A Science of Humanity:

Humanistic Sociology's Response to Sociobiology

William Du Bois

If you haven't noticed, the whole culture is back in the late 19th century. Conservatives today are back embracing the same foolhardy theories that demanded the creation of sociology in the first place. Rugged individualism. Free Markets. Many sociobiologists seek to strike the final nail in the coffin for left wing politics. We are told we must now argue our positions from within the framework of the new biological truths. What is at stake is the very existence of the human.

The question "what does it mean to be human?" can best be answered in the context of what we know about psychology, sociology, and existential philosophy. This paper deals with the period of the birth of the idea of a science of human behavior (sociology and psychology) in the United States. Sociobiology reopens the crucial conversation about a science of humanity we have forgotten. However, it takes wrong turns submitting to the paradigm of the natural sciences rather than bridging a synthesis between the social and natural sciences. A Science of Humanity requires the inclusion of two essential components of human existence which the natural sciences so swiftly sweep from view -- values and meaning.

The only adequate response to sociobiology must be a holistic answer which talks about everything. Those trained as traditional scientists may find my generalizations about life unsatisfactory but it is hard to take broad strokes without taking broad strokes. However, too much specialization can insure we never get to the broad conclusions necessary to ever found a Science of Humanity. The answer will always be eternally postponed awaiting further data.

Part I of this article sketches what we know of human nature, human needs and about fundamental social and psychological processes. Part II explores possibility of the implementation of a true Science of Humanity where humankind takes life in its hand and consciousness knowledge intervenes as an active force in the progress of evolution and the direction of life itself. We are back to the founding arguments of social science and recovering the lost humanistic tradition which could create a Science of Humanity.

Part I: Human Nature: Basic Needs and Processes

As Daniel Dennett writes in Darwin's Dangerous Idea:

From what can Ôought' be derived? The most compelling answer is this: ethics must somehow be based on an appreciation of human nature -- on a sense of what a human being is or might be, and on what a human being might want to have or want to be. (Dennett, 1995: 468)

This is the same argument August Comte and Lester Ward made more than 100 years ago. However, as anthropologist Ernest Becker(1974) noted, "One of the great obstacles to the development of a theory of human nature that would command scientific respect has been the bitter dispute between the biological and cultural scientists themselves."

Sociobiology brings us back to that grand conversation about Everything. Comte thought if there were x number of disciplines, there needed to be one more (x + 1) to put them all together as they relate to the human. He called his meta-conversation Òsociology." Sociobiologists are renewing the essential work at synthesis a cowardly, value-free social science abandoned.

Take a trip to Barnes and Noble. It will scare you to the core. The section on sociobiology/evolution is as large as the section on sociology. The public is hungry for a relevant theory that puts everything together. [1] The relativism of value-free science and postmodern philosophy have left many retreating to fundamental versions of religions in search of solutions to the basic problems of human existence. Human beings need values and a direction. Conservatives understand this and people are listening: [2] We must begin with values because where we start influences what we shape.

Sociology has reached its current absurdity because the values of science have been held to be so sacred. We wanted a system of knowledge that removed human values from the picture, looked at the world objectively and allowed the universe to reveal the truth about how to live. Such relativism turns out not to work. However, relativity disappears once we put the human back into the picture. As the early sociologists knew, once we understood human needs and human nature then (and only then) would we have the basis for a Science of Humanity.

The ultimate political turf war looms over the human. During the 1980's, the Reagan administration ordered the National Institute of Mental Health to ignore the considerable research showing social factors caused mental problems and henceforth only fund research into psychological and chemical causes. Conservatives could then avoid spending money on social programs and blame individuals for problems. Armed with the new biological research funded the past two decades, sociobiologists now claim social science is obsolete. In psychiatry, a battle now rages between traditional psychotherapy and the new breed of psychopharmacological psychiatrists who see everything as only biochemistry (Luhrmann, 2000).

New research allows us to see down to the molecular level. But how is that related to behavior? Sociobiologists today are using biological research as metaphor on which to hang their own pet theories about humanity.

Sociologists are right to be wary of the latest round of biological imperialism. We have been down this road before. It is dangerous territory fraught with wrong turns and potential abuses. The stakes couldn't be higher -- our vision of humanity. A deterministic, reductionistic science seeks to explain everything away and take the mystery and wonder out of life. Becker summarizes the crucial failing of sociobiology:

Man's fateÉ has to be an open mystery instead of a closed one. This is where, I think, the criticisms of the cultural anthropologist ...come to rest. (Becker, 1974: 252)

Human Needs

What is right about sociobiology is they once again make us focus upon human nature and human needs. Sociobiologist Steven Pinker (2002) in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature accuses social scientists of treating humans as infinitely malleable. He is right. There are limitations. We must discuss fundamentals. Erich Fromm's classic ÒWhat Does It Mean to Be Human?" is the best place to start. It must to be quoted at length.

Some anthropologistsÉ have believed that man is infinitely malleable. At first glance, this seems to be so. Just as he can eat meat or vegetables or both, he can live as a slave and as a free man, in scarcity or abundance, in a society which values love and one which values destruction. Indeed, man can do almost anything, or, perhaps better, the social order can do anything to man. The Ôalmost' is important. Even if the social order can do everything to man -- starve him, torture him, imprison him, or over feed him -- this cannot be done without certain consequences which follow from the very conditions of human existence. Man, if utterly deprived of all stimuli and pleasure, will be incapable of performing work, certainly any skilled work. If he is not that utterly destitute, he will tend to rebel if you make him a slave; he will tend to be violent if life is too boring; he will tend to lose all creativity if you make him into a machine. Man in this respect is not different from animals or from inanimate matter. You can get certain animals into the zoo, but they will not reproduce, and others will become violent although they are not violent in freedom. ÉThe history of man shows precisely what you can do to man and at the same time what you cannot do. If man were infinitely malleable, there would have been no revolutions; there would have been no change because a culture would have succeeded in making man submit to its patterns without resistance. But man, being only relatively malleable, has always reacted with protest against conditions which make the disequilibrium between the social order and his human needs too drastic or unbearable. (Fromm, 1968: 61-62) (Italics Original)

We can do anything to people but not without consequences. We ignore human needs at our peril. Social systems that do no answer human needs will have all kinds of social problems.

