Chapter 2

 

Beyond Aristotle's

"Political Animal"

 

The strain of man's bred out into baboon and monkey.

Timon of Athens, Shakespeare

 

If we were to proceed immediately to an informative description of political institutions and their structure within human society, it would suffice to quote Aristotle's authoritative statement, which has often served authors as a point of departure, to the effect that man is by nature a political animal. But we must still ask: Why is man a political animal? This question about the causal explanation of man's political behavior is not merely rhetorical. It can facilitate our later scientific inquiry into the nature of political systems; for if we assume that political systems are organized because man is a political animal, and that man is a political animal because of certain factors, it is plausible to think that those factors will have a relationship with the political systems and will be reflected in them. Thus, we will have some constants explaining the nature of the ingredients and constitutions of political systems.

 

To begin with, we will have to know whether classifying man as an animal provides clues to his behavior, whether he shares some characteristics with other species, and whether those characteristics which differ are the cause of his political behavior--that is, if we maintain that other animals are not political.

 

I. Physiological Drives

 

Man, like other animals, has certain biological and physiological needs. In order to qualify as anima, meaning in Latin "living being," he shares with other animals three basic biological needs, namely, food, rest and sex. For our purposes we need not elaborate a more detailed classification. It is enough to point out that each of the three separate headings is intended to cover wider categories in biological terms. Thus under food we also include liquids, although in biology, strictly speaking, the wants for water and food are thought to be caused by different physiological processes. Extending the meaning slightly further, we may also include under food what Montagu calls oxygen-hunger, or the need for breathing.^[1]  By rest we refer not only to the need arising after fatigue, but also to the relaxation of the organism, such as eliminations of bowel and bladder, as well as the need for sleep.

 

Extending this latter need to its logical consequences, we may consider it to cover shelter against cold or heat, including the required security against exterior dangers for resting. As far as the sexual need is concerned, it may be argued that the animal can survive without sexual intercourse. It has been demonstrated that when the first two physiological needs are not adequately supplied, the sex drive diminishes.^[2]  But while under restricted or inadequate conditions the sex drive may be suppressed or diminished, under normal conditions its biological reality cannot be denied. Besides, the species under consideration would not continue if it did not reproduce itself, whether that reproduction is a conscious or unconscious consequence of the sex drive. Trobriand Islanders in the southwest Pacific were ignorant of the connection between sexual activity and reproduction and yet had quite an elaborate sex life.^[3]

 

Biological needs are a condition for the survival of the animal, and different animals behave differently in seeking to satisfy them. In the simpler species, the stimulation is activated by an organic mechanism and calls for response in the form of satiation of the biological need. Fulfilling this need may be considered instinctive in the strict sense of the term, i.e., unlearned, patterned, goal-directed behavior that is "species-specific."^[4] This behavioral pattern in some cases may, through genetic heredity, go as far as providing an innate blueprint of shelter structure, as has been observed in some insects and birds.^[5]  As the animal becomes physiologically more complex, the relationship between its biological needs and the drive for their satisfaction no longer follows a single causal pattern of stimulus-response. The need is converted into a motivation which, in relation to the goal, may modify the original drive. The organism not only reacts directly to the stimulus but adapts its response to other factors, sometimes unrelated to the stimulus. Thus, despite an accumulated amount of lactic acids causing fatigue in its muscles, the animal under stress may not relax, but on the contrary remain vigilant and awake as long as other physiological factors permit.

 

Between the motivation and the goal, the animal may also develop certain behavioral patterns to facilitate attainment of the goal. For example, wolves, who normally live in isolation or in immediate family units, band together to overcome stronger prey. Birds like oyster catchers, knots or gannets flock together at the mating season while otherwise living in isolation or in pairs. Fish like the Stickleback, while normally respecting and defending their respective territorial shoals, come closer together in time of danger. Other animals mass together bodily for protection against frost.^[6]  Single biological and physiological needs can thus induce flocking together, although such grouping may remain spasmodic and- periodic, enhancing no social structures, properly speaking, in the sense of hierarchy or specialization in social functions beyond biological differentiations. In some species the process of reproduction and rearing of the newborn lengthens the periods of social living. As we move up the phylogenetic scale, we encounter more lasting social units structured around male-female, parent-child and territorial arrangements, varying from species to species. The gibbons of Siam live in monogamous units of mother, father and offspring, the chimpanzees in promiscuous polygamous societies, while the howling monkeys seem to live in a clan where males assume leadership in turn, share all the females, and defend the territory of the clan.^[7]  Similar patterns of social behavior have been observed in many species such as seals, prairie dogs, various fish and birds.

 

Thus, satisfaction of physiological needs--some, like sex, requiring direct contact between the members of the species; others, like common efforts for food or security and shelter, indirectly motivating their coming together-can generate social patterns. Elements involved in these patterns are similar to those in human society. Hierarchical stratification takes place in different species on the basis of a variety of factors, such as age, sex (more often males than females) or physical force, which is determined by open contest between those aspiring for the leading position.^[8]  The sexual relationship is regulated by codes similar to those regulating different human societies. Even territorial recognitions among animals often seem to follow patterns familiar to human species.^[9]  In other words, by qualifying as animal, man shares with other animals the capacity for certain social arrangements. But how much more advanced is he than the rest of the animal kingdom in order to qualify as a political animal?

