I had a very strange/amusing dream this morning. I dreamt that I was the 1975 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee (which, I believe, would make me Mondale?). I was at the Democratic National Convention and I had just been nominated. I was standing there waiting for Jimmy Carter to finish his speech, but in perfect Boo form I had not written a speech of my own. I didn't feel scared, though… just a little nervous. I figured I'm pretty good at winging stuff like this so it should go off well. Then again, I WAS AT THE FRICKIN' DNC! I probably should have been a little more nervous than I was.
This lack of fear is what made the whole thing amusing. Here I was standing before thousands of people and I was offhandedly thinking to myself, "Hmmm…I should probably open by stating that I’m just a regular guy and I like to state things as clearly as possible. Yeah, I’m definitely more of a ‘man-of-the-people’ kind of guy. I should probably mention that ending nuclear proliferation is one of my goals. People can get behind that."
As I was thinking these things, I was actually writing notes on the palm of my hand, because, of course, no one would notice me glancing down at my hand behind that big podium.
All the while, I was just taking this as the most natural scenario in the world. I didn’t think anything of the fact that I was nominated for the second-in-command position to the most powerful leader in the free world. I just figured that my good nature would pull me through. If the people think I’m a sham, I’ll simply resign, because, hey, I wouldn’t want to ruin Jimmy’s chances. He seems like a nice guy.
This dream highlights one of the main facets of my personality – the fact that I am relatively free of guile. This same facet provides the very reason I will never hold public office. If you ask me any question, you are bound to get my true feelings as an answer.
Mind you, I’m not saying that this is always good and I’m not trying to make myself sound like some kind of saint. In fact, I would say that this aspect of my personality makes me particularly ill-suited for modern society. I’m not primarily motivated to construct hidden plans and designs in order to get what I want. Furthermore, I tend to take things others tell me at face value. Of course, this amounts to a certain degree of naiveté on my part, but it’s a naiveté of which I’m not necessarily ashamed.
Of course, there have been those who have thought me a fool. I can think of at least one person who has thought my transparency born of a lack of intelligence. Some people simply believe that one’s ability to beguile others or simply lie to them is evidence of the most highly evolved mind. They believe that sophistication is directly proportionate to the development of their anima.
I believe precisely the opposite, and I think that evolution supports my point of view. Even though camouflage is a direct product of evolutionary adaptation, as life forms have given way to higher* life forms they have also tended to lose their camouflage. They have tended to look more like that thing which they really are. A walking stick looks exactly like a stick, not the insect it really is. A bear is brown so he vaguely fits into his natural surroundings, but it doesn’t take long to discern that he’s actually a bear (at least it better not). A human looks like a human and only a human, not a tree or a mound of dirt.
Often in science one finds that certain disciplines provide rough yet uncannily apt analogies for totally different disciplines. A clumsy example is Heisinger’s Uncertainty Principle and the way psychological experiments are conducted.
Heisinger’s Principle is a concept used in physics; it dictates that the more light energy you throw at a molecule in order to observe it, the less accurately you will be able to observe it because of how the light energy you are applying affects the molecule. Similarly, in psychology, experiments are often done without letting the subject know they are being observed so that such knowledge does not affect the observed results. Sometimes this is even taken further, such as in a double-blind experiment in which neither the person applying the stimulus nor the person receiving it know who is getting the stimulus or the control.
I think that a similar analogy is possible for how increasingly complex spieces lose their physical camouflage and how a truly strong person looses the need to camouflage their true intentions. I have to wonder if, in the primordial development of our systems of thought and ethics, this is how honesty came to be identified with virtue. Perhaps honesty came to be identified with that same shedding of camouflage which signifies evolution. The ideal is that a person can acquire what they need simply on the basis of the evolved strength of their character and the verity of their intentions. Such a thought is obviously based in whimsy, but it does seem beautifully apt and natural to think of ethics in this pseudo-evolutionary way.
In a way, reality bears this out. As one becomes more powerful, one finds less need to veil their intentions. After all, whom do they have to fear? Of course, this brings up the topic of the quality of one’s intentions. In the example of political power – if one is to follow the Humanist train of thought – the quality of one’s intentions is gauged by how closely it matches the desires of the people. If one’s intentions are of poor quality, they have to camouflage their true intentions until they are in a comfortable enough position to make them known (thus, the disparity between what George Bush says when he is running for office and what he does when he has won office). Which is exactly why I would be poorly suited for political office. I am not willing to be dishonest (and even if I do lie I’m really bad at it).
There are some things about which I am firmly convinced that I am right. But, in wide majority of situations that a political leader is confronted with, there are so many rights and wrongs that to discern what is truly good for the people would require more consideration than is possible in four years.
Upon being asked about such matters, I would honestly say I don’t know and that I think it requires more thought. There is, of course, nothing voters want to hear less. The vast majority of people would much rather hear a candidate state a worthless position with conviction than hear him honestly explain how complex the issue is and how gently the matter must be handled.**
This point, believe it or not, brings me full-circle to the notion of honesty being the sign of ethical evolution. This may seem odd: didn’t I just explain how this same verity makes me ill-suited for modern society? How does that make one more highly evolved?
It’s true; most people in today’s world don’t want to hear truth and whenever they are confronted with it, they tend to avoid it. Both my friends and I possess a degree of honesty that handicaps us in just such an environment. However, I would say this is not a sign of my friends being under-evolved, but more evolved***, than most people. In today’s society, where the traffic of information is growing exponentially, it becomes ever more likely that if you lie you will be found out. It is becoming more and more difficult to tell one group of people one thing and another group of people another thing, and not expect them to share notes. The only way to avoid this dilemma is to simply be honest. Honesty, it seems, is the way of the future. Luckily, my friends are prone to just such honesty.
That may sound elitist, but we are all, in some way elitists. Otherwise, we would have to be friends with everybody. And, personally, I find no person more suspicious than a social butterfly.
*For the sake of this discussion we will assume that higher means possessing greater ability to use reason and logic and to foresee the large-scale consequences of one’s actions…roughly speaking.
**This highlights my view (though I suspect I'm not the only one) that, more often than not, only idiots successfully run for public office. I think to succeed in politics, you truly have to believe that the world operates in just the black-and-white way in which you present it to the populace. What could possibly be more absurd?
***Understand, I'm not using the word "evolved" in an entirely literal way. Perhaps I am even using it in a whimsical way.