Your list of human needs may not look exactly like mine, but they cover much of the same ground. Whether we designate limitations as biological imperatives or existential contingencies, it is important to acknowledge there are essentials fundamental to the human condition. I see no advantage to designating them as genetic except to claim turf for sociobiologists.

I have always liked Judith Bardwick's (1979) term, Òexistential anchors." We need to make sense of life. We also need a framework to organize and understand everyday life because unlike other animals who can become rabid, humans can go crazy (Fromm, 1968). The other key essential anchor is human contact. W. I. Thomas called the human need for intimacy the need for Òresponse." You know you are alive because when you act, someone responds. As psychologist William James had said, no worse punishment could be designed than when you act, no one responds and when you say something, no one hears. We need response or it is as if we do not even exist. We need to be effective -- babies or adults crying for help need to feel their cries can elicit a response.

Ernest Becker was probably the last great mind to synthesize the disciplines. The Structure of Evil: An Essay on the Unification of the Science of Man presents a theory of human ills. He would win the Pulitzer Prize for The Denial of Death. In what I think was the last article he himself submitted for publication ÒToward the Merger of Animal and Human Studies," he says something odd. Sociobiologists are Òspeaking the truth Ôfalsely.' ÉLet us linger on this important denouement because it leads us exactly to the merger of animal and human studies."

the general instinct of self preservation. Écan be satisfied in any number of general ways. The enthusiastic victory over creatureliness is a phenomenological problem in sum, and in this way we have an intimate reconciliation of [sociobiology and its] critics in cultural anthropology and sociology. They are all talking about the same thing -- transcendence of creature limitations. (Becker, 1974: 243-244) (Italics Original)

The very evolution which brought intellect to consciousness gave us the knowledge we will die. With consciousness comes anxiety. We are immediately in contact with animal fears about survival. Sociobiology offers the important truth that all is not spin as postmodernism would have it. The world is not only a social construction. We are a finite animal creature. We are living. We have needs.

the real problem of the human condition is terror of death and the need for heroic transcendence. Scientifically we are distracted by shuffling off to the side of the problem, to flocking instincts and bonding biograms. I am reminded here of the eminent William Ernest Hocking's criticism of psychoanalysis and its focus on sexual problems: he said that these only served to distract us from the real problem of the meaning of the world and of one's life. (Becker, 1974: 251)

The Nature of Life -- Biology and the Life Force

Human beings need meaning. We are back to the larger meta-conversation about life. The early scientists had been out to discover God's laws. Modern science was created with Spinoza's conclusion it didn't make any difference whether scientists used the word "God or Nature" as the ultimate final cause in their theories. However, that shouldn't have granted free license to leave out both.

David Hume would show the Òsecret springs" of life couldn't be dissected or known by induction. This would not do for a science out to eliminate all mystery. Immanuel Kant rushed in and "saved" Western science. He said there are noumenon and phenomenon. Noumena are metaphysical and can't be known by scientific analysis. Phenomena are the world of appearances that can be observed (and measured). Science moved merrily off to study phenomena (the world as it appears) and construct a science (and a world) just as if Òsecret springs" did not exist. But studying only the world of appearances doesn't get us to reality.

What are we to think of a life science that leaves out life? We must put life back into Science. There must be room for the human and the hand of life. God (or Nature) are left only as remote first principles unrelated to daily events. Fromm once commented medical students learn more about cadavers than human life. In The Lost Science of Man, Becker says we must be more than just Òforeground manipulators."

We need to keep in view ...the Aristotelian problem of final cause, and not merely material cause. We need to try and understand what life is all about, where it is heading. Otherwise, we ourselves will be headless, undirected, trivial men. (Becker, 1971: 154)

The Will to Power

Where is life headed? Sociobiologist Daniel Dennett calls Nietzsche one of the first sociobiologists because of his idea of the will to power. Nietzsche's Òwill to power" is the same actualizing energy Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers talked about and sometimes gets Nietzsche designated also as the Father of Humanistic Psychology. It is the idea the Army ripped off for its most popular advertising campaign ÒBe all you can be."

. . . basically the will to power in Nietzsche is . . the dynamic self-affirmation of life. ÉIt isÉ the drive of everything living to realize itself with increasing intensity and extensity. The will to power is not the will of men to attain power over men, but it is the self-affirmation of life in its self-transcending dynamics, overcoming internal and external resistance. (Tillich, 1954: p. 36)

This is a different conception of power than we are accustomed. Nietzsche noted when most people use the word freedom, they speak as if they meant freedom from, but what they really desire is freedom for: to accomplish something. This is what feminists refer to as personal power -- the ability to get where you want to go. Fromm makes the same distinction as Nietzsche terming it the difference between power of and power over. ÒPower over" is an attempt to overcome the impotence of being ineffective.