 

Homo Sapiens

 

For centuries man has pretended to his status as a political animal by his capacity to communicate with his fellow men through symbols and concepts and the complexity of his social organization. Hobbes could deny Aristotle's assertion that bees and ants were political creatures by assuming that they "...have no other direction, than their particular judgments and appetites; nor speech whereby one of them can signifie to another, what he thinks expedient for the common benefit."^[10]  But now von Frisch refutes Hobbes.^[11]  Recent studies of such insects as ants, termites and bees have revealed many aspects of their social lives resembling political structure and behavior. Beyond the long-known social stratification of the beehive into the queen, the worker bee and the drone, we are now discovering ant societies which grow gardens of mushrooms under the earth, breed flocks of plant-lice, make slaves of other peaceful races of ants which will accompany them to battlefields, and cross different species to create new races of ants.^[12]  It is true that according to our present stage of knowledge, what seems to motivate these insects' behavior are hormonal secretions which make them act more like the organic components of a living body than like independent individuals. But is there no choice in the ants' decision to resist or submit to the formica queen who intrudes into their nest to lay eggs? And is there not policymaking involved on her part to hide in the new nest until she has acquired its odor before rivaling the "lawful" queen and subjugating the workers, or to discriminate between alien workers who submit and those who do not, the latter being dispensed with? Zoologists have not yet answered these questions So far we have not penetrated the ant brain. It may, after all, be possible that ants which have survived the different ages of this earth and, according to fossils, have been in existence some 70 million years (thus preceding hominids by some sixty million years) have superior capacities which we have not yet attained! Going to the moon is not necessarily the criterion for reaching the heavens. What do we know about ants' enjoyment of philosophical sublimation and ecstasy? Maybe they are riding the waves of quarks and nutrinos--or something else beyond man's grasp and terms of reference--which may by far transcend our limitations? They apparently do not have the problems of distribution of power and attribution of authority with which human societies constantly juggle. Compared to ants' well-organized social structure, Huxley's Brave New World is the first amateur attempt of a novice species!

 

Is it then that despite our belief in our faculties to develop symbols, to communicate and to organize our society, we are really following a biologically predetermined evolution?^[13]  Some recent studies of animal behavior and ethology have hinted at the possibility of genetic transmission of acquired behavior in man. These biological, anthropological and ethological dimensions will have growing relevance to the analysis of political behavior, yet they present the danger of generating interpretations and conclusions based on the scanty information so far available for normative purposes and value judgments. There is the possibility, for example, of precipitating extreme racial stratification in human species on the basis of experiments which postulate that mental capacity is unevenly distributed among the races and is so perpetuated through genetic heredity.^[14]  The neo-Darwinian and Lamarckian extremes have generated many racial theories in support of political ideologies. Yet biologists, anthropologists and ethologists have not yet presented a well-rounded and conclusive explanation of man's evolution in support of one school of thought and to the exclusion of the other. By their own admission they have hardly scratched the surface of the unknowns of their science. The relevance of their research, however, calls for their inclusion in our study, but their novelty commands alertness and caution.

 

It is maintained at this stage of biology that the evolutionary process of a species takes place through genetic mutation and that the different positions of the genes together on the chromosomes result in the variations in individual characteristics. A struggle for existence ensues between different species--and in particular situations and cases among the members of the same species--and against the unfavorable factors of the environment, out of which the fittest survive. This, of course, applies to physiological fitness determining natural selection. According to the now well-established Mendelian theories of genetic heredity (further developed by Weismann and Morgan and substantiated by many recent experiments), the strands of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) determine the final properties and characteristics of organisms, carry in them the hereditary information and make it more likely that the fittest of the species, which have survived the struggle, will reproduce. A certain genetic arrangement in a given species will therefore be more adaptable to a given environment and will perpetuate itself. Thus, for example, the amount of ultra-violet radiation in the tropics favors dark skin pigments and more sweat glands per unit of surface area, while in the cold climate a well-developed subcutaneous fat, deep vein routing, and other features resist the environment more efficiently.^[15]

 

But if it were admitted that in a given environment certain glandular systems for sweating were more viable than others and their blueprints were genetically passed from one generation to another, then why should genetic evolution not pass from generation to generation the characteristics of a variety of glands dealing not only with the physiological conditions, but also with psychological and intellectual consequences? Studies have demonstrated that among other physiological indices, the frightened individual's adrenal medulla has a predominance of epinephrine or adrenalin secretions characteristic of fearful animals, like rabbits, which run away for survival, while the angry individual secretes more norepinephrine or noradrenalin, similar to the reaction of aggressive animals like lions.^[16]  How about, then, a glandular social hierarchy of the rulers and the ruled?

 

The political history of mankind shows, however, that many despotic regimes, sometimes for centuries, have suppressed and exterminated the revolutionary elements among the people they subjugated and yet did not thoroughly succeed in breeding a race of docile subjects by keeping and perpetuating only those whose organisms, in the face of superior force, would secrete epinephrine making them submit. Conversely, and maybe as a reason for the previous observation, although not discrediting it, revolutionary elements among the subjugated people have controlled themselves despite their visceral secretions and have not struck at inappropriate times. The reason is that the human organism does not react to situations only through its sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous system, but rather through its combination with cerebral functions. Psychologists and biologists still ponder the physiological roots of emotions.^[17]  What happens most of the time is that the organism secretes and thinks at the same time.

