The author of this morning’s essay is the CEO of a small software company Casady & Greene noted for innovation and high quality. At 84 years of age, he remains actively involved with the company, and writes a regular column for their website.
Charles R. Fulweiler, Ph.D.
I am not trying to write a scholarly treatise, but I am trying to take note of eighty-four years of observation of the human condition from my personal point of view. I am not a scholar, nor do I believe that one must be a scholar in order to observe the world in which one lives. Therefore, even though I am unwilling to do the tiring and exacting work of the scholar, I am moved to write about where I think the human species is today and what it is about.
At first glance it looks awful. It seems as though Armageddon is here right now. There are wars and certainly many rumors of wars. Our “beloved corporations” are showing themselves to be rotten to the core. Too many of our elected politicians have been chosen from the ranks of these undeniably criminal companies. Too many people, really good people, feel that they have to join the powerful bad guys if they hope to survive.
On the other hand there are those companies and people who make it their business to function honorably and ethically, with compassionate awareness. We, as a society, are trying, against terrible opposition to take the steps necessary to save many small and largely unknown critters that would have been exterminated without the loving and vitally necessary help of good people. The roles of men and women are changing for the better.
For all of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries our culture has seemed to worship business. It is easy to see how this arose since business is an outgrowth of such activities as hunting game, gathering edible plants, building fires and erecting shelters all in the interest of caring for our families and ourselves. Certainly we have shown great skill and ability in developing and maintaining an almost infinite number of organizations carrying on business. Why, then, are we in such terrible trouble? Why Armageddon? We could feed the whole world and simultaneously supply it with vastly more goods and services than it needs so why aren’t we happy? Why are there people starving in this world of plenty? Why, when we have mastered the tasks necessary to keep us relatively clean and disease free are hordes of people just like you and I dying of easily preventable diseases and living in filth?
My attempts to answer these profound questions revolve around enculturation. Under the best of conditions all of us will make mistakes that is why we need tolerance, compassion and forgiveness so badly. Mistakes aside we still labor under enculturation patterns in all the nations of the world that are threatening to engulf and destroy us. A number of people have questioned the origin and meaning of the word “enculturation” which I use frequently. To reassure myself I looked up the definition in “A Dictionary of the Social Sciences” copyrighted in 1964 by UNESCO. It is defined as “the process of conscious or unconscious conditioning occurring within that learning process whereby man, as child and adult, achieves competence in his culture.” This dictionary attributes its introduction into the social sciences to M.J. Herskovits in 1948.
Full credit has never been given to the horrifying power this “conscious and unconscious conditioning” has in determining our likes, our loves, our hates and, in short, all of our feelings about ourselves and each other and the world about us. In the first three years of life when we learn at a prodigious rate, this early conditioning or enculturation is carried out by our parents, our siblings and other relatives. The attitudes, tastes, feelings and behavior patterns we learn during this time have the sense or feeling of being absolute, beyond question and, above all, RIGHT. At this time, it appears that television and its overwhelmingly powerful advertising has taken over as the dominant enculturator, joined shortly by peers, comics, magazines, movies and school. All of them have methods of using advertising and all of them continue and reinforce the process. Is it any wonder then, that when we meet people who believe and behave differently, we look on them always with distrust, sometimes with loathing and, more frequently than not, with fear or all three plus anger. These are all conditioned responses. They are not thought out, not rational, not the product of intellectual processes and not chosen voluntarily by us. They appear to us (all of us) as the revealed truth, requiring no explanation, no discussion and, most certainly no argument. Some of these enculturations are badly needed to protect us from harm and thereby give us a chance to grow up. But many of them, particularly those relating to social and personal things, are by now outmoded and, most definitely, wrong.
It can be said that with very, very minor exceptions there are no unattractive or unappealing people. Any person who is loved or for whom you feel friendship or affection is attractive and appealing. Think back in your life experiences and I am sure you will see the truth in this. Yet perhaps the most egregious of the prolonged and continuous conditioning of our responses to everything and everyone around us has to do with attractiveness and with sex. In our earliest years our enculturators are busily trying to show us that anything having to do with sex is bad and forbidden. It is probably painfully obvious that just as our mentors are being successful in teaching us that sex is bad, evil, nasty and to be avoided, our hormones are beginning to scream a different message. Now we pay close attention; but the conflict engendered can do overwhelming damage to us personally and, certainly, to society as a whole.
