Positive Liberty

By all means do continue to chatter on the thread just below. Against my expectations, it actually seems to be going somewhere. In the meantime, I’m bumping one comment up to the top for a good careful examination. Chris Byrne writes,

I dont hold that homosexuality is wrong because it is riskier, (and come on guys, it is riskier as a whole, counter examples like yourself to the contrary notwithstanding), but I recognize that it’s a valid point…

I do not recognize that it’s valid point, no matter who holds or does not hold this belief.

Sure, count up all the gay guys in the world and what their sex lives are like–and they probably do have more partners than the average straight guy (I’m tempted to wonder how many anti-gay people are just being jealous, but I digress).

The problem is that the average gives us little or no meaningful information. For starters, recall my example about blacks, who are much more likely than whites to be imprisoned for crimes. If the gay lifestyle is “riskier on the whole”–then should we conclude that the black skin color is “more criminal?” Is this a “valid point?” And all by itself?

Perhaps some people will bravely march in this direction, loudly touting their moral rectitude and political incorrectness–and noting that statistics do not lie.

But when I say that there is nothing necessarily riskier about being gay, I still mean it, just as the color of one’s skin does not necessarily make one more criminal. So where does the riskier (current) behavior originate? This is the question we ought to ask–and stopping just short of it is a very suspicious omission.

Before answering this question, I’d like to note that it makes no difference whether a gay person or a straight person is asking it. Even to propose that my response depends on the sexual orientation of the questioner is to institute a political correctness just as bad as anything the left has ever imagined.

What matters here is whether the questioner is willing to entertain a serious, fact-based reply–or whether he is merely posing a rhetorical question that happens to make gays look bad. We approve of the former approach, as we have no fear of facts. The latter, though, is only a slur masquerading as a fact.

Clearly, it’s time for little gay history. I apologize in advance, as much of it will be male-centered. In part, it reflects the clinical and legal prejudices of the era.

Not so long ago, the standard clinical narrative ran like this:

“For much of the twentieth century and throughout western culture, there has been a growing awareness of a peculiar mental illness. Like alcoholism, virtually all religious groups have condemned it as a vice. Yet in our modern, enlightened world, we now know better. Homosexuality is a psychological perversion wherein a man becomes confused about his gender status early in life and fails to mature into a heterosexual adult. These immature men-children are incapable of forming satisfying relationships; on some deep level, they too were aware of how incomplete their development had been.”

I find it uncomfortable to recall, but much of 20th-century psychological thought on homosexuals really did look a lot like this.

Now, even in that supposedly enlightened age, the psychological workings of sexuality were still quite dimly understood (as they remain). In the bad old days, therapy with so-called homosexual perverts purportedly showed that their “confusion” could start with a single traumatic episode. It could be childhood sexual abuse, perhaps, or even just seeing an adult engaged in questionable gender behavior.

In part, these findings seem to have been elicited from patients precisely because the therapists of the time were hoping to see their theories confirmed. (Other theorists proposed different etiologies, but I have spared you the anatomical examinations, often performed on unconsenting prisoners, that were designed to test them.)

Ultimately, psychologists declared that a breakdown of parental obligations was the root cause homosexual perversion. Cold, distant fathers and smothering, overbearing mothers were said to yield male children who did not understand what it is to be a “real man.”

Mothers were advised to be nurturing (a cold mother produced schizophrenia)–but not too nurturing. Fathers must be present in the child’s life (lest they become feminized)–yet not too present, because again a mental illness would surely result. [Are you starting to see, dear readers, why there is so much anxiety about children and homosexuality? For a long time, psychology laid all the “blame” for gayness squarely on the shoulders of parents–Yet it offered absolutely no effective tools against it. No wonder people so often panic!]

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the first half of the twentieth century saw a rapid growth in the population of urban centers, accelerating a trend which had been developing in the west for centuries. The resulting anonymity brought about the formation of many distinct urban subcultures, and among them was a nascent one catering to gays and lesbians.

The roots of this culture can actually be traced to 18th-century London and Paris, for which see Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant Ragan’s astonishing Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection. These documents demonstrate that the community of “sodomites” in pre-Revolutionary Paris was active indeed, with cruising places, gay cafés and bars, private parties, and most of the mate-finding apparatus of later gay culture.

In this regard, George Chauncey’s Gay New York is also an invaluable book. While many seem to think that American gay life began with the Stonewall riots, and while others get closer to the source by pointing at demobilization following World War II, Chauncey examines the fifty years before the war, showing that here, too, a carefully hidden gay culture existed despite the overwhelming societal disapproval.

World War II accelerated the development of gay life, in part by throwing together large groups of men and removing from them many of the social strictures they had previously known. Soldiers returning from World War II often found themselves discharged in New York and San Francisco. Many of them were single, homosexual in orientation, quite well aware of that fact, and totally uninterested in returning to life on the farms or in small towns of their youth. They settled in the cities and contributed powerfully to the gay life of midcentury America.

So much for religion, psychiatry and demographics (and yes, we’re moving very quickly here. Feel free to ask questions in the comments). There remains another important factor, and this is the law.

If you think the current legal regime is anti-gay, you have not seen the one that prevailed during the 1950s and 1960s. The crackdown on gay life began almost immediately following the war, as gays were widely suspected of being tied to communism–among all their other vices and perversions. Nascent gay rights groups, newspapers, and community organizations were generally repressed.

During this era, gay life consisted chiefly of the bars, which could at least plausibly claim to be “legitimate” businesses. Other social avenues were all but nonexistent, as the vice squads generally shut them down whenever they could.

Police routinely raided the bars, too, often arresting everyone that they found within. Yet the bars proved hard to eradicate: Their owners and patrons relied on a complex set of secret symbols to advertise the true nature of the establishment, and police only sometimes caught on. Bribery and other secret arrangements helped keep many of them open, as did, sad to say, their ties with the Mafia. As always, criminalize an activity, and only criminals will engage in it.

Keep in mind, too, how psychology claimed at the very same time that a healthy gay life was an impossibility. In effect, the authorities closed off all potentially healthy venues for gay self-expression–then declared that gays were mentally incapable of leading a healthy life.

Besides the bars, the bath houses were one of the few remaining options for gay social life. In the early twentieth century, public baths were common for working urbanites of all sexual orientations and genders. As plumbing amenities became more common in working-class houses, however, the baths came to be taken over by gay men. All authorities–religious, medical, and legal–assured gay men that their kind cared for nothing but sex. (And hey, let’s face it, sex really is enjoyable.) In the baths, gay men simply acted out what they were told.

Do I blame straight people for creating a gay culture based almost entirely on sex? It depends on which straight people you mean. Today’s straight people have very little to do with it, outside the religious authorities who continue to demonize gay people, and the very real damage they continue to inflict.

But the heterosexual medical, legal, and religious authorities who prevailed not so very long ago–yes, I do blame them. My proposed remedy, though, does not rest on this blame. Keep reading and I will explain it.

The gay liberation movement began with the Stonewall riots, in which the patrons of a gay and lesbian bar violently resisted arrest. Given the injustice of the legal system at the time–and the routine brutality of the police–I can only say “Good for them.”

Gay culture and gay politics both took off as never before. Openly gay artists, authors, fashion designers, and even politicians were suddenly a reality. But the gay culture that resulted from the liberation movement faced a terrible dilemma: What should be done about gay sexuality, which for so long was the only real expression of gay social life? On the one hand, gays could affirm that free love was the basis of their movement–and thus confirm all of the attacks of their enemies. On the other hand, they could deny gay sexuality–and risk looking as if they again agreed with their enemies, who claimed that gay sexuality must be denied at every occasion. It was a hopeless double bind, of the type that one so often encounters in gay politics.

This double bind is important enough that it should be stated in general terms:

Do gay people affirm their sexuality? It’s because they are perverts who only care about sex. Do gay people deny their sexuality? It’s because they are perverts who only care about sex. And they’re self-hating. Heads I win, tails you lose.

The initial response was to affirm sexual liberation as the very core of gay culture–with all of the promiscuity that it implied. This strategy had the distinct advantage of making a good clean break with past attitudes; it posed a challenge to mainstream America, to which the mainstream is still pondering its reply. It may yet have done some good.

But the disadvantages of the strategy were legion; AIDS was only the most visible and damaging among them. Besides this, many who might have come out much sooner now found themselves horrified at gay culture; I know that I certainly was, and that many others were too. Promiscuity bought shock value, visibility, and conflict–at the price of never being taken seriously, and of scaring away many potential allies. Lastly, it also meant pressing gay culture into one direction alone, from which it is still trying to recover.

In the last fifteen years, a new gay liberation movement has arisen, with a new answer to the old double bind. The movement for same-sex marriage proposes to affirm gay sexuality by channeling it, precisely as straight people have always affirmed their sexuality. Making same-sex marriage the focus of the debate has changed the terms in ways whose importance cannot be overstated: Do you say that gay people are sexualized beings? We are no more so than you, and we ask to be treated the same. Do you say that gay people are self-hating because they know they are evil? But this you can no longer say; self-hate is an improbable force to bring you to the altar.

Here the contributions of Andrew Sullivan have been particularly important, and despite all his faults, I suspect that he will be remembered as one of the key gay civil rights leaders of all time. More than any figure, Sullivan has consistently made the case for gay marriage, not only to straight people, but to gays themselves, who have often been skeptical of adopting this “heterosexual” institution.

Combating AIDS has likewise changed how gay culture relates to gay sexuality. Yes, gay people do on average still tend to be riskier than straight people–but considering where we started, and the values that many of us absorbed during the bad old days, the far more surprising fact is just how far we’ve come, and not how slowly, but how fast.