 

Physiologically speaking, it is debated whether, beyond genetic mutation, human beings can genetically transfer to their progeniture characteristics acquired for their adaptation to their environment through their experiences. We should not, of course, totally exclude that possibility, lest we fall into the dogmatism we want to avoid. The secretions of the adrenals, as well as the secretion and stimulation of sex glands, are controlled by the pituitary glands which are in turn influenced by the psychic characteristics of the individual. The hypothesis may then be advanced that if the pituitary glands do transfer the psychic inhibitions and stimulations to sex glands and organisms, they could also affect the products of these organisms and glands, namely the sex cells, carriers of the genes which hold the nucleic acids and the blueprint of procreation. The day when this hypothesis could be scientifically substantiated, we would be provided with biological bases to explain such political phenomena as national characteristics and political cultures. But even if it were proved that some acquired characteristics are genetically transferable, the scientific statement to this effect should be complemented by the fact that the organism also normally. includes a nervous system containing some ten billion neurons, each with a capacity to establish over. ten thousand connections. Perhaps if the individual were isolated he might develop certain hereditary patterns of behavior. But besides its lack of scientific proof, this statement is self-defeating because of the impossibility of making such an experiment, and because an individual is an individual only within a social environment. That which will determine the individual's behavior, then, is the exposure of his organism, including a complex brain, to the stimuli of his surroundings.^[18]

 

So man, black, eskimo or white, whatever the distribution of his sweat glands, manages to survive in different environments. This observation does not refute the premises of genetic mutation and evolution, and natural selection but relates to man's "artificial" struggle for existence using his intellect to adapt himself to and modify his environment. In biological terms, in his evolutionary process man remedies some of his physiological handicaps by his developed brain. Not only does he do it to himself but also imposes this artificial selection on nature by permitting certain species, such as domestic animals, to survive despite the possibility of their extinction if left to "natural selection."^[19]  In the words of Eric Fromm:

 

Man first emerged from the animal world as a freak of nature. Having lost most of the instinctive equipment which regulates the animal's activities, he was more helpless, less well equipped for the fight for survival, than most animals. Yet he had developed a capacity for thought, imagination and self-awareness, which was the basis for transforming nature and himself. ^[20]

 

Thus, by man's standards, what makes him a Homo sapiens, probably among other sapient animals, is his capacity to think, to communicate and associate with his fellow man, and to choose. In the hierarchy he establishes, he ranks high among the primates by the complexity of his brain and his use of symbols and concepts, of which language is one.^[21]  As we move up the phylogenetic ladder, the innate hereditary blueprint of behavioral patterns becomes sketchier and is replaced by a brain with more and more potential for autonomy. Even the maternal motivations of higher primates are more socialized than "instinctive." A causal explanation of man's behavior, therefore, will. go beyond the simple stimulus-response relationship.

 

In his complex behavior the individual may not only become involuntarily exposed to a stimulus but may voluntarily search for it, avoid it or alter it. His own motivations may color his observations and experimentations, leading to inductions and deductions which will influence his evaluations of the results beyond the direct causations of the original perceptions and sensations. Depending on the motivating expectations and the conditions under which the observation and experimentation take place, the organism may register and rate the processed input in a spectrum ranging from shades of pleasant, useful or positive, passing through indifference, to shades of unpleasant, useless or negative. Following and combined with this development, the organism, on the basis of its predispositions and motivations, may store the proceeds in the light of its acceptance or rejection of the stimulus, or may convert them into output in the form of action--immediate, latent or postponed--reaction, obscuration or transmission to another complex of action.

 

The Social Animal

 

This complex of action involving man's thinking and choice-making faculties may suggest that the Homo sapiens can, on the basis of his motivations, produce a wide range of possible and unpredictable responses to a given stimulus. Yet the study of human behavior shows that in given circumstances, the range of his response to given situations and stimuli generally follows detectable patterns. For, in addition to his well-developed brain, man-unlike many mammals--has the handicap of total dependence on others of his species (generally but not always his parents) for the first year or so of his life. At birth his limbs are too weak for him to move independently. He is taught to stand, walk and procure his food through the social process, during which he also learns to communicate with others through language. It is this prolonged period of weaning and rearing that makes man irrevocably the social animal that he is.

 

The child, due to his long dependence on his immediate surroundings, undergoes the socialization which conditions his motivations and emotions. Through imitation, learning and experience, a person's thrust may be accentuated, attenuated or inhibited. It may, by social encouragement and reward, sublimate in high attainments. Environmental obstacles may frustrate a dynamic thrust which may then, depending on the nature of education received and experiences undergone, turn into aggression or withdrawal, or be displaced in its aggressive form to a direction different than the source of frustration. A tendency towards fear or non-acceptance of a given situation, whether due to physiological factors or to some previous experience, can be extenuated through habituation. These are only some general patterns of socialization. Their political implications are too obvious to need emphasis.

 

The child's personality will be molded, both physiologically and mentally, by his environment. Medical information shows that early malnutrition, lack of care and poor housing, which are generally consequences of economic deprivation, can cause mental and intellectual handicaps in the child, whose later development is further handicapped because what remains of its intellectual capacity is not properly tapped in unfavorable social conditions. An environment of socioeconomic stress may not provide adequate means, time nor teaching capacity for the education and the creation of incentive in the growing person.^[22]  It may also create in him a motivational pattern and attitude characteristic to the environment in which he grows.^[23]  Nevertheless, this should not suggest that the environment always traces a rigid line along which the individual should evolve. Not to mention the individual's capacity to analyze his actual situation and adjust his motivations, the environment itself, i.e., the family or the group, may provide for him an ascending or descending trend.^[24]

 

The conditioning process is permanent in the human being's life. Of course, it has different impacts in different persons, and will give different results due to the infinite possibilities of combination of the stimuli and the organism. But the environment will be the context in which the organism's response will be conditioned. Going back to the earlier query that a complex of action may produce unpredictable responses to a given stimulus, and reviewing the last page, we may conclude that while, due to man's developed brain, the outcome of a complex of action does not follow a biologically determined pattern, it is conditioned not only by the autonomous process within that complex but also by the interplay of the multitude of other complexes of action which constitute the environment in which the particular complex of action evolves. Thus, from within the smaller units of the group such as the family, man's behavior towards satisfying his physiological drives for food, shelter and sex are regulated through the prevailing arrangements for marriage and the distribution of property and land, taking different forms in different societies: now community of property and land, now private property, sometimes monogamy, sometimes polygyny, still other times polyandry or group marriage.

