeria without someone bribing someone. In fact, bribery
is so rampant in Nigeria that it is now accepted as part of the culture,
and, not to factor it into the equation of any business transaction, is
considered unrealistic behavior.
Let us say that you fly into a Nigerian Airport. The immigration officer would take �dash� (bribery money) from you,
before he processes your passport and gives you permission to enter the
country. The Custom�s officer will take money from you before he clears your
baggage, and if you did not keep a watchful eye on him, many items would go
missing from your luggage.
�
You seek the services of a taxi to take you from
the airport to your hotel.� The driver
informs you that there are many police checkpoints along the route to your
hotel, and tells you exactly how much he is expected to bribe the policemen at
each sentry point. He then asks you to pay that sum, in addition to his regular
fare, if you want to ride in his cab.
�
When you get to your hotel, the front desk clerk
demands payment of �dash,� otherwise your reservation suddenly disappears from
his records.
Let us assume that you came to the country for some
business that takes you to a government ministry and you go there.� The office receptionist demands dash from you
just to announce your presence to his boss. If you do not pay up, the oga
(boss), you would be told is not in.�
When finally you meet the oga, he demands payments for whatever services
you want him to perform for you. The going rate is 10 to 15% of the worth of
the business that you hope to transact with the �evil� civil servant. Even to
pick up a supposedly free form from a government department, you have to bribe
someone.
A day in Nigeria would get you wondering whether the people were
born with criminal genes.� You wonder
whether racist white psychologists are correct in asserting that black persons
are born with a tendency to criminal behavior.� Are Nigerians born with a tendency to
criminality?� It would seem their genius
lies in figuring out how to cheat, rather than how to do things that serve the
public good.
�
(Empirical studies demonstrate that sociological
factors are mostly responsible for much of petty criminal behavior.� However, hardcore antisocial personalities,
perhaps no more than two percent of any population, probably inherited their
proclivity to criminality? It is because some criminals are not remediable that
society must have jails and prisons to lock them up. These antisocial
types�they are generally fearless, and not easily physically aroused, they are
as dense as predatory animals, really� recycle through jails until encroaching
old age and consequent somatic weaknesses render them less able to commit
violent crimes.)
Nigeria�s politicians and civil (evil) servants loot the
public treasury. In fact, it seems that the primary motivation for people going
into public service is to take bribery and enrich themselves
from the public trough? A poor man gets into public office, and within a couple
of years becomes a rich man. He steals as much of the public�s money as he can
get away with, and whoever dares complain is thrown
into jail or, even worse, killed. When the late Nigerian leader (he was more
like a gang leader than a national leader), Sani Abacha died, almost a billion
dollars was recovered from his estate. And a lot more money has not been
recovered from his overseas bank accounts.
��
What goes on in Nigeria is replicated in much of sub Saharan Africa (with
the possible exception of South Africa?). Joseph Mobutu, for example, practically saw the
Congolese national treasury as his personal money and did with it, as he liked.
The secondary school drop out, bought castles in Europe and banked billions of dollars overseas.
At the time of this writing (February, 2004), the
rulers of Angola cannot account for billions of dollars they made
from oil.� Africa seems governed by a bunch of amoral thieves. Kleptocracy is, perhaps,
the most appropriate name for African governments?
If foreigners are na�ve enough to give financial
aid to most African countries, the chances are that the money would wind up in
the pockets of unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats, and is seldom spent
for the purpose it was given.� Obviously Africa needs foreign aid but the donors ought to be realistic and go to Africa and manage the expenditure of their money themselves if they want
accountability on how it is spent. One would be extremely na�ve to trust
African politicians and bureaucrats with money; that is like permitting foxes
into chicken coops. If one does not want to be duped, one simply has to treat
African politicians as if they are predatory thieves, and take precautionary
measures against their anticipated criminal behavior.
This is a negative assessment of the African
politician, but facts leave us with no alternative but to reach that
pessimistic conclusion.� The social
realist does not predicate his behavior, certainly not when it comes to money,
on individuals� professed good intentions, but on how they behaved in the past.
You bank your money with a financial institution with a reputation for
creditable managing of people�s money, not one with a reputation for stealing
such money.
����
CAUSATION
That
African governments are corrupt, is not questioned by any one who has had any
kind of dealings with them, the real question is why are they corrupt?� Many social observers have explored possible
causal factors for corruption in Africa.� Chinua Achebe,
in his book, Man of the People, seemed to think that corruption in Africa has something to do with the fact that Africans are only recently
exposed to the riches of modern life, particularly as represented by
Westerners, and want to become rich as quickly as is
possible. In a more recent pamphlet, The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe elaborated on other putative explanations
of why many Africans are thieves. He seemed to suggest that the multi tribal
nature of African States, has something to do with
their corrupt political behavior. As he sees it, tribal leaders perceive
themselves as in public office, to get as much money as they can for their
tribe, from the National treasury. The national treasury is seen as a cake and
each tribe wants its own share of it.
