Natural Democracy

    My colleagues and I are applying our understanding of how the genes get us into trouble and how our understanding of them can keep us out of trouble. We know that the central problem is that humanity is on automatic pilot too much of the time. We know the solution is to move from automatic pilot to self-control, being conscious of how our genes are controlling us and how we can control them.

The Design Components of Natural Democracy

    The  first component of natural democracy is the epigenetic rules. The ways in which the influence of our genes become visible in humanity's behavior and emotions are the gene-based characteristics of human behavior and emotions. These characteristics were called "epigenetic rules", by E. O. Wilson and Charles Lumsden in their 1981 book titled, Genes, Mind, and Culture; the Coevolutionary Process. Rules, which are pertinent to natural democracy, include the tendency to reciprocate, to  do things for others and return favors done for us. They also include the tendency to deceive others, and us many times unconsciously. More complete details about these rules are described in the Appendix.

    A second component of natural democracy is to create conditions that induce our genes to trigger balanced and expanding reciprocity. In the human genome work reported to date, the gene mapping has found genes identified with a number of behaviors and emotions.  So far most of them have been connected to particular diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia. However it is obvious that deception detection is a key condition for allowing reciprocity to function. Without the ability to detect deception, trust doesn't develop and exchanges of favors cease.

    A third component of natural democracy is self-piloting, each person being conscious of human nature and taking it into account during the governance process. Self-piloting is the process by which each of us brings our behavior into consciousness, examining the impact of the rules on our situation.

    A fourth component is the development of great goals and measures of progress toward them. Great goals are the visions of life outside of our own.

    In each of the tests of natural governance described in subsequent chapters, all these components, these design tools, were used.

    These genes are controlling all of us through a set of rules which define and guide how we behave and express emotion. These rules have been programmed into our genes over millions of years as we have evolved. They evolved because they worked.  The rules are tendencies to behave in certain ways when we are confronted with situations that are like similar situations in the primitive environment.  There are several rules.  Most of the time only one rule is controlling you at any instant. Which one is in control generally depends on what is going on around you, the conditions in your "environment" -- the immediate world of people and things around you and beyond you in the world.

    When my Vermont Agency of Human Services colleagues and I want to understand what's going on in a situation, we take the rules into our consciousness one at a time.  We find five rules to be sufficient most of the time to understand what is going on: Reciprocity, Anxiety about Strangers, Two-part Classification, Deception, and No Integrated Assessment.

    Reciprocity:  Reciprocity is the natural human tendency to respond in kind to actions of others.  We tend to react toward others in the same way we are acted upon. Those who do us ill are likely to be treated with similar behavior.  When someone does something for us, we tend to feel a sense of obligation to respond with equivalent good.  Reciprocity is the glue that holds human societies together at the most basic level. The frequent exchange of favors is fundamental to social cohesion.  The favors do not have to be large, and the most effective reciprocal exchanges occur when the cost of the favor to the giver is less than the value to the receiver.  For example, a neighbor volunteering to take care of a new baby allows the new mother some respite.  The new mother, somewhat refreshed, can do a better job of caring for the baby.  The neighbor may benefit by sleeping better if the baby  doesn't cry as much at night.  This one simple exchange of favors benefits the neighbor, the mother, and the baby.  And it builds trust. Another example -- if I call the fire department because I see your house on fire while you are at work, it costs me little, but is very important to you.  We both benefit, because you will very likely return the favor if my house is on fire, but more important, you will be more likely to call the fire department if you see smoke in a house across town, and, in the long run, all of our insurance rates will go down.  The more favors we do for one another, the closer we become.  Friendship is a direct corollary of the frequency and intensity of favors exchanged.  Love is the most intense form of reciprocity in human emotion.

    Another rule is the Anxiety in the Presence of Strangers rule.  All human beings feel anxious in the presence of strangers.  They relax and feel relief when they are in a crowd and recognize someone.  All human beings become very anxious when they are alone, confronted with a group of more than two young, strange teenagers or young men.  It doesn't take much to decrease the stranger anxiety -- a comment about the weather is sufficient, if responded in kind.  "Hot, isn't it?"  "Enough to fry an egg!"  "Yep."  Nevertheless, the stranger's rule is in operation with all new people we meet.  That is why diplomats exchange gifts and talk about their children.