 

Beyond satisfying physiological needs, social living caters to man's other drives. Similitude attraction is a basic cause for human gregariousness. Man does not necessarily talk because he has something to say, but because he wants to hear himself talk to someone. This phenomenon reveals a further dimension of the social being. While the group does condition man to live within it, it does not condition him purely for social functions. In other words, man's behavior and actions within society are not geared totally to social and political purposes. Otherwise he would talk only when he had to say something which could be considered rational in its social and political context. This is believed to be the difference between human society and the instinctively organized societies of insects. Man's latitude to use his faculties for personal motivations may imply that human society is not subject to a pre-established structure, but can be influenced by the interplay of the personal motivations of its component individuals. Yet, particularly in the area of political structure, it is astonishing to see that despite his ability to consider and choose alternatives, man's formulae for social organization are not very different from arrangements followed by insects and animals whose behavioral pattern is dictated by a genetic blueprint. If the political organization of man's society is not random but presents given sets of arrangements, and if these arrangements are not the results of "instinctive" blueprints, then surely there must be some general patterns of human motivation and behavior which serve as constants and basic building materials for man's social and political institutions.

 

II. Psychological Drives^[25]

 

As the functions of man's brain do not stop at group arrangements for satisfying physiological drives, neither does society limit itself to using man's physiological motivations for social organization. The human brain produces thought and imagination and can make abstractions. And thought flies far and wide. Man reflects on himself, his surroundings and beyond, and uses the mixture of his motivations, emotions and thoughts to pursue his personal social goals.

 

Domination Drive

 

The very beginning of his existence, his heavy brain and yet his weak body to carry it, are man's first encounter with the realities of his contradictory being. As a fetus he received oxygen, food and warmth in his mother's womb, though limited in his movements. Once out of the uterus he finally finds space to stretch, which in a sense frees him from the confinement of the womb. But having found space at birth, the child soon experiences the discomfort of hunger and changing temperature.^[26]  He is at the mercy of the adult care for his basic needs and has to submit to their rhythm, which may not be his. When hungry or uncomfortable, he cries.^[27]  His appeal may receive satisfaction within the biological range which makes his cry a beneficial factor for his growth, or it may be frustrated so as to turn his appeal into rage.^[28]  Each extreme and the spectrum of possibilities between will affect his later behavior.

 

Soon he becomes conscious of his dependence on others.^[29]  His dependence infringes upon his freedom. At the same time he becomes habituated to the care he receives and expects attention, the degree of which will, of course, differ from family to family and from culture to culture. His expectations of attention go beyond the satisfaction of his biological needs and relate to his needs for affectional relationship and contact comfort.^[30]  This affectional attraction to the immediate environment, like the attraction for the functional satisfaction of biological needs, may meet varying responses. But even under the most favorable circumstances, the response cannot provide total fulfillment for the affectional needs. To mention only one obstacle, the need for affection and attention and the response for its fulfillment are placed in separate complexes of action. Even a dedicated and loving mother cannot meet her child's expectations of attention ex toto et tempore, simply because expectations will evolve in relation to their satiation. Thus the being, from the moment his brain becomes capable of registering his experiences through the moment when he becomes conscious of himself as an individual, is constantly confronted with situations presenting limitations and possibilities. On the one hand, they attract him by offering security; on the other, they repulse him by imposing dependence. The terms "on the one hand" and "on the other hand" are misleading because attraction-repulsion, love-hate and freedom-security drives are, psychologically speaking, understandable in their togetherness and mutual presence. It is the intensity of one in relation to the other in a given situation that influences the individual's attitude and, for example, makes him consider enclosure as either protecting or confining him. Thus, all through life man has to choose. By the very nature of things he cannot both have his cake and eat it.

 

As the individual gains experiences, first with his parents, then with his playmates and teachers, later with his colleagues and other members of the society, his dependence for security and freedom of action is shifted to different sources. The optimum goal, of course, is to control the sources of security, thus gaining freedom in their use and consequently "independence" from them. In its complex form, security involves not only the fulfillment of physiological needs but also affectional relationships which, while including the attention of those who supply physiological needs, develop more abstract and cover such expectations as admiration, Zove, and respect. In other words, the individual wants to be on top of the situation and dominate it.^[31] The child who cries for food to draw the attention of those who care for him and finally receives satisfaction, or who later charms his mother to buy him the candy he wants, already has some control over the sources of his satisfaction.

 

The drive for domination, whether in the child-parent relationship or in the social and political arena, follows the pattern of the Darwinian law of the survival of the fittest or, in the socio-political context, all factors considered, the dominant position of the fittest. Thus, in the omnipresent drive for domination some will settle for more and some will have to, or simply will, settle for less. Those who do settle for less extrinsically have, in their motivated behavior, intrinsically opted for the security provided for them rather than for control and freedom of action.^[32]  In the evolution of a power relationship, however, the dependence of those who have settled for less on those who dominate may eventually reduce the security the former originally sought, because in the more complex social and political contexts, the goals of those who have originally sought power for their own security and freedom, and who have taken control of it, will not always coincide with the goals of those they dominate. More extremely, the power holders may develop a taste for power, which may then become an end in itself, sought not only for security and freedom, but for the pleasure of overcoming resistance and making others do what they would not do otherwise. Power may become engaged in a spiral of expansion.^[33]  Its exercise will be its confirmation and a source for the satisfaction of other drives, such as those for excitement, game and challenge.