This explanation, however, falls flat on its face, because
those same tribal leaders do engage in bribe taking from members of their
tribe. An Ibo politician and, or evil civil servant would take bribes from
fellow Ibos. In a specific case, that this observer is aware of, some villagers
levied themselves and came up with the funds to provide their village with pipe
borne water.� Lacking the technical
skills to implement the project, they went to the ministry of public works to
perform the task for them. The government whose function, inter alia, is to provide the villagers with water, not only failed
to do that for them, but then demanded bribery from the villagers before it
could do for them, what they had actually done for themselves. If they had not
paid bribe the waterworks would not have been constructed, so they paid up.
Clearly, the personnel of the various African
governments seem to lack deep identification with their own people�s
sufferings.� Africans are the poorest
people on earth and essentially live wretched lives. One would expect African
leaders to have single minded determination, to improve their peoples� poverty,
to work like driven people to drag their people into the twenty-first century
economic living standards. The backwardness of African living, vis a vis the rest of the world, is unbelievable.
Apparently, African leaders do not seem to perceive themselves as existing to
serve their peoples� public interests, but only their own self-interests. In
other words, African governments seem composed of self-centered officials.
Instead of addressing the pathetic living standards
of their people some misguided African nationalists spend much of their time
and energy trying to prove, to a skeptical world, that they too had illustrious
past civilizations and are not backward. Maybe Africa had some civilizations of note, but that is not relevant in today�s
world. Yesterday�s glory is not significant; what matters are today�s laurels.
No present African country can be considered exemplary, and worthy of
admiration. Admiration is the greatest evidence of respect. So what non-African
want to be an African? Probably none. Many people around the world want to be
American-like, because they appreciate America�s prosperous economy and dynamic culture. That
says it all.
The thesis of this essay is that self-centeredness
is at the root of most of the mismanagement of Africa�s public affairs, and also accounts for its corruption. The corollary
thesis is that something must be done to reduce self-centeredness in Africans,
if modern polity is to arise in Africa.
To say that Africans are self-centered, however,
does not seem to say much, since an argument can be made that most human beings
are self-centered. Yet some of them manage to have a relatively corruption free
government? Why is it that in the case of Africa, self-centeredness causes so much social disruption, and not
elsewhere in the world where people are equally self-centered? This is a good
question.
�
My argument is that, Africans are prone to
corruption, because the social forces that ameliorate human self-centeredness
are insufficiently developed in Africa.
In his seminal work, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
argued that human nature is characterized by self-centeredness.� As he sees it, in the state of nature, that
is, before civil society emerged, each person pursued his self-interests, and,
if necessary, at the expense of other persons� interests. Natural man is
selfish, Hobbes observes. The result of this selfishness is constant conflict
and war between people. Life in the state of nature was characterized by
perpetual warfare and, consequently: �nasty, brutish and short�.� To reduce their insecurity, Hobbes argues,
people gathered together, elected a ruler, and formed civil society.� They gave the ruler/government the authority
and power to arrest and punish those of them who transgress others� interests.
As Hobbes sees it, government came into being
because of the self-centered nature of human beings.� If human beings were social serving there
would be no need for governments, at least not the form of governments that we
currently have. It is the reality of human imperfection that makes it necessary
for society to impose governments on themselves. Governments, by definition,
exist to restrict individuals� behavior, so as to give them physical and social
security. Governments take away individuals� natural license to do as they
like, and give them circumscribed social rights. (The Founding Fathers of the
American polity used Hobbes, Montesquieu and Locke to rationalize the choice of
government they made. See Madison, Hamilton and Jay: The Federalist Papers.)
According to conservative political theory,
government is a necessary evil. Without it people revert to Hobbes�
hypothetical state of nature, and to chaos. Without organized government, that
reduced peoples� freedom to do as they pleased, there would be no civilization.
Without government, people would not have the security to engage in productive
activities, as most of their energies would be devoted to trying to protect
themselves from attacks, from lawless and predatory persons. (Nigerians are
mostly unproductive precisely because they are spending too much of their time
and energy trying to survive, rather than take their security for granted, and
then engage in self actualizing activities, ala Abraham Maslow. Maslow posited
a hierarchy of needs that individuals must satisfy before they pursue higher
ones: physiological, safety and security, social acceptance, self-esteem and
self-actualization.� The lower order
needs must be met before higher order needs, like self-actualization is sought.
If and when lower needs are not met, people revert to seeking them. A person
must eat, feel protected from other persons attack, feel like he belongs to a
social group, and like other people, value his worth, before he seeks to
realize whatever inherent potential he came into the world with.)
Hobbes argues that the function of government is to
check human self-centeredness, so that, people do not negatively affect each
other�s well-being. The role of government is to provide people with physical
and social security, and then leave them alone to go about pursuing their
understanding of happiness.
Given the self-centered, and evil nature of human
beings, Hobbes seemed to think that it required an absolute government to
exercise corrective power over them, to get them to be prosocial rather than
their natural antisocial nature. John Locke� corrected this undemocratic strain in Hobbes
political philosophy by stating that, since it is the people that established governments
to protect them, they have a right to limit what governments can and cannot do.
Limited, rather than absolute, government is a prerequisite for democracy.
Governments are not imposed on people by God and, as such, do not rule by
divine rights, as European kings used to claim, but rule with the peoples�
consent (Rousseau�s General Will). A
rational people give their governments mandates to rule them in certain areas
only, and otherwise, demand that they be left alone to live their lives as they
see fit.
