Virtue and Vice, Individual and Cultural

Philosophers have long discussed how one develops goodness. Whereas Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory, rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, emphasized reasoning sophistication with the assumption that aligned action would follow, there was another, older view of goodness—practicing virtue. In fact, Jeffrey Rosen points out that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ that USian male founders wrote about was not referring to pursuit of pleasure but to the pursuit of goodness through virtue.

Although virtue scholarship is typically rooted in ancient Greek philosophy, we can find a deeper heritage, in hunter-gatherer civilization.

What do I mean by virtue? To be virtuous in the fullest sense is to, in each moment, align harmoniously with the rest of Life. This is deep cooperation, which means staying centered in oneself—alignment of feeling/emotion, aims, thought, action—plus centering in respectful treatment of others, human and non-human.

Every era or society has its list of virtues.

In our ancestral context, hunter-gatherer civilization, holistic virtue comes about naturally because everyone is nested throughout life in humanity’s evolved way of fostering and maintaining our species-typical cooperative nature.  The evolved nest meets the basic needs of everyone as they arise. This is especially important for babies who are self-organizing their physiological systems and their psychological and social capacities, around experience. Supportive, nested experience sets up healthy self- and co-regulation, whereas unnested experience fosters dysregulation in various ways depending on timing, intensity and duration of undercare.

Individual virtues in hunter-gatherer civilization include egalitarianism, non-coercion, and sharing (e.g., food, experiences). There are no authorities and next to no ownership. At the same time, it is taken for granted that individuals will cooperate, express their autonomy and be self-assertive. These are species-typical features of human beings in small-band foraging communities, where humanity spent 99% of its existence.

Notions of virtue and vice are different in hierarchical civilizations where there are authorities and property. Hierarchical civilization represents less than 1% of human existence among only a portion of humanity at any given time (although today capitalist globalization/colonization is forcing hierarchy on everyone).

Hierarchy and its corresponding inequality are a mismatch with our millions-year-old heritage of egalitarianism. Studies of societies today indicate that inequality makes people physically and mentally ill.

In a hierarchy, different sets of virtue and vice apply to different groups. The ancient Greek virtue of generosity only applied to those that had property, male citizens (perhaps 10% of the population). For those considered inferior in the value scale of a hierarchical society (typically children, slaves, women), obedience to the system and its representatives is the primary virtue. Any disturbance of the system’s functioning is considered vice, or viciousness.

In the USA, founded on white male privilege, inferiors were denied equal rights for most of the nation’s existence (e.g., initially only propertied white men could vote). Inferiors were justifiably punished when out of line. Most famously, Jim Crow laws required those with dark skin to sit in the back of the bus, stay out of the way of whites, and get out of town at sunset. Violating any of the Jim Crow laws gave license to Whites to punish the offender(s) with torture, lynchings and the destruction of neighborhoods, with no resulting punishment of perpetrators. Policing systems still discriminate against and abuse those who do not look white.

The Maafa or Black Holocaust is a name for the abuse, enslavement and terrorizing of Black people across Africa from European invasion and colonization. Hierarchical civilization, with its focus on power and control, met hunter-gatherer civilization, with its focus on accommodation and sharing.  San Bushmen, with hunter-gatherer virtues, were considered by settler-colonizing authorities to be vicious because they did not obey the White Man’s newly established laws of property on lands that were previously used by everyone. The Bushmen instead self-asserted in taking food sources around them (to share with the band), whether wild or domesticated. There is no understanding among hunter gatherers that anyone would ever starve, because all food resources are for sharing. Instead of receiving mutual cooperation and egalitarian treatment, many Bushmen were exterminated, like pests. All over the world, settler-colonizers treated Native populations in similar ways.

Species-typicality is not welcomed in a hierarchical civilization. Individuals must be domesticated or tamed to be obedient and learn to stay in their place.

How do you train obedience? You can do it deliberately or accidentally. Nazi child raising manuals were deliberate, giving instructions on how to break the spirit of the child—before age three because then they won’t consciously remember the process and be resentful toward authorities. The adults play a power game where they teach the baby that adults are in control of their needs and decide when to meet them. Babies are put on rigid schedules of eating and sleeping. They are spanked or isolated when they make demands. Their physiological needs might be taken care of (e.g., diaper changes) in a timely manner but psychological, social, and emotional needs are neglected. The baby is put into a nearly constant state of fear or panic to such a degree that they learn to dissociate from their body, from relational trust, and from full-hearted world engagement. The babies who survive the treatment would have received enough positive support to make living seem worthwhile, but their psyches are malformed and their health compromised.

Accidental training of obedience is common across the USA today where parents have little support for raising children and where the culture encourages undercare. US parents do not know what they are doing by and large, unless they are driven by an ideology of parental control over baby evil (original sin). Parents are conducting experiments on their babies just like researchers experimented on laboratory rats or, in the old days, monkeys. Parents must not realize that what they themselves are doing what was purposely done to animals to test the ill effects of separation, punishment and neglect. From animal studies, we already know the long term effects of baby separation from parents, of minimal touch 24/7, of extensive imposed distress (from sleep training, isolation, spanking).

When you break a child’s spirit, you ‘take them off their game.’ They no longer feel confident in following their inner compass or spirit towards fulfilling their unique potential. Without nested support, they are unable to practice species-normal holistic virtue. Instead, they look externally for guidance. Their insecurity follows them ever after so they need a strong ideology or strong man to feel safe. Yes, they become authoritarians, as Nazis preferred—easily submitting to an authority they learned to trust, but also, when they have power, sadistically treating others like they were treated. This is how you keep a fascist system going.

Knee-jerk obedience is not virtue. It’s Kohlberg’s Stage 1, a sign that punishment was part of the person’s past. Obedience might be called cooperation on virtue lists, but it’s not hunter-gatherer cooperation, which is more like the cooperation of a group of birds or fish moving together. Compliance with rules or authority is not the cooperation of enjoyably ‘moving-with’ a bonded community.

The focus in virtue scholarship is typically on an individual’s virtue. What you might be noticing is that the culture itself can be virtuous or vicious. The dominant culture today is extremely vicious, especially from a hunter-gatherer perspective. Hunter-gatherer values of egalitarianism, no coercion, and sharing in activity and resources are violated by the policies and practices of hierarchical institutions.

The hunter-gatherer, Indigenous lifeway is a coordinated way of being that harmonizes with Nature’s ways and with the community from the beginning of and throughout an individual’s life. Communal concern is the way one’s body and mind and spirit move, intertwined with all, an embodiment connecting to a dynamic web of life.

Those of us who awaken to the Indigenous lifeway in adulthood find that our habits are in conflict with our enlightenment. When we come late to holistic, Indigenous, virtue development, communal concern is imposed like overcoat on a well-dressed individualistic fashion model. The vagus nerve is not so comfortable with close physical contact; we are socially threat reactive; and we have a hard time socially attuning to others. Again, the reason is because the foundations of virtue are established in babyhood, in our neurobiological health. We must consciously work at learning new habits, new virtues. But regulating dysregulation is highly effortful, making repeated failure probable as we unlearn the old and learn the new ways of being.

It is then easy to perceive what is typically missing in discussions of virtue: the fact that although virtue can be lectured about and painstakingly attempted by adolescents and adults, it is hard to change longstanding habits and reactions that are not virtuous—both in individuals and in cultures—especially if you use the wider definition I proposed here: To be virtuous in the fullest sense is to, in each moment, align harmoniously with the rest of Life.

The foundations of virtue are built in babyhood, affecting adulthood and the culture adults build. So to turn our world around, let’s support all babies with love-in-action, the evolved nest.

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