Power of = capacity, and power over = domination. Power = domination results from a paralysis of power = capacity. 'Power over' is the perversion of 'power to.' . . . Domination is coupled with death, potency with life (1947: 94)

The ultimate human agenda is not Òpower over" but Òpower to" make sense of our existence and feel good about ourselves. Carl Rogers (1977) says it took him a long time to understand when he was talking about self realization, he was really talking about Personal Power. Like the power of love or even charisma, we are attracted towards actualized being. It is no secret that people want to be happy. People strive to feel good about themselves. Is self esteem the primal force? Becker once thought perhaps self esteem --a subjective feeling of well being -- would be the value on which to unify the disciplines. [3]

In their commitment to building a science of behavior, the social scientists modeled their discipline on the hard sciences model of a value free science. But the central fact we know about the human is people need values. They need to make sense of their existence, they need meaning, purposes and a frame of reference to rank alternatives and decide upon a direction. In a value free system of knowledge, human beings are lost with no direction. All that is necessary to step out of this circle of the relativism of science is to agree upon one value. Erich Fromm (1968: 96)) writes:

I want to submitÉ. one may arrive at objective norms if one starts with one premise: that it is desirable that a living system should grow and produce the maximum of vitality and intrinsic harmony, that is subjectively, of well being.

The Psychology of Science -- Mind & Matter

But sociobiology goes the other way modeling its synthesis after the value-free approach. Sociobiologists get Nature back into science but they claim the keys to the mysteries of life are locked deep in the genetic code. But since it is in code, who speaks for the code? Today's sociobiologists speak for Nature much as a previous generation of prophets spoke for God.

Since we have to be initiated into their club to understand the code, we need to examine club rules. Separating mind from matter -- and then using our science of matter to explain mind -- involves some subtle sleight of hand. The scientist steps out of life onto a platform of objectivity. We pretend science is not a human act. Mind simply views body.

It gets especially tricky when we then decide to turn methods we used to view matter back around on mind. The toolbox borrowed from the hard sciences is ultimately conservative emphasizing detachment, skepticism, predicting and controlling, an absence of values and Òwhat is" (Hampden-Turner, 1970). All that doesn't fit the rational scientific worldview gets swept into a new category that gets invented at the same time called the Òunconscious." If you didn't notice, much that is human gets chased from view. This is important to remember because sociobiologists are going to use this objective stance as the platform from which to claim their truths. [4]

Sociobiologists deem outside, objective knowledge superior to personal knowledge, feelings, and empathy. However, as Martin Buber (1957, p. 97) notes, "The principle of human life is not simple, but twofoldÉ. the first [is] 'the primal setting at a distance' and the second 'entering into relation."'

"Setting at a distance" is essential: for thought, for movement, for perception, and for speaking. In order to see and frame in language, we must distance -- abstract. This is the nature of thought. And yet our abstractions from whole -- from process -- must not be such that they are reified and become treated as the thing-in-itself. "Setting at a distance" must not be allowed to cement into objects; our framework of thought must not estrange Self from Other. It is essential that we frame our conceptions in a way that we can overcome the separateness which is implicit in our distancing and thus preserve a dialog (Buber, 1957, p. 105).

Maslow in The Psychology of Science says a humanistic science must include both ways of knowing -- setting at a distance and getting involved. It incorporates ÒI-Thou" knowledge as well as ÒI-It" objectivity. What does it mean to be a human being? We have inside experience. To ignore this is hardly empirical.

Our methods must respect our subject matter. We cannot successfully approach the human with the same mechanistic tools we used in the hard sciences.

That which is forced must preserve its identity. Otherwise, it is not forced but destroyed . . . . One cannot transform a living being into a complete mechanism, without removing its centre and this means without destroying it as a living unity (Tillich, 1954, p. 46).

Mead also shows clearly we must treat self as an object Ð a Òme" --- in order to see. But we must also allow room in our social conceptions for the movement of the ÒI." By reifying a stance of objectivity, science cements the Òme" but leaves no room for the ÒI." Freud's dictum is revealing of a scientific approach: ÒWhere Id was, let Ego be." Science is out to territorialize and tame the mysteries. ÒI" must become Òme." But in such a world, we are reducing to the role player looking in the mirror. It is small wonder that Erving Goffman's sociology has become the prime methodology of today's spin doctoring politics. We are reduced to images and Òme's" with little room for the creative, authentic ÒI."

Both our social theories and our theories of organization must be reconceptualized to provide room for the ÒI." A science solely focusing on the Òme" ultimately means the elimination of the human.

Left Brain, Right Brain

"Feelings are also knowings," philosopher Ernest Hockings said. But trusting such instincts isn't quite what most sociobiologists had in mind. The history of Science unfortunately has been the story of the left side of brain territorializing the right brain. We have separated the world into masculine and feminine and then devalued and ignored all we labeled feminine.

Psychologist Carl Jung would say the most important task of our time is to recover the feminine. Jung felt unless we recovered the feminine in all of us, society would leave behind the human and people would become sick. We need a left brain framework that respects right brain qualities. We need to organize our understandings in such a way as to allow room for the movement of the spirit and the hand of life.

Sociobiology sits back looking objectively at the genetic code without allowing us to criticize the contrived platform from which they gain their view. Susan Griffin in Woman and Nature writes:

patriarchal thought.. represents itself as emotionless (objective, detached..) This voice rarely uses a personal pronoun, never speaks as ÔI' or Ôwe,' and almost always implies that it has found absolute truth, or at least has the authority to do so. ÉYou will recognize that voice from its use of such phrases as Ôit is decided' or Ôthe discovery was made.' (Griffin, 1978: xvi)

A humanistic perspective puts the human back in. We are more than just objects. Values and meanings are central to what makes us human. Objectivity alone will not do. We have a stake in the human experiment.

Mind is not Just Brain

Sociobiologists talk as if mind and brain are the same. As my friend humanistic psychologist Arthur Warmoth reminds: Brain is a product of biochemistry. Mind is not. It is a critical distinction.

Just because a behavior is accompanied by chemical processes in the brain doesn't mean biochemistry caused it. If you are about to be run over by a bus, your brain will trigger a rush of adrenalin. That doesn't mean adrenalin caused your reaction. And although we can create panic by injecting a person with adrenalin in the laboratory, we have forgotten about the bus.