Adam Smith,
in his influential book, The Wealth of Nations, essentially argues that human
beings are self-centered by nature. As he sees it, a rational economic system
must take into consideration this self centered nature of human beings.� Human beings, empirical observations seem to
indicate, tend to work hardest when they work for themselves, not when they
work for public good. Therefore, Smith argues, that a capitalist economy, that
optimizes self-interested incentive, is the best in motivating people to work
very hard.�
As Smith sees it, the free enterprise economy is
very efficient in the allocation of scarce resources. Those economic systems
that are predicated on the premise that human beings are social serving by
nature, Smith suggests, are generally unproductive because they incorrectly
assessed human nature. Man is self-centered, Smith holds.� More importantly, if man is allowed to pursue
his self interests, rather than social interests, somehow the blind forces of
the market compel him to be more productive than he would normally be.
�
The economically rational person observes that,
each person is out to satisfy his self interests, and would only buy goods and
services that satisfy him, and ignore others.�
Therefore, for suppliers of goods and services to sell their products
and make profits they have to gear them to what people
want.� Demand, in effect, determines
supply, or at least what the market rewards. This way, resources are more
efficiently allocated in the economy, better than they would be in a planned
economy that assumes that people are socially interested, Smith said.
Adam Smith�s Laissez-faire economy seldom exists in
pure form. At the time Smith wrote (1776), what actually existed was
mercantilism. Today what exists in the West is mixed economy. John Maynard
Keynes
taught the West, that governments should use fiscal, monetary and taxation
policies to regulate the tendency for capitalist economies to go through
periods of boom and burst, inflation and depression and everything else in
between.
Charles Darwin,
in his revolutionary book, The Origin of Species, said that dispassionate
observation of animal behavior, lead him to one inevitable conclusion: that animals
evolved by adapting to the constant changes taking place in their environment,
and that the fittest tend to survive and the weakest die off.� Darwin implied that, nature is impersonal, neither good
nor bad, and is disinterested in animals� survival.� Animals, human beings included, Darwin tells us, want to survive and struggle to do so.
As an aside, one can ask: why do human beings want
to survive? Why do they want to live?� Do
they just want to reproduce themselves and make sure that their selfish genes,
as Edward Wilson,
in his social biology, tells us, survive? What is the purpose of life? Is life
a meaningless and purposeless exercise in blind seeking for survival, as
existentialist writers like Albert Camus
and Jean Paul Sartre
tell us? Pure empiricism would seem to suggest that, there is no purpose to
life; that people are mere variety of animals, with inbuilt desire to survive
but survive for what they do not know. But as Emmanuel Kant reminds us, in his
Critique of Pure Reason, pure empirical reasoning is not enough explanation of
man. Man is a teleological creature; without his purposes he dies or lives a
shiftless existence.� Thus philosophy,
though mostly deductive and speculative is part of the human equation.� Man must ask: who am
I, and posit albeit conjectural answers. Darwin�s pure inductive observation, though scientific is
not an adequate explanation of the phenomenon of man. We need more than science
to explicate the phenomenon man. Religion and metaphysics, though not based on
verifiable science, have a place in the explanation of the mystery that is man.
As Darwin sees it, animals that can do what nature demands
for survival survive, and those that cannot do so die.� In other words, people must be realistic and
do what they have to do to personally adapt to their changing world.
Self-centeredness, social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer,
tell us would seem the most rational approach to an impersonal nature that does
not care for human beings survival.
On occasion, however, collective behavior is
necessary for human beings� survival. Political realism teaches that people are
aggressive animals and do fight each other and that wars are inevitable.� It requires collective effort to fight off
armed groups.� For example, if many persons
attack the individual, he is more likely to survive if he is part of a group
that defends him. That is to say that collectivism and cooperation are
sometimes necessary for the individual�s survival.
If collective behavior is sometimes conducive to individual
survival, crass social Darwinism is, therefore, an inadequate philosophy to
live by. In the real world we always need both competition and cooperation to
survive, not an either or choice. Therefore, social Darwinism is at best an
infantile philosophy.
A variety of capitalist economists, Milton
Friedman, for example, harp on the advantages of pure competition, and rave and
rant against what they call socialist collectivist behavior, but what they do
not seem to understand is that if people did not cooperate there would be no
society where people compete with one another. Our earthly reality is such that
we have a pair of opposites: competition and cooperation, light and darkness,
good and bad etc.� Perhaps in heaven
there are no opposites, but on earth we seem condemned to having opposites and
whoever talks about eliminating one side of the equation is dangerous, for if
listened to could cause a lot of social suffering. The real choice before us is
mixed economy, and how to have maximum competition within its realistic
framework.
Spencer had carried Darwin to its logical conclusion and said that the rich
and powerful are the most able to survive in our competitive environment. He
used his philosophy to rationalize the incredible wealth acquired by the robber
barons during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller, Ford, and the other millionaires
spawned by the industrial revolution, were supposedly superior individuals who
were more able to survive than the poor proletariats slaving in their
factories.�� Indeed, in a racist
overtone, Spencer implied that the European races are the most able to survive,
and that non-European races are weak, and therefore in the jungle that is human
society would die off.� Before they died,
Spencer saw nothing wrong using them to increase wealth for the fittest to
survive.