To bring all of this back to the topic at hand, my short gay history is also part of the reason why I remain unsatisfied by the new reading that Chris gives to his earlier post: So much of it is steeped in the same old untruths that should have been discarded years ago–if only they had been spoken of heterosexuals. But because of the overwhelming prejudices against gays and lesbians, these falsehoods and double standards still pass for rational, factual, and fair. They are no such things.

Whether the ideas Chris talked about are his own beliefs (which seemed a self-evident reading at first), or whether they come from outside, they still represent for me nothing more than the old familiar products of bias, double standards, and vague appeals to authority.

In particular, one example emerges in a new light given the gay history I’ve recounted above: Blaming the heterosexual AIDS epidemic on closeted gay men who infect straight women is shown more clearly than ever as an outright double standard. Everyone has the responsibility limit their risk of exposure, difficult as it may be. To blame homosexuals generally for the actions of dishonest, closeted individuals is to ignore the single most important contribution of the gay liberation movement, which has been to encourage honesty and openness about sexual orientation, even in the face of mortal danger.

Think about this for a moment: Under the argument Chris presents, a straight person is never to blame for an AIDS infection, so long as their partner is bisexual. No, the mere presence of a bisexual or closeted gay man in a sex act automatically makes the infection his fault.

But it takes two to tango, and safer sex is likewise everyone’s responsibility. So how can I read this as anything other than homophobia? How can I possibly see this as a rational argument?

Moreover, what are the gay people to do? In the question of heterosexual HIV, gays face a double bind much like the ones they have always faced: Should we come out and admit who they are? It won’t matter, because honesty does not exempt “homosexuals” from the blame (later in the argument, we’re also told that being “in your face” about sexual orientation is verboten). So should we stay in the closet? But no–Closet cases are directly to blame for heterosexuals’ HIV infection. Heads I win, tails you lose.

No wonder we’re such “bitchy queens.” And no wonder I still don’t accept these arguments as even vaguely reasonable.

In the comments to my post titled “Crazy Talk,” reader Chris Byrne wrote,

Jason, I really like what I’ve read here. I recently wrote something touching on this, and I wanted to talk with you about it if you’re interested.

I suppose I should be gracious up front and thank him–despite the many difficulties I have with what followed. Chris then directed me to an essay at his own blog. It begins as follows:

Homophobia - n.

1. Fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men.
2. Behavior based on such a feeling.

Homophobia is offensive.

Not the commonly accepted defnition of homophobia, but the word itself, and the concepts it represents.

Yes, the concept of hating or disliking, or disapproving of someone because of their sexual choices strikes me as silly, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

The entire concept of homophobia is that people who don’t like homosexuals, or homosexual behavior, are irrational, and that their only reason for that dislike is fear, or ignorance.

I’m going to say right now, that’s bullshit.

Bullshit is a strong term. And when we employ strong terms, they require strong evidence. My troubles with this argument began in the sentence immediately before the one declaring bullshit.

As defined in this second-to-last sentence, homophobia is the supposed prime mover of all anti-gay actions. This definition is quite different from the one offered at the beginning of the essay, and the slippage indicates some sloppy thinking. I submit that the first definition identifies a genuine social phenomenon, while the second represents a misguided blurring of the issue, one that probably exists on all sides of the political divide.

I do not believe that homophobia is the sole reason for disapproval of gays and lesbians. Other reasons exist as well, and perhaps they are legitimate and rational within the confines of worldviews that I do not share (eg, Christianity). All the same, I am still convinced that homophobia exists–at least according to Chris’s first definition.

I believe homophobia exists as an irrational, unthinking response to gayness, one that happens below the level of conscious thought or even religious belief. I also find that homophobia is part of a broader group of fears concerning gender-appropriate roles for men. These fears are completely out of proportion to the danger that gender-inappropriate behavior could possibly pose.

Further, the near-universality of such phobias do not make them any less irrational. I would now like to give a few examples to illustrate my point.

Two Couples: Consider my father. I grew up in a traditional family, Republican as a matter of course and Catholic by grace of God. My parents remain staunchly Catholic and conservative today. My straight brother and I have powerfully challenged them, though, and they have responded in radically different ways.

As most of you know, I am in a same-sex marriage. My parents do not accept my husband Scott as a part of the family, and they have informed me that they never will. “If that’s how you are,” my father has said, “well then this is how I am. You say you can’t change, well neither can I.”

Scott may not come to any family functions, nor am I to speak of him in my father’s presence. “I don’t want that in my house,” he has said. I have tried on many occasions to discuss it with him. Every time, he has told me that there is nothing to discuss.

Now meet J. She’s my brother’s girlfriend. J is politically liberal, Jewish, and cohabiting with my brother. That’s right–they are living in sin. The two of them get invited to family functions all the time. Already, J is a part of the family in a way that Scott can never be.

Of course, my father has a right to live his life however he sees fit, and I have no right to demand his acceptance. We both are adults, and we both must live with the consequences of our decisions. Yet I admit I cannot see any rational reasons behind his decision, nor can I see that his faith compels him to take the strange course he has taken.

If my father disapproved of Scott and I because we are living in sin, then that disapproval would surely apply to my brother as well, who is not even married yet. If my father disapproved of me because I have left Catholicism, then the same would apply to my brother, who observes the Jewish religious law and now wants to raise his kids as Jews. (Which, incidentally, is fine with me!)

Now, if homophobia is “bullshit,” and if there really is no such thing–Then what explains this difference? Why can I not even talk about Scott in my father’s house, while fornicating unbelievers are welcome to spend the night? If there isn’t something irrational–and phobic–about this, then nothing is ever irrational or phobic.

No, really: Is there any other sin, or any crime at all, that would lead to such complete rejection? I can’t name a one. If Scott were an alcoholic, a shoplifter, even a murderer–heck, even a Jew–he would be welcome in the house, provided only that he were female. It should be kept in mind, too, that gay sex is not by a long stretch the worst sin that a Catholic can commit.

I am forced to conclude that my father’s antipathy toward gays is completely out of proportion, totally beyond the bounds of right reason, and not subject to any self-criticism on his own part. In other words, it is a phobia. He disagrees with my brother’s lifestyle; he shuns mine, and there is a world of difference between the two.

The Toxic Handbag. Let me give another example. This one comes from a class I took as an undergraduate; it was the first course that really got me thinking critically about issues of gender and sexuality.

A woman and a man are out in public. The woman asks the man to hold her handbag for a moment while she performs some task that requires both hands: She is trying on a watch, perhaps, or even considering a new handbag to replace the old one.

The man consents–with dread. He holds the handbag by the tips of his fingers, or maybe at some distance from his body. If it’s a bag with a shoulder strap, he would never even think of slinging the bag over his shoulder, even though that is by far the easiest way to carry it. No one must ever think the bag belongs to him, because holding a handbag would make him look effeminate, which is forbidden. Even the touch of the thing pollutes.

Now, in holding a woman’s handbag, there is no danger whatsoever of one’s actually turning gay, or female, or feminized in any sense at all. Your genitals won’t drop off; you won’t experience a sudden urge to perform fellatio or even to listen to show tunes. There is no rational reason to fear the handbag, yet virtually everyone has this phobia.

It may be objected that this example reveals a fear of feminization rather than the fear of homosexuality. Yet the two are terribly close to one another. Merely conceding that we fear the feminization of men is strong support for the reality of homophobia.

Vamps and Tramps. Consider the fashions of rebellious teenagers. In certain circles, it’s expected that you will dress in a manner designed to evoke fear. One sect wears gangsta fashions even though they enjoy comfortable suburban lives; another group takes up fangs, chains, and makeup to evoke a gothic past that never existed outside of 19th-century fiction (and would that they’d read it!). They try, in other words, to look scary. But outside of teens who are openly gay, very few dress in ways that explicitly blur the gender lines.

Yes, we fear gangstas–with good reason. They’re violent. And maybe we even fear the creatures of the night, however comical the goths may be. But gender-bending is a fear too far. It’s driven not by any reasoned motivation, but by contempt, loathing, and irrational responses that far outrun any of the actual dangers.

A Number of Other Difficulties. Having denied that homophobia exists, Chris then proceeds to make a number of very ignorant, reflexive, unconsidered claims about gay people and the gay community. The double standards and flimsy thinking, combined with an overwhelming tone of confidence, all serve as my last and strongest proof of just how real homophobia is.

Consider the following:

Homosexuality is by all scientific measure a far more risky lifestyle than heterosexuality. The physical activity itself is riskier, as well as the social environment. Gays tend not to plan for the future. Gays tend to be more prone to depression, self destructive behavior, and suicidal tendencies (for many reasons).

Please note, I am not claiming these statements are universally true, only that they are stastically true.

I’ll leave aside for a moment the total lack of scientific evidence, coupled with a naked appeal to scientific authority.

I will also ignore the fact that of course you may plan less for the future when everyone around you is dropping dead, when everyone else repeats that you are inherently wicked and irresponsible–and when the law itself discriminates against you, making all your future plans risky at best. Of course gay people plan less. They have no reason to expect that society will respect their plans, their relationships, or even their lives.

I believe that that’s what we call bullshit, and I will ignore it.

Let’s get back to the real subject: Is homosexuality in itself riskier than heterosexuality? “Statistically yes,” Chris says. And we all know that statistics do not lie.

But statistics have nothing to do with it. Otherwise, we might be conclude that there was something inherently wrong with black people, too: After all, so many of them obviously commit crimes and end up in jail. Statistically, there must be something wrong with them. Not with all of them, of course, but with a whole lot of them–and you are just hiding from the uncomfortable facts if you deny it.

Now this is a lot of pernicious nonsense that has somehow crystallized around a tiny grain of fact. The really brave, thoughtful, incisive stance here isn’t to point at the statistics and pat oneself on the back for one’s prejudices. Real courage is to admit that a problem exists–and then take steps to correct it.