There are three core components to behavior: Mind-Body-Environment. Reducing one to the other is absurdity. Psychedelic drugs can approximate a mystic state of consciousness but that doesn't mean a drug induced nirvana is more than a Òcounterfeit infinity." The spiritual is not just a chemical reaction. (Roszak, 1969)

One could say brain comes first and mind is based on chemical processes. But human beings are born into pre-existing groups just as surely as they are born into individual bodies. Cultural myths and patterns of thought exist well before any particular animal. It's a chicken and egg affair.

Brain is hardware, mind is software. Everything can't be reduced to understanding hardware. Anyone who has experienced DOS compared to modern Windows and Macintosh operating systems appreciates that software makes all the difference in the world. In fact, it doesn't make any sense to consider one without the other. They evolve together.

As Ward and the early sociologists knew, the social forces are human needs and purposes. The social evolves as we act. The Sociological Perspective is this: Human behavior takes place in a context. Culture is a series of resources. The social resources one has available influences how one acts. Different environments make some behaviors more likely and some less probable. By seeding resources into the environment, we can influence behavior.

Human beings are both creatures of culture and creators of culture. Dennis Wrong had warned us of the dangers of an oversocialized viewed. We must ask the question -- what is society for? Is culture a series of social resources designed for people to meet their intrinsic needs? Or is it the ultimate absurdity -- people made for society -- people to serve the social construction?

What is mind? It cannot just be reduced to body and matter . Science does not provide definitive explanation and eliminate mystery as we thought. We are part of something larger. In The Denial of Death, Becker writes:

Science thought that it had gotten rid forever of the problems of the soul by making the inner world the subject of scientific analysis. But few wanted to admit that this work still left the soul perfectly intact as a word to explain the inner energy of organisms, the mystery of the creation and sustenance of living matter. We still haven't explained the inner forces of evolution that have led to the development of an animal capable of self-consciousness, which is what we still must mean by Òsoul"Ñ the mystery of the meaning of organismic awareness, of the inner dynamism and pulsations of nature. (Becker, 1973, p. 191)

It is a tautology to say the evolutionary step that made us human is consciousness. Surely our degree of consciousness is what separates us from other animals but that doesn't abolish the question of what brought us to consciousness.

Henri Bergson -- A Humanistic View of Evolution

We have become accustomed to thinking of religion and science as being opposites. We think back to lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan debating evolution in the 1925 trial of school teacher John Scopes for breaking a Tennessee law forbidding teaching evolution. We forget there were also philosophers and religious people who had a quite different take on Charles Darwin and evolution. They felt thought Darwin hadn't gone far enough.

If mankind was indeed some sort of evolved ape, how could it be that Darwin -- himself an evolved ape -- had managed to come up with the theory of evolution? They reasoned not only bodies, but consciousness itself must be evolving. We are nature with a concept of nature. Humanity is nature's way of becoming conscious of itself.

. French philosopher Henri Bergson attracted the greatest following of any public intellectual in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He was as popular then among educated people as Billy Graham is today among conservatives. Bergson was no fly by night. He would win the Nobel Prize for literature two years after Scopes Monkey trial. Bergson had a major influence on the important thinkers of his time including George Herbert Mead and the pragmatism of William James. Had James lived long enough, he was planning to write the introduction to the American translation of Bergson's Creative Evolution (1911).

As Mead notes, Herbert Spencer missed the point in seeing evolution as only adaptation. Bergson shows even biological evolution is also creative -- it involves innovation (Mead, 1938: 506). The life force passing through matter is what Bergson calls the "elan vitale." He would later say that it is the Òimpetus to love." If God is love, Life begins as a speck (in the mind of God if you will). The life force pulsing through matter evolves seeking greater expression. Not only is the physical universe evolving but mind as well. This is a quite different epistemology than a mechanical God pulling the strings of the universe and laying the mystery deep in the genetic code. Human beings evolve gradually as a way of matter being able to know God, taking the universe in hand and moving closer to getting to heaven standing up. Bergson sketches a grand, majestic vision. If one wants a more contemporary version, there is nothing finer than feminist Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature.

Only now, as we think of ourselves as passing, doÉ we list all that we are. That we know in ourselves. We know ourselves to be made from this earth. We know this earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. {Griffin, 1979: 225-226)

In The Two Sources of Religion and Morality, Bergson deals with society and does a complete job of illustrating institutionalization and reification. From time to time, pioneers in morality appear who show us how to love more -- a Jesus, a Buddha. We are drawn towards better.

This is what occurs in musical emotion, for example . . . . In point of fact, it does not introduce these feelings into us; it introduces us into them, as passersby are forced into a street dance. Thus do pioneers in morality proceed (Bergson, 1935, P. 40)

It is these men who draw us toward an ideal society, while we yield to the pressure of the real one (Bergson, 1935, p. 68).

....exceptional souls have appeared who sensed their kinship with the soul of Everyman . . . . The appearance of each one of them was like the creation of a new species . . . . Each of these souls marked a certain point . . . of a love which seems to be the very essence of the creative effort (Bergson, 1935, p.95).

Inspiration returns us to our souls, touching us in a way we had almost forgotten. Much of Mead's ÒI" and Òme" is similar to Bergson. As we abstract to reflection, the creative becomes reified. Moving from inspiration to formulas, followers try to convert everything to recipes to get it to happen again. It gradually turns into moral codes and social obligation. Even the most inspired insights get patterned into ritual and routine. Then there is the need for a new breakthrough to bring us back to more life once again.

Pioneers in morality show us practical ways to love more -- how to create a win-win situation where everyone's needs are met. Karl Marx had concluded there is a fundamental synthesizing force moving through history. Lester Ward invented a word for the driving force behind evolution. He wanted it to convey the idea of a synthesizing energy. The word he coined was Òsynergy."

The Self and the Social

The early sociologists and psychologists set about the task of articulating the fundamental social processes. They thought once they understood those, they would have the foundation for their Science. The remainer of Part I explores these fundamental processes.