Joseph Chamberlain
said amen to this racist strain in Spencer, and encouraged Europeans to
colonize Africa and Asia, because
Africans and Asians are supposedly inferior races. Superior races ought to rule
inferior races hence Europeans went on a scramble for Africa and Asia during the last decades of the nineteenth century.
They divided up Africa and Indochina among
themselves, without the slightest regard for those already living there. As far
as they were concerned, Africa and Asia are empty
lands, and the powerful Europeans merely take them for their own use.
International law did not recognize indigenous peoples� right to land until the
mid twentieth century.����� (The question
that poor Spencer and company did not ask is: why should the masses permit
themselves to be exploited by the rich and powerful for their own survival and
not the survival of the masses?� If there
is no God and justice in the world, as Dostoyevsky, in Brothers Karamazov,
tells us, all behaviors are permitted. If so, why shouldn�t the exploited wage
slaves rise up and kill their exploiters? Perhaps morality is after all
necessary in society? And, if so, what is the basis for morality if all we are
doing is surviving and the fittest survive?�
Since the masses have the capacity to kill the rich and powerful why,
shouldn�t they do so and appropriate their wealth?�
Is fear of punishment the deterrence?� Punishment by what force? If as Nietzsche
said, God is either dead or may not have existed, then there is no external
power to punish the masses for taking from the powerful. The masses are always
more numerous than the rich, and if they did not have silly fears of punishment
by the gods preventing them from doing as they liked, they could easily
overwhelm the few rich and appropriate their wealth.� In the real world each of us has the capacity
to harm and kill each other. Given this reality, therefore, pragmatism dictates
that we must share our wealth if we do not expect other persons to appropriate
it. Marx noted that the powerful control the weak with religion, making them
fear non-existent gods, hence religion as the opium of the masses. Now suppose
religion is eradicated from the masses consciousness, what would prevent them
from reaching for the throats of the rich? Fear of society�s punishment?� When the masses rise in vengeance the
gatekeepers of prisons generally run away, as happened during the French and
Russian revolutions. Spencer did not provide a philosophy that could make
society possible and, as such, is silly.)
Nietzsche, in Thus Spake Zarasthustra,
agreed with social Darwinism, and argues for society where the most powerful
rule the weak.
�
Fascists like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler
tried to implement Nietzsche�s apparent psychotic obsession with power.
(Nietzsche was schizophrenic, paranoid type; that mental disorder is
characterized by, among other symptoms, grandiosity and quest for unrealistic,
that is, deluded power.)
Hitler delineated fascist political philosophy in
his autobiography, Mein Kampft. As he sees it, one individual is the most
appropriate to rule a given polity. Government by committees, democracy, he
said, is indecisive, unworkable and unproductive. That individual is, of
course, Hitler. His tribe, the Germans, Hitler believes, is the most powerful
and ought to survive at the expense of other tribes. The Germans ought to rule
non-Germans, and indeed ought to expropriate their lands, just as Europeans
took American Indians lands and drove the poor things into reservations�and
sold them alcohol to drink themselves to death. Genocide, as public policy, has
been practiced before so Hitler saw no reason not to do so. (The sociopath said
all these with a straight face; he had no guilt feelings at all, and indeed
carried out the world�s most heinous pogrom without remorse. What is man that
he could do such a cruel thing? Savage?)
Hitler fancied himself the natural leader of a
natural leading tribe, and set out to subjugate other European tribes to his
rule. It never occurred to Hitler, that those, whom he
considered inferior, might not construe themselves as inferior to him. And if
they do not construe themselves as inferior to him, why would they accept his
leadership of them? Of course they would not and would fight him, as the
Russians fought him, and finally forced the little rat to commit suicide in his
underground burrow.� This is reminiscent
of racists who believe that they are superior to blacks, and it never occurs to
them that blacks are not obligated to believe in their self serving views, and
as such, would fight for their freedom.
Arthur Jensen writes about the inferiority of black
people, and actually expects black persons to accept his infantile views.� Why should they? Because he fancies himself
as god, and or has god (science) on his side?�
It never occurs to the man that he is being aggressive, and, at worst,
delusional since no human being knows what the truth of man is and to claim to
do so is to believe in what is not true as true, hence be psychotic.� Racists are asking for a racial war and will
probably get it as Nazis got their war. We know what happens when psychotics
get their wars, the civilization they stand for dies, and those they had looked
down upon rise to ascendancy. The barbarians replaced proud Rome.
�
As the twenty-first century progresses, it is clear
that nuclear weapons will be everywhere. No weapon ever developed by man remains
the exclusive property of one nation forever.�
Thus, when the currently oppressed folks lay their hands on weapons of
mass destruction the simplistic racists who instead of seeking ways to unify
people, seek ways to divide them, will find what they are looking for, death.
Keynes reminds us to watch what we say for demagogues often latch unto half
baked ideas of scholars, and use them to justify their crimes.� Hitler latched unto the spurious ideas of
nineteenth century anthropologists, and used them to believe that his people
are superior to Jews and Slavic persons. Current racists use the idiocy
propagated by pseudo scientists called educational psychologists, to justify
their racist views and harm non-white persons. Because these academic hacks and
their voodoo science endanger people, they ought to be treated as the
pestilence they are.