If we really did learn from experience we would, by now, be completely aware that sex for money or sex without feeling is just as Philip Roth termed it “masturbation in utero” and, although it relieves immediate sexual tension, over the long haul it is not particularly rewarding. We should long ago have learned that sex with friendliness is good, sex with affection is better and sex with love is by all odds infinitely superior. It should be pointed out that if children result it is infinitely superior for them also. Apart from the obvious benefits of a good love relationship for both the participants and their resulting children, a good love relationship will guarantee very rewarding and enjoyable sex and sex play for all the years one can survive. We need to remember well that neither friendship nor affection nor love is contingent on any physical characteristics of the other person. There are an infinite number of reasons why people are attracted to each other whether moderately or profoundly, but we must remember that we are not conditioned to love, to share, to be friendly, nor to be affectionate. No! We are conditioned to be ashamed of our appearance, suspicious of other people and frightened that we won’t measure up to what others expect of us. Rudolph Valentino, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Betty Grable and a host of others, have been “role models” for men and women to follow (aided by an excellent air-brush); and boy have we tried. The implication has always been that to be worth anything this is how you had to be; this kind of coloring, this kind of musculature, this kind of figure and these kinds of faces. However, in spite of all the advertising to the contrary, the most frequent reason why people get together is still that they sense that the other person really accepts them. This doesn’t seem to have been understood by our mentors . It is, however, true and remains the single most important reason that the doors to love and marriage open at all.
Our culture’s attitudes toward work are also an excellent example of destructive enculturation. Just think of the number of “labor saving” devices invented in the past three centuries. Now think of how many of them are really needed and truly valuable. Many of these inventions are quite valuable when the task is to provide increased food, clothing or shelter for a vast number of people but for the individual they deprive us of the opportunity to do things which really are pleasurable. In every part of our culture work=bad, so that anything that eliminated activity defined as work was great. It has come as a shock to me many times to realize that the “labor saving” device I had bought was keeping me from doing something that I really enjoyed doing. Think of your own life and of how many of the things you are “saved” from that are much more pleasurable than a double fault in an exhausting Tennis match or a bogey in a humiliating round of Golf. How often have you seen people return from a “vacation” so exhausted from trying to “have fun” that they need a vacation to recover from their vacation. In other words we frequently work harder trying our best to do all the things that have been defined for us as things that bring pleasure and rarely recognize that they bring no pleasure when pursued so diligently, without joy. They certainly bring no satisfaction.
During childhood, work is defined as bad and, more often than not, is used as a punishment. In school, we are threatened with work if we don’t behave properly. As adults, most people seek as early a retirement as possible to get away from hated work. When they succeed, then quite rapidly they wither away and die. It is a real tribute to the force of enculturation that we haven’t learned that one of our greatest assets is the counsel of our elders based on their years of experience. And, of course, we haven’t learned that the greatest privilege we can have is that of working. Work is quintessentially necessary for our health and our mental and emotional functioning as well as for our over-all well-being. Yet our culture trains us to avoid it, to fear it and to feel that anyone who can avoid it completely must be superior to all those around her or him. In a culture that worships and uses callow youth, it must be quite disheartening to don the elders uniform of sloppy pants, slouchy hat and a cardigan sweater only to be, not venerated, but ignored.
There is an implicit assumption that there is a reward waiting for people who work and save hard enough to retire young. Don’t you believe it. What do you really get? Instead of being consulted as a valued source of information you are ignored. Instead of being asked for help you are ignored. Instead of being valued and honored, you are pitied—and ignored. What a sad thing it is that we throw away all that our elders have learned. Now consider those who have been taught to believe that if they accumulate enough things they will avoid the fate of less wealthy people. They must have several luxury cars—and a chauffeur. They need an apartment in New York, a large home in Southern California, a pied a terre in France and so on and on they go acquiring more and more—and yet they still get sick, they still feel unhappy and unfulfilled and they still die.
So where are we now? Slowly, but quite surely, we are beginning to recognize our interconnectedness, our interdependence. It is my opinion that the “flower children” and the “beats” started to show us the way. They, perhaps unwittingly, accomplished a great deal. They seemed to be willing to throw out the book and try new and different things. We are at a choice point today and, as a species, we need help. Help in changing our enculturation habits and practices. Help in breaking free from our conditioned responses. Help in growing up. Conditioning can be overcome and, indeed, must be brought under our control as a chosen tool if this world is to turn from warfare and mutual assured destruction toward working together to nurture, protect and improve this very small planet that we live on and all of its inhabitants. There is no compelling reason for us to continue using the same teachings we used a thousand years ago to train today’s children. It is my belief that we have learned a thing or two about the human animal, about social structures and about how to live. If we can utilize this accumulated knowledge to help us to structure a well planned and fulfilling future for this world, we win. Otherwise we lose catastrophically.
