Cannibals and Altruists: Nothing Personal - Just Business

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Manipulation is a tool for managing a person, as a result of the use of which a controlled person performs actions that, without the use of this tool, would never have performed or refrains from actions that he was obliged to perform.

Lies are a natural companion and the most noticeable marker of manipulation, because attempts to control a person, a group of people without agreeing with them goals and tools to achieve these goals invariably run into resistance. And in this case, two paths open before the initiator of the control action:

a) try to force him to perform the action imposed on him, that is, to break the resistance (open control);

b) disguise the control action so that it does not cause objections (latent control).

Is it moral to secretly control another person against his will? It depends on the degree of morality of the goals of the manager. If his goal is to gain personal gain at the expense of the sacrifice, then it is certainly immoral.

But since manipulation with good intentions is the exception rather than the rule, we will assume that manipulation is the control of a person against his will, which brings one-sided advantages to the initiator. The initiator controlling the action will be called the manipulator, and the recipient of the action - the victim (manipulation).

Thus, manipulation is a type of covert control, determined by the selfish goals of the manipulator, causing damage (material or psychological) to his victim.

Manipulation is impossible without creating the appropriate conditions, which are described in his book "The Enlightened Heart" by Bruno Bettelheim, from which we can single out a whole regulation on manipulation, consisting of the following rules:

Rule 1. Make the person do meaningless work.

Rule 2. Introduce mutually exclusive rules, violations of which are inevitable.

Rule 3. Introduce collective responsibility.

Rule 4. Make people believe that nothing depends on them.

Rule 5. Make people pretend that they do not see or hear anything.

Rule 6. Make people cross the last inner line.

The manipulator is absolutely unconscious, but because of this, no less persistently, he always tries to create an atmosphere of fragmentation around himself, when homo homini lupus est and there is no concept of “ours”. To achieve this, morality must be broken. An indicator of broken morality is behavior when one betrays and eats one.

Rat training

The most vivid and full-blooded example of manipulation, which is practiced with might and main on homo sapiens, has been used from time immemorial by people in the fight with their competitors for a place in the sun - with rats:

“These animals are primarily known for their incredible survivability. The basis of such vitality is social cohesion. Rats are incredibly social animals. They go to work together, help each other, protect, if possible, take the wounded with them. Rats feel like a single organism and behave like a single organism. They quickly exchange information, quickly warn of danger, transfer skills of protection. There is no individual gain in this behavior. The defense mechanism has a moral nature …"

Experiments carried out by American biologists have shown that rats purposefully help their comrades in trouble and even share with them a treat that they could eat alone. Rats release each other from the trap even if the freed person then ends up in a separate room, so the observed prosocial behavior cannot be explained by the desire to brighten up his loneliness. Apparently, the sight of a locked relative causes negative emotions in the rat, which can be got rid of only by coming to his aid.

One of the most effective ways to deal with rats is based on the destruction of defenses. Since protection is based on morality, the method is ultimately based on the destruction of morality. Morality cannot be broken for everyone. You can break it alone, and even then not immediately. They break down gradually. For this, conditions are created when rational logic becomes decisive. The main thing is to make you take the first step - an action that was previously under an absolute taboo.

This is done as follows. They take a large and strong rat, starve it for a long time, and then throw a newly killed rat into its cage. After some deliberation, she devours her dead brother. Rational logic dictates: this is no longer a fellow, this is food. He doesn't care, but I need to survive. So you need to eat.

The second time, the bar of immorality is raised higher. A barely living animal is thrown into the cage. The new "food", although almost dead, is still alive. Again, rational logic dictates a solution. He will die anyway, but I need to live. And the rat again eats its own kind, now practically alive.

For the third time, a completely live and healthy "food", a weak rat, is thrown into the cage. In the strong rat, the rational logic algorithm is turned on again. There’s nothing to eat anyway, she tells herself. What's the use if we both die? May the fittest survive. And the fittest survives.

The rat took less and less time to make a decision each time. At the same time, the level of immorality of each new devouring was more and more. After a while, the rat did not think at all. She treated her countrymen like food. As soon as a new rat was thrown into her cage, she immediately pounced on it and devoured it.

From the moment when she did not think at all whether to eat or not to eat, her morality was broken. Then she was released back into society, from where she was taken at one time. It was not the same rat. It was already a being without signs of morality. In its actions, it was guided only by the logic of selfishness. But those around him did not know this. They took her for theirs and completely trusted her.

Very quickly, a creature that looks like a rat came to the idea: why somewhere to look for food, if it is around, warm and fresh. Rational logic determined the nature of the action. The rat-eater chose an unsuspecting victim and devoured it …"

Training people

Exactly the same scheme, copied in detail from the practice of fighting rats, is the training of consumers. The logic is simple and straightforward. The consumer society demands to consume. Any restrictions on consumption are dangerous and must be disposed of immediately and mercilessly. Everything that interferes with consumption - into the firebox. Live today! Take everything from life! Love yourself! Children? Not now, later, then … but better - never. Parents? A relic! To a nursing home.

