Burgers Gave us Love and Democracy.
Meditate with me this summer by grilling a burger.
Cooking meat is so awesome it created human civilization.
I now present support for this thesis, an entertaining rambling, or both, or neither. For the sake of all of us, hopefully not the latter.
Consider the following scenarios.
We have all been there:
You are standing around with friends. Someone states a position that, while popular, deviates from scientific fact.
You are in a meeting. Someone gives an opinion on an established work process that deviates from said process.
You are talking with your spouse. He or she says something that does not align with reality.
What do you do?
If you are like most people, you do not first review the given statement in your mind’s eye to see how closely it conforms to established fact, process, or reality.
You look at your friends, boss, or spouse, and gauge their reaction.
Why? Why do you consider someone else’s reaction before your own perception?
We consider other people’s reactions first because we are social creatures first, critical thinkers second.
Why?
We are social because we evolved that way; evidently being social helps one procreate. Genes care about little else.1 In fact, genes don't care about anything at all.
This line of argument assumes Evolution to be true. For those that disagree, I ask you to suspend disbelief in Evolution so that I may make my point, just as one might ask another to suspend disbelief in God, for example, to make a point. May courtesy be our watchword in this interesting time. Besides, one can believe in both Evolution and God, or not.2
Returning to our line of reasoning, why would being social aid reproduction?
Being social aids reproduction because being social grants access to resources like food or shelter. This is a good reason to be social.
We see this social behavior, not only from the fossil record of humans and proto-humans, but also by inference from observation of other primates, our cousins.
Looking at ourselves by looking at other primates offers another advantage. A degree of separation strips away the personal bias that comes with introspection and self-examination. A clearer focus on simpler truths is possible, hopefully applicable.
Comparative studies between humans and animals, specifically human children and primates, reveal three dominant types of behaviors in common, used as strategies for resource access.3
The three classes of social behavior are
Aggressive behavior, where the treatment of others involves Coercion, and whose relationship type is Dominance;
Affiliative behavior, where the treatment of others involves Privileged Treatment, and whose relationship type is Bonding; and
Action-indicating behavior, where the treatment of others involves Sharing Competence, and whose relationship type is Leadership.
So, primate relationships with others are dictated by how they treat others which is dictated by their behavior.
Let us return to our original scenarios.
You are standing around with friends. You are in a meeting. You are talking with your spouse.
How do you relate? Dominate, Bond, or Lead?
How do you treat others? Coerce, Privilege, or Share?
What is your behavior? Aggression, Affiliation, or Action?
Sound familiar?
Like our cousins the primates, our relationships with others are dictated by how we treat them which is dictated by our behavior, whether with friends or at work or with one’s mate.
Our ancestors needed access to resources. Being social granted greater access to resources. Access to resources like food and shelter aids reproduction.
We still need access to resources to procreate. We still fight, or share, or lead. The sum total of the relationships built between individuals constitute social structures we scale for resources. The nature of the relationships between individuals give shading and characteristics to the social structures that evolve.
Personality matters. Behavior defines more than simply our relationships with others; behavior also defines us. “You will know them by their fruits.”4
So, how does one understand those “fruits?” How does one measure one’s ability to scale these social structures? How does one measure oneself against others? In differentiating social structures, what criteria exist? How do others measure you? How do we know you belong? There are rules, you know.
We are talking about standards of behavior within a social context.
A very old name for standards of behavior within a social context is Honor.5
Honor is defined as a reflection of personal integrity, which is a function of virtue, as well as reputation and social rank, which is a function of power. Both aspects of Honor inform each other.
Honor can promote virtues like courage, hospitality, and integrity, and reinforce a sense of community and responsibility. Honor can also promote social progress.6
And, as foundational sources of human behavior drove human relationships and one’s place in social structures became paramount, Honor as a social measure gained currency.
Aristotle recognized the primacy of Honor as a measure of cultural worth:
“He would not be worthy of Honor, either, if he were base, for Honor is the prize of virtue and is assigned to those who are good.”7
With Honor as currency and where legal authority is lacking, which long ago was everywhere, we see the development of Honor Cultures.8 For most of our history, Honor Culture was the dominant culture. Today we still see examples, primarily at the local level in both urban and rural America if I may be parochial; there are nation-state examples as well.