It is not the homosexual or heterosexual nature of an act that makes it more or less risky. Risk comes from unsafe sex, drug use–and nothing else. Both unsafe sex and drug use have indeed been associated with gay culture for a long time, and it is high time that these behaviors were ended.

As everyone ought to know, a pair of monogamous, disease-free homosexuals are at no greater risk than a pair of monogamous, disease-free heterosexuals. Gays with multiple partners have also modified their behaviors tremendously in recent years, and the results are starting to show. As Andrew Sullivan reminds us:

in San Francisco, the epicenter of the epidemic, AIDS deaths last year were 182, compared to a peak of 1,633 in 1992; AIDS cases were 245, compared to a peak of 2,327 in 1992. Both numbers were far lower than in 2003. Of course, this reflects what has happened in the epidemic, not what will or may happen. But HIV infection rates have also remained stable. We should not be complacent. But we shouldn’t panic either.

Given that gay culture used to be far more promiscuous and unsafe, an immediate return to the level of infections found among heterosexuals is unreasonable in any event. But, Chris, shouldn’t you at least admit that this is strong evidence of how gay people can change–and how they should?

I understand your objections to the bar-centered gay culture; rest assured that I share nearly all of them. I don’t do drugs, I despise cigarette smoke, and I’m not willing to put up with them just for the chance at a meaningless one-night stand.

But the bars are just the oldest and most visible part of gay culture. Many other aspects of gay life go unnoticed by straight people, and many gay people fill their lives with the other parts gay culture, never bothering at all with the bars. Consider gay social and artistic groups like the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC, for example, or the dozens of sister organizations just like it in cities across the world. There are gay athletic leagues, gay parenting groups, gay-oriented community service and charitable groups, and many, many others.

Which is the better strategy for living wholesome gay lives? Should we encourage gays to create a healthy culture based on more than just sex? Or should we condemn gays because they are statistically more likely to be diseased, irresponsible, and oversexed?

If your problem is with the bars, Chris, then do make it clear. Likewise be clear about it if your problem really is with gays all by themselves. But don’t you dare equivocate between them.

Then we have this paragraph:

Despite all the media messages to the contrary, the primary vector for AIDS in the united states is still unprotected gay sex. The primary AIDS vector for straight people is unprotected sex with a bisexual person, or a partner of a bisexual person. This is especially true in the black and Hispanic communities where secret homosexuality is far more common than among whites or Asians.

It’s interesting that Chris has focused on the United States, one of the few places in the world where his point still has any validity at all. Across the world, AIDS is overwhelmingly a heterosexual disease.

Chris, what possible good could come of blaming one group alone for something like this? You don’t see me condemning straight people because straight sex is destroying Africa. Yet it certainly is, and the very logic of your argument would lead inescapably in that direction.

The reason why you find it so easy to blame AIDS on gays–and why you choose to evade the overwhelming problem of straight AIDS around the world–is because you, Chris, are homophobic.

And let’s look at the United States, too. Why is it that the gay sex gets blamed for the straight people having AIDS? Didn’t the straight people get it from straight sex? Again, why blame this on the gays alone? Straight people, men and women, have exactly the same responsibility to engage in safer sex as gay people have. I am sorry to hear that some straight people have failed in this responsibility, but I reject your attempt to pin the blame on me.

Further, Chris, how dare you blame openly gay men for the actions of those who are still in the closet and refuse to come out? Openly gay men are completely against the “secret homosexuality” that you are attacking here. We agree with you on this one, man–if only you’d let us. Instead, you want to make us part of the problem. This, my friend, is nothing but homophobia.

We openly gay men spend enormous sums of money and a very great deal of our time trying to prevent secret homosexuality. We often know firsthand just how these secrets hurt everyone involved. The closet leads to dishonesty, to failed relationships, to risk, and to disease. If you understood this, you would support openly gay people–and condemn those who lie about who they are. How can you possibly equivocate between the two? Again, it’s nothing but homophobia.

Dear readers, if your blood isn’t boiling already, then do get ready for this one:

What about the psychological health argument? How many truly happy gay men do you know? I have known hundreds of gay men, I know very few happy ones. I have known hundreds of lesbians, again I know very few happy ones. Without a doubt they are unhappier when they don’t acknowledge their homosexuality, or worse, when they do acknowledge it, but hate themselves because of it, but even once they are open and accepting of their sexuality, rarely are they happy. Once again, the reasons behind this are many and varied, and they may ease if society becomes more accepting of gays, but maybe not.

It’s not worth rethinking our attitudes about a mistreated minority. They probably can’t be happy anyway, so why bother? And just look–They’re even getting angry right now! Proof positive!

I shudder to think where we would be today if such arguments had prevailed in earlier civil rights struggles. Moreover, I do not ask that society should make me happy. I ask only that it should treat me as it treats all others, something which has been unquestionably denied. Leave my happiness alone, Chris, and do not presume that you hold it in your hands.

This last comes from near the end of the essay. By now, Chris, I am afraid you have totally lost my sympathy. I quote:

I hate bitter angry queens. I hate people who thrust their gayness in my face and scream it in my ears. I hate people who tell me that I’m a bigot, or stupid, or unenlightened because I don’t like their behavoir. [sic] I hate people who’s [sic] gayness is the only thing in their life.

Well, Chris, I don’t hate very often, and I have never been very good at hating. Usually, the moment I start hating something, I end up regretting it, and I often change my mind shortly thereafter.

But I do admire your frankness, and in return I will tell you what I hate, just this once.

I hate all those who demand that I make excuses for their bigotry.

I hate people who use anti-gay slurs in one breath, then proclaim themselves tolerant or enlightened in the next.

I hate anyone who spouts uninformed, ill-considered opinions like your own–and then asks not to be called stupid, which he richly deserves.

And you know what? I love all those people whom you label “bitter angry queens.” Frankly, the world needs more of them–and fewer bigots like yourself.

Update: As so often happens, there comes a reply. From being mostly convinced of my interlocutor’s homophobia, now I’m just plain puzzled. He writes,

My whole point is expressed in this statement:

I could not care less who anyone loves or has sex with, I just hate the characterization of people who disagree with this, or any, idea as mentally ill, evil, Ignorant, or stupid.

Yes, some of them truly hate without justification, some of them truly fear without reason, but most of them have reasons. They are reasons I disagree with, but they are reasons nonetheless.

We can say they are wrong, but calling them crazy is offensive, and counterproductive.

I must say I don’t know what to make of it. I can’t see at all how this later statement squares with his earlier words:

The entire concept of homophobia is that people who don’t like homosexuals, or homosexual behavior, are irrational, and that their only reason for that dislike is fear, or ignorance.

I’m going to say right now, that’s bullshit…

The real purpose of the word homophobia, is to make gay people feel better about themselves.

These statements still seem flatly to contradict one another–to say nothing of the long and rambling anti-gay disquisition that followed, which Chris, in the comments below, now disavows as unrepresentative of his own opinions. Again, given how personal he was in his earlier statements (”I hate bitter angry queens”), I have to admit I’m confused. And suspicious, but I’m trying my best to contain it.

I must say I believe that there is still some utility, at times, to calling certain actions or attitudes irrational. They represent little mental illnesses, not strong enough to fully sever someone from the community of the rational, but they are illnesses nonetheless.

I believe that homophobia is one of them, and that homophobia is an intellectually distinct phenomenon from anti-gay sentiment, which may also be the result of misinformation, religious belief, or negative personal experiences. Likewise, I also believe that certain manifestations of racism and sexism exhibit phobic traits; for a particularly vivid example, see the “toxic handbag” discussed above.

Perhaps a good counter example would help, too. As everyone knows, observant Jews do not eat pork. Yet they bear little or no animus toward people who do. They don’t make evil jokes or stage angry protests about people who don’t keep kosher. And, save for a few very extreme cases, they would not shun a family member merely for failing to keep the dietary laws. If opposition to homosexuality looked more like this–and less like a witch hunt–I might be more willing to believe that anti-gay sentiment was a mostly rational phenomenon, or at any rate that it was merely a matter of private religious choice. Until then, I think there will be good cause to keep the word “homophobia” in our vocabulary.

Okay, here goes:

For the past thirty years or so, [Wiley] Brooks has been claiming that we don’t need food, water, or sleep. He asks “if food is so good for you, how come the body keeps trying to get rid of it?…Man was not designed to be a garbage can.” He claims that adepts and yogis have been living on air for millennia. Brooks offers workshops at a Sierra Nevada mountain retreat for $2,000, meals included.

Meals included. Check out the entry on inedia from the Skeptic’s Dictionary (via the aptly-named Strange Doctrines).

“So… If you were really holy, you would [insert bizarre and dangerous feat here].” Why ever do we do such things to ourselves?

This afternoon I signed the petition in support of Hans Hermann Hoppe at the Mises Economic Blog’s site. I encourage others to educate themselves on the case and sign as well if they are so inclined: Even repulsive and offensive opinions deserve a fair hearing, and all should be allowed to speak their minds in the university seting.

Somewhere in between the signatures page and the main one, however, it seems that an automatic excerpting script chopped my comments rather misleadingly. As I signed the petition, I wrote,

I disagree with many of the things that you have said, Prof. Hoppe. I agree with many others. And I defend your right to say all of them.

Sadly, only the first sentence came through intact. That changes things a right bit, now doesn’t it?

A reader has sent in a number of questions on evolution and the origins of same-sex attractions. His questions appear in italics; my replies to each of them follow.

(1) There exist evolutionary roots such that homosexuality is adaptive for some reason that remains obscure, and is environmentally evoked in utero in response to a “perceived” environmental pressure that may have been significant in the primordial Serengeti, but has since lost its significance.

