> a return to our most natural, basic state, which is the law of love
I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive. All living things are the products of evolution, and hence competition and the drawing of boundaries between "us" and "them" (i.e. between the phenotype of the reproducing genome and the environment that is used to provide the resources to reproduce) is an inherent part of all life. To be sure, cooperation can be beneficial to survival, but there is nothing in the laws of physics that insures that the cooperative boundary should be the entirety of one's own species. Peaceful coexistence is hard precisely because it is NOT our most natural, basic state. This is not to say that peaceful coexistence is not desirable or achievable; it is both. But pretending that it is a "natural state" is the left-wing equivalent of climate-change denialism. We will not solve the problem of global warming by denying the laws of physics, and we won't solve the problem of inter-human conflict that way either.
Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive as pretending that cooperation/love is. You mention the phenotype and us/them, but don't explain how violence is an obviously beneficial trait. It is easy to contrive cases where violence is beneficial, but that is a far cry from saying that it is life's most natural and basic state.
Also, I know you didn't actually say this, but I wanted to make the point anyway, since it wouldn't be hard to come to that conclusion from your post.
> Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive
That depends on what you mean. It is certainly true that our natural state is not to be psychopaths, indiscriminately killing everything in sight. But the evidence (and the theoretical foundations) indicate that a certain amount of violence is an inherent part of our basic nature, and so achieving peace requires work.
I do want to emphasize, though, that it can certainly be done. The internet, airplanes, McDonalds -- none of these are part of our basic nature either, and yet we've managed to achieve them. Peace is not out of reach, and indeed, the historical trend is towards an ever more peaceful world [1].
>To be sure, cooperation can be beneficial to survival, but there is nothing in the laws of physics that insures that the cooperative boundary should be the entirety of one's own species.
Nothing in physics but there is a clear trend over time towards more inclusive "us" groups. Humans started off as tribal groups of 50 joined together by blood. Then groups of millions bound together by a common belief system. Which brings us to todays multi-cultural metropolitan areas and world federations of billions.
Yes, indeed, and this is a very hopeful trend. But cities are not a "natural state" from which humans have departed and to which we can "return". They are the very definition of artificial.
What do you think artificial means? Here, I'll help you:
"made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally"
Artificial may be considered a proper subset of "natural", but what humans do is different enough from what the rest of nature does that it's useful to distinguish between those things that exist because we humans put our effort into making them exist and those things that exist without our help. Cities are in the former category.
This sounds like splitting hairs over semantics because applying that definition of artificial in this context is circular: all things humans do are artificial because artificial is defined as things humans do.
Humans gather at residential centers with populations in the millions, yeah, so do ants. Are we going to call that antificial?
The underlying point is that human beings have natural proclivities toward certain positive/healthy/beneficial behaviors, regardless of whether or not those behaviors occur spontaneously. This principle probably pervades nature beyond humanity, but Tolstoy's point is that only humans recognize this, and some deliberately place themselves in opposition.
Not matter what we call the words, I believe Tolstoy (and Ganhi, and Jesus, and the people replying to this post) are correct: the only way to succeed as civilization, whether it means ending violence or even just eliminating wealth gaps, is to recognize and develop love for one another.
Seriously? You cannot discern the qualitative differences between human social interactions and ant social interactions?
Gathering in groups is natural. Doing it in residential centers full of buildings that have right angles in their construction and flush toilets and electrical outlets and internet connections is artificial.
> the only way to succeed as civilization, whether it means ending violence or even just eliminating wealth gaps, is to recognize and develop love for one another
Love? How about just respect?
But it doesn't matter what label you attach to it. I agree that the only way to achieve peace is to reach some state of mind, and I don't particularly care whether you call it "love" or "respect" or "nirvana" or the flying spaghetti monster. I don't want to quibble over terminology. What matters is that this state is not the natural order of things. Mankind has never been in this state, and so we cannot "return" to this state. What we have been doing is steadily making progress towards this state. But we have made this progress by mastering the laws of physics, not by denying them.