Those nation-state examples may be fewer than before, because the same features “that encourage community, loyalty, and sacrifice can also promote hatred, hostility, and prejudice.”9
In a nation-state based on Honor Culture, personal reputation is the foundation for government. As there is not much staying power in life, so too there is not much staying power in reputation. Honor Cultures at the nation-state level appear overwhelmingly violent. There is not much stability in violence.
Consider the most powerful of all Honor Cultures, the 13th Century Mongol Empire.10
Genghis Khan united the Mongols, gave them a written language, emphasized meritocracy, established trade routes, encouraged technological development, and allowed freedom of worship, resulting in a period of contact between Europe and Asia from approximately 1250 to 1350 known as the Pax Mongolica. Those are the positives.
The negatives include at least 37 million dead, or around 11% of Earth’s population.11
Between 1209 and 1276 the Mongols conquered Persia, Russia, Arabia, and China, enslaving 4 major civilizations within 70 years. Khan Ogedei’s death in 1242 spared Western Europe, literally the last Eurasian civilization standing;12 it also heralded dynastic struggles. Having gotten into a land war in Asia, and having won, the Mongols now proceeded to tear each other apart. Multiple civil wars between cousins fatally weakened the Empire.13 The Black Death didn’t help.14
Personality matters, but only while you are alive. Wither the Mongol Empire.
Honor among people is one thing; Honor as a societal currency is quite another. Honor Culture does not appear to scale well to the level of the nation-state.
What does scale well is a Dignity Culture, so-called because Dignity is its foundation.
What is Dignity? Dignity is the inherent worth of the individual,15 absent the need for social context. Social context is necessary for Honor, hence its need for locality.
Where did Dignity come from?
Honor Cultures arose because of who we are. Dignity Cultures arose because of what we did. Honor Culture came from us being primates. Dignity Culture came from us learning to cook meat and that changed us into humans.
Actions have consequences.
Consider the following scenario.
Millions of years ago we are proto-human primates, violent as all get-out and engaged in a variety of dominance hierarchy social structures for reproductive purposes, the most popular of which was Polygony, or an alpha-male with exclusive mating access to females.16
One day one of us learned to make fire.17
Suddenly we had a tool. More importantly, we learned to cook our food, especially meat.
Assuming the Cooking Hypothesis to be true, learning to cook and consume meat led to larger brain size in proto-humans.1819
A larger brain meant that it became more difficult to carry children; bipedalism didn’t help. Human children are born less mature than their primate cousins because a large head means more development post-partum. Human children thus need great care.20
Polygony became less attractive from an evolutionary perspective. In a species with a growing brain size, pair-bonding provided an advantage.21 Love reinforces a pair-bond.22
Thus is intellect the handmaiden of love, because someone cooked meat.
While intellect was changing the nature of the relationship between men and women, it also logically led to language,23 and that of course led to writing.24
Honor Culture appears to be a social structure that can work for a localized realm, reflecting its origin in our primate past and need for social context. As long as the members of the group know each other, Honor as a measure of functionality within that group can work.
When dealing with friends, or coworkers, or a mate, Honor can be an appropriate yardstick in an environment with few formal norms or boundaries for interpersonal dynamics.25
What happens when the size, and therefore the Dispersal,26 of a group increases? Honor works when people know each other. It does not seem to work when they do not.
This brings us back to Dignity Culture.
In a Dignity Culture, individual worth is inherent and can thus float freely without physical limitation. Language, especially in the form of writing, makes this possible.
When the worth of individuals can float freely, then so too can the abstract notions people conceive of float freely, unmoored from personal conviction.
Ideas like democracy and capitalism and private property and freedom of speech and religious freedom and human rights are allowed to take flight. Dignity being inherent, everyone is worthy of respect, and these ideas become possible.
Dignity can lead society, with Honor at its side.
This summer, consider the transcendence of grilling, and give thanks.
Burgers Gave us Love and Democracy.
So, did I support my thesis?
Ibid.