I have trouble with this argument, in part because “an obscure reason” is always pretty much untestable. It seems to take way too much on faith and to explain way too little. There isn’t even a way to test this proposition without clarifying it further.

(2) “Homosexuality” is a constellation of separate traits that individually are adaptive, but in conjunction render an individual unlikely to perpetuate his genes.

This, however, is a reasonable and even a testable proposition. The simplest example of this type of trait is the gene for sickle cell anemia. Most people have two “normal” hemoglobin-forming genes. If you possess a copy of the sickle-cell gene paired with a “normal” gene, it is believed that you are more resistant to malaria. But if you possess two copies of the sickle-cell gene, you instead got a very serious disease that could not be treated until recently.

Here is another example, this one without the connotation of disease. Skin color is much more complex genetically, yet it too comes from a combination of different genes, and this means it is almost certainly closer to what we are looking for. Scientists presume that skin color is genetic, yet many of the specific genes remain elusive. It seems probable that there are several dozen of them. Here is one overview of the issue.

Now let us consider what the world might look like if homosexuality were a constellation of many different genetic traits, sort of like skin color. Let us also keep in mind that homosexuality is a behavioral trait over which the individual clearly has at least some short-term control. Does this theory explain what we observe in real life?

First, it would seem to explain bisexuality quite elegantly. Given a group of several dozen genes that incline people toward preferring mates of one sex or the other, we might expect to find a gradient between exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality. Given that exclusive homosexuality is an adaptive disadvantage, we would expect the population cline to be skewed heavily toward heterosexuals. And so it is: Studies from Kinsey to the present all confirm it.

Assuming that highly accurate information could be found about the sexual orientation gradient, the degree of inclination toward the homosexual end would give us at least some information about how adaptive the genes of the homosexuality constellation are when they are expressed in isolation or in small groups. This would be difficult research to conduct given the stigma against homosexuals and the popular tendency to label everyone as “gay,” “straight,” or “bi.” These labels are far too crude for the work we would be doing.

Second, the constellation theory would explain quite well why homosexuality seems to run in families yet not follow classical Mendelian expression. In my own family, I have at least two relatives with orientations other than heterosexual; this is far more than the populational average, and many gays and lesbians report similar findings.

Third, the constellation theory would help explain how different people claim to have varying introspective experiences of their sexuality. “I knew I was gay when I was five years old,” some people say. Others take longer to figure it out. Personally, I didn’t know until puberty, but my parents claimed to see it a lot earlier.

Fourth, a smooth, mostly genetic variation between hetero- and homosexuality could explain how at least some people seem to have changed their orientations, while others find themselves completely incapable of doing it: The closer one is to being a purebred genetic heterosexual, the easier heterosexual behavior will seem. Those genetically in the middle may be able to suppress homosexual behaviors and even desires; people on the far extremes, though, won’t be able to do it so well.

There is only one strike against the constellation theory that I know of, but it is very serious. Twin and sibling studies suggest that a genetic component may not cause homosexuality, but merely predisposition people toward it. Here are some numbers from a study done on the siblings of gays and lesbians:

* 52% of identical (monozygotic) twins of homosexual men were likewise homosexual
* 22% of fraternal (dizygotic) twins were likewise homosexual
* 11% of adoptive brothers of homosexual men were likewise homosexual

* 48% of identical (monozygotic) twins of homosexual women were likewise homosexual (lesbian)
* 16% of fraternal (dizygotic) twins were likewise homosexual
* 6% of adoptive sisters of homosexual women were likewise homosexual

The figures for identical twins are quite high–and the numbers for men and women are intriguingly close to one another. Still, they are not anywhere near 100%. The constellation of gay genes, if there is one, is probably far more complex than anything we have seen with skin color, and it may yield only predispositions, not firm certainties.

(3) Homosexuality is one of Stephen J. Gould’s famous “spandrels,” overly reified in modern society. In other words, homosexuality could represent an inevitable, emergent consequence of traits that are adaptive for other reasons (e.g., females attracted by heightened emotional sensitivity, the additional brachiation skills afforded by limper wrists (!), etc.).

Overly reified? Oh hell yes!

The sexuality of even a few centuries ago is an unknown continent to most of us. While some aspects of sexuality are obviously coded by our genes, what we do with them has become so entangled with culture that I despair of ever separating the two.

To give one historical example: In 18th-century Europe, oral sex was considered to be an utterly filthy and degrading act for the person who performed it. An echo of that attitude remains in American culture today, where some of our most cherished insults refer to the various forms of that act. Today, though, most people find anal sex a lot more repulsive.

In the eighteenth century, these attitudes were reversed. Homosexuals shared the distaste, if you will, for oral sex, and among them, being penetrated anally was commonly thought less degrading than to perform oral sex. By contrast, though, today’s gay culture usually finds oral sex a far more “casual” activity, one that implies much less intimacy than anal sex.

Another historical example is masturbation, which has gone through some fascinating cultural metamorphoses during the last few hundred years. Everyone knows, for instance, that at one time children were sometimes told that masturbation would make them go blind. Non-Jewish Americans also first started circumcizing infant males because they believed it would prevent masturbation and the harms it caused.

Many people do not know, however, that many early moderns found masturbation a more serious sin than fornicating with a prostitute. Why? Because visiting a prostitute was at least a “natural” sex act, and because one more client could hardly be said to corrupt a prostitute much further. Masturbation, on the other hand (ahem), was an “unnatural” act, one that corrupted the person who performed it.

I could go on, but I want to look at something more fundamental.

When people look for the “cause” of homosexuality, it is almost inevitably because they are opposed to homosexuality and wish to stamp it out. The reader who submitted these questions is certainly not among them, but it’s an important point to note anyway. Certain writers have thus expressed hostility toward the entire project of finding the “origins” of gay sexuality. Among others, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s The Epistemology of the Closet makes this point if I remember correctly (I would look it up, but I’m snowed in at home today and can’t get to the library).

How does this hostility play out in the search for origins?

First, it is sometimes claimed that it does not matter whether genes incline someone toward homosexuality–Genetic or not, it’s still an evil. This argument strikes me as deeply flawed.

Now, we do not find people with different skin pigmentation to be evil, or at least most of us do not. While it is possible to change one’s skin pigment, the most natural course is to let it alone. It does not harm anyone, and the natural variation of skin color gives beauty and variety to the human race.

Conversely, we find sickle cell anemia is indeed harmful. By its very nature, it inflicts pain and suffering on its victims. We try very hard to treat sickle cell anemia, and every decent person hopes that one day it will be cured for good. But under no circumstances do we demonize the people who suffer from sickle cell anemia.

We do not, for instance, ridicule them for being genetic mistakes. With gays, and for reasons unknown, there is a disturbing tendency to slip from “you are a biological mistake” to “our laws must discriminate against you” to “let’s beat you up in the street.” But we do not treat other biological mistakes in this fashion.

And why should it be that a biological mistake that encourages different behavior should be viewed so differently from a biological mistake that causes different skin color? If the behavior harms no one else, then it is simply a part of natural human diversity. It ought to add complexity and beauty to the human condition just like all our other variations.

So… Are gay people biological mistakes? As we’ve just seen, it’s a loaded question, yet let us try to answer it anyway. In one sense, of course we are mistakes: Predominantly gay people are far less likely to reproduce than heterosexuals.

But in a more important sense, biology does not make mistakes. When someone says that evolution has made a mistake, it almost always indicates only that the speaker does not understand evolution. Even the most ill-adapted genetic forms, such as the many embryos that fail in the regular course of human fertility, are a part of a larger process, an algorithm that seeks out more highly adapted forms by creating and then discarding millions of so-called “mistakes.” These mistakes are the very heart of the evolutionary process; without them, evolution cannot occur.

For proof, consider the common banana. I read once that the banana has been accepted as food in every culture where it has been tried; clearly it is well-adapted to the task we have set for it. Yet every living banana is a precise clone of all other bananas, and all of them are highly vulnerable to the black Sigatoka fungus, a fatal disease that could end the banana as we know it.

This example shows how the best chance for a species to survive lies not in the creation of a purified master race, but with a rich, diverse, and multifunctional gene pool. The latter can far more easily adapt to new environments and new threats. Eliminating “bad” genes often comes back to haunt selective breeders, who have inadvertently pruned from their fruit trees or livestock a vital though seemingly harmful genetic “mistake.”

Were all the copies of the human genome somehow made identical, and all the subsequent copies somehow made perfect, human evolution would grind to a halt. New environmental conditions could no longer be answered by new genetic innovations. It is best, both ethically and genetically, not to go down that road, and not inquire too deeply about genetic mistakes. Evolution has taken care of itself for billions of years without us; it is sheer arrogance to suggest that it needs our help.

(4) Homosexuality isn’t adaptive at all, but rather is a “mutation” (in a very loose sense) that would ordinarily eventually be weeded out by natural selection (unless we find a way to combine DNA from two male gametes to produce and gestate viable offspring, which I’m sure is just around the corner). Not all human traits are adaptive or necessarily the product of evolution, in other words.

I disagree that this is a likely scenario. Homosexuality has been observed in so many animal species that it is hard to believe such a detrimental “mutation” could have developed independently in all of them (see Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance for some fascinating reading in this area). I think the “spandrel” theory has a lot more going for it, wherein homosexuality is a by-product of something undiscovered yet highly beneficial. This goes a long way toward explaining its prevalence among many different animals–an area where few other theories succeed.

(5) Homosexuality is adaptive, because it is one extreme expression of genetic variability in the trait that motivates men to “screw it if it looks vaguely humanoid.” We can liken this idea, in a crude way, to the tendency for goslings to form attachments to any large moving object, because such objects are likely to be caregiving parents and UNlikely to be Konrad Lorenz.