In his Table Talks/Secret Talks, edited by Trevor
Roper,
Hitler said that Slavic Europeans were inferior to Germans, and that he wanted
to kill them all off and take over their lands, pretty much as Europeans killed
the Indians they had perceived as savages in America. On second thought, however, the practical Hitler
understood that it would take a whole lot of labor to till the vast soil of Russia.� So,
grudgingly, the Fuhrerprinz agreed to keep a few Slavs alive to work as slaves
for Germans, but prevented them from going to school beyond elementary school.
Hitler killed over fifty million persons in pursuit of his grandiose lebensraum
foreign policy.
�
The amazing thing is that Slavic people actually
ignored what Hitler said about them in his Mein Kampf and pretended that he was
not going to enslave them until he did so.�
Stalin made a pact with him, did not believe that the madman was out to
kill Slavs, and felt surprised that the lunatic killed Russians whom he
perceived as subhuman.� This is
incredible.� By the same token, many
misguided Africans currently disregard the fact that racist whites consider
them subhuman, and would like to kill them or reduce them to slavery. This is
sad.� Africans must take the foolish
ramblings of racist whites seriously and prepare to checkmate them. Africa must, therefore, struggle to become powerful, for as scholars of
international politics tell us, only balance of power prevents war between
nations, not so-called good human nature. Africa must become economically, politically and militarily as powerful as
any other continent on earth. That is the only way to prevent treating Africans
as second-class citizens. (The little schooling to be permitted Hitler�s slaves
was to enable them to read instructions given by their German masters.� In the Americas, racist whites similarly prevented black persons
from going to schools, so as to more effectively exploit and control them.
South African whites did the same to Africans. The depth of human depravity and
capacity for evil is yet to be plumbed.)
The operating Western assumption of man is that he
is self-centered by nature.� Of course,
there are few who have contrary views.�
We can think of Jean Jacque Rousseau. In the Social Contract, Rousseau
implied that in nature people are socially interested and social serving. Man
departed from social-interested behavior because of the corrupting influences
of organized society.� Rousseau wished for
a return to �pristine nature� where people lived cooperative existence, as he
imagined the noble savages (American Indians) lived. (Please note that he
called the Indians savages, betraying his not so unconscious sense of
superiority to the Indians, that is, European superiority to non-Europeans).
Socialists and communists like Fourier, Robert
Owen, Joseph Proudhorn, Karl Marx, Frederic Engel, V.I. Lenin
and others seemed to believe that man is communal by nature. They seemed to see
self-interested behavior as unnatural.�
In Marx�s dialectic materialism, as delineated in his major work, Das
Kapital, he convinced himself that history moved in a linear order from
communalistic to slavery, feudalism, bourgeoisie, and finally returned to
communalism. As Marx sees it, each stage of history has inherent contradictions
that inevitably dispose to its overthrow, and the emergence of a new stage of
civilization. The new stage is always a synthesis of the overthrown (thesis)
social order and the forces that overthrew it, usually those it oppressed
(antithesis).
Marx said that he stood Hegel�s philosophy on its
head. Hegel had argued, among other things, that the forces of history are
working towards the emergence of the nation state, the absolute idea.� The nation, therefore, ought to be obeyed by
all citizens.
At the time of Hegel�s writing,
Germany was composed of a conglomeration of Princedoms who
were easy prey for France and other European powers, and Hegel, being a nationalist,
wanted his people to unify into a strong state so as to be more able to defend
themselves from their predatory neighbors. Hegel deified the state, and
probably contributed to Germans� tendency to sacrifice themselves for their
country?
�
In pursuit of national unity, Hegel justified a
powerful state.� In similar vein, seeking
to unify weak Italian dukedoms so that they could fight off powerful France and Austria, Machievelli
recommended cunning use of power by a prince who could embark on that
undertaking. Machievelli justified the means with the end.�
The preponderance of Western thinkers tends to
consider socialism an aberration from the mainstream of Western political
philosophy.��
The two current mainstream political thinking in
the West, liberalism and conservatism, are essentially two approaches to man
perceived as self-centered.� Liberals
believe that government can be a positive force in bettering human beings.
Liberals want to use the power of the state to improve human beings, but not
change their basic self-centered nature.�
Conservatives are less sentimental liberals, and want the individual to
do things for himself.� Conservatives
fear that should the power of government be expanded, that it would become
monolithic and oppress the people. In, as much, as they recognize the need for
philanthropy, they want it done by individuals, not governments.
The two mainstream political ideologies agree on
the fact that capitalism is the best form of economy, and that democracy is the
ideal polity. However, Conservatives fear the power of the state.� They believe in limited government.� They believe that if government is made too
powerful by expanding its role in society, in misguided efforts to help the
people, that it would oppress the very people it was set up to help.
In his Second Essay on Government, John Locke, the
quintessential conservative writer, wants governments to be given limited
powers to do the good of protecting people from foreign and domestic threats.
Charles Montesquieu weighed in to say that, the best way to prevent tyranny is
to divide government into its natural three branches: legislative, executive
and judicial, and give each branch to different political actors to perform. He
hoped that given human tendency to power seeking, that the three would be
struggling for power, and their competition would prevent one from dominating
society, hence tyranny averted in a democracy.
