On conscience

Recently I came across this thought provoking article which asks some interesting questions.

The writer invoked one of my favourite questions of all time: Is it in our nature to destroy ourselves? Giving many examples of deeds that benefit a few at the expense of the many, he or she asks if the perpetrators don't realize or care about the damage they cause to innocent people.

The whole essay can be boiled down to one question - Don't these idiots have a conscience?

Good question. But lets not talk politics. Let's talk about something that's easier for ordinary people like me to digest. Let's talk about the environment.

So people like to do open burning. They also like to throw rubbish in open drains, they don't recycle, they drive their cars to places that are a mere couple of minutes walk away and so on. To use a cliche, don't these people know they don't own the place but rather, they are merely borrowing it from their children? So why pollute the place they borrow from their own kids? Don't these people have a conscience?

Wait, let me ask the same question of people who double-park, cut queue, smoke next to the no-smoking sign, abandon their pets. Don't these people have a conscience?

If the writer traces these actions back to their roots, I think he will discover something very familiar. Not only will he find this thing called selfishness. He'll also find that the slimy politician has a lot more in common with him than he's willing to consider.

We all have selfish friends, selfish neighbours, selfish colleagues. Its a fact of life so do we really expect politicians to be any different? Why is selfishness so pervasive? Well, for one thing, every cell in our body has self preservation written on it. Its in our DNA. We all have an auto pilot that faithfully takes control over every fight-or-flight situation. This instinct is impervious to delusions of good. How? Notice in a carrot and stick world, the carrot almost never works (well not for long anyway) but you can always rely on the stick. If it was otherwise, you would see policemen behaving like Santa Claus waiting to reward you for good behaviour instead of carrying around their buku saman. Yes, it is an open admission that in real life, humans need to be beaten with a stick before they get in line, like cattle.

It doesn't mean that altruism and conscience are dead. Notice how people don't dump trash in their longkang? They don't double-park and block a family member's car? Slimy politicians don't plunder their families assets? No, they dump it in your longkang. They double park and block your car. They plunder your assets.

So actually there is decency and conscience, just that it exists in a manner that is self-serving. Yes if I am a greedy politician (I am neither, thank God), I'll plunder the nation and strip all that I can, even if I am 60 years old. Sure I cannot bring it to my grave but look at what I leave behind. Enough wealth to last 7 generations. So what if people aren't happy about it?

7 generations? For what, you might ask. He can't finish spending it. Isn't it ridiculous?

To know why, let me recommend you this book entitled "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist from Oxford. Apparently all that looting, plundering and racism that you loath can be traced back to a primordial biological mechanism that works in the interest of one's own genes. The motive is not so much personal greed as what people think or even the penchant to destroy ourselves as what the Terminator 2 guy alleges. On the contrary it is to make sure one's genes are replicated after death. And what better way to ensure this than to grab whatever you can while you can and drag it to your nest.

So despite the soaring talk about nation building etc, the evidence seems to point to a frantic attempt at nest padding aimed at prolonging the gene pool of a 'lucky' few. Remember the survival of the fittest? Before money was invented, if you had sharp claws, can run fast and can outwit your foe, you survive. Now that money is invented, becoming the new sharp claw that determines your life or death, if you know how to steal, you survive. The tools change but the game never does, and it is as bloody now as it was then.

So forget clan, race, creed. Gene survivability is an individual's game, not a clan's, although a wily character will not hesitate to use the mob clan as a means to an end. Think of all these cries of nation, country, race while the looting goes on rampantly at the back. Think of how the same extremist individual, when visiting a foreign country, will transform himself, suddenly turning into a believer of justice, equality or whatever is in vogue in that country. Instant change, like a peppered moth. Adaptation. Opportunism. Survival. I think Richard Dawkins and Darwin has a point.

And you know what's most scary? It is to think that sometimes, all that stands between the greedy racist politician and the honest man in the street is that one has the means to do it and the other doesn't. Hard to believe? Observe how quickly some good people turn bad as soon as the goodies are within their power to grab. Let me emphasize that this happens to some, not all.

Its not all gloom however. I do believe that people are genuinely capable of doing good selfless acts, even when they know there is no chance of gene propagation for them. Think of celibate monks, nuns, unmarried people devoted to a life of charity. Yes there is a chink in the selfish gene theory but that's another topic I might write about on another day.