I have seen it suggested that sexuality in general plays an adaptive role in humans that it does not play in many other creatures. Humans are interested in sex almost all the time, which is rare in the animal world. Religious explanations would attribute this to the Fall, but I would not.

Surely the human sex drive would be an evolutionary disadvantage, as screwing all the time doesn’t leave much energy for hunting and gathering. Might there be an evolutionary purpose to it? I tend to think that we use sex–and I know this sounds terribly mercenary–as a way of bonding among members of a group. Bonobos, a near relative of ours, represent a somewhat different permutation than the one observed in humans, but the principle is the same:

[Bonobos are] best characterized as female-centered and egalitarian and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Whereas in most other species sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category, in the bonobo it is part and parcel of social relations–and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination (although such contact among close family members may be suppressed). And sexual interactions occur more often among bonobos than among other primates. Despite the frequency of sex, the bonobo’s rate of reproduction in the wild is about the same as that of the chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of between five and six years. So bonobos share at least one very important characteristic with our own species, namely, a partial separation between sex and reproduction.

This separation between sex and reproduction serves–even the Catholic Church affirms it–to create bonds between the partners (Sex among Catholics should always be open to reproduction, but a married couple may have sex simply out of love, even if they know they are infertile or if the woman is already pregnant). If sex serves this bonding purpose in humans, then sex between two males or two females suddenly has a reason after all.

(6) Homosexuality is adaptive because it facilitated kin selection in the primordial Serengeti (e.g., “I’m gay, but I’ll help my brother with the cooking and increase his chances of reproducing”). This explanation is rather doubtful and ad hoc, but I thought I would state it for completeness’ sake because it works in other contexts.

Before you speculate about the clear utility of having nonreproductive males in the village, remember that natural selection does not operate at the group level, but rather at the level of the individual. Genes are selfish, and can’t perpetuate a trait unless their carriers reproduce.

I disagree with the statement that “natural selection does not operate at the group level.” If this were true, one would be hard pressed to understand the origin of social insects, among whom only a tiny fraction ever reproduces. There is a clear utility, though, to the division of labor that social insects achieve, and part of it comes from making sure that most individuals are infertile.

A further example comes from very early in evolutionary history: How did multicellular organisms come to be, when only some of the cells in these clumps went on to reproduce? There is a great evolutionary advantage, for instance, in convincing my liver and intestines never to go it alone. I might, after all, reproduce–and then their genes would be passed on, too. Why is this not the case with communities?

While I disagree with the claim about the reproductive fitness of communities, I find the “clear utility of nonreproductive males” somewhat doubtful among humans: The male contribution to reproduction can easily be kept to a minimum if that is how society sets things up. Unlike the female half of things, reproduction on the part of males is not debilitating in the least, and there seems to be little incentive for males not to breed among humans.

So, while I can’t see the benefits of the nonbreeding male as a factor in male homosexuality, I could definitely see the benefits of the nonbreeding female as a contributor toward female homosexuality. And this is exactly what social insects have done.

To sum up, I don’t know what causes homosexuality–but I don’t think that arguments for or against ethical or public policy positions ought to depend on the answer. The many possible explanations that remain open do not frighten me–but some of their advocates certainly do.

This Reuters news item informs us that the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging Alabama’s law against sex toys. Given Lawrence vs. Texas, it would seem that the case should be a no-brainer: What interest could the state possibly have in criminalizing “[devices] designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs?” I mean really, what’s the rationale for it?

My favorite part of the law, though, is going to leave me smiling all day long. It makes a special exemption for “a bona fide medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial or law enforcement purpose.”

A legislative purpose?

[Crossposted at Liberty & Power.]

I am a bit surprised to see that the day came and went without a single Liberty and Power blog post on Kelo vs. New London, which was argued before the Supreme Court today. With Ashcroft vs. Raich, Kelo makes this Supreme Court term arguably the most important in many years for advocates of limited government, freedom of commerce, and private property rights.

Kelo seeks to overturn the established precedent holding that governments may seize private property and, provided a “just” compensation is given–then transfer it directly to other private entities. The rationale? So-called “public interest.”

Now this is clearly not what the Fifth Amendment envisioned when it held that governments may seize property for “public interest.” The plain meaning of the amendment was to provide for the building of government facilities alone; indeed, this section of the amendment seems written precisely to avoid the conditions under which we now suffer. And suffer we do; since 1982, eminent domain has been used some ten thousand times to transfer private property from one owner to another.

Clearly this is grossly unfair. It represents a major step toward the disintegration of private property rights in any sense whatsoever, for when the government can take your property, directly and wholesale, and transfer it to someone else, “your” property can hardly be called your own.

Here is the New York Times on the case; from what I can tell (and quite surprisingly), the Justices seemed to be leaning toward the homeowners and against the government, although it’s still far from clear how they will rule:

If a city wanted to seize property in order to turn a “Motel 6 into a Ritz-Carlton, that would be OK?” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor asked.

“Yes, your honor, it would be,” Horton replied.

The justices expressed sympathy for the longtime residents. At the same time, they questioned whether they have the authority to stop the town’s plans.

O’Connor is exactly right to be asking this question, because once eminent domain can be used in this manner, there is no remaining principle to which one can appeal. Eminent domain as it now stands is a license for governments to micro-manage the economy; this license must be revoked.

Timothy Sandefur has a substantial collection of links about Kelo; in recent days his blog has been giving the issue thorough and detailed coverage. There are editorials, interviews, news pieces, and primary sources, including Sandefur’s amicus brief, which very convincingly argues for the homeowners. Mr. Sandefur’s work is always marked by its sound reasoning, well-chosen arguments, and deep erudition. I encourage readers to pay him a visit and educate themselves on the case.

[Crossposted at Liberty & Power.]

In an e-mail exchange, a reader has confronted me as follows: Homosexuality is a sickness that affects your brain. It makes you unhappy and predisposes you do bad things like use drugs, have unsafe sex, and commit domestic violence.

I protested that I do not do these things. I pointed out that I was very happy, that I’d worked out almost all difficulties that gay people often have, and that my emotional life was more or less without any major problems.

The reply? You are too sick, and too crazy, to notice the trouble that you are in. If you aren’t doing these bad things now, then you will be soon. You are like a schizophrenic who has lost touch with reality, and I am here to help you. And the proof that you have lost touch is that you are actually happy being gay.

Now this is crazy talk. Its power as an argument–for want of a better word–is that it cannot be falsified. Because it is so self-referential, it can be lifted from homosexuality into any other venue of life without losing any of its alluring unfairness: You are ill because I say so, and disagreement is just one more proof of your illness. If you are sad and self-destructive, then you are on my side; if you are happy and doing well, then you are on my side even more.

Against such arguments there can be no reasoning.

Fortunately, my e-mailer is an extreme example, and most people, even most anti-gay people, do not hold such views. If I were a lazy blogger, I might note this message and then gesture vaguely in the direction of the religious right, hoping to tar as many people as I could. We term this behavior PASWO blogging, which stands for Point At Something With Outrage. It is the laziest technique in the blogger’s arsenal, and I am resolved to avoid it.

Instead let’s imagine a continuum between this e-mailer and a militantly pro-gay individual. The pro-gay individual might say something like this: “None of my problems are my own fault; all of them are the result of the homophobic society that I am forced to live in. If gay people use too many drugs, have too much sex, or commit domestic violence, it is because of traumas they received from straight society.”

Now, I would suggest that the continuum between my e-mailer and the pro-gay position I have just outlined is nearly contiguous with the political map of attitudes toward gay rights in the United States. One side blames gays for everything; the other puts all the blame on straights.

Neither extreme has a particularly strong argument; where the e-mailer’s cannot be falsified, the hypothetical pro-gay argument closes off all potential for genuine gay self-examination and self-betterment. Both represent dead ends, and a compromise between them hardly sounds any more promising, at least from the standpoint of trying to live a healthy, well-adjusted gay life.

You will note that as I see it, politics is secondary, as it is, I suspect, with most straight people, who put the greater part of their energies into living healthy, well-adjusted lives. Or at least we trust that that’s what they are doing. Shouldn’t we be doing likewise?

Now, it is certainly true that gay people have some problems, and that many are far more troubled than I am. It is also true that many of these problems really are the fault of a homophobic society.

Mercifully, though, the problems we experience as gay individuals are quite often within our own power to solve, even if they did originate from the bigotry of others. This is the message I’ve taken away from Joe Kort’s 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives. Kort argues that gay people really do have the power to live happy, successful, emotionally fulfilling lives. He does so without blame on either side, and his poise is certainly one of the most remarkable aspects of this short work. For example, Kort discusses the delayed emotional adolescence that many gay men experience:

Unfortunately, society overlooks this delayed developmental stage in gay men and, though the lens of heterosexism, sees only an adult carrying on like a teenager–being radical, sexually promiscuous, angry, and immature. The result is a sweeping generalization: “That’s just how gay men are.” Because these behaviors are so visible, homophobic and homonegative writers and mental-health experts have decided that this is the “gay lifestyle.” They label all gay men immature and developmentally stunted and refuse to follow the transitional stage to the end of its cycle.

But like most straight men as they reach their middle 20s, gay men eventually settle down, feel more comfortable with themselves, and become less “in your face.” [pp 57-58]

For once, telling gay people to get to work on their emotional lives isn’t blaming them: Here, Kort presents it as a transitional stage of life, one that we often haven’t had the chance to go through yet. Blame on either side is counterproductive; only growth will do. And straight people should be forgiven for a system that they have inherited just as much as we have.

Another section of the book I especially liked was this discussion of some of the benefits of gay culture:

One. We’re not bound by gender roles. When we’re partnered, stereotypical expectations don’t exist. Everything has to be negotiated–just as it should be in a relationship. We get to decide what works best for us….