Much of what is wrong with sociobiology is an immature understanding of self and society. Sociobiology uses the psychology of Sigmund Freud and primitive versions of economic and political theory. Freud's classic picture in Civilization and Its Discontents is that society must keep down our animal natures. Working in the shadow of Darwin, Freud shocked Victorian sensibilities by insisting on grounding the core existential dilemmas in bodily functions: sexuality, weaning the infant from its mother's breast, and house breaking the little human animal. The metaphors often distracted people from what he was actually saying.

Sociobiologists don't seem to understand the actual existential dilemmas. This is critical. What Freud called the oral phase, his student Carl Jung would talk about as the individuation process. Initially infant and mother are one and whether a mother breast feeds or not, the child's sucking response is primary during the first few months of life. Indeed all the world comes in through the mouth. There is no distinction between ÒMe" and ÒNot Me." The oral phase is learning how to distinguish between what is self and what is other. Learning to make this distinction in a healthy manner is the existential dilemma of the individuation process.

The social psychology of George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley would deepen our understanding of the social. Self and other are not fundamentally opposed as Freud would have it. The self and other are constructed with the same stroke that simultaneously sets the division between what is ÒMe" and what is ÒNot Me." Cooley would note the group and individual are but two sides of the same coin.

Social psychology originated to articulate what Freud had missed. And what Freud had missed was the true nature of the social. Sociobiology does not understand this. Mead and social psychology traced the creation of mind and society. We become social by learning to take the role of the other. The Generalized Other is the opposite of Freud's Superego. The Superego is the logic of obedience. The ÒGeneralized Other" is a totally different organizing principle for society. The Generalized Other maintains social order by empathy. Whereas ÒSuperego" has to do with repressing, the Generalized Other has to do with being able to put yourself in the other's place. The core component of civilization is empathy (Warmoth). All the great world religions recommend the Golden Rule as the central wisdom of their faith and the core human understanding to getting along. That is the Generalized Other. It is a recognition of our common humanity.

Mead thought of it as a political strategy for transforming the world. We have buried Mead's true intention and meaning just like we buried David Hume's. Hume did not stop by demolishing the philosophical foundation of scientific and showing that an inductive science would not reveal how to live. He then proceeded to write what he considered his master work saying Òsympathy" must be the basis for our knowledge about how to live together. Mead and Hume's vision reminds of today's restorative justice circles. Hal Pepinsky suggests the process of democracy (taking others into account) is just such a responsive dynamic and its opposite is violence (refusing to take others into account).

Mead's is an evolutionary theory of human consciousness. Mead maintained universal community was the ideal of history -- the ideal towards which humans had always aspired. This is not a theory but a force that can be observed at work in history (Cronk). Mead saw three movements towards the ideal of universal community -- the Òultimate values toward which creation moved" (Mead, 1938: 504) The first is the common dream of most religions -- the family of humanity based on love. The second -- economic exchange -- moves rapidly beyond boundaries to establish contact but produces mainly superficial relationships. The third is communication. Notice Mead's is not a finished model but allows room for the human. As he says, "It indicates direction, not destination" (Mead, 1938: 519). Communication must always be an ongoing process. It is the key.

The human social ideal -- the ideal or ultimate goal of human social progress -- is the attainment of a universal human society in which all human individuals would possess a perfected social intelligence, such that Éthe meanings of any one individual's acts or gestures É would be the same for any other individual whatever who responded to them. (Mead, 1934: 310)

In other words, when someone said or did something, everyone in the world would know what they meant. We might not agree or like it, but we would understand. Someone might even fly an airplane into the World Trade Center, and people would understand what they were saying.

From Tribe to Humanity

The movement of evolution must move beyond self, family, tribe, nation to embrace all of humanity. As Bergson noted, we will never get to a kinship with all humanity by simply expanding the in-group outwards -- it is always by a leap of intuition that we sense our common humanity (Bergson, 1935: 267). Erich Fromm wrote love which simply expands outward to include your family, club or team is simply an enlarged selfishness.

It is normal to become very attached to those who are familiar to us. We root for the home team. But there is no need to give this any biological hocus pocus. Establishing what is Òme" and what is Ònot me" is a fundamental social process. A unified Science of Humanity would work to understand elementary human processes. We tend to create Òin-groups" and Òout-groups." Comedian Dick Gregory once noted, humans of all races on earth would achieve instant equality and harmony if we were only invaded by creatures from outer space. Having a common enemy can give us an identity. Jung showed how we often deny our own faults, project them onto others and attempt to eliminate them over there. Scapegoating is a natural social psychological mechanism for denial. However, in an age of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, fundamental worldviews which see the foreign other as the source of all evil are a threat to human survival. As Jung showed, psychological health involves learning to own and deal with our faults rather than projecting them onto others.

In-group - out-group is a social tendency but it is not inevitable. We tend to identify with those like us and fear those who are different. It is the most common factor research shows related to racial prejudice. Counterbalancing this process historically is the ideal of love: ÒÉif we say that it embraces all humanity; we should not be going too far, we should hardly be going far enough, since its love may extend to animals, to plants, to all nature" (Bergson, 1935, p. 38).

Classical economic and political theories posit the idea of separate individuals. They fail to appreciate how we are also intertwined. The very definition of social interaction is Òmutual influence." People who interact take the other into account shifting their actions in anticipation of reactions. Conservatives have an unrealistic all or nothing approach to self and society. They bounce back and forth between viewing individuals as totally independent or demanding they conform to group authority. They never develop an accurate understanding. Sociobiology also embraces this same absurdity. The truth is more complicated. Self and Community are interdependent. We need to get the Òwe" conversation right. Society is not just a bunch of separated individuals.

