Cutthroat Trout                                                                                                                          (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

15. The First Universal Trait and its attached Beliefs/Values

So, what might some of these universal, values-shaping traits of reality be?

It is important for us at this point to insert a caveat for readers to keep in mind. The listing and explaining of the major values-shaping traits of reality and of the values that humans have evolved to deal with these basic traits that I go into below is a simplification of the real processes that are occurring in human social evolution all the time. An analogy between the species in an ecosystem and the many societies of the Earth will help to clarify here.

In a living ecosystem, like a patch of forest in a valley in the Rocky Mountains or in an isolated lake, we can study the system in detail. For example, wolf and elk populations in Yellowstone National Park may vary from year to year with the severity of the winter, pressures by humans, and hosts of other factors like disease, parasites, etc.. But they tend toward a median point for both species. Trout and freshwater shrimp populations in a lake vary in analogous ways.

For us to speak of these relationships as if they are the only variables affecting each other’s populations would be totally misleading. A small hayfield near the lake being sprayed with a new pesticide may hugely affect the populations of all of the species in the lake, perhaps even causing some species to die out entirely. Global warming bringing steadily milder winters might cause elk populations in a park to soar to levels wolves can no longer control.

The point is that simplifications of these relationships can be misleading. So we keep these caveats in mind. Scientists who study wildlife know that a new invasive species or dry summer or mosquito control spray mandated by a nearby city – any of these may radically change the big picture. Sociologists keep analogous factors in mind as they study human tribes. 

However, the simplifications are also useful, as long as other factors stay fairly constant. The wolf population is a good – not perfect – indicator of the overall health of the park. The trout population is a good indicator of the health of the lake. Even the population of probiotic bacteria in my intestines is an indicator of my health. So, in the discussion below of the values our societies have arrived at as cultural programming, please keep in mind that these values must be seen as usually reliable indicators of a society’s health. But they’re simplifications. When we view them with caution, they are useful for clarifying how a society’s values affect its long term survival. Thus, we could ask what volunteering levels in a society tell us? Or the numbers of new business starts? Or fentanyl deaths?    

All concepts, terms, and models in all sciences are provisional. Even the concept of “life” in Biology turns out to be fuzzy at the edges (dormant viruses) as do “real numbers” in Math and “time” in Physics. The key question is whether the concept leads us to useful, testable results. Moral Realism, as a model in Philosophy and Sociology, leads us in that useful way.

                  

                                                            Wolf in Yellowstone Park                                                                                                               (credit: NPS, via Wikimedia Commons)

The first principle is balance. Even more valuable than cleanliness, balance is the profound general principle that shapes atoms, molecules, and solar systems in the non-living world, and cells, organs, creatures, ecosystems, and tribes in the living world. At all levels, a balance of forces pulls the universe into existence out of nothing. Thus, respect for balance has become a value in cultures all over.

In all tribes, adults teach kids to look for a range of effects for every decision and action. Advantages and disadvantages. This is what it means to ‘grow up’. To ‘cut your wisdom teeth’ people used to say in English.

Most crucially, this means that human tribes all over – each in its own way – recognize that balance means existing in ecosystems. Human tribes and other living species interact to find, and stay in, balance. Systems theory tells us that systems are dynamic: they work to maintain equilibrium, internal and external. Tribes that survive over centuries come to recognize the balance principle of reality and use it to guide their choices as they live in the world. Some of their other values may change over time, but balance does not.  

Aristotle emphasized to his followers that they must do all things in moderation, nothing to excess. He said the best life is a life of balance between extremes. The Tao of Taoism is, essentially, balance. Buddhism is called ‘the middle way’.

For centuries, Chinese culture has taught its young about yin and yang: balance as a deep universal principle. For centuries, Christianity has taught children of God’s wrath, God’s mercy, and the human need to achieve grace (balance).

For many native tribes of the Americas, this reverence for balance was even more profound. Europeans took a while to grasp that if they wiped out a species in an area, that action would likely precipitate changes in the ecosystem that would be bad for humans. They lacked a profound understanding of balance as it worked in the wilder ecosystems of the new continents they had come to.  

The first European farmers who came to the Americas learned the hard way that they couldn’t simply shoot hawks and owls to protect their chickens and not suffer consequences. If they killed off the hawks, the rodents, in many areas, multiplied grossly in a few years.

But indigenous people knew why this was so. They also knew that the wolves keep the moose strong by culling the less fit from the moose herd’s gene pool. Less fit moose are easy prey. Over generations, the fit ones then survive, breed, and toughen the gene pool. Native people used these concepts to guide their own actions, and they too stayed strong.

Other tribes elsewhere in the world have similar ideas about balance and the guidelines for achieving it. Most strive to restore their nation’s balances even during crises (“peace, order, good government”: the Canadian constitution).

As a value, balance has endured because it has guided its adherents, ancient and modern, to study tasks to find ways to make their responses to them more nuanced and effective with less labor to yield more good results for more folk more of the time. And thus, to raise the tribe's survival odds over the long haul.

Respecting balance begets tribal efficiency and durability. It teaches humans to scrutinize real world situations carefully and invest their energies wisely. If a reward for a task looks too good to be true, it probably is. A balancing downside will be found in the bigger picture somewhere.                      

Balance as a guide permeates successful cultures. As an idea, it goes on because it enables people who grasp it, live by it, and pass it on to make smart decisions and thus, they go on. They act to maintain balanced systems around them. The tribe then survives well and carries that value forward over generations.  

Furthermore, we should emphasize here that the first human tribes likely did not understand ecosystems. If they had a chance to pick every fireweed root in a patch or kill all the deer in a valley, they probably did. A respect for balance is still in our values programming probably because it gave a survival edge to the earliest tribes that did learn it. They were our forebears.  

                                                        Neanderthal Flintworkers                                                                                                                   (painting by Charles Robert Knight, via Wikimedia Commons)