Two. We tend to explore and examine our sexuality more openly than heterosexuals. Heterosexism and homophobia have forced us to talk about our sexuality and develop a language for it. Many heterosexuals, both male and female, have difficulty knowing what they want, let alone talking about their desires.

Three. Gay culture is very honest. I think our best features are courage, assertiveness, and affirmation. It takes bravery and sincerity to come out of the closet in a society that would rather we stay passive and dishonest. When we are honest enough to come out, others become honest with us as well. It forces truth to the forefront for all.

Are gay people immature? Are they unable to admit that they sometimes have problems? Do they in fact have problems, some of which are quite serious? Yes to all of these–sometimes. But people like Joe Kort are working to change all that.

If you are having a difficult time living as a happy, well-adjusted gay male, I would definitely suggest reading his book. Although I have been openly gay for over a decade, I still found insights that I consider valuable. These included tips on communicating with one’s partner, how to tell if you or someone you know has an addictive sexual behavior, and even the surprising relationship advice that lesbians could give to us all. Many and perhaps even most gay self-help books deal with coming out or with finding a mate. While this one could certainly help on both counts, it’s also got something for gay men at all stages of life.

Kris and Chris–both of whom know far more about psychology than I do–have made a number of very interesting comments in reply to my post “Evolutionary Psychology and the Blank Slate.” A few reconsiderations seem to be in order.

Innate Ideas I: Introspection. At one point I asked the question, “If the characteristics we have inherited from the Era of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA, a time which we are told essentially ended some 50,000 years ago) really are innate, then shouldn’t we expect them to be obvious by introspection alone?” Kris replied,

There is no reason to expect that evolved mechanisms should be obvious through introspection. Likewise, there is no a priori reason to think that what seems obvious through introspection is therefore innate.

I have some trouble with this answer, though. Obviously, many evolved mechanisms will escape even the most careful introspection (”You mean calcium ions are important to the process of thinking? In all my years of studying philosophy, I’d never have guessed!”). But this is not what I meant at all.

A preference for groups between 25 and 150 people is surely something that one can identify by introspection. If it were not, then it would not be a preference, because to prefer something is to choose in its favor when possible. You don’t have to know why you choose, but to imagine oneself in the act of choosing, and to imagine one choice or the other, seems necessary if we are to call it a preference at all.

Now, if this supposed preference is not an idea that we can identify by introspection, the innate tendency would seem to have little force at all. If I cannot look into my mind and notice some rising level of discomfort when I am in a smaller or larger group, then this lack of introspective evidence is a first strike against the claim that humans prefer groups of this size.

Innate Ideas II: Three Different Kinds. One thing this discussion has illuminated is that there are at least three different things that we mean when we speak of innate ideas. It is important to distinguish them.

First, there are innate ideas that need no explanation: Hunger, thirst, and sex drive can all be talked about at length, but no amount of talking suffices to convey the true experiences, which come to most of us automatically. None of these are ever unknown in any human culture. They might be called innate ideas in some sense, but if they are to be so termed, then what of sight, hearing, and so forth? Do we use these faculties through an innate instruction manual? I am unsure what to think of these questions.

Second, there are innate capacities, for which the human brain seems to have been adapted during its evolution. Both Chris and Kris have pointed out (and I actually recall from biology, many years ago) that there are well-defined language centers in the brain. Damage to them–most famously in Broca’s area–will cause difficulties in forming grammatically correct sentences. The ability to acquire language certainly seems to have been evolved, as both Kris and Chris have pointed out, and it is an innate capacity in humans.

I am less inclined to believe, though, that language itself is innate, particularly given how children raised by animals or otherwise in isolation do not develop languages, not even idiosyncratic personal ones. Instead they develop no language at all, and they have great problems acquiring language later in life. This is in contrast to the capacity for learning subsequent languages; these can be acquired at any age, admittedly with greater difficulty. But if primary language acquisition were a matter of volition alone, we could presumably do it any time we wanted.

So: Language requires both innate capacities and socialization to acquire. Insofar as it requires socialization, language just like any number of other ideas, including everything from trigonometry to religion to racism. Language has specialized centers in the brain, but those centers are more or less blank if they don’t get used. Whether the others have specialized brain centers is a question that I will let the psychologists answer.

What does this mean for evolutionary psychology? Clearly, humans have been living in groups that use language (or its primitive precursors) for a very long time, long enough that this behavior has left an evolutionary imprint. In other words, we have been living in such groups for so long that a part of human development is actually incomplete if other humans are absent during the formative years.

There are varying degrees of type-two innateness, and varying maps of how these tendencies manifest. I will talk more about these below.

The third type of innate ideas seems unrelated to the others. When Locke argued in the First Treatise of Government that no man was born to rule and that none was born to slavery, he was speaking neither of innate capacities like language, nor of innate sensory mechanisms like hunger, sex drive, or vision.

The Question, then, …is which type of “innate” do we mean when we speak of the things we have acquired from the Era of Evolutionary Adaptedness. My greatest concern about the EEA (aside from epistemological issues; see below) was that it postulated type-three, First-Treatise innate ideas of rulership and servitude–or at the very least collectivisms of this type. My question was entirely serious: If human brains are hard-wired to prefer, however slightly, to live in groups of 25-150, then it is only a matter of time until someone uses this as a justification for frowning on social groups either larger or smaller than this number. Why? Because they, like all humans, crave power, and power is what comes of being able to reshuffle society in so radical a fashion.

I remain firmly skeptical about the 150-person band, and moreso now than ever. I have no problem, say, spending days or even weeks with no one else around except Scott. He feels the same way, too, a phenomenon we have often remarked on during our relationship. Before we began living together, I was also at my happiest when I was completely alone with my books and music. Perhaps we are unusual, but I’m not so sure about that.

Moving to a larger sample size, if 25-150 people represents some peculiar zone of comfort for us, then why is it that there is such an affective difference between our nuclear family and those who are more distant from us? My relatives out to second cousins, great-aunts, and so forth, would be about 150 people. Yet the ones with whom I am in closest contact–my parents, brother, aunts, and first cousins–number barely 25 themselves. The evidence would seem to be that I prefer a much smaller group, and yet this evidence is true also of most Americans, I suspect.

Come to think of it, the children raised in isolation tend to be mistrustful of others; they don’t reach instinctively for 25-150 people, but often prefer to live alone. And yet these children–who have presumably no acculturation whatsoever–are precisely the ones we might expect to exhibit humans’ evolved traits most most distinctly, without the interference of culture.

In the final analysis, it seems to be a mistake to conclude that studying humans in the absence of culture will give us meaningful information on our evolved traits; culture has been so much a part of our evolution that the evolutionary experiment, as it were, is hopelessly spoiled. Or perhaps it is enriched to a level of complexity that no experiment can fully capture.

The All-Species Soccer Tournament: There is a lot of confusion going on here. It seems absurd to deny that humans have any evolved mental traits, yet the attempt to identify any specific evolved mental trait also inevitably fails at some point: Culture and evolution are inextricably intertwined. Even language acquisition, the category cited most firmly as being an evolved trait, depends thoroughly on culture for its full realization.

To cut through some of the confusion, I’d like to draw on some ideas from a book I’ve been reading lately, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett. In “Evolutionary Psychology and the Blank Slate,” I wrote,

We would never say that humans evolved vaccines, or air travel, or the Internet.

To which Kris replied,

This is best understood through analogy. Humans did not evolve to play soccer, but they are very good at it. They did, however, evolve physiques that allowed them to be good hunters and strategists. They evolved the motivation to play games and compete with one another; such traits were adaptive in the EEA in the contexts of hunting for food and competing for mates. Given the predispositions, something like soccer was almost inevitable.

Was soccer really inevitable? Or is this another “just so” story, in which evolution makes us who we are–and we know all this because we are who we are, and not anyone else… So we must have evolved to do it!

Dennett, I suspect, would look at the question of whether humans were designed to play soccer as follows. First, he would point out that soccer was designed for humans to play. Sea cucumbers, sparrows, and even most quadrupeds will have a very difficult time with the rules, provided we can make the rules intelligible to them at all.

But at the same time, while soccer was clearly designed for humans, humans designed the rules of soccer in consideration of human abilities. The two are not the same. Soccer thrives as a game because it answers so many impulses that humans undoubtedly have. If it did not answer these impulses, it would be difficult to understand the attention that we pay to the game. Depending on which entity we take as the primary–soccer or humans–we can say that the one was designed for the other, or vice versa. The same is true with humans and language.

Generally speaking, there are two ways we can look at this situation, and both of them have their merits. The first is to consider the problem from what Dennett calls the design stance. Chronology momentarily aside, it is a reasonable question to ask which creatures can best play soccer, and to conclude, after a suitable tournament, that humans are the best: Even a very bad human soccer team will defeat a team composed of virtually any other animal (Tigers, we trust, would be ejected from the tournament after their attacks on the other players). Dennett’s design stance would conclude that humans are best designed to play soccer.

Another way that we can look at the question is from Dennett’s intentional stance, about which he has written an entire book, and one that I really need to read. From what I understand of it–the intentional stance is also a recurrent theme in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea–after a look at the rules (and perhaps a tournament), we would have to ask ourselves for whom the game was designed, and what the designer had in mind. In every case, the answer is “humans.” The intent of soccer is to be a game played by humans.

Now, we could easily imagine a population of humanoid aliens who have so highly developed their leg muscles, reflexes, coordination, balance, timing, and so forth, that they would always beat the best human soccer teams. Should we conclude that soccer was designed for them instead? In the design stance, we would say that they were designed for soccer; taking the intentional stance, we would say that the rules of soccer clearly intended to favor them. (They might be terrible at baseball.)