Many people from many different backgrounds have addressed the problems I speak of. In fact, so much has been written and spoken on the subject that we should, long ere this, have arrived at an awareness that, contrary to our enculturation, we are not alone but are completely interdependent with all the myriad life forms with which we share this lovely planet. It has been written about and spoken of in bits and pieces—here and there, now and then. But I don’t believe that significant awareness has accompanied our sporadic attention. However if we look honestly at ourselves, we begin to realize that what we have read here and there is true. We are not discrete, identifiable entities. We are a vast complex of animate and inanimate parts. The living things that inhabit our gut, and even our cells, are different from but a part of us and indisputably necessary for our survival. The mites that inhabit our eyebrows and eyelashes—we need them. Where does our connection and our dependence stop? Can we be sure that we don’t need rats and slugs and ants and snails and maggots and eagles and fleas and bears and dogs and cats and snakes and spiders and monkeys and trees and flowers and weeds? Are we so sure of our supremacy that we can willfully slaughter the fish and the worms and the bugs and the jellyfish and the anemones and the sea horses of the seas, oceans and lakes with complete impunity? If you were given the power, would you thoughtlessly (and suicidally) kill all bacteria and all viruses? Which of these things that we wantonly kill with pleasure or from fear is the one lowly thing the loss of which will signal our destruction? Can we get in a space ship without our fellow living things and hope to survive? It now can be clearly seen and recognized that the only obvious targets for the violence that we propagate are ourselves and the defenseless creatures who are one with us. From the myriad of animalcula to the magnificence of whales and elephants, all living things are intimately related and infinitely dependent on the existence of one another. When do we learn to treat all living things with respect? At that point, perhaps we will understand and respect the complex set of processes that keep all of us in balance and permit our survival as a species and as individuals. The apocryphal story of Noah and the ark shows us the way. Just as Noah did we must protect, nurture and safeguard all of our fellow entities and cherish their safety as we cherish our own. When we realize that we are intimately connected to all of life, then we will realize that we survive together or we don’t survive at all.
Much has been written attempting to describe, define and do justice to the infinitely complex and gorgeously simple set of processes that underlie all that we are and all that we do. I say simple because, in fact, at its heart, it is really very simple—life forms sustain themselves by eating each other. Life cannot and will not be sustained if we do not kill and eat other living things. It is indeed fortunate, and crucially important that in most of the higher animals there is a violent instinctual rejection of cannibalism. At some times and in some cases this taboo has been violated but never approved of. Being a food source is not the only function of living things, of course, but it is important that we recognize that it is one function we cannot do without. Human beings are, by nature, omnivores—-we eat everything except each other. Animals, plants, creatures and plants of the seas—we eat them all. Swine are also omnivores as are the one-celled-organisms which eat the same everythings we eat, including eating us.
It is tempting to read and recount all the wonderful studies that have been done in this field. However, for most of us, it is sufficient to understand what is happening and the meaning it has for our lives. What is happening is clear, as I noted above: life forms sustain and create life forms by eating life forms. Does this mean that because I can kill some living thing that I cannot honor its existence, respect it for its valuable place in our lives and treat it well? Certainly not! Lions don’t hate gazelles. Rabbits don’t hate carrots. I don’t hate chickens or cows or rabbits or fish or broccoli or lettuce. Yet we kill them all for food to sustain our existence. What is worse, we treat those creatures we eat very badly as we raise them and prepare them for their fate. This careless inhumane treatment is one of the things studies leave out. Also, humankind seems to be the only animal that kills not only out of hunger or need, but from hatred and anger and even for pleasure. There is a vast difference between killing for food to satisfy hunger and killing from hate or for pleasure. Mankind has, it seems, forgotten this difference and, if we continue to forget it, we will not just fail to thrive, we will fail to survive.