The consumer society teaches: there are no people of our own in nature. All are strangers, all are potential food. The most optimal food is those who are nearby and consider themselves to be your loved ones. And does not suspect that you actually perceive it as food. He believes, and you eat him.

The human being naturally opposes such behavior. We have to use heavy artillery:

How many millions of TV viewers stuck to the screens when the Last Hero show was on! But the paradigm of this program is absolutely cannibalistic - getting into extreme conditions, where it was necessary to rally for survival, people had to “eat” one of their “brothers in misfortune” every day. The technology of growing cannibals-rat-eaters has been reproduced absolutely scrupulously. The whole blow is concentrated on the destruction of morality. By all means the concept of one's own is burned out.

There cannot be (should not be) one of our own, even in a family. Especially in the family! Here's where the ratmen hang out with knowledge of the matter:

Ask the search engine the question "how to become a bitch" and rate the handsome headlines:

“I want to be a bitch! - A guide for real women"

"From doormat to the girl of his dreams"

"The times when the word" bitch "addressed to women sounded like an insult have long been forgotten."

And the texts under these headings:

"Arousing desire in men and hatred, and sometimes even envy, in women, she goes through life easily and naturally, not bothering about anything and not regretting anything."

"If you are ready to step over and go further without remorse and a clear realization that this does not concern you, you do not need it - then forward, boldly walk towards our dream!"

Well, as a natural continuation of learning - beauty contests, which for some reason I want to call rat contests, as well as all kinds and different versions of reality shows, where the main advantage is the ability to shoot your neighbor in the back in time and thereby establish yourself on a papier pedestal. mache.

Nothing personal just business

The same philosophy is easily and uncomplicatedly transferred to the level of the economy, where the much-needed cooperation and mutual assistance is replaced by cannibalistic ones: "Nothing personal - only business" and "Bolivar will not stand two." And, of course, into politics, where, again, quietly, slowly but surely, like rat-eaters, political strategists raise cannibals:

“The first scrapping, eating a corpse, is a promise of something that is obviously unrealistic to fulfill. Logic: if you don’t promise from three boxes, you will not be chosen. They will choose another, worse than you, who promises that his mouth will speak. Since, in any case, society will be deceived, but in one case you will be among the fools, and in the second case among the chosen ones, let there be the second option.

An analogue of the second stage of breaking up morality, devouring a half-dead brother, is trade in places in your party. The logic is also clear, the elections need money. If you make yourself a "gymnasium student", your competitors will take the money. As a result, someone will take the money anyway, and in any case will be chosen. Since this is inevitable, then I'd rather take it than someone else.

The third stage, devouring a living and healthy brother, is lobbying for laws that are harmful to the country. The logic is the same. If you refuse to participate in the outright robbery of society, others will rob it. The cannibal law will still be pushed through, and if so, what difference does it make through whom it will be done? Better to let through me.

As a result, the political public sector today is a final-stage bunch of "rats". They have nothing sacred, nothing personal, only business. And this process cannot stop. He will improve, obeying rational logic …"

And at the request of the search engine "politics about the people" in the eyes dazzled by the cynical revelations of those in power: from the infantile "well, how could you not promise" to the cannibalistic "people are cattle who need a stall." Everything is correct. Everything is natural. It is impossible to love food because then you cannot eat it.

Cannibals-rat-eaters have two problems, but both global and unsolvable

1. The cannibal rat-eater is constantly afraid. For, while eating his neighbors, he constantly runs the risk of himself being served at dinner as the main dish. Even if he has strong teeth and an animal instinct, God forbid - you will substitute your back, God forbid - you will loosen your grip … Somewhere quite nearby another cannibal with a more powerful grasping chewing apparatus is wandering around and is very attentive to those around him, choosing a better food … Therefore it is not surprising that the oligarchs have such tense faces, the faces of those sentenced to be eaten during their lifetime.

2. The reproduction of cannibals must be constantly supported, because they themselves do not reproduce, but they are perfectly recruited. But by supporting (and expanding) this reproduction, they reproduce and support competitors for a place in the sun, which … see point 1.

But for those who are not yet ready to walk over their heads and eat human flesh? What are they to do? How to survive in conditions when the number of cannibals per square meter in megacities exceeds the number of these meters?

In the film "Alien", the alien animal was at least outwardly easily identified, but these look, behave and even smell like real ones and even better. And here the main, if not the only, marker that distinguishes the cannibal among ordinary people is a painful passion for manipulating others on business and without. He who has eyes, let him see.