    The third effective rule is Two-Part Classification, which defines the way in which humans make decisions.  We tend to divide all decisions into iterative dichotomies -- the part of the decision that is in, the part that is out.  Then we take the part that is in, divide it in two, and so on.  This is a function of having to make choices about our environment quickly.  If the jaguar drops down out of the tree, should I run or shout a warning?  Should I dodge left or right?  A series of binary choices gets us to the most effective short-run strategies the fastest.  This is all well and good when the choices are primitive. But when we combine two-part classification with the strangers rule, we sometimes get into serious trouble as in the Arab/ Israeli relationships, for example.

    The fourth rule is Deception.  In our political process, many of our national leaders have claimed to be in favor of campaign finance reform, but have found circuitous ways of covering their tracks as they have paid back major contributors to their campaigns. We sometimes deceive ourselves and others about the realities of the moment.  We have to believe that we make a difference, and that what we do is important.  We have to believe that we are good people, in order to cope with the guilt of not being so occasionally.

    Finally, the No Integrated Assessment rule.  Human beings are so bound by the epigenetic tendencies that we function primarily on the influence of one rule at a time.  In fact, most of the rules are in operation (auto-pilot) most of the time, and we base our behavior and reactions on (usually) one rule at a time.  Most decisions in the primitive environment were life/death choices. "The quick and the dead." However, most decisions we make in the modern era are far more complicated, and require, for effectiveness, assessment of the factors that influence the issue, including the perspective resulting from examining each issue with regard to the rules.

    A breach in reciprocity occurs when we do not have a sense of kinship, and then behave as if the stranger has done us wrong. Breaches in Reciprocity also occur when the favor done is not returned or acknowledged.  This occurs more readily between people who do not see themselves as kin. Since most of the world, and even the citizens of our hometown, are not direct kin to us, reciprocity for kin's sake is difficult to come by.  And since we are not kin, it does not come naturally for us to sacrifice even a little for a stranger.

    We know that some of the conditions in our lives have caused and are still causing humanity's genes to trigger negative reciprocity, especially in the context of the anonymity of the modern world.  When we feel that another person has wronged us, it gives us permission to wrong them in return because they are not known to us.  An extreme example from the past is that the conditions in WWII were such that the enemy and I exchanged bullets and bombs in attempts to kill each other.  And yet, even in the heat of the most negative reciprocal exchanges, human beings make amends, make peace and make do.  After the battle of Fredericksburg in the American Civil War, solders sent rafts across the Rappahannock River to one another, carrying coffee one way, tobacco the other.  In World War I, the trenches would be quiet, and soldiers would carry on conversations and exchange letters.  We know, in general, that a key part of the solution is to allow the conditions in our lives to become those that will cause our reconciliation genes to heal breaches.  We make amends for the wrongs we do.  Heads of state exchange gifts in face to face encounters, in the same way that families send cards at birthdays to recognize their kinship.  Humanity is probably designed to be able to change the conditions in our lives to produce and sustain natural democracy -- healing and breaches in reciprocity before they get out of control, as part of the process of natural democracy.

    Consciously moving to natural democracy is likely to require great amounts of political will, so substantial inducements may be needed.  The democratically developed great goals mentioned in Chapter 1, and further developed in subsequent chapters, are candidates to provide the motivation.  Making sustainable progress toward the goal of becoming all we can be is likely to require a more effective political process than democracy has yet produced while we have been still under automatic control.  The present process makes it too easy to kill each other and waste energy in cleaning up the messes that war leaves.

    In summary, humanity's design, our genetic design, our double helix DNA, gives us the capability to produce and sustain natural democracy and natural governance.  Before showing that capability in action, here is a list of the design ingredients, the components that allow these forms of governance to function.