I do not mean to state or imply that this description of the cycle defines us. I happen to believe, in my personal life, that humankind is more than just the restless churning of this eat and be eaten cycle. If it is, however, no more than this, it is still a magnificent undertaking and, however we define our-selves, it is a privilege to be a co-participant. If my thinking is correct, however, then we must understand and appreciate this process, this balance of nature, before we can truly appreciate our holiness. The whole world seems to be in some kind of end-game mode. If my judgment is correct then we must be doubly on guard. I do believe that this world is a great place and that we should pay close attention to what the tactics and strategies we are using are doing to us before it is too late.
When I try to state what I have learned in my life, I iterate and reiterate that we seem, over the last millennia, to have been trying to learn to live without hate and without fear. From time immemorial, most people have dreamed of being safe—really safe. We can learn that the cycle of life and death is natural and not to be dreaded. Isn’t it enough that we have the privilege of being born? Since we have been given the privilege of living here can we learn that there is nothing to be afraid of? Can we live our lives without fear but with acceptance and understanding. Yes, we have finally reached a point in our development at which we have learned a great deal and, if we have the will and the intelligence, we must know that we can live with joy and without fear. We must have the will to persist in this new understanding in spite of fanatic resistance on the part of those who would preserve the status quo, and we must use our intelligence to recognize that this is not a game with “winners” and “losers.” No, this is not a game, it is the result of living in a world that we can destroy with our fear and our unthinking violence, and everyone loses. We must always remember, and cherish the memory, that it can also be made a garden spot of the universe— it really is our choice—Those who question whether Man has free will pay close attention.
Love, respect, tolerance, compassion, forgiveness, understanding, the privilege of good hard work—these are the only building blocks for a life of joy and happiness and peace of mind. How many millions of times have they been preached to us without our understanding them. We don’t understand them because they are said in the context of a world in which killing from fear or for profit or for fun is rampant. It is a world in which killing and eating are by all odds the dominant activities. At some time in the past, we had many, many natural enemies. It was important then for there to be very strong men as part of the family and the community. Their purpose was to protect the unborn, the quite helpless pregnant women and the very young children. We no longer have natural enemies, other than rodents and disease and each other, and we seem to be ever more skillful in dealing with them. Why is it, then, that we have continued to instill in young people the values and mind sets that were appropriate thousands of years ago but are singularly inappropriate today? Why do we still teach and train young people that work is not something joyous but a curse we bear until we can retire? When was the last time you heard anyone, including yourself, encouraging a young person to find out what kind or kinds of work the enjoyed?
It is very encouraging that more and more men and women are beginning to recognize and honor the value and the rewards of the more utilitarian drives toward cooperation, mutual respect, compassion, love and joyous work—the forces that lead inevitably to life, health and a future. However, this shift in dominant parameters is not easily made. When one has been trained all of one’s life to consider brute strength as the characteristic that will rule the earth, it’s a little difficult to shift one’s point of view. It is a very abrupt awakening when one realizes that brute strength leads, and can only lead, to certain death and absolute destruction.
There are some things that must be done if we are to make this shift:
We must learn to teach, and demonstrate by example, great respect for all our sisters and brothers. We can show this by honoring them as people and respecting their cultures, by understanding that cultural differences are just cultural differences, not measures of worth.
We must curb the power of those who would control us for their own aggrandizement. With the advent of something approaching good communication, we rapidly learn that we are being controlled by those who covet power and use it stupidly. Their tools (or weapons, if you will) are advertising, teaching and even the arts (If they are abused and misused).
Over all, our needs must be met in sufficient quantity. We must learn to share and share alike in all things pertaining to our survival. Those who are starving and disease-ridden in all the countries of the world are a dying testament to our neglect.
We must maintain and enhance our ability to be clean and have our illnesses well treated. Photographs of those throughout the world who are dying of diseases that are brought on by horribly unclean conditions, and dying of starvation which, to our shame, we look at without guilt and without feeling the need to help, show how far from this goal we are now, and how far we must yet go.
We must learn to honor excellence in all things and in all non-destructive behavior and must learn to take real pleasure in the search for such excellence. When the reward for our efforts can be measured not in profit, but in the thrill of achievement, whether by ourselves or by others, we will be on the path toward survival.
We must acknowledge our debt to our fellows. There is no invention, no advance that isn’t predicated on the thinking and consideration of millions of women and men who have gone before. (Including this.) When we have a brilliant idea or invention, we must learn to be grateful to all those around us, as well as those who have gone before, for their support.
We must learn to stop glorifying war. Such activity is justified only when one is physically attacked. For a long period of time in mankind’s history, violent behavior was both necessary and highly rewarded. That is no longer true. We must learn to live comfortably and peacefully with even wildly different philosophies. We then honor and respect those who protect and defend us.