Rats against rat-eaters or how nature resists

“When the rat community had no doubts that a wolf in sheep's clothing had wound up among them, the rats simply left this place. Moreover, they left in a hundred cases out of a hundred. The animals seemed to be afraid of being poisoned by the fluids of the transformed rat. They were afraid to become the same. They instinctively felt that if their consciousness absorbed new attitudes, a society without brakes would emerge, a society of traitors, a society of consumers. The atmosphere of immorality will destroy the mechanism of social protection, and everyone will perish”.

Roughly the same, until not consciously, at the level of reflection, is demonstrated today by the human society. Downshifting, that is, a conscious transition from the wealthier strata of society, where the proportion of cannibals is higher, to the less well-to-do, where there are not so many suffocating ones - this is an instinctive, but absolutely true imitation of the natural wisdom of the rat community. Moreover, downshifting is by no means a new phenomenon. Diogenes, Diocletian, Leo Tolstoy are the most famous conscious downshifters.

Instinctive downshifters today are a huge part of young people who refuse to be included in the "rat race" for their careers and money. It is boring for her to engage in petty intrigues in the struggle for the chair of the 4th assistant of the 5th manager. She wants freedom from the rat breeders.

All this is still an unconscious reflection, but the very problem of the threat to the existence of civilization from the manipulators-cannibals, which is being considered today, is an absolutely new challenge, not yet fully realized, and even more so - not studied and not included in the repertory. Although the idea is to isolate from cannibals without coming into contact with them, I like it.

It is quite possible that there is a more effective medicine for these non-humans. Should be found. If only because selfishness, contrary to the assertions of the hedonistic misanthropes, is by no means encouraged by nature:

“We have found that evolution will punish you if you’re selfish and violent,” says lead study author Christoph Adami, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. “In the short term and against some specific opponents, some selfish organisms may gain an advantage. But selfish behavior is not supported on an evolutionary scale.”

An article with the results of this research was published in the journal Nature Communications and is based on game theory, which is used in biology, economics, political science and many other disciplines. Much of the past 30 years of research has focused on the origins of cooperation, as it has been found in many life forms, from single-celled organisms to humans.

The authors of this study, Christoph Adami and Arend Hintz, had doubts that following a zero determinant (ZD) strategy would effectively destroy cooperation and create a world full of selfish creatures. So they used computer computation to run hundreds of thousands of experimental games, and found that ZD strategies could never have evolved. While such strategies are beneficial when used against opponents who don't use them, they don't work well against other ZD players.

“In an evolutionary situation with different population strategies, you need additional information to accurately differentiate each other,” says Adami.

"The ZD player's only hope of survival is to figure out who his opponent is," says Hintz. “And even if the ZD players win as long as there is no one left but the other ZD players, in the long run they will have to move away from their selfish strategies and become more cooperative. Thus, they will no longer be ZD-players …"

Collaboration is an essential feature of both human society and the animal kingdom. Ants live in colonies. Lions hunt in groups. Worker bees work for their fellow bees and even die defending the hive.

The conflict between individual interests and public good has puzzled scientists for decades. A trio of researchers (in addition to Flatt, which included mathematician Timothy Killingback and Swiss programmer and population biologist Jonas Bieri) have developed a unique model, unlike any other, that can theoretically explain the benefits of collaboration.

According to their calculations, altruists not only survive, but thrive and maintain their numbers in the long run. The merit of the new model, in the opinion of its main creator, Flatt, lies primarily in the extraordinary simplicity and, at the same time, the versatility of the approach that can be applied to cooperation at all biological levels “from insect to human”. (Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.)

At the same time, American anthropologist Samuel Bowles, summarizing all available archaeological and ethnographic data, came to the conclusion that the level of intergroup aggression in Paleolithic hunter-gatherers was high enough to ensure the spread of genes responsible for intragroup altruism in the human population. …

Despite the fact that carriers of "altruism genes" died more often and left fewer offspring than their selfish fellow tribesmen, "altruism genes" still had to spread - provided that the presence of selfless altruistic heroes in the tribe at least slightly increased the chances of victory in the war with neighbors.

Well, if we are completely degraded, we will learn from our smaller brothers:

Experiments with one and a half-year-old children and young chimpanzees have shown that both are ready to selflessly help a person in a difficult situation, if only they can understand what the difficulty is and how to overcome it.

Selfless altruism in chimpanzees was first recorded in rigorous experimentation. Previous attempts of this kind have ended in failure due to the fact that during the experiment, in order to demonstrate altruism, chimpanzees had to share food with someone. But this time the experimenters did not demand such terrible sacrifices from them, and everything worked out. (Felix Warneken, Michael Tomasello. Altruistic Helping in Human Infants and Young Chimpanzees // Science. 2006. V. 311. P. 1301-1303.)

I hope we will succeed.