The Alpha Male Monkey
Jun. 19th, 2007 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldI mentioned this essay on The Sci Phi Show and said that I'd put it back at the top of the site when the episode aired so the listeners could see the illustration, so here it is.
Imagine if transportation was defined as a device that uses horses or sails-- automobile drivers would be accused of denying the existence of transportation.
We're genetically programmed to see an Alpha Male in our primate pack as the source of truth and moral law. This explains the difficulty I have in communicating alternative models of truth and moral law to bible believers. It's not that they reject the model I present, it's that they literally don't know what I'm saying. It's a mental block. We take away the concept of the Alpha Male Monkey in the sky, and they think we've declared truth and morality to be nonexistent, because to them, "right" is defined as: "whatever the Alpha Male Monkey says." By definition. The discussion goes like this:
Bible Believer: "So... where is the Alpha Male Monkey in your model? Is it you? Why should I have to do what you say?"
Me: "No no, there isn't one. Right and wrong are based on the suffering of the victim, not obedience to laws."
Bible Believer: "Um. So we're abolishing laws? There's no law against, for instance, rape?"
Me: "No, if somebody says 'don't rape me', it's wrong."
Bible Believer: "So, she's the Alpha Male Monkey?"
Me: "THERE IS NO ALPHA MALE MONKEY. Morality doesn't look like this:
It looks like this:
We're all equally at the top."
Bible Believer: "We're all Alpha Male Monkeys? I can't believe you're arrogant enough to think you have omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence."
Me: "We're all equally at the top, but the top is a lot lower than perfection. We don't need that; it still works just fine."
Bible Believer: "So what if it works? You don't have a replacement Alpha Male Monkey to obey, so why should I care? I define 'morality' as 'obedience' as you depicted in the first chart. Therefore you have no basis for morality."
Me: "But it works! If you want to be moral, just do unto others as you would have them do unto you!"
Bible Believer: "There you go trying to command me again. Who died and made you Alpha Male Monkey?"
Me: "I didn't command you. I said 'if' you want to be moral. I'm pointing out to you how to accomplish something you said you wanted to accomplish, and how to measure how whether you've acheived it. If you don't want to be moral, I'll let you deal with the problems that come along with that."
Bible Believer: "Hold on a minute... I'm trying to find a command from an Alpha Male Monkey in that... where was he again?"
Me: *facepalm*
As the old tract goes, "only two choices on the shelf: live for God or live for self." It literally doesn't occur to them to see beyond that fase dichotomy. Notice that I didn't get around to defending my model because I literally couldn't get across what it was. Hopefully the concept of an Alpha Male Monkey will help to explain this in the future.
Imagine if transportation was defined as a device that uses horses or sails-- automobile drivers would be accused of denying the existence of transportation.
We're genetically programmed to see an Alpha Male in our primate pack as the source of truth and moral law. This explains the difficulty I have in communicating alternative models of truth and moral law to bible believers. It's not that they reject the model I present, it's that they literally don't know what I'm saying. It's a mental block. We take away the concept of the Alpha Male Monkey in the sky, and they think we've declared truth and morality to be nonexistent, because to them, "right" is defined as: "whatever the Alpha Male Monkey says." By definition. The discussion goes like this:
Bible Believer: "So... where is the Alpha Male Monkey in your model? Is it you? Why should I have to do what you say?"
Me: "No no, there isn't one. Right and wrong are based on the suffering of the victim, not obedience to laws."
Bible Believer: "Um. So we're abolishing laws? There's no law against, for instance, rape?"
Me: "No, if somebody says 'don't rape me', it's wrong."
Bible Believer: "So, she's the Alpha Male Monkey?"
Me: "THERE IS NO ALPHA MALE MONKEY. Morality doesn't look like this:
It looks like this:
We're all equally at the top."
Bible Believer: "We're all Alpha Male Monkeys? I can't believe you're arrogant enough to think you have omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence."
Me: "We're all equally at the top, but the top is a lot lower than perfection. We don't need that; it still works just fine."
Bible Believer: "So what if it works? You don't have a replacement Alpha Male Monkey to obey, so why should I care? I define 'morality' as 'obedience' as you depicted in the first chart. Therefore you have no basis for morality."
Me: "But it works! If you want to be moral, just do unto others as you would have them do unto you!"
Bible Believer: "There you go trying to command me again. Who died and made you Alpha Male Monkey?"
Me: "I didn't command you. I said 'if' you want to be moral. I'm pointing out to you how to accomplish something you said you wanted to accomplish, and how to measure how whether you've acheived it. If you don't want to be moral, I'll let you deal with the problems that come along with that."
Bible Believer: "Hold on a minute... I'm trying to find a command from an Alpha Male Monkey in that... where was he again?"
Me: *facepalm*
As the old tract goes, "only two choices on the shelf: live for God or live for self." It literally doesn't occur to them to see beyond that fase dichotomy. Notice that I didn't get around to defending my model because I literally couldn't get across what it was. Hopefully the concept of an Alpha Male Monkey will help to explain this in the future.
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Re: When everyone's an alpha male monkey...
Date: 2007-06-19 05:19 pm (UTC)Humanity influences each other greatly. We are social creatures. We are like cells of the body and choosing to do violence or harm is like a body that has an auto-immune disease like lupus attacking itself. The more people choosing to cause harm to another person the sicker the body of humanity will become and the inflammation spreads. A community sees the harm and steps in and creates a government to administer anti-inflammatory medicine as it were sending people to jail, fining them, tell them to cease and desist the harm, etc.
This works on the smaller scale of a single indiviuals life as well. They can choose to cause harm to people and suffer the consequenses in their own life which are often visible with only a few years of this type of behavior: lonliness, nobody to rely on, lost opportunies. Choosing to act for the benefit of another on the other hand yeilds many positive results, less types of lonliness (I'm a realist; we all live in our own skin after all.), a community to fall back on when life gets stupid and increased opportunties to better your life. Choosing to benefit instead of choosing to harm is like a cell that divides and creats a new cell promoting good health and keeping the body alive.
There are those we call psychopaths who do not feel the connection to their peers and they believe themselves to be Alpha Males. They are not many and the community works to keep them as little inflammatory as possible.
We are not an island to ourselves as the famous quote says. If everybody tried to go off and live alone the consequences would be disastrous. We need each other. Americans in particular seem to dislike this concept they are so invested in individualism. I of course value individualism but everything must be viewed with a balanced perspective. I see a community with each person an equal voice not one man the preacher interpreting a holy book and no one else can contribute so much as a peep.
I've been in churches and I know the reality is that the other people often to contribute to interpretations and end up funnelling the book to say whatever they want anyway. This is what a community does after all.