How do we make this shift? The first thing we must learn to do is to forgive those who, by virtue of their training and background, cannot behave differently than they do. Does forgiving them mean we let them go on doing what they do best? Not on your tintype! We have had the example of the awesome power of “shunning,” as practiced by some groups. It is this type of avoidance, or something very like it, that would have the most effect in stemming evil. When good people absolutely refuse to participate in evil in any way, manner, shape or form then evil will have no power and will cease to exist in any operationally meaningful way.
Does this mean that we must hate, despise or reject those we shun? Heavens no! We must learn to love the person even though we detest the behavior. We must learn to exercise tolerance, respect, compassion and understanding for the person even though we practice absolute rejection and denial of their behavior. Obviously such changes in enculturation patterns and concomitant thinking won’t happen overnight. Humankind is just beginning to emerge from its long, painful adolescence. Let us all hope that we learn what it means to be an adult in time to avert our extinction.
Are we on this earth in order to build bigger and fancier buildings? I don’t think so. Are we here to build bigger and fancier cars, clothes, trains or factories? I don’t think so. We have already shown that we can do these things. We’ve also shown that we can organize farms in such a way as to be able to feed all of humankind even though we have quadrupled our population. We have, in short, managed to find ways of supplying food, clothing and shelter for all the people we have and probably more.
Why then are we not all well shod, well clothed, well fed and well housed?. Why are we not all as happy as clams? The primary reason is that we have been taught to be aggressive, competitive and self-centered in all our relationships. The second reason is that we are fast running out of some of the things we have come to depend on that nurtured aggression and competitiveness. We have come to know that burning Coal pollutes our world. Oil not only pollutes our world but will last only a few more years at the most. There are solutions but they are being mightily resisted. Wind power—Solar power and probably some form of biological power that is barely dreamed of at this time. Our love affair with the automobile has brought us many blessings but unless we continue to turn toward alternative solutions to providing energy it can destroy us.
The most significant invention of the modern age, however, is our newest—the Internet, the World Wide Web. With this tool, for the first time in human history, all people can talk to each other equally. We are entering a time when even the most victimized can and will be heard around the world. The meekest voice can be heard and will be heard as stridently as a king’s or a president’s. When we, the meek, catch on to the fact that no one can hide any longer, when we realize that it is no longer a matter of muttering forlornly “if only people knew,” when we realize that we can speak the truth as loudly as a thousand trumpets and be heard around the world, will we then speak the truth without fear? Perhaps the playing field is now almost level. When evil must function in the clear and relentless light of day evil might mend its ways significantly.
We know now that time is not on our side. Our knowledge of the universe clearly shows that there are limits. We cannot transcend those limits unless we start learning as adults. It is only since the advent of the Internet that we finally have the communication tools to go with the technology that makes it possible to assume full stewardship of this world we live in, and even better tools are fast on their way. Whether we can grow up fast enough to use these tools in such a fashion as to be good stewards is another matter. If there be a clear categorical imperative that we must finally adhere to or die, it is that we must learn to live in peace and harmony, with each other and our whole world-wide community. We must learn to live happily in relationships of mutual love, respect and compassion with all the various manifestations of our-selves and our world or face the ultimate extinction of this very pleasant world and this very enjoyable life form. In short, contrary to what people in the past have tried to tell us we do not own this lovely world, we are the most fortunate care-givers of our world and everything that is in it. Yes, we are not owners but stewards. Can we grow up enough to accept the responsibilities of being adults and become truly good stewards? If we stay as children, misbehaving but convinced that someone will come behind us and clean up our messes, then surely we will not survive.
What I have written is in a sense a blueprint for accomplishing this metamorphosis. We turn toward understanding, knowledge, love, sharing, good work and a sincere desire to help our sisters and brothers. We know that these values are rock solid building blocks for successful living. We know this—we understand this—we preach about these values—we must now act on them!
We are one. As one we must realize that we survive together or we don’t survive at all. This is a clarion call to good people throughout the world to once and for all time shun evil. Set honest rules that benefit all—and then adhere to them as scrupulously as possible. Neither riches, however great, nor intelligence, however profound will stave off the inevitable consequences of our failure to solve the problem of learning to live, as adults, with our fellow man not pit our-selves against him, of learning to live with our beautiful world not loot it, and learning to love and respect all the creatures that share it with us.