The "most natural, basic state" refers to the ultimate dissociative mental state that Spiritualists aspire to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(spiritual)> ... and not to the evolutionary base (which is comprised of both loving and savage instincts). The key thing to understand here is that dissociating from something (eg: savage instincts) is not the same as eliminating them; the "most natural, basic state" is a manufactured one where the savage instincts are minimized and the tender ones (love) are maximized to the nth degree.
You should visit Africa and see humans living in villages in the "most natural, basic state" and I seriously doubt anyone would want to live like that. Doubly so for women, for of course it doesn't come with choice of partner (rape is "default", in the sense of not choosing who you have sex with, violence is not usually involved), nor does it come with hygene supplies. It also comes with violence, in fact, if you're male, you're either going to die from some (easily curable) disease or violently (usually both: you're going to die from disease, specifically gangreen, after a superficial bit of violence. Like a rat bite during a hunt, or simply by getting a cut from a tree). If you're female, you're going to die giving birth to your 7th kid. I think I'd actually prefer the latter. Of your life, you'll spend a third of it with food poisoning (usually due to the water, not so much the food).
As for the loving, it's mostly the physical kind of loving (on the plus side: the women -and men- are physically a lot more attractive than the average westerner, and obviously nobody except one village leader and his "wife" are fat, usually not even them). There is no love in parent-child relations. They're very, very different : kids aren't brought up by their parents, rather they're brought up by their seniors. The 12 year olds take care of the 8 year olds, the 8 year olds of the 6 year olds, and so on. On the plus side: this works pretty well. On the downside: your sleeping accomodations are likely to suck badly until you're at least 8 years old and capable of building a hut.
Somehow this form of living, which is the only true "most natural, basic state" of the human species. Judging from talking to a few of these people, it seems to me it's a total lack of mental state and thought that leads to this form of living.
That's not consistent with what Tolstoy said (or at least what the author says of what Tolstoy said -- I haven't actually read Tolstoy). The author says that Tolstoy "advocates for a return to our most natural, basic state, which is the law of love." [Emphasis added.] Mankind can't return to this state because mankind has never been in this state. We may some day in the future be in this state (I hope so) but we haven't quite gotten there yet. And, I submit, denying this won't help.
Well, I get that. To be as blunt as possible for comprehension - Tolstoy and the like, when they are busy living "the law of love," are actually dissociating themselves from the savage instincts (while identifying with the tender ones), which gives rise to the delusion that their newfound identification is somehow our "most natura, basic state" that other people need to return to.
This is the same old Spiritual nonsense being regurgitated by the so-called secularists. For example, Zen masters talk about (returning to) one's "Original Face" which is the same thing, ultimately. However just because some popular person says something doesn't make it so. As we know that human nature, deep down, is comprised of both the savage (fear, anger) and tender (nurture, desire) instincts - it is simply not possible at the same time for our "most natural, basic state" (that we supposedly had in the golden past and have lost since then) to be exclusively tender (love) in nature unless, of course, one is either smoking something or sitting cross-legged to some dissociative state.
> We may some day in the future be in this state (I hope so)
And I too hope we will figure out a way to live in complete peace and harmony. But denying human nature — as the likes of Gandhi, Tolstoy, Buddha are wont to do — ain't gonna get us there. We can already get a peek at what happens when people deny human nature by observing modern day social politics.
I like your comment because it is a good antidote for people who suffer from a naive and dull sort of adoration for saintly, detached love. But there is also a detachment which comes from embracing and surrendering to human nature. This is the difference between the saint and his admirers.
For the record, Zen Masters were often violent, and they do not seem to have believed in returning to a natural state of peace and love.
"Original face" is a mysterious phrase used by Huineng, an early patriarch, in a story where he's chased by an angry monk and when they stop and talk, the patriarch tells him to suspend all thoughts of right and wrong and then asks him about his "face before you were born." This provokes an insight for the monk.
These masters did talk about being ordinary, ordinary mind, mind that doesn't cling to delusions, mind that's relaxed and in some sense carefree. But they also denounced "mind pacification" and sitting cross-legged.
