----- Original Message -----
From: Eva Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Natural selection and genetic development works in a
>much larger time scale than social depelopment that
>may change human hierarchical, obedient etc behaviour
>in less than a generation and such socially
>conditioned behaviour forms
>are not genetically inheritable.
You are correct. Here is a longer quite from Somit & Peterson
that discusses "indoctrinability":
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This book seeks to explain an incontrovertible though hardly welcome fact:
Throughout human history, the overwhelming majority of political societies
have been characterized by the rule of the few over the many, by dominance
and submission, by command and obedience.
No matter the century or era, we see the same pattern -- authoritarian
regimes are notable by their presence and persistence, democracies by their
infrequency and impermanence. This has unarguably been the case in the past;
an objective assessment of today's some two hundred polities compels the
conclusion that, even in what is hailed as an "Age of Democracy," it still
remains essentially the case today.
The consistency of this pattern raises two very troublesome questions. First
and most obvious: Why are authoritarian governments so common and
enduring--and democracies, in painful contrast, so rare and, all too often,
so fragile? To this question, many answers have been offered; as their sheer
number and variety testifies none has yet been particularly persuasive.
In this book we address the same issue but advance a quite different
explanation. Although other factors are undoubtedly also operative, the most
important reason for the rarity of democracy is that evolution has endowed
our species, as it has the other social primates, with a predisposition for
hierarchically structured social and political systems. In the pages that
follow, we will try both to explain why and how this has occurred and,
equally important, to anticipate the objections that likely will (and
certainly should) be raised to such an unattractive thesis.
The proposed explanation promptly triggers the second question: How, then,
can we account for the undeniable occasional emergence of democratic
polities? Many of those who have wrestled with this problem find the answer
in some unique concatenation of economic, social, historical, and political
"facilitating" factors. These factors undoubtedly play a role. Nonetheless,
paradoxically enough, we must again turn to evolutionary theory for the
necessary, though not sufficient, condition that makes democracy sometimes
possible.
Although it shares the proclivity of its fellow social primates for
hierarchical social organization, Homo sapiens is the only species capable
of creating and, under some circumstances, acting in accordance with
cultural beliefs that actually run counter to its innate behavioral
tendencies. The generally accepted, if lamentably awkward, term for this
truly unique capacity is "indoctrinability." Celibacy and the (presumably)
less demanding ideal of faithful monogamy are obvious examples of
indoctrinability at work. Democracy, an idea almost as alien to our social
primate nature, is another. It is indoctrinability, then, that makes it
possible, given some conjunction of the aforementioned facilitating social,
economic, and other, conditions, for democracies occasionally to emerge and
to have some chance to survive.
Our original objective was to address the two questions identified above. As
we proceeded, however, a third task emerged. A neo-Darwinian perspective on
the prospects of democracy in a social primate species can all too easily be
misperceived as deliberately or inadvertently (the net effect is the same)
antidemocratic in thrust. That is assuredly neither our position nor our
desire. Our intent, rather, is to show that the democratic cause will
continue to be ill served if we fail to take adequate account of our
species' innate hierarchical inclinations.
That evolution has endowed Homo sapiens with a genetic bias toward
hierarchy, dominance, and submission need not necessarily be a counsel of
despair. Better to grasp this reality than to blissfully believe that our
species is innately democratic in its political tendencies and that other
forms of government are unfortunate, but essentially temporary, aberrations.
Only after we recognize and accept that fact can we begin to think
realistically about the type of domestic and foreign policies required for
the survival of democratic government, a subject to which we finally decided
to devote our concluding chapter. [pp. 3,4, DARWINISM, DOMINANCE, AND
DEMOCRACY: The Biological Bases of Authoritarianism, by Albert Somit and
Steven A. Peterson; http://info.greenwood.com/books/0275958/0275958175.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275958175
Jay
