Chapter 13                     Part B 

     Over millions of people and thousands of years, values enable survival of a human society if and only if they complement the forces underlying physical reality, or, to be more precise, successful values must cause humans to behave in ways that complement and accommodate the physical forces that underlie reality, usually for the individual in the short term, but especially for the whole society over the long term. 

       Our values in modern democracies have been fairly effective at guiding us to survive and spread, though admittedly not always in humanitarian ways. But the demands of survival in a hazardous reality have caused us, over millennia, to work out a set of values, morés, and behavior patterns that is (mostly) consistent with the forces of reality. If we and our forebears had not learned our lessons at least moderately well, and then implemented them at least moderately well, we would not be here. Having children is hereditary: if your parents didn't have any, you won't have any.

 American children reciting pledge of allegiance

           

            Chinese children saluting flag

            children saluting flag in Belarus 

  Boy scouts in Iran at celebration of 1979 revolution

           But we don't yet comprehend the biggest of these truths in a conscious and self-aware way. Most people in all countries still see their values as being exempt from analysis because in a deep way - via early childhood imprinting - we have been taught to be unquestioningly loyal to those values. This style of programming has made the vast majorities of people in most societies, both historical and modern, into unwitting pawns of their society's "way of life". A major purpose of this book is to try to make values conscious and turn them into concepts that are available for analysis and discussion by circles of thoughtful people in this twenty-first century.

        First, then, what are the values that enable humans to respond to the main consequence of entropy, the unceasing, hazardous struggle of life, the quality of life that we know as “adversity”?   

  

         A whole array of values should be taught to young people to enable them to deal with adversity. In order to deal well with adversity, a society needs large numbers of people willing and even eager to face constant struggle, exertion, exhaustion, and pain. A society proves most effective, in fact, if its citizens take up the offensive against the relentless decay of the universe. In short, a society proves most durable if its children are taught to like challenge. These children become adults who seek to bring new territories (planets?) under their tribe's control, and to devise new ways of growing/storing more food, building shelters, etc. - ways of accomplishing more work with less human exertion (i.e. by new technologies) - and, in general, constantly performing the tasks of survival more efficiently.

       When we generalize about what these entropy-driven behavior clusters have in common, we derive two giant values; they are, in English, the ones called "courage" and "wisdom".

         Under different names, courage is instilled in the young in societies all over the world, which is what we would expect if it really does work. Bergson spoke of "élan", Nietzsche of the "will to power"(1.) Japanese samurai lived by bushido, their code of discipline, and European nations lived by a similar code, chivalry, right into modern times. But beyond the difficulties of translation from culture to culture and era to era, we see in all these values a common motif: they all direct their disciples to train themselves to persevere through challenges and obstacles of all kinds, even to seek challenge out. Achilles chose a brief, hard life of honor over a longer, easier one of obscurity. For centuries, the ancient Greeks considered him to be a model of a man, as do some people in all nations that have absorbed ancient Greek culture to this day. Many cultures have similar heroes.   

   Brad Pitt as Achilles in the movie "Troy" (2004)

     Apache leader Crazy Horse (c.1881) 

  Henry Cele as Shaka in t.v. series "Shaka Zulu" (1986) 

       If entropy/adversity is in all parts of reality in all eras - and it is - then if we're rational, we ought to learn the values that equip us to handle it and make those values universal in our way of life. History supports this conclusion. 

         19th century English writer K. H. Digby put it this way: "Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic actions, and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world." (2.)

         The exhortation to meet, and even seek, adversity echoes through all societies. We can most conveniently sum up the gist of all of these values by saying that they are built around the principle that in English is called “courage”. 

         Yes, it is familiar and cliché to exhort people to aspire to courage. Clichés get to be clichés because they express something true. Amid the chaotic background of the physical universe, life creates stable, growing pockets of order. In the case of humans, it does so by cultural programming into young people of the whole constellation of values around the prime value called "courage". From it, behaviors that meet and overcome adversities of all kinds naturally flow, and societies that believe in courage survive better and better because of that belief, which is all our values ever were created to do. 


Notes 

1.http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-    h.htm#link2H_4_0004; especially part XXXIV "Self-Surpassing".

2. https://archive.org/details/broadstoneofhono02digbiala