I don't think you understand evolution. Evolution has nothing to do with competition. If the environment is setup such that all beings get 'the prize', which is possible in environments of abundance, then there really is no competition.
We as humans have advanced such that we typically can survive every environment. And this is because of technology AND society. We have created for ourselves an environment of abundance. We are just not smart enough yet to realize it.
It is you who do not understand evolution, though you are hardly alone in this. I suggest you read "The Selfish Gene." The inherent competition in evolution is not among individuals, it is among alleles.
> which is possible in environments of abundance
Sure, but environments of abundance do not occur naturally. The natural state is for exponential growth to continue until resource pressure limits it, which is to say, until abundance ends. (This is because, in nature, alleles that reproduce exponentially always out-compete those that don't.)
Yes, we can produce abundance, which in turn can produce peace. But that's an artificial process, not a natural one.
By "our" I mean "humans", though it is actually true of all living things.
> Ever heard people saying "God is Love", "we are all one" or "nirvana"? That's it.
Of course I've heard people say it. I've also heard people say that humans are not the cause of climate change. Just because people say something doesn't mean it's true.
Nirvana is not a natural state that humans have abandoned (and thus can "return" to.) It is an artificial state that humans have invented. We don't "return" to Nirvana, we have to make Nirvana. We have to design it and build it and maintain it. And that requires work. Simply reciting empty platitudes won't do it.
I agree. The truth is that every so called leader always treats the current state of life as wrong. One may say there are too much violence, whilst the other one thinks there are not enough of love. A tiger eats a moose. Is it a "violence" or just a fact? A human kills a human. Is it a violence or just a fact? People tend to love/hate different minds. But the question is, why do those minds exist? Well, it's all about the timing I believe. Let's say there are two groups of people - group A and group B, 100 people each. While Group B lives in the perfect world where everyone loves each other and the sunrise is treated as a holiday, Group A experiencing hard times - internal conflicts, wars, hate and violence. But suddenly, there is a guy named A1 from group A who truly wants to live like people from group B. A1 could actually become a great sales person, because people tend to listen to him, however his goals are different. After a while, A1 becomes a reformer, a "legend". Word of mouth does the job and now even group B knows everything about him. In a few years, group B starts to experience problems, similar to what group A has had before. Now they need their own "leader". They truly do and they find one. More or less, the cycle repeats. The thing is that group B has never lived in the perfect world. They also had their own problems they had to deal with every day. At that time, those problems were just less stressful in comparison to the group A's "hell". It's all about timing and relativeness.
AFAIK, Gandhi was born in quite a rich family. He got a law degree in London. How many people from India have a chance to get a degree in London? Or, at the very least, maybe visit a London? I personally could only dream of that, even so, I wasn't born in India. The reason why I mentioned this fact is because of a psychological perception of higher-class people. In most cases, a poor man will always carefully listen to a person from a higher-class society. The fact that he used his power in, probably, the right way, deserves respect. At the same time, there are doubts as for the source of money while he was in Africa, which results to another set of questions.
I once read quite an interesting blog post (can't really find it now) from a guy who suddenly jumped from an engineering position to a CTO. The author was shocked by the fact how people became nice and careful to him. They stared to smile him, always listening to every single word he was pronouncing. Know what? At the very small level, he became "different".
I never treated Gandhi as someone special, but this is just because of my perception. As for the love and violence - there is no such thing as more love or less violence.
There is life. There is love. There is violence.
I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive. All living things are the products of evolution, and hence competition and the drawing of boundaries between "us" and "them" (i.e. between the phenotype of the reproducing genome and the environment that is used to provide the resources to reproduce) is an inherent part of all life. To be sure, cooperation can be beneficial to survival, but there is nothing in the laws of physics that insures that the cooperative boundary should be the entirety of one's own species. Peaceful coexistence is hard precisely because it is NOT our most natural, basic state. This is not to say that peaceful coexistence is not desirable or achievable; it is both. But pretending that it is a "natural state" is the left-wing equivalent of climate-change denialism. We will not solve the problem of global warming by denying the laws of physics, and we won't solve the problem of inter-human conflict that way either.