Meditation 2008:4 from the Capri Philosophical Park.
An American dilemma: the Negro problem and modern democracy. That was the title of a book that was published in 1944. It was one of the very first serious studies of what you then spoke of with that term. The author, Gunnar Myrdal, got two dozen doctor honoris causa for it, from good U.S. universities from Harvard to Howard. He was my academic mentor in my early life. And I know that, had he lived, he would have been just as happy as I am over the fabulous progress of “modern democracy” in the United States shown by the choice on November 4th of Barack Obama as President of the United States, that is, Number One in power in today’s world.
By chance, the very same day , my eyes fell upon a little boy, on a website, saying “Sono il numero uno!”, I am Number One! It was the title of a children’s book by Anna Cerasoli, equally unknown in the United States as Obama now is well known in Italy. The little boy had the same striving as Obama, to be Number One. And so had my mentor. Myrdal’s father had told him that “either you become first and best and biggest, or you will end up as a farm hand”. The father of another U.S. President, John Kennedy, gave his sons a similar warning.
Like any Olympic athlete, Kennedy, Myrdal, as well as the little boy in the tale, all wanted to be Number One. Why this urge? What is the deepest cause behind this wish?
My hunch, a half serious hypothesis, is that it is the same urge as the one behind mankind’s many wars as well as behind its take-over of all of nature, simply the wish to survive.
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“It cannot possibly be true!”, said even a very good friend when I tried to explain to him that during our first six million years as non-chimpanzees mankind increased with less than two individuals per year. But so it was! During more than 99 percent of our existence individual life was extremely precarious. Two brothers rarely grew up into maturity together. As an individual you had to be Number One or die. Blind nature selected the tough types for survival.The same was true for our collectives. Man is a “zoon politicon”. For six million years we lived as herd animals in very small kinship groups. We tried to survive in a nature filled with other predators who much liked our children as a delicious Sunday meal. To avoid that, you had to live in a group with a strong leader, a very competent Number One surrounded by very “fit” followers. For six million years natural selection surely worked also to make our “herds” strong enough for survival.
Most probable this explains why soccer fans seem equally happy when their team wins, as the followers of Barack Obama do right now. They belong to the winner, to a Number One, a team or an individual. This is surely a biologically selected feeling, to create strong groups.
When the Neolithic period came some ten millennia ago there were tens of thousands of such small groups. Now we have only about 200 nations, all of whom in one way or another is dependent upon Obama’s United States.
In that period the small groups have been fighting each other. You had to belong to the strongest group with the best leader, the Number One group. If you didn’t, you belonged to the tens of thousands which have disappeared or made into slaves. And that even if you were Number Two!
You had to be the toreador who killed the bull, or the bull, your closest neighbour, would kill you! To survive into the 21st century you had to be best and strongest!
This, I claim, is the biological background, the innate and hard-wired behaviour of mankind since at least six million years. This is what explains the happiness of the little boy, of the winning soccer fans as well as that of Barack Obama and his followers right now.
But with this happiness comes a tremendous responsibility!
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Barack Obama has built his election appeal around the concept of change. Now he has to achieve some such things. But which? Also an American President is surrounded by enormously strong fields of force, which are not easy to change. The major one, if I would suggest it, is now the blind drift towards global globalization, towards what a Presidential candidate in the USA, a good friend of Gunnar Myrdal and a strong anti-racism activist, Wendell Willkie, in a book, in the middle of the second World War, called One World. In which there will be only one single truly serious Number One leader.
In that process many individuals will wish to be Number One in the world. And as nationalism is one of the strongest forces in our present nations, many of them will want “their” nation to be the most important one. Not least those with much people, big areas and old histories, like for instance China, India, Iran will also nurture dreams of being the Number One nation.
How that process will be handled, to the extent that it at all can be handled, is a responsibility that the leader of the military strongest nation of the world cannot escape.
In that “one world” we will all be part of one single global group of human beings with only one single top leader. Now that tremendous responsibility is falling upon Barack Obama.
Obama’s predecessor, soon going out, has been Number One in the United States, but crudely acting against both the rest of the world and against nature.
As millions and millions today eagerly wish, may Barack Obama, as Number One in the United States act with the rest of the world and with that nature which is mankind’s true creator!
Capri in November 2008
Yours Gunnar
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Gunnar Adler-Karlsson, Prof. V.I.
Box 79, IT-80071 Anacapri, Italy
adler.karlsson@capri.it
www.philosophicalpark.org
Yours Gunnar
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Gunnar Adler-Karlsson, Prof. V.I.
Box 79, IT-80071 Anacapri, Italy
adler.karlsson@capri.it
www.philosophicalpark.org
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i You will find figures on page 162 in my new book, The Biological Origin of Evil. If you would want it, turn to Amazon or send me a message! From November 15 to early March best to: NORRTULLSGATAN 55, SE-11345 STOCKHOLM, Sweden.