John Stuart Mill,
operating from utilitarian philosophy�the individual is prone to pain and pleasure,
and seeks pleasure and resents pain, and, therefore, only he knows what gives
him pleasure, hence he seeks public policies that optimizes his pleasure�makes
a powerful argument for representative democracy that respects minority rights.
Whereas, he agrees that the majority should rule, but insists that ways be
found to protect minority rights. At any rate, if you do not respect minority
rights, politics being war by peaceful means, but war nevertheless, those
ignored would revert to hot war, rather than the cold war that is politics.
Good politics is the art of compromise, bargaining and trading off of
interests, to come up with compromised public policies that are acceptable to
all members of the polity. (See Mill, On Liberty. Also see Von Clauswitze, On War.)
Observing the ensuing chaos from the French
revolution, Edmund Burke,
an arch conservative, tells us that we must hesitate throwing out old political
orders that have worked well for us, albeit that they were imperfect.� He cautioned against trying to implement
radical political ideas that have not been tried and proven workable in the
real world.� Political idealism is
imaginary fiction propagated by neurotic minds that rejected themselves and
their society, and are seeking an imaginary society that would never come into
being in the real world.
Political realism teaches us that revolutions tend
to end up being worse than the societies they tried to replace. Socialists talked
the talk of economic well being for all persons, but ended up enacting the most
authoritarian and totalitarian polities known to human history.� Socialist states became terrorists, and used
force to intimidate and cow citizens. These terrorist states randomly killed
people, so as to generate fear of harm and death in the general population, and
from that fear control them. Those who disagreed with communist dictators like
Joseph Stalin, either wound up in Siberian Gulags or dead.
Governments exist, according to accepted western
political philosophy, to protect individuals from their natural
self-centeredness, but not to eliminate that self-centeredness. To attempt to
eliminate people�s self-centeredness is romantic and utopian; a futile,
misguided and neurotic effort to make human beings into gods. Man must always
be self-centered, social realism holds. As such, you must construct punitive
social institutions to keep him in check.
In pursuit of his self-interests, individual man is
assumed ready to attack other men so society establishes the military to deter
foreign aggression, and the police to checkmate domestic aggression.� A rational society has in place the
judiciary: courts, judges, police, and the penal system: prisons, wardens etc.
ready to punish antisocial persons, because it expects people to act against
other persons, interests. Antisocial persons are arrested, tried and punished
(jailed or executed). This is political realism at work.
The West assumes that without Laws and law
enforcement agencies, that all would be chaos, as people revert to their
natural self-centeredness. As if to prove this assumption about human nature to
be true, whenever there is a breakdown of the forces of law and order, people
go out and pillage other people�s properties. Remove the police and army from society, conservative politicians tell us, man reverts to
his true colors, savage.
Even Western psychologists seem to agree with the
assumptions of man made by the West�s political and economic thinkers.� Sigmund Freud,
in his various writings, and particularly �Civilization and its Discontents�,
suggested that the real human being is driven by what he called id. The id is
the instinctual aspect of man, and if you like, is the real nature of man.� This aspect of him is said to be wild and
driven by amoral desires for sex and aggression.�
As Freud sees it, man needs the power of organized
society to corral his instincts.� The
child is thus forced to internalize stringent and punitive social norms, and to
the extent that he identifies with them as his, and behaves accordingly, he is
considered normal, if not he is abnormal. (If you doubt the need to supervise
society leave Catholic priests alone in a room with boy children and see what
happens; many of them would be having sex with six-year-old boy children.� Rev. Paul Shanely advocates sex between boys
and adults in his North-American-Man-Boy society. Man is a depraved creature,
and at all times needs someone to supervise his behavior, and punish him should
he stray from accepted norms of behavior. This is adult, realistic and
conservative thinking. Romantic liberal thinking that sees man as good, takes
chances on man, and reaps the whirlwinds of crime.)
As Freud sees it, without society-checking people�s
sexuality and aggression, they would be polymorphously perverse.� In other words, man is a savage that needs
laws to civilize him. At the rate the West is going, legalizing every deviant
behavior, the next �battle for freedom� would be to legalize incest and pedophilia.
Why not?� What is it in nature that says
that they should not be practiced? That they lead to the demise of the species?
Where is it written that the species should survive? Any way, Freud would say
that the current unloosening of morals, would be the end of Western
civilization.� Freud says that we need to
repress the primitive aspects of us to be civilized.
�
The current Western generation, like Rousseau wants
to return to primitivity, with no checks on any of their behaviors. These days
deviancy is normalcy. And soon, laws will be passed, forcing these deviancies
on society, and those who oppose them, be punished. At present political
correctness already punishes those who dare to call western degenerate
behaviors by their proper names.
Freud considered a normal person, a person whose
psyche has a little war going on inside it, war between the id (instincts) and
the superego (internalized social mores, or conscience).� He posits a third part of the psyche, ego,
and acting as a sort of referee balancing the two warring parties. The ego
makes sure that id drives are satisfied but in socially approved arenas. For
example, the ego permits sex in monogamous marriages and discourages it outside
of marriages; and the ego permits aggression only during socially approved wars
and sports, and discourages individuals from harming other people as they would
in nature.