To sum up: Evolutionary psychology seems to equivocate quite often between Dennett’s design and intentional stances. Are we designed to do activity X? Or did we create that activity through our cleverness, after a careful assessment of our capacities? Dennett himself might say that these are two sides of the very same coin, or at least so I suspect. Evolutionary psychology seems guilty at times of arguing that the one causes the other–and vice versa, which is an absurdity.

What does all of this mean for politics? I am increasingly comfortable saying that market capitalism is an effective system for which we were not evolved at any distant time. Instead, it is a system that we discovered, one that proves to have mostly positive results, and one that requires considerable acculturation to learn. It is easiest viewed from the intentional stance, since it really does look like something we retro-fitted to biological human development.

I happen to believe–in opposition to Chris–that capitalism represents a subset of cooperative behavior, constrained by a number of rules that prevent the abuse of that cooperation. Yes, competition is cooperative, and I realize that this sounds like a contradiction. Yet this is exactly the contradiction that Adam Smith proposed as the engine of capitalist progress, and, in a sense, he anticipated this entire debate.

What evolutionary psychology accomplishes on the heuristic level, for those who favor free markets, is to suggest a radically new arc to history and to the future itself: We have been one thing (hunter-gatherers in small groups), and, for greatest comparative advantage, we must now become another (law-abiding producers who participate in a market together, even with people whom we have never seen before). There are dangers all around, not the least of which are the “just so” explanations I worried about earlier.

Lastly, I think that the ghosts Locke exorcised have no chance of returning in any event. Those that he unleashed however, may yet return: Instead of favoring a crude notion of innate ideas, the peoples of the world today seem inclined to believe in a crude notion of social conditioning: Because you grew up in a given culture, you will have certain traits that are effectively innate (hatred of women if you are a Muslim; cheese-eating surrender-monkeyism if you are French; dog-eat-dog capitalism if you were born in the United States). Would that it were so easy, but then, it’s probably only my genes talking.

A lot of research in recent years has addressed the idea that free markets are fundamentally not natural to humans, and that, while large-scale free-market societies may be good, our brains have not been evolved to act in them. As Will Wilkinson writes (via Tim Sandefur),

A growing scientific discipline called evolutionary psychology specializes in uncovering the truth about human nature, and it is already illuminating what we know about the possibilities of human social organization.

Evolutionary psychology seeks to understand the unique nature of the human mind by applying the logic and methods of contemporary evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology.

The main working assumption of evolutionary psychology is that the mind is a variegated toolkit of specialized functions (think of a Swiss Army knife) that has evolved through natural selection to solve specific problems faced by our forebears. Distinct mental functions–e.g., perception; reading other people’s intentions; responding emotionally to potential mates–are underwritten by different neurological “circuits” or “modules,” which can each be conceived as mini computer programs selected under environmental pressure to solve specific problems of survival and reproduction typical in the original setting of human evolution, the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, the “EEA.” Strictly speaking, the EEA is a statistical composite of environmental pressures that account for the evolutionary selection of our distinctively human traits. Loosely, the EEA was the period called the Pleistocene during which humans lived as hunter-gatherers from about 1.6 million years ago up until the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

According to evolutionary psychologists, the basic constitution of the human mind hasn’t changed appreciably for about 50,000 years. Thus the evolutionary psychologist’s slogan: modern skulls house Stone Age minds.

This argument accomplishes several things. First, it dispenses with the old Lockean idea of tabula rasa. The idea has been the source of a great deal of nonsense just lately in political thought, and I am glad to see that something is combating it. I do have some reservations, however.

Wilkinson writes:

The key political lesson of evolutionary psychology is simply that there is a universal human nature. The human mind comprises many distinct, specialized functions, and is not an all-purpose learning machine that can be reformatted at will to realize political dreams. The shape of society is constrained by our evolved nature. Remaking humanity through politics is a biological impossibility on the order of curing cancer with pine needle tea [as attempted, pitifully, in North Korea]. We can, however, work with human nature–and we have. We have, through culture, enhanced those traits that facilitate trust and cooperation, channeled our coalitional and status-seeking instincts toward productive uses, and built upon our natural suspicion of power to preserve our freedom.

These are all laudable goals. But Locke’s idea has had many positive consequences, too. For instance, tabula rasa was instrumental in the fight to jettison monarchy’s “natural” claims over humanity: No one, Locke said, was born to rule. It has also been helpful in combating racism, sexism, and other forms of collectivism. We now accept that no one is “born” to be a peasant or a slave, just as no one is “born” to be king. We arrived at this consensus chiefly through tabula rasa reasoning.

Properly understood, tabula rasa was a wonderful heuristic that helped establish the modern idea of the social contract. It is still the best theoretical foundation for government that we have, and I would submit that even anarchists often reach for it in formulating their private, fragmented social contracts. It seems important to me to consider that in abandoning at least the presumption of tabula rasa, we may end up doing more harm than we imagined.

Admittedly, the foundations for tabula rasa were always fairly weak. Stories abounded even in Locke’s day of nobles whose progeny were idiots and of born commoners who outdid their supposed betters. Against all expectations, women and blacks proved capable of acquiring an education. All of these supposed proofs, though, of Locke’s tabula rasa were merely necessary conditions; none were sufficient to demonstrate the claim.

Comes now evolutionary psychology, which seems to have a fairly detailed idea of humans’ innate ideas. During the period in which our brains evolved, it is claimed, human beings lived in bands of 25-150 people. Because of this, we experience difficulty trusting a cohort any larger.

In what frankly strikes me as a “just so” story, it is even revealed that people’s address books seldom contain more than 150 names, and that military squadrons are of roughly the same size as Pleistocene hunting expeditions. Intervening human history can be understood as the effort to create institutions that will bridge the gap from our narrow, trusted circle of 150–up to a modern capitalistic society, which could theoretically encompass the globe. How do we get people to trust one another with their money, their property, even their children, when they are not hard-wired to do it? This is potentially the stuff of a radically new take on history, one comparable in originality to Marxism and with an explanatory power virtually guaranteed to be greater.

So far as I can tell (and I am hardly an expert), evolutionary psychology proposes to pick apart Locke’s thought experiment entirely. Although there are some evidences against tabula rasa and no proofs at all for Locke’s claim in its stronger senses (It is possible that there may never be such proofs), still I am reluctant to give up entirely on the idea.

Yes, tabula rasa may seem to justify socialism, but this is only in some of its formations; a philosophical concept that may be turned to a bad end is not in itself necessarily bad. A proper contextualization may very well save it, distinguishing along the way those consequences that are morally good (respect for individual rights) from those that are not (Stalinism).

A somewhat weakened tabula rasa might hold, for instance, that humans are subject to some forms of instinct or some innate tendencies, but that these are overwhelmed in most cases by cultural and volitional factors. It might argue that the essentials of human nature are not predetermined, even while certain inessentials are indeed innate.

Another take on tabula rasa may be that it is not a statement precisely about human minds–but rather about our capacity to know or to control the minds of our neighbors: We ought to think of people as if the proposition were true, for thinking of them otherwise tends strongly to bring out our worst authoritarian impulses. In this formulation, tabula rasa is not so much true as it is useful and good. It is no longer a scientific claim, but a moral one.

As I understand it, cultural anthropology tends strongly toward a tabula rasa view of human knowledge, often with this moral component as an implicit assumption. Yes, many in the discipline would be loath to admit such a western bias, yet I believe it exists all the same. In effect, cultural anthropology seems to hold that there is little or no significant innate component to human knowledge through its stress on the highly varied cultural forms found throughout humanity.

Our innate ideas certainly don’t establish western-style monarchism, as was argued in Locke’s day, and they seem to establish precious little else on their own. Cultures, and minds, always defy our efforts to nail them down, except in a few very isolated circumstances. Hunger and thirst, of course, are innate; what we do about them is not. Heterosexuality might be another one example, although even on this I’m not entirely sure, and obviously there are exceptions.

As Wilkinson describes it, evolutionary psychology adds the claim that dominance hierarchies are “natural,” although I frankly find this deeply troubling. If it does not precisely revive the notion that some men are born to rule, still it seems to contradict the idea that all men are created equal. (And where did we come up with that idea, if dominance hierarchies are innate to humans?)

I am left with a number of serious questions for advocates of evolutionary psychology as it applies to human social behavior and ultimately to politics. I’d prefer to keep any ensuing discussion firmly within the realms of history and political theory, as I’m not much of a scientist. Still, I have many questions.

1. If the characteristics we have inherited from the EEA really are innate, then shouldn’t we expect them to be obvious by introspection alone? Most people claim, for instance, that this is how heterosexuality seems to them: All they need is a single moment of reflection to convince themselves that this idea is innate. Likewise with hunger and thirst. Why then are the truths of the EEA so counterintuitive, and why have they only been discovered just now? Are there two different levels of innateness? What mechanisms establish them?

2. How can it be determined that human brains primarily evolved in the EEA as is claimed? What evidence is there for the environmental conditions that would give rise to these mental traits or habits? Didn’t brains evolve gradually, over many millions of years? What evidence is there, come to think of it, that the change took place so suddenly? And what evidence is there that the change wiped out everything that went before it? In short, why go back 50,000 years–and then stop?

3. Early in ancient history, humans appear already organized into large cities and empires. From what little we know of preliterate societies, these too were often organized into groups that far exceeded the 25-150 of the EEA.

For example, many Native Americans of New France, particularly the Iroquois, organized themselves into groups of several hundreds or thousands each; these in turn were organized into still larger groups. They possessed no written language, no metal, and only rudimentary agriculture at the time of first contact. After they had been decimated by war and disease, these societies reformed into much smaller, more flexible bands–within the constraints of the EEA where they had not been before. But which was the more “natural” state for them?

