Horace Mann, public education advocate in the U.S. in 1800s 

                                            (credit: Matthew Brady, via Wikipedia)

An Analogy For Consideration

 

I write today on an analogy between biological ecosystems and social ones.

We humans live inside of social ecosystems that function and maintain their balances within much larger biological ecosystems. Canada (my country) and Canadian society exist inside of a temperate climate in latitudes above the forty-ninth parallel. Switzerland and Afghanistan have no seacoasts. Britain, on the other hand, is only about 1000 km. from top to bottom, but it has 31,000+ kilometers of seacoast (counting all of its islands). And so on. Social ecosystems exist inside of biological ones.

But it’s the social ecosystems, the societies, that I want to focus on today.

Why are they so important? Because the vast majority of us absorb most of the programming by which we live our lives from the people around us during the time from when we are born till when we are seven years old. After that, we can change our programming, but doing so is very hard and takes months or even years of work, both in support groups and with therapists.

But note also that these facts imply that humans are programmable, which is a hopeful thought. I can’t alter the programming that makes me breathe. That programming is written into me at the genetic level. But I can learn to stop being mean to members of the opposite sex, even though in my society, men and women are not kind to each other. I can change my ways even more readily if I realize the one I’m really angry with is my alcoholic, abusive father (or mother). Genetic-level programs are nearly impossible to change; cultural ones are not. 

Which brings me to my point today.

If changes to our individual programming can be made, then in theory it should also be possible to reprogram whole nations. For example, we could retrain a whole nation to stop being pervasively militaristic and warmongering. By war? By beating them up, in other words? That’s one way, and it can bring some improvements over long periods of time. Generations. But there are other ways. Trade. Cultural exchanges. Economic cooperation. Sharing of technologies.

Now notice also that we can extend this analogy between social reprogramming and biological reprogramming much further.   

Our immune systems can be reprogrammed to adapt to challenging changes in our ecosystem. That is what vaccines do. They train the immune systems of humans to respond effectively to a virus, one that most people in the population may not have been exposed to before. And vaccines work. Evidence says so.

My argument today is that a society can be programmed in an analogous way to respond to social challenges that history has shown are dangerous. We could, for example, “vaccinate” a nation against totalitarianism.

We could educate our future citizens, our children, to recognize and respond to things like: arbitrary arrests of dissenters; enacting of laws that forbid citizens from criticizing the regime’s policies or leaders; closing of media outlets that criticize the regime; building of special camps for citizens convicted of “nation-threatening” crimes. History has shown us many signs to watch for. Our kids could learn, in school, how to organize demonstrations, stage “media” events, get interviewed on television, etc. And to further counter the jingoistic beliefs that we know are basics in totalitarianism by simply being decent to each other.

Most of all, in my view anyway, the kids could learn to detect and counter all attacks on the public schools. To demonstrate, for example, against laws that require teachers to swear allegiance to the regime. To reject curriculum that has been re-written to bring it into line with government ideology. To challenge any measures that encourage children to report to their teachers remarks that sound disloyal to the regime, remarks made at home by their parents. (Both Nazis and communists have done this with school kids in the past.)

We know the signs of this deadly social disease called “totalitarianism”. Or fascism, Nazism, communism, etc. Different disguises for the same malady.

Could a society be “vaccinated” against it? I think that public education that is up-to-date, rigorous, tolerant, and compassionate is the only real way we have to achieve that kind of political immunity. Not a perfect solution (a free press also has to be in the bigger picture of a vigorous society, along with some other elements), but liberal public education is the crucial ingredient. If it is present, a society can survive a lot of other assaults and deficiencies. If it is absent, the other elements of democracy are not going to be enough to save that democracy.

Do you want to do your best to help your nation survive as far on into the future as you can? Support public education, folks. Not private, not parochial. They don’t reach all kids and they aren’t set up from the starting assumption that we want most of all to preserve the nation that made our children’s getting a good education possible in the first place. Public schools. The vaccine for a nation.

Now in spite the pall of climate change hanging over us, have a hopeful day. Thoughtful, concerned, well-educated kids might even solve that one. (How I hope that it may be so.)  

                                         Modern U.S. kindergarten 

                          (credit: woodleywonderworks via Wikimedia Commons)