Given the breakdown of morality in the West, one
supposes that Freud�s schema no longer holds? This would seem to suggest the
sociological claim, that reality is a social construct and not self-evident?
(See Karl Manheim, Emile Dukheim and other sociologists of knowledge.)
Contemporary Western feminism, for example, has
deconstructed the marriage institution, which it perceives as a product of what
it calls patriarchy: male dominated society, and reconstructed it with
female-headed households and, we add, chaos. Boys now grow up without male
authority to discipline them and become unruly. A few more generations of this
social engineering, and decadent Western society, would self-destruct, and more
disciplined oriental societies would replace them. China is probably going to be the dominant political and
economic force of the twenty- first century?
Alfred Adler,
one of the earliest disciples of Freud, seems to agree with socialists and
postulate that man is collectivistic by nature.�
As he sees it, to pursue excessive self-interests at the expense of
social interests, is a form of mental illness, a neurosis.� The normal person is motivated by social
interest, and the neurotic is motivated by unbridled self-interests. What we
need to do to heal neurosis is to teach the neurotic social interested
behaviors, Adler says.�
Adler was a committed socialist, and obviously his
economic and political philosophy was brought to bear on his individual
psychology.� His view is that the
exigencies of being, made man feel inferior, and that he compensates with
superiority feeling. To attain his desired superiority, he becomes
self-centered. But if he were in his healthy state he would seek what is good
for all people. A healthy human being, according to Adler, does not seek to be
superior to other people but insists on equality, oneness and sameness of all
people, and, more importantly works for society�s interests.
Adler�s definition of neurosis, of course, is by no
means universally accepted.� Karen
Horney,
in her seminal book, Neurosis and Human Growth hypothesized that neurosis
results from pursuit of ideal selves.� As
she sees it, the neurotic rejected his real self and pursues a purely mentally
constructed idea of him; one that he believes is perfect and acceptable to all
members of society.� As it were, he is
pursuing a chimera, since no matter what he does; he could never become a mere
idea. He is composed of flesh and blood and must be imperfect. Normalcy, as
Horney sees it, lies in accepting the real self, imperfect as it may be.�
Adler injected a bit of morals into his psychology.
But psychology aspires to becoming a science and, as such, eschews morals.
Behavioral psychology, for example, stresses only observed behaviors and does
not speculate on what goes on in people�s minds. As far as B.F. Skinner
is concerned, you reinforce a certain behavior and it is repeated.� Man is a product of his past history of
classical and operant conditioning and that is all there is to him. He lacks
freedom and dignity, for he is a contingent and determined creature.�
Contemporary neuroscience
goes further than behaviorism: it reduces man to biological determinism.� Our so-called mind/thinking is construed as
epiphenomenal, as a product of the permutations and configurations of particles
and atoms in our brains. Inject some poisonous chemicals into the brain and the
individual stops thinking, so thinking must be purely a material phenomenon,
reductive neuroscience teaches.� Indeed
these days all mental disorders are assumed to be biological in origin and treated
with medications. Are you psychotic (hallucinate, thought disordered), here are
neuroleptics? Are you bipolar (euphoric mood, excited, poor judgment), here is
Lithium and Depakote?� Are you depressed
(sad, lost interests in activities of daily living, no interest in work, play,
friendship, food, sex etc.), here are antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft and
Paxil? Are you anxious (feeling fearful without seeing any apparent cause for
your fear), here are the anxioleptics like Xanax and Valium?
As Thomas Kuhn reminds us, science is paradigmatic,
and over time paradigms change. In time we shall move away from current
biological reductionism to something else. In a world of constant change every
thing, sooner or latter, changes.
If one scours the writings of Plato, Aristotle,
Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhaur; David Hume, George Berkeley,
John Stuart Mill; Voltaire, Pascal, Henry Bergson, William James and other
Western Philosophers,
one finds that in varying degrees they hypothesize that man is individualistic
in nature.
�
The proselytizing by religious persons to the
effect that man is socially interested by nature, accordingly to mainstream
Western philosophy is not persuasive. At any rate, give those religious leaders
the opportunity to rule and they engage in the most perverse behaviors known to
man. The popes of Rome were routinely homosexual, pedophilic and
worse.� Other religions had their own
share of depravity. Moslem Caliphs, Sultans, Sheiks and Emirs had harems of
women to satisfy their sexual perversions.�
Indeed, Moslem rulers went on slaving expeditions and kidnapped women
from all over Europe and reduced them to being their sex slaves.
Moreover, where religion rules, we have theocracy
and its tendency to stifle intellectual and scientific discourse.� When the Christian Church ruled Europe, Europe was in the dark ages, with no notable scientific
discovery, because ignorant church leaders punished whoever dared to think
objectively rather than embrace their nonsensical view of man and his place in
the universe. Galileo
was made to recant his scientific discovery that the sun is the center of our
solar system. His discovery apparently irritated a Church that taught that the
earth is the center of the universe. Isaac Newton escaped the wrath of the
Church because he lived in an England that had separated from papal domination. If Newton and Copernicus had lived in inquisitous Spain, perhaps we would not have the understanding of
astronomy they provided us with, hence remained ignorant about the nature of
the universe we live in, and being ignorant, we would be more effectively
controlled by the Machiavellian church? Is the Church, like Hitler, aimed at
keeping people ignorant so as to better manipulate them? You never know what
motivates human actions. Skepticism, as Descartes pointed out,
is always the best protector against human penchant for treachery.