How did the transition from small bands into groups of thousands occur, if 150 is the maximum “natural” size of human groups? This question may be impossible to answer, as we don’t have any written records of the transition. Still, the formation of empires–almost universal in early ancient history–seems to be a problem with the theory, as do Native American societies such as the ones I have described. The Iroquois, for one, seemed on the verge of establishing an empire of their own in the great lakes region during the early 1600s; it is an open question what might have transpired had the Europeans not arrived with smallpox, the fur trade, metals, gunpowder, and so forth.

4. The putative prehistoric humans of the EEA are suspiciously rational. They act, I hate to say it, rather too much like good classical liberals, albeit blinkered by their bias toward small groups.

Again looking at early ancient history, I observe that these humans were often terribly irrational. Never mind how they ended up in large groups or cities: How did they all start worshiping the same gods, sharing the same superstitions, fighting massive wars, and so forth? Don’t these examples all show both irrationality and mass allegiances not predicted by the EEA hypothesis? We could always dismiss these as “late” innovations, but this strikes me as ad hoc and quite lacking in evidence.

Add in the more rational yet still large-scale behaviors of ancient history (agriculture, shared oral and written language, common weights and measures), and you have a portrait of early ancient society that diverges radically and almost instantly from the EEA.

5. If the sudden emergence of oral language (which happened, most agree, long before written language) is the evidence for this imputed evolutionary change, isn’t it possible that the capacity for language existed well before its actual development? And that the development of language may not have been a genetic/evolutionary step so much as it was an intellectual one? (I know there is a huge scholarly debate here, but I am curious how evolutionary psychology deals with the question.) How does the EEA interface with language at all?

6. We would never say that humans evolved vaccines, or air travel, or the Internet. Isn’t language an invention rather than a genetic adaptation? And what about the formation of societies? Aren’t they inventions too? Why are some societies (smaller than 150 people) “natural,” while others (above 150 people) are “not natural?” Just where is the boundary between nature and nurture, anyway? And why set it here? (My own inclination is to think that there is no such boundary, and that neither “natural” nor “artificial” has any enduring metaphysical status, especially when it comes to humans, who transform everything they touch into the artificial.)

7. Does it strike anyone else that as presented here, evolutionary psychology is rather teleological? Ethically, there is nothing wrong with this, of course, but where does the science stop, and where do the ethics start? I’m having a very hard time finding the boundary.

8. To elaborate on the last question, we could easily imagine a group of thinkers far removed from the Cato Institute. These thinkers would make very different claims based on exactly the same data. Why not argue that because EEA traits are innate, we had best not fight them at all? Perhaps this is the long-sought path to human happiness: Let us return to small bands of hunter-gatherers, for this is exactly how our minds happen to be set up. Back to the Pleistocene, anyone?

Nor am I trying to be sarcastic by asking this question: A long tradition, in the spirit of Rousseau, holds that if we could only find our “natural” social relations, we humans would finally be happy. How does a political theory based on the EEA deal with these arguments?

[Incidentally, Wilkinson cites the books The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley, Darwinian Politics by Paul Rubin, and The Company of Strangers by Paul Seabright as useful guides to the field. I would gladly read… well… maybe one of them. My plate is otherwise very full right now with finishing my dissertation and with several other books I’ve volunteered to read and review at Liberty & Power. If I had to add one more book to the list, Seabright’s is my preference, in part because it was already recommended to me. Further guidance would be much appreciated, particularly if articles rather than books have what I’m after.]

[Crossposted at Liberty & Power.]

The Inner Ethical Council had just reconvened after a rather long holiday break. Composed of avatars who represent the moral principles by which our world is run, they are sometimes kind enough to offer adivce for my readers.

Some of them had been reading Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea; others had been lurking about Ed Brayton’s site, while still more had made desultory efforts at following Pharyngula.

A few had grave objections.

“I would believe evolution,” said the Humanitarian, “but for one problem. Evolution implies that some races of people are more evolved than others. The very thought of it makes me ill.”

“Come now,” said the Cynic. “We are not to shy away from an idea merely because it’s politically incorrect. Perhaps some races really are inferior–and if science says it, then it must be true. I think you just don’t have the courage to admit it.”

He smiled wickedly.

The Humanitarian cleared his throat for emphasis. “I look around me,” he said, “and I see how certain people use evolution to prop up a whole lot of nastiness, when really the fault almost certainly lies with a cultural system from which these very people have benefited. And even if genes were ultimately to blame for human inequality, that’s still no reason to give up preemptively on the great mass of humanity. We ought to do what we can to help them–and let the genes do what they will. Any differences, if they exist, are far too small a foundation on which to base our public policies. We know this, too, from experience: What race has not at some point claimed that it, personally, was the master race? Surely they should be disgusted of this ploy by now.”

“You are mistaken,” said the Malthusian. “On all counts. Everyone’s heard of survival of the fittest. It’s dreadful, but what can you do? The ‘great mass of humanity’ is going to perish before they reproduce, I tell you. And among those who do somehow reproduce, their descendants still have a better than even chance of perishing too. In the long run, we’re all dead–and in the long run, all of our blood lines run out, except maybe for the master race.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Dangerous idea, indeed.

“But we can smile all the same!” replied the Epicurean. He really was smiling. All eyes turned toward him, and he continued. I’d never known Nazis to wear silk togas before, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“We are fortunate indeed,” said the Epicurean. “Every single one of our ancestors has managed to survive and reproduce! O noble race! Every last one of them, black, white, Asian, even homosexuals!” He nodded in my direction without the faintest trace of condescension. “All of humanity is descended from an unbroken chain of evolutionary winners. Ladies and gentlemen, you are the master race.”

“Do you mean to say that all humans are equally a product of successful evolution?” asked the Humanitarian.

“Yes. But by virtue of their being alive today, their genetic code has succeeded. It has succeeded every iota as much as the genetic code of all other human beings–and not an iota more. They are all equally successful, all races of men, all individuals, so let them all strive to be equally happy,” he exulted. The Humanitarian liked this last bit; he was smiling too.

“But that,” said the Stoic, “is not only true of humans; it’s true of every creature now living! Not only is it true of white Ayrans–who are prone to fancy themselves better than everyone else–but it is also true of Asians, blacks, Jews, homosexuals. It’s even true of monkeys, lizards, and amoebas. As regards the amoebas, it might even be more true.”

“You mean that amoebas are the master race?” asked the Moral Relativist, gleefully. (Long a prisoner of the virtual Bastille, he participated by satellite link from his cell. An iron mask still obscured his face.)

“I mean precisely that,” said the Stoic. “The organism that has had the most generations of practice–it surely has evolved more than the others, ergo it is the best. How often do you think an amoeba reproduces?”

“Let’s not forget,” said the Malthusian, “that the amoebas are also quite numerous, far more so than humans or even insects, who are the most plentful of the macroscopic creatures. If evolution were an ethic, the amoebas would be saints, the insects would be the righteous–and we would be miserable sinners, barely dragging ourselves out of Purgatory, if that.”

“Then we must throw evolution out the window: It is nothing but an absurdity,” replied the Pragmatist.

“Not so,” said the Capitalist. “I think you’re asking far too much of evolution. For one thing, it was never designed to be a moral theory at all.”

“No more survival of the fittest?” asked the Cynic.

“Certainly not,” said the Academic. “Darwin never once uttered those words, so far as we can tell. And if you think about them, you will see them to be a perfect tautology. You survive because you are the best; you are the best because you survive. Talk about making a virtue of necessity! And when virtue comes this easy, is it any wonder that everyone wants in on the game?

“But real goodness should be something that you aim at, and that you can either work toward or not. It can’t be something your ancestors did–and that everyone else’s ancestors did equally well. You cannot possibly inherit it. And real goodness can’t be something that lies in the hands of your children’s children’s children. Either you do it now, in this life, or it doesn’t count.

“So no, you possess no particular virtue merely because your ancestors survived. If you did, you then would have to concede that your virtue yields before the virute of the amoeba, whose goodness multiplies every several minutes if it is but placed in the right petri dish.”

“Wait a minute,” said the Pragmatist. “Isn’t evolution pointing us toward being smarter, stronger, faster, sexier? And aren’t all the lower animals struggling to keep up with us?”

“In a word, no,” said the Capitalist. “Each animal has its own particular niche, into which it has adapted–in that niche alone, it is better than all the rest. It is not, however, objectively ‘better.’ You, for instance, would make a lousy cheetah.”

“Hey!”

“Could you live on a diet of nothing but raw meat?” asked the Capitalist.

“I suppose not.”

“Then you yield that niche to an organism who can. In economics, we call this a comparative advantage. But economists seldom commit the error of conflating comparative advantage with absolute good.”

“You mean the amoebas aren’t lower organisms than humans?” asked the Moral Relativist.

“No, they are not,” replied the Capitalist. “But they are equal only in the evolutionary sense, which is perfectly outside of ethics.”

“Why does everyone then speak of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ forms?” asked the Cynic. “There’s no basis for it whatsoever.”

The Moral Relativist winced, apparently in guilt. The video link went dark, and I made a mental note to have a very long chat with him the next time I was in the neighborhood.

Bastiat’s Window is a new blog with a great idea: It documents real-world examples of the broken window fallacy first described by French classical liberal economist Claude Frédéric Bastiat. It also seeks to address other common economic fallacies, particularly if a good dose of Bastiat might cure them.

Rejoice, o you who have been lamenting the foolish recent tsunami reporting: This blog is out to set things right. (”Just look at all the economic opportunities!” scream those who do not know their Bastiat).

And because it’s such a good story, here is the original parable of the broken window:

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James B., when his careless son happened to break a square of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—”It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade—that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs—I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account