 

Challenge, Excitement and Game

 

Observation of human behavior suggests that man evaluates subjectively his control and domination of his sources of satisfaction and security. A goal to attain has a different value than the goal attained. The first may stimulate challenge and excitement; the second may supply satisfaction or satiation. Satisfaction, however, is measurable in relation to challenge and excitement. Man relates himself to his environment through the stimuli it provides, and he draws satisfaction (different from satiation) from the presence of stimuli. As yet inconclusive biological experiments suggest the possible role of the limbic and reticular systems of the animal brain in the natural need for excitement.^[34]  Zoological observations have been made of the playful aggressor losing interest in his first rival or victim and attacking another when the first ceases to be a challenge.^[35]  Psychological experiments show the need of stimulation for the normal functioning of the human brain.^[36]  The drive for challenge, excitement and game is one man shares with many animals. Kittens play, dogs play, crabs play; so does man.

 

Beyond the physiological and psychological need for sensory excitement, it is suggested that the drive prepares the animal for other environmental and social endeavors.^[37]  The intensity of the drive depends on environmental factors and the behavioral patterns of the animal. The drive may range from a simple game with rules of fair play to aggression following anxiety or frustration, resulting in fatal encounters. The drive implies doing better than others. Matching the rival's performance involves escalation in the challenge, which in turn increases tension. Zoologists have observed that rivals of the same species (not necessarily carnivorous) go for the kill in their challenge. As for man, whatever becomes of the heated debate over his aggressive origins,^[38] anthropological research has concluded that men systematically exterminated each other at. least as early as the encounter of Cro-Magnon with Homo neanderthalensis.

 

Man's developed brain helps him elaborate his behavior to satisfy his drive for game, excitement and challenge. He can invent, on the basis of observation and experimentation, varied ways, means and arrangements to diversify his satisfaction. Because of his mental storing capacity he can become habituated to a rhythm of excitement, depending on his environment. Thus, an individual conditioned to frequent struggles will feel lacking when there is no tension and will look for excitement, perhaps in the challenge of a game or a fight. Finally, due to this storing capacity and memory, or delayed response, man can cumulate the results of one challenging situation with the stimuli of another. An encounter will then be less the spontaneous result of an immediate opportunity or frustration. Rather, it may carry the consequence of previous experience and conditioning which can escalate excitement and anxiety into rage, aggression or violence, related or unrelated to, and sometimes disproportionate with, the causes of the direct challenge.

 

The cumulation not only occurs within the organism of one individual, but can also take the form of group action. Along with ants, hyenas, and a few other animals, man is capable of intra-species collective aggression. The aggressive drives of the members of the group may be given a direction through the inculcation of a cause which could, at times, be fanatically upheld. One may become a soldier out of a search for glory, self-assertion and adventure, or a mercenary want for livelihood, or a socially conditioned sense of duty, or a cause. Here we have extended our discussion of the drive for excitement, game and challenge into its more complex manifestation as violence, particularly collective violence. The general proposition, of course, is that the drive has potentials for displacement. On the whole, man's drive for excitement, game and challenge may at one extreme manifest itself as purposeful pursuit of a goal in combination with other motivations such as the satiation of physiological needs or the satisfaction of the domination drive, at the other extreme, it may seem as an end in itself. The child may repeat shaking a rattle and laugh at each stroke.^[39]  But beyond the child's laughter, men will soon need to identify a goal as the stimulus of their excitement--whether it be swinging a bat, kicking a ball, or a political challenge. And they will find a concrete or abstract, negative or positive use and explanation for the outcome which will in turn become socially functional. The child who swings a stick and strikes a reed to see it bend under the impact of his stroke may swing at stalks of wheat or berry bushes, destroying them for himself and for others. In certain social contexts he is reasoned with and conditioned to reason. His swinging energy and excitement can be diverted to bats and balls, or to a club for hunting or defense.

 

The Search for - and the Fear of - the Unknown

 

The drive for excitement, challenge and game clearly evinces man's inquisitiveness, curiosity and drive for exploration. There is excitement in discovery. Experiments have shown patterns of exploratory behavior in animals as well as in man.^[40]  In his exploration under normal and equal circumstances, man's attention will be more attracted to the complexities of an unfamiliar phenomenon than to a more familiar one.^[41]

 

Exploration of the unfamiliar and the unknown inspires the human mind. According to a study by the Illinois Institute of Technology, seventy percent of our modern facilities and technological developments result from pure scientific research for the sake of understanding phenomena, i.e., not originally undertaken for lucrative purposes. The point has significance because in our modern technological age the trend has been increasingly towards direct patronage of inventions and innovations for industrial profit or power. Of course, beyond curiosity, exploration is also greatly motivated by the need for acquaintance with the environment to provide better security and satisfaction of physiological needs, as discussed earlier. Man's use of his mental capacities in exploring his environment, to provide for his needs and to satisfy his curiosity is self-perpetuating. Having reached the confines of what he may have conceived as a given space, man faces a beyond which he may grasp by additional material effort, or a beyond which, in its abstraction, may lie outside his reach: Life itself, and its end, Death.