Power -- Self Love, Selfishness, and Community

Sociobiology talks about the individual as if the social does not exist. Today's sociobiology embraces the theories of history's most extreme champion of rugged individualism -- Herbert Spencer. They suggest individuals are innately selfish but that what they call the core evolutionary process -- the wisdom of the market -- works for a higher good. Spencer coined the phrase Òsurvival of the fittest" to justify social inequality. It is the ultimate conservativism. It is circular to say Òsurvival of the fittest" because whatever survives can be argued to have been best fitted to survive. It is like saying, whatever is, is.

Spencer thought Nature alone drove social evolution, and humans are powerless to change it. To Spencer society was no more than a collection of individuals. In a letter to Lester Ward (1918, III, 213, Spencer wrote he would Òregard social progress as mainly a question of characterÉ The inheritedÉnatures of individuals, only little modifiableÉ" Spencer was himself isolated -- a rich, lonely man whose last 20 years were spent with illness and drugs. He would conclude: ÒIf pessimism means that you would rather not have lived, then I am a pessimist."

Sociobiologists do not understand selfishness is not an effective path to self esteem. Realistic self fulfillment can best be achieved in the context of community. As Kant noted, the social ideal towards which we should strive is Òmaximum individuality within maximum community."

Sociobiologists do not understand power and the interrelationship between self and other. The early behavioral scientists worked to discover the core social and psychological processes. The child must successfully learn to balance its own needs with the desires of others. Freud calls this the anal phase. This is no mere illustration. It is the genius of Freud that he locates the dilemma exactly where it is -- in the bodily needs. You don't have all the power. You can't always do what you want because there are other people in the world and their desires intrude. However, you can't give your power away completely to please others because your are living and also have needs. Toilet training is the exact process whereby the child learns to balance the conflict between its own needs and the demands of others. The child may repress and postpone to accommodate the outside world but eventually when you've got to go, you've got to go. The lesson of all psychology is that if needs are repressed in one form, they resurface in another. We can either honestly address our needs or end up playing interpersonal games that fools others and perhaps ourselves. Either way, needs will out.

As a student of Freud's Alfred Adler articulated, power between parent and child is further complicated by the fact that the small child is powerless to oppose the will of more powerful adults. To achieve a feeling of well being, the child must somehow manage to compensate for this inferiority. Parents want to assert their own wishes but also want to raise a well adjusted child. How do you influence a child without destroying feelings of self worth? In an unhealthy resolution of this dilemma, the children overcompensates feeling they must put others down in order to feel good about themselves.

The successful staging of self esteem must be win-win -- ÒI'm o.k., You're o.k." to use the language of transactional analysis. As etiquette understands, a successful social interaction demands both people are able to walk away feeling good about themselves. The unhealthy ways of resolving the conflict between self and other are where I repress my needs for your convenience (You're o.k., I'm not o.k.) or I trample on you to get my needs met (I'm o.k., you're not o.k.).

Self fulfillment takes place in the context of community. Fromm shows in The Art of Loving, self love and selfishness are actually opposites. Love is the same whether it is directed towards ourselves or others. Maslow's research showed self actualized people are able to drop their boundaries and allow others in. It is people who don't love themselves who must cling to ego like it was pure gold. The attitudes we have towards ourselves tend to be the same as our attitudes towards others. Buber says the word ÒI" always is contained in a word pair of either ÒI - Thou" or ÒI - It." If we treat others as objects, we are likely to treat ourselves as an object. If we treat ourselves with respect and caring to our needs, we are apt to treat others as also a ÒThou."

Sociobiology makes the same mistake as economic exchange theory. It sees individuals as separate entities who exchange interpersonal commodities back and forth across rigid boundaries. Other people are objects to be used and seen in terms of what they can bring in benefits to self. This is an ÒI-It" relationship. However, people also form relationships where identities merge and Other is seen as an important part of self. I love you and my significance depends on you also being alright.

Sociobiologists cite the statistics showing stepchildren are 100 times more likely to be abused than biological children (Daly and Wilson 1998:28). They say there must be something biological for the relationship to be that great. Why? For the natural parent, children are defined as part of ÒMe." Stepchildren are ÒNot-Me" and any inclusion is more artificial. It is easier to be define stepchildren as objects -- even sexual objects. It is easier to cross a line of social convention (and loyalty to the mother) than with a daughter conceived of as your own flesh and blood. Biological parents also watched the child grow from an infant while the stepfather often arrived on the scene late. Incest is one of our strongest social taboos although cultures define it differently. It is a commitment not to treat some people as objects. We incorporate others as part of our identity. There does not have to be anything genetic about it.

We are one. And we are two. That is pretty fundamental, but it is where we must start. Individuation sketches the process by which we become separate individuals. Power deals with the conflict between competing needs and agendas and how people feel good about themselves. How do we come together in a relationship or as a community and still retain our individuality?

Love -- The Life Force

Without love and human contact, children do not grow normally and often die or are developmentally disabled. Human beings testify love is the most important part of life. However, love is one of those secret springs objective science ignored and stuffed into the right side of the brain. It is hard to find a way to talk about love and be taken seriously in scientific circles.

We would have a quite different view of evolutionary forces with love at the core. And with all apologies to objective scientists, that is exactly where humanists would place it. You want a sociobiology? Start with love. There is no better place to start. Love is basic to the human organism.

Sociobiologists say love is only an emotion and like legislation and sausage, we don't want to see how feelings are made (Pinker, 2002). Is love just a feeling inside the brain based on a chemical process? Is love just a by-product? Martin Buber (1970: 66) was most insistent love is not a feeling. Buber conceives of love as a real spirit between people.

Feelings accompanyÉlove, but they do not constitute itÉ. Feelings one 'has'; love occurs. ÉThis is no metaphor but actuality: love.. is between I and You. Whoever does not know this, know this with his being, does not know loveÉ. (Buber, 1970: 66).