    How can taking human nature into account change governance and democracy?

    Here are three steps.  My colleagues and I learned these steps by running the tests of natural democracy reported in subsequent chapters.  By describing the steps now, the logic of the test will be cleared.  Also, it will demonstrate that you and every reader have both the capability and a feasible route to pilot yourself toward exciting great goals.
 
    My colleagues and I learned that the steps are synergistic. Each expand the understandings from others. As you go through this step yourself keep in mind that we had two roles. One was to learn this steps as a technique for our own personal use, each getting our own answers to the "What do I want to do with life?" question. The other role was defined by our function in the Agency of Human Services: to help people answer that question for themselves. For example, to teach people how to decide to cooperate rather than steal, or how to decide to participate effectively in their children's education at all stages, or how to decide to live health-promoting lives. In those two roles, we proved to ourselves that each step has practical value.  

Step 1. Learn how to be conscious of how our genes are controlling us.

    Keep in mind the image of a section of the human genome. (See P. 6B). Your body contains millions of times more sections of the genome than are shown in this image.  They are in every cell in your body, including your brain. These genes are controlling us through the epigenetic rules. When John Gorczyk, the Commissioner of Corrections, wants to analyze any problem situation, he brings these rules into his consciousness, one at a time.  He restates the problem in terms of which rules are causing it.  The solution becomes obvious out of this process.  He uses the tendencies consciously in his interactions with people.  He determines which tendencies are controlling them and tailors his responses accordingly.  He takes the range of emotions into account as well.

    John Perry, Director of Planning for the Department of Corrections has a list of the human nature tendencies posted on the wall in front of his desk.  As he works with this understanding of human nature, he glances up from time to time to bring them into whatever he is working on at the moment.  He uses the tendencies in stages -- first applying them, and then testing the results, then using them again to modify his results on the basis of the initial feedback. In creating new programs, he is guided by the tendencies.

          He tests the draft with focus groups.
          He gets feedback about what is likely to work well.
          He uses the tendencies to predict what is not likely to work.
          He says that this understanding is so powerful that it has altered the way his brain works, and he knows it works better.

    Joe Patrissi, the former commissioner, applies the tendencies in steps, first "spotlighting" -- shining each tendency like a spotlight to see what effect it has on the problem. Next, he predicts what might resolve the problem, using the tendencies as guides to achieve the desired results.

    Consider the problem of " the deadbeat dad", an absentee parent. The separation of father from child creates a breach in the reciprocity. In these situations Joe and his people use their deeper understanding of human nature to make the possible consequences visible. They trace the series of breaches in reciprocity, which in many cases could lead to a prison term as the child grows into a resentful youth.

    Tracing the reciprocity chain opens up thinking about the opportunities to create conditions that are likely to prevent the breaches from occurring in the first place. It opens up thinking about healing very minor breaches at the early stages of growth beyond babyhood. For example, the community may have an obligation to the family to provide opportunities for successful parenting.  This may not be fully satisfied by paying taxes to support a school. It probably requires mentoring and role modeling among and between neighbors and families.
 
    Gorczyk, Perry, Patrissi, their colleagues, and I work as a team on occasions,  Sharing our thoughts about which rules are controlling in a situation. We look at the conditions that are causing the particular rules to be controlling.  The Reciprocity rule turns out to be the one that gives us the most insight about what's going on, and breaches of it generally define the problem to be addressed.  As we apply the insights, my colleagues and I have learned that they answer two primary questions (from a rules perspective): What is going on?  Why is it happening?

    The tests reported in subsequent chapters show how conditions were changed to repair breaches in reciprocity.  In each case, we started by identifying those breaches.  So a good way to begin to become conscious of how your genes are controlling you is to think about the breaches of reciprocity, which you see around you in the world, and the conditions that produced them.  Example: Our reliance on gasoline engines produces carcinogenic chemicals creating an overly stressed environment in the natural sense.  Healing that breach calls for a new balance in our reciprocal relationship with the physical environment.  Example: cleaner air and water to lower health hazards