 

Anthropology suggests that even before they could communicate elaborately by speech, the Mousterian ancestors of man, still of the Neanderthal species, had rituals for burial of their dead near the hearth some 50,000 years ago.^[42]  What happened to the dead man was probably among the primeval man's first observations. "Will it happen to me?" was a logical follow-up. Then, at some stage, the thinking animal could not help wondering, "Where will I go afterwards?" And around and above him, the firmament! In the words of Einstein:

 

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense, then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.^[43]

 

But for some, indeed for most of mankind, the confines of exploration may produce tension beyond toleration. As with the drive for domination, in the search for the unknown, few go for the ultimate; the many settle for less. To remedy the dissonance of his helplessness in the face of his ephemeral existence and his infinite surroundings, man searches for the meaning of what he does not understand. Of course, his search is limited to his faculties of imagination and knowledge, conditioned by his environment: he will create a god, if he can, according to his own image.^[44]

 

So in his exploratory drive, man will tend to provide not only for his material, but equally for his spiritual security. In the next chapters we shall see how this phenomenon intervenes in the social organization. At this stage of our discussion, we need only point out that the different degrees of spiritual inquisitiveness and need for spiritual security will create within the human group a hierarchy where those well versed in explaining the mysterious and the miraculous will bring comfort and confirmation to the doubting multitude and will receive in turn veneration for their divine relationship.

 

III. Sociological Needs

 

While man's drives are conducive to group life, group life engenders certain group dynamics. The drives leading man to live with the members of his species can have negative and positive consequences. The psychological drives examined above imply that in order for some to dominate, some submit, and in order for some to win the game, some must lose. Monotony of satiation will involve boredom; excitement of challenge will bring anxiety; similitude attraction may result in the nuisance of neighborhood.

 

Liberty

 

Is man then bound by his nature to a group life which may, at one extreme, accumulate only negative outcomes? The social phenomenon of slavery suggests that the situation does arise. Many a slave will choose the solitude of the wilderness over the hardship of his subjugated existence within the group. But even at the extreme of bondage, some may opt to remain among men. They feel, or are led to believe, that in the state of nature, free from limitations imposed by the group and other men, they may find, in the words of Hobbes, that "which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short."^[45]  Freedom in the state of nature does not amount to much.

 

Sociologically speaking, then, a combination of freedom from and freedom to makes man feel that he is better off as a social rather than a solitary animal. Interpreting Hobbesian thought in the language of F. D. Roosevelt, man opts for freedom from fear and want and accepts social control. This implies, of course, that in the group, compared to a hypothetical state of nature and solitude, man's possibilities are expanded and, although more controlled, involve greater liberty of action. When Locke suggested that men relinquished their rights under the government because of "an intention in everyone the better to preserve himself, his liberty and property,"^[46] he was referring to the kind of liberty we are discussing here, although, as we saw earlier, the coming together of men under a political system does not exactly follow a contractual pattern as Locke conceived it. The combination of man's faculties and drives as discussed in the past pages leads any reflection on freedom and liberty to dimensions beyond the material possibilities provided within the social context. John Stuart Mill, having laid down the premises of the individual's liberty of action in utilitarian terms, goes on to define it in the largest sense, including such liberties as those of the "...inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral or theological."^[47] Freedom from and freedom to should be interwoven with both material and spiritual dimensions of action. As a sociological need, freedom can then receive different emphases. If Mill places it within the consciousness of the utilitarian individual, Hegel makes it the "consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit,"^[48]  elsewhere identified as "the State, ...the actuality of concrete freedom."^[49]

 

The treatment of freedom as a state of mind and consciousness, whether individually or collectively, often foreshadows its material premises as a sociological prerequisite for group life which should exist to provide possibilities of action for the members of the group. For Marx:

 

The realm of freedom only begins, in fact, where that labour which is determined by need and external purposes, ceases; it is therefore, by its very nature, outside the sphere of material production proper. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature in order to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce his life, so also must civilized man, and he must do it in all forms of society and under any possible mode of production. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase, but at the same time the forces of production, by which these wants are satisfied, also increase. Freedom in this field cannot consist of anything else but the fact that socialized mankind, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with Nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power, and accomplish their task -with the least expenditure of energy and under such conditions as are proper and worthy for human beings. Nevertheless, this always remains a realm of necessity. 'Beyond it begins that development, of human potentiality for its own sake, the true realm of freedom, which however can only flourish upon that realm of necessity as its basis.^[50]

 

Let us then consider first the basic social requirements for liberty of action conducive to the later and higher freedom of consciousness. By way of metaphor, a man within the group is free to buy himself ice cream, as opposed to the man alone in nature who is free to sweat under the sun without access to even the rudimentary conditions of social organization which make the procurement of ice cream possible. Obviously, liberty of action as a social phenomenon will differ from the freedom that may be enjoyed in the hypothetical state of nature. Indeed, a man possessing one may not be able to conceive or evaluate correctly the other.

 

Man's liberty of action as a social phenomenon is limited in relation to the liberties and possibilities of others. In this context, it is identifiable by the degree to which the formulation of a thought or a will within a complex of action can be realized. A prisoner may .want to stroll along the bank of the river, but he does not have the liberty to do so. A man in good health sitting by his window at his home is free to stroll. Yet he may be preparing a job for the next day which requires many hours of work, leaving him no time for a walk. If he decides to finish his work he will not have time to walk because his motivation to achieve a social goal is stronger. There, at a different level, his liberty of action is conditioned and limited by the group.