Love is a fundamental drive for union at the core of existence. We could call it the desire for connection, overcoming separateness or a primal urge. Sociobiologists would call it the need for Ògenetic closeness." However, I don't see how that improves our understanding.

If we are going to forge an agreement between sociobiology and the behavioral sciences, what is important is to recognize love as core process. Merely calling it genetic and quickly moving off misses the deep understandings of psychology. Sociobiology would want to simplify this as a chemical process based on genetic replicators. But such mechanistic reductionism misses a great deal.

no serious student of man would want to exchange the richness of our understanding of man gained from fields like psychoanalysis and social psychology for the one we get from zoology (even broadly considered). Admittedly it is basic, graphic, sometimes even humorous, warm, and poetic -- but it is thin. A whole book on flocking behavior does not give us the depth and complexity of a single page on group dynamics; a whole shelf on the vicious of animal aggression, or even on the inhibitors of it, does not convey the subtlety of a single page on human scapegoating, on the psychology of buying off one's own death, one page of Erwin Strauss on the dynamics of miserliness is worth a volume on primate selfishness. (Becker, 1974: 249)

It is important is that we linger here. The point of psychology is that people do get attached -- and moving off is not so easily done. A child's first emotional bond has deep implications. Breaking away from parents and establishing identity as a separate life is complicated. Neither will ever be completely independent. Parent and child carry each other inside as long as either shall live. There can never be an all or nothing resolution. Their feelings are interdependent. Erich Fromm translates Freud's wayward Oedipal metaphor into existential terms. How things are resolved between parent and child influence how we learn to form intimate bonds with others. The existential dilemma of love is how to bond without consuming or being consumed.

Freud said there is a life force -- what he called the libido. Fromm says Freud did not understand sex deeply enough. Fromm sees sex as part of the primal desire for union. Let us remember mother and child once were one. All energy isn't sexual energy. The human animal must find a way of overcoming separateness and feeling at home in the universe. There is no need to see achieving union with your parents by conforming to their wishes or even creative activity as sublimated sex drive. Sex is one way of overcoming separateness and achieving union but it is not the only way. Fromm (1956) notes other ways to overcome separateness include conformity, orgiastic feasts of sex or food, giving your life to the Fatherland, creative activity. Fromm says the only satisfactory answer to the problem of existence is love which he defines as Òfusion under conditions of integrity." It is a win-win situation where neither person is sacrificed for the sake of relationship.

There are many ways to achieve union and overcome separateness. Freud had posited both a life force and a death force. Denis de Rougemont does a content analysis of literature in Love in the Western World. The lover and the soldier share much the same fate. Passion seeks to obliterate separateness by merging with the cosmos in some grand destiny. Much of what passes for romance is almost like a love affair with death seeking mystic annihilation of self. Such romance does not work because it is a Òtwin narcissism." The other is needed only so as to unleash a script in order to feel aflame and not loved as th e real person he or she really is.

passion, born of a fatal desire for mystical union, may be regarded as open to being surpassed and fulfilled only thanks to the meeting with some other, and the admission of this other's alien life and ever distinct person, which although distinct, holds the promise of unending alliance and begins a real dialog.

Then dread having been banished by response and nostalgia by presence, we both ceaseÉ to suffer, and accept our daylight. (De Rougemont, 1956, pp. 322-323).

True love requires two full selves. That take mature people who have learned how to balance self and other. And that is a difficult lesson.

Love is the drive for reunion of the separated. It presupposes that there is something to be reunited, something relatively independent that stands upon itself. ÉWithout this justice there is no reunitive love, because there is nothing to unite (Tillich, 1954, pp. 68-69).

There are two core processes at the core of creation -- the desire for oneness (overcoming separateness and feeling at home in the universe) and the desire for differentiation (separateness, identity). What do we do about others? What do we do about society?

Authoritarianism, Conformity, Democracy

A good deal of research in sociobiology indicates that humans have been built by evolution to prefer authoritarian forms of governmentÑthat is parent-like leadership as opposed to a democratic form of government. (Arcaro and Kilgariff, 2003)

Hiding behind rote biological determinism to give up on democracy is dangerous. The necessity of authoritarianism is a severe misreading.

Much of psychology has dealt with the parent-child bond. Freud would even eventually say the Oedipus complex really was about the relationship of the child to both parents. The child learns to quell existential anxiety by obedience to parental wishes but at the cost of denying its own feelings. It is a costly bargain Alice Miller (1983) calls the poisonous pedagogy. The child can't just go back to marry the parents' reality and live happily ever after.

Conforming to authority is also social in nature. It is a flight from existential insecurity as Fromm shows in Escape from Freedom which is his analysis of fascism and authoritarianism. Democracy is a social invention. Many cultures don't have a tradition of democracy. Even in America, we don't seem to understand democracy is something you do and not just a logo. That makes it hard to export. C. Wright Mills maintained the idea of democracy is a strange paradox -- a group that supports the ideal of individuality. All the social research on conformity shows a tendency for groups to stamp out individuality. There is security in going along with the crowd or conforming to authority rather than having to stand out as an individual. Most people do not stand up to authority or to the group -- although it is important to note research shows a significant small percent do.

We might say democracy is not in our natures but more correctly, it is a natural to want to get your own way. When we are in power it is tempting to neglect the rights of those who disagree with us. Democracy is an ideal. It is a dialogue born of enlightened self interest -- it could have been me. There are no guarantees. We must constantly remind ourselves of the ideal -- to respect people and to take others into account. It is the belief that healthy conflict and respecting the needs of all will produce the best society. It is easy when you are top dog to exploit others. In times of danger, fascists argue they will keep us safe. In economic scarcity, there is not enough to go around so the powerful are even more likely to want to horde and keep others down. It's easy to believe your own group is capable of self government but the lower class (or third world people) are not. It is always hard to balance the rights of winners and the needs of losers.