None of these mean that God does not exist. Only a
fool says that there is no God. An honest person states the truth as he knows
it; he does not know whether God exists or not, hence is agnostic. In the
meantime, in the empirical universe we have no evidence of the existence of
God. But as Shakespeare�s Polonius observed: there seems more to life than is
found in our empirical philosophy.
�
Perhaps there is another world outside the
empirical and observable universe, a parallel spiritual universe? In that world
it is conceivable that the opposite of our world exists?� Whereas our world is a world of opposites,
good and bad, light and darkness, superiority and inferiority, man and woman,
and, above all, a world where everything is separate from everything else, a
world of space, time and matter, a world of differences, in that world there is
only union, oneness, equality, and sameness? An amazing American female
psychologist, Helen Schucman, in her book, A Course in Miracles, makes a
powerful argument for a world that exists apart from our empirical world.�
In this essay, we choose to limit ourselves to the
empirical world, for it is the only world we know of, and, at any rate, is the
only world where politics and economics takes place. The world of God, if it is
the world of oneness and sameness, as reported by mystics like Meister Eckhart,
would be a world of being, not a world of doing as is our world. We are
interested in the world of the here and now, and if there is another world, we
shall get to it when the time comes. We are not escapist, and do not negate
this world for a conceivable better alternative one. We want to make the most
of this world, transient and ephemeral as it may be, and prepare for the next
one, if it exists. (Admittedly, ours can only be the philosopher�s God, Arthur
Schopenhauer�s type of God, in Hindu categories, Jnana Yoga).
We accept the scientific methodological approach to
phenomena. Only observable and verifiable ideas are accepted as tentatively
true, and are discarded as soon as they are disproved as not true. (See Karl
Popper�s writing on scientific methodology.)
Contemporary cosmology
points out that, the universe began fifteen to twenty billion years ago, in a
Big Bang and has been expanding since then.
Man�s body is a product of the forces of material evolution. Man�s body is a
composition of particles, atoms and elements, a biochemical soup.
This does not necessarily make us material
monists.� Nor are we philosophical
idealists. In Rene Descartes, and Voltaire�s skeptical fashion, we simply do
not know if there is more to man than matter?�
However, we do not rule out the existence of spirit, while stating that
we do not know whether it is real or not. We are not atheists who claim to know
for certainty, what no human being knows for sure; that there is no God. As
Kierkerggard observed, belief in God takes faith, and some of us, like David
Hume seem incapable of faith in the non-observable.
However, like Machievelli (Prince), we know that if
there were no God, society would have to invent one, because God is a useful
tool for controlling people.� The fear of
God�s punishment gets more people to obey the laws of society than the fear of
secular punishment. Man can always hide from secular laws, and avoid
apprehension and punishment but as long as he believes that if he dies he is
judged by a God, he cannot hide from, he would do what that god asks him to do,
love and care for other people.� To avoid
been relegated to eternal hellfire by a punitive God religious people obey laws
and avoid harming one another. Therefore, we accept the utility of the God
hypothesis. Nevertheless, we see the study of physics, chemistry, biology,
geology and astronomy and business studies---economics, finance, marketing,
engineering etc. as the only salvation there is for man in the here and now
world.
Pure empirical observation shows us that human
beings are self-centered.� This is so in Europe, Africa and wherever human beings are found. Rousseau may
dream of noble savages who care for one another, the savages we see are as self
centered as the indolent members of the court of Louis the XVI of France.
The Catholic Church agrees with our conception of
man as self-centered.� The Church has a
dogma, the concept of original sin.
We are said to be born in sin and live in sin. Adam and Eve allegedly disobeyed
God by eating the forbidden fruit and were driven from the Garden of Eden. They
separated from their union with God and now live in sin. (To live in sin is to
be separated from God, to be individuated and see ones self as apart from the
union of God and his creation.� God is
unified spirit. He is one with all things he created. To see ones self as
separate from God and as having different interests from him and his other
creation is to live in sin. Only the equal and same can unify. To see ones self
as special, superior or inferior to other persons, and to God, is to live in
sin. See the writings of Meister Eckhart on this subject.)
The Church says that because we are sinners we need
salvation.� The Church proposes to save
us from our sins by teaching us the right way to live. It claims to have received
that right way of living from its founder, Jesus Christ.
The concept of Original sin can be interpreted as
self-centeredness, and human egoism. We are born in sin; thus, it means we are
inherently selfish.� We need redemption
from our sins means that we need to live selflessly, caring for other people.
When an individual is delivered from his sins, he has been liberated from the
hell of living from the ego self interests. (See the writings of the Church
founding fathers, particularly St. Augustine�s City of God, Thomas Aquinas Summa theologica, and the writings
of Origin, Tatullian, Erasmus, Anselem, and others.)
Socialists seem to believe that man is naturally
good, and that his social environment makes him bad. Socialists are not talking
about the same man we have observed during our sojourn on planet earth.� The real human beings we see with our naked
eyes are selfish and need on-going efforts to make them less so. If you desist
from trying to civilize human beings, they revert to their natural
self-centeredness.