 

Depending on its structure, the group may provide different degrees of liberty of action. But in order to be a group of human beings in the social sense, it should provide a minimum of liberty of action and interaction for its members. An aggregate of contiguous autonomous individuals not cooperating but confining each other is not a social group. At a minimum, the aggregate should constitute a defensive arrangement against outside danger. In other words, a human group is a living complex. Ideally--that is, if every member in a human group could benefit from all the potentials offered by every other member (a not altogether realistic assumption)--the group's liberty of action would be the exponential whole of the potentials of all the members of the group (those potentials which each member can, at every point in time and space, provide to help another) distributed among them in a dynamic and positive interaction. "Dynamic" and "positive" imply that, according to Rousseau's idea of man's innate goodness, in the ideal situation man can use his energy totally in favor of his fellow men; as opposed to Hobbes's concept of man's natural wickedness where man can use his energy totally against his fellows. The same energy can either defend a fellow man (in a near state-of-nature situation, for example, by crushing the skull of a beast attacking him) or attack him (by crushing his skull). The first gesture is positive for group life, for it saves the other fellow and his energy which, according to the positive assumption, he will in turn use in favor of the other, thus increasing their liberty of action exponentially. The second act is negative because it reduces the man to his state-of-nature isolation. The contradistinction is between "hanging together" and "hanging separately," as Benjamin Franklin put it.

 

Of course, the togetherness of a group creates congestion which makes it materially impossible for each and all the members to benefit from the total potentials of each and all. Furthermore, in the reality of group life, the potentials will likely be exploited on the basis of complex motivations, both for defending one's fellow man in mutual danger and attacking him when he constitutes a rival--depending on where he is, who he is, and what the circumstances and conjunctures are. However, if the members remain within the group (as opposed to their hypothetical option for the state of nature), the aggregate of their state-of-nature freedoms must be smaller than the sum total of group benefits. But that minimum would not seem a sufficient social prerequisite for group life because, to function, the group should move away from the brink of disintegration and tend towards the ideal fluidity of transaction in which every component receives the best from the others' potentials while giving the best of himself; where each does to his neighbor as he wants his neighbor to do to him; and where each contributes according to his capacity and receives according to his needs. Under such conditions man feels free to do what he wants, and what he wants to do neither harms nor handicaps his fellow men but benefits them, while at the same time they enhance his possibilities for doing what he wants.

 

This ideal can hardly exist, even within a small, rationally organized community, basically because it does not correspond to human realities--not to mention that, as George Bernard Shaw paraphrased, you should not do to your neighbor what you want him to do to you because he may not like it. The ideal situation would also frustrate man's other drives, such as those for domination and challenge. It would be hard to confine the sphere for satisfying man's domination and challenge drives to other phenomena, excluding other men. It will take a long evolution--or probably surgical intervention on human genes, virtually changing man into another species-before the ideal stage of social liberty of action (which by man's present standards may offer little freedom) could be achieved.

 

The physiological drives imply that within social dynamics the spheres of liberty of action will be greater for some than for others. Not only was slavery conceived as a possible social arrangement by such great thinkers as Aristotle and Sir Thomas More, but it was practiced as an official institution in the United States until the last century. But slavery, although still a human practice, may be a misleading illustration. That some are well off while others suffer deprivation needs no demonstration. Even in situations of abundance, when liberty of action could be extended to material as well as psychological, social and spiritual domains, in its pulls and pushes, the group advantages some and disadvantages others. Yet despite its failure to provide equal opportunity, the group somehow holds together; or, let us say, for a group to be a group, it should hold together despite the unequal possibilities it offers to its components. This coherence must then involve other factors besides the liberty of action which the group provides but distributes unevenly.

 

Order

 

A two-way centripetal and centrifugal force seems to provide a balance making group life possible. By way of illustration, a cloud mass is identified by the saturation and condensation of water vapor which arrange the vapor particles in a certain order within the condensed mass and in relation to the environing atmosphere. Otherwise, the air contains water vapor particles dispersed in it in different degrees and not identified as a cloud. The metaphor suggests only that in its ongoing flux a human group must have a certain degree of integration and follow a social order. We shall see later that there are different degrees of integration and different arrangements and intensities of order, depending on a variety of factors characteristic of each group and its environment. Here, our discussion is limited to demonstrating the need for order in itself as a sociological phenomenon for group living.

 

From what was said earlier about man's mental faculties, we may infer that a given social order is not predetermined in the same way as the position of atoms in a crystal, or duties and rank of bees in a beehive. Men are usually aware of some social order. But the idea of order may differ for different people. Paint ten cubes of different heights and weights in the colors of the spectrum. The painter will probably put them in the order of the spectrum, the architect may arrange them by height, and the grocer may rank them by weight. Color ten mice and try to put them in the order of the spectrum. You will have a problem, because they will not remain in place. You may, of course, coerce them by putting them in cages, or you may nail their tails to the floor. They will not remain exactly in a row; for that, you will have to put the nails through their bodies. But then you have defeated the purpose of having chosen mice instead of cubes. The difference was life. Yet go to a circus or a psychology laboratory and you will find mice who do trapeze acts or behave predictably without apparent coercion. They are conditioned through a range of possibilities--from-negative inhibition to habituation to positive reward. We can, of course, identify the source, the process and the experimenter who have imposed on them the order they follow. While coercion, inhibition, habituation and reward can also make men submit to a certain order, usually the sources and the processes of their conditioning are more complex. The individual in the group is both influenced and influential, although to different degrees. Depending on the structure of the group, the individual may submit to an order not only because of coercion, inhibition, habituation, reward or indoctrination, but by bargain, compromise or consent. The individual's active role in establishing a pattern of order for the group will determine the nature of order and the degree of cohesiveness within the group.^[51]

 

The possibilities offered by the liberty of action discussed in the last section will be of no avail if their outcome is not predictable--that is, if there are not some rules to regulate the relationships among group members and to secure the benefits each member draws from the participation of the others in the group. We saw, however, that liberty of action is not equally distributed among the group's components. It is reasonable to assume that, as a general rule, those who have more liberty of action will be more inclined to provide for an orderly distribution of group benefits according to the prevailing order which favors them. They will vouch for that order to secure stability and predictability for the exercise of their own liberties. It is also safe to surmise that they will constitute the part of the group which will not only consent to the standing order, but approve of it and desire its perpetuation. History has not produced many Robert Owens.