It is true many leaders have chosen to treat their people like children. However, there is no biological necessity for conformity or authoritarian structures.

Sociobiologists still suggest society must be a Big Parent repressing animal urges and keeping people under control. It is the voice of Freud. But we must go deeper.

[we need to] get at both the basic animality and the larger ontological and phenomenological problems that are missed by a simple instinctual reductionism -- just as Freud himself missed them. The Ômonsters' that are unleashed from the id are not primal drives from the dim recesses of racial memory. They are forces of hate and destruction that struggle against the insignificance of the creature, and that will take their toll to overcome that insignificance. (Becker, 1974: 243)

Many sociobiologists insist the human animal is naturally aggressive and any exceptions merely show the power of culture -- that it can even manages to repress our true biological nature. It is a no-win argument. A more correct way to talk is that there are core existential (or animal) needs, which can be met in very different ways. As Becker notes in Escape from Evil:

it is one thing to say man Éis a vicious animal, and another to say that it is because he is a frightened creature who tries to secure a victory over his limitationsÉ it is the disguise of panic that makes men live in ugliness and not the natural animal wallowingÉ. this means that evil itself is now amenable to critical analysis and, conceivably, to the sway of reason. (1975: 169)

It is true that with the step from hunting and gathering societies and simple horticultural societies to the late agrarian and industrial societies that human evil has become a larger problem. But that does not mean we are doomed to increasing evil. Knowledge might be turned to understanding human problems and creating human betterment.

A Science of Humanity:

Humanistic Sociology's Response to Sociobiology

William Du Bois

Part I: Human Nature: Basic Needs and Processes

As Daniel Dennett writes in Darwin's Dangerous Idea:

Take a trip to Barnes and Noble. It will scare you to the core. The section on sociobiology/evolution is as large as the section on sociology. The public is hungry for a relevant theory that puts everything together.[1] The relativism of value-free science and postmodern philosophy have left many retreating to fundamental versions of religions in search of solutions to the basic problems of human existence. Human beings need values and a direction. Conservatives understand this and people are listening:[2] We must begin with values because where we start influences what we shape.

Man's fateÉ has to be an open mystery instead of a closed one. This is where, I think, the criticisms of the cultural anthropologist ...come to rest. (Becker, 1974: 252)

Human Needs

We can do anything to people but not without consequences. We ignore human needs at our peril. Social systems that do no answer human needs will have all kinds of social problems.

É.the real problem of the human condition is terror of death and the need for heroic transcendence. Scientifically we are distracted by shuffling off to the side of the problem, to flocking instincts and bonding biograms. I am reminded here of the eminent William Ernest Hocking's criticism of psychoanalysis and its focus on sexual problems: he said that these only served to distract us from the real problem of the meaning of the world and of one's life. (Becker, 1974: 251)

The Nature of Life -- Biology and the Life Force

Human beings need meaning. We are back to the larger meta-conversation about life. The early scientists had been out to discover God's laws. Modern science was created with Spinoza's conclusion it didn't make any difference whether scientists used the word ÒGod or Nature" as the ultimate final cause in their theories. However, that shouldn't have granted free license to leave out both.

The Will to Power

The Psychology of Science -- Mind & Matter

Our methods must respect our subject matter. We cannot successfully approach the human with the same mechanistic tools we used in the hard sciences.

Both our social theories and our theories of organization must be reconceptualized to provide room for the ÒI." A science solely focusing on the Òme" ultimately means the elimination of the human.

Left Brain, Right Brain

ÒFeelings are also knowings," philosopher Ernest Hockings said. But trusting such instincts isn't quite what most sociobiologists had in mind. The history of Science unfortunately has been the story of the left side of brain territorializing the right brain. We have separated the world into masculine and feminine and then devalued and ignored all we labeled feminine.

Sociobiology sits back looking objectively at the genetic code without allowing us to criticize the contrived platform from which they gain their view. Susan Griffin in Woman and Nature writes:

Mind is not Just Brain

Sociobiologists talk as if mind and brain are the same. As my friend humanistic psychologist Arthur Warmoth reminds: Brain is a product of biochemistry. Mind is not. It is a critical distinction.

Henri Bergson -- A Humanistic View of Evolution

As Mead notes, Herbert Spencer missed the point in seeing evolution as only adaptation. Bergson shows even biological evolution is also creative -- it involves innovation (Mead, 1938: 506). The life force passing through matter is what Bergson calls the "Žlan vitale." He would later say that it is the Òimpetus to love." If God is love, Life begins as a speck (in the mind of God if you will). The life force pulsing through matter evolves seeking greater expression. Not only is the physical universe evolving but mind as well. This is a quite different epistemology than a mechanical God pulling the strings of the universe and laying the mystery deep in the genetic code. Human beings evolve gradually as a way of matter being able to know God, taking the universe in hand and moving closer to getting to heaven standing up. Bergson sketches a grand, majestic vision. If one wants a more contemporary version, there is nothing finer than feminist Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature.

It is these men who draw us toward an ideal society, while we yield to the pressure of the real one (Bergson, 1935, p. 68).

The Self and the Social

From Tribe to Humanity

Power -- Self Love, Selfishness, and Community

Love -- The Life Force

Then dread having been banished by response and nostalgia by presence, we both ceaseÉ to suffer, and accept our daylight. (De Rougemont, 1956, pp. 322-323).

True love requires two full selves. That take mature people who have learned how to balance self and other. And that is a difficult lesson.

Authoritarianism, Conformity, Democracy

Hiding behind rote biological determinism to give up on democracy is dangerous. The necessity of authoritarianism is a severe misreading.

It is true many leaders have chosen to treat their people like children. However, there is no biological necessity for conformity or authoritarian structures.

Sociobiologists still suggest society must be a Big Parent repressing animal urges and keeping people under control. It is the voice of Freud. But we must go deeper.