 

It is, however, not so simple to draw a straight line between the Marxian "freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed...," for society is not a matter simply of two classes, but of complex relationships in which the distinctions "oppressor and oppressed" are relative. According to Marx and Engels' own words, "In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations."^[52]  The process of their subordination to the established order does not necessarily follow the gradation from consent by those at the top to coercion of those at the bottom. It is more a question of whether the member of the group has a rationale for his perception of the prevailing order. Whether that rationale is rational or not according to the standards of another group is not relevant as long as alien rationales and standards do not interact. The more the member of the group sees justification for his position and action within the group, be it through inhibition, habituation or indoctrination, up the line to consent, the less, obviously, will coercion be needed, and the more the established order will prevail. Thus, in addition to the two sociological prerequisites so far discussed--liberty of action and order--the group will require some standards of justice to uphold the first two and permit them to function smoothly.

 

Justice

 

Justice without force is impotent; force without justice is tyrannical. Justice without force is contradicted, because there are always the wicked; force without justice is accused. Justice and force should therefore be put together, and for that it should be so arranged that the just be strong or he who is strong be just. [Blaise Pascal]

 

When within the predictability of the established order the recipient of a reward or sanction not only expects it but believes that he deserves it, we have already passed the stage of forceful imposition of the prevailing order. Justice is then here understood as a need to "justify" the established order. The justification may be generated by different types of rationales.^[53]  For example, we may assume that the group member, following Hobbes, considers that the group is instituted as a commonwealth by a covenant of

 

...every one, with every one, that to whatsoever Man, or Assembly of Men, shall be given by the major part, the Right to Present the Person of them all, (that is to say, to be their Representative;) every one, as well he that Voted for it, as he that Voted against it, shall Authorise all the Actions and Judgements, of that Man, or Assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men.^[54]

 

The group member would be justifying his acceptance of the established order not so much because he fears harm if he fails to acknowledge the command of the sovereign but because he-dreads the greater evil that chaos and the state of nature may hold.

 

Another group member may find justification for reward or punishment in immutable principles regulating human destiny. He may, like St. Thomas,^[55]  find an explanation by reading his Bible:

 

By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.

By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.^[56]

 

Or, along with Plato's ideal concept of polis and justice, he may consider that those who maintain the established order and serve as its guardians are imbued with reason and impartiality, and therefore their rules, to which he submits, are rational and just.^[57]  He will, of course, have to be indoctrinated to believe in the Platonic noble pseudos--the allegorical fiction-according to which men differ in their compositions: some mingled with gold, others with silver, and yet others with brass or iron, with only the golden race fit to govern.^[58]

 

Our group member may think, like Rousseau, that his noblest faculty is his free will, which, through a social contract, he has dissolved into the group's general will to secure the common interest. Therefore, because of "that admirable identity of interest and justice which gives to the common deliberations of the people a complexion of equity,"^[59] he should abide by the general will thus established. He should not deviate even though in the sovereign and equal voting, he may find himself in the minority, for he "assumes that all the characteristics of the general will are still in the majority."^[60]  The individual's free will is thus diluted in the general will to whose justice the individual, by his original adherence to the social contract, consents.

 

A more individualistic member of the group who wishes to qualify the imposition of the Rousseauan general will may have been conditioned by concepts such as these of John Stuart Mill:

 

There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human. affairs as protection against despotism.^[61]

 

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.^[62]

 

Here the group member tends to accept the justice of the prevailing order with the understanding that, if he is in a minority, he can, in due process, change his status and the prevailing order by discussion and persuasion or by compromise and bargain on more relative truths.

 

The above rationales which generate acceptance of the prevailing order involve, of course, both the law-givers and those who submit. The more a given rationale is generally accepted by those who have greater and lesser liberty of action, the less dissonance there will be. In the Hobbesian model, the system will function not only when the subjects believe to have given up their rights of governing themselves, but when

 

...that great LEVIATHAN...[believes that] by this Authority, given him by every particular man in the Commonwealth, he hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.^[63]

 

Similarly, in the model in which the subject believes that he who renders justice receives his power from God, it is when that sovereign is a believer and fulfills his mission in the spirit of his belief that group harmony will prevail. Even the pseudos of the Platonic model should not be interpreted as a deceiving device in the hands of the guardians; for they should sincerely believe in the rationality of their system and status, using the pseudos only to explain the prevailing order--otherwise inexplicable to the average mind--as an understandable allegory.^[64]  As for the model elaborated by Mill, it will function best when the power-holders and those who submit adhere to the democratic rules of the republic. That is what the American Bill of Rights is all about, and that is why Nixon's Watergate scandal of 1972 and the FBI's intimidation of political dissidents were serious threats to the American form of government.

 

The actual reality of human groups seldom approximates the models drawn up by philosophers and thinkers. A look at history will reveal that the rationale of justice rendered and that of justice as conceived by the recipients are mostly dissonant, though to different degrees in different cases. But only beyond a certain limit does the order within the group become precarious. It is that sociological needs are only part of the complex conditioned by other drives and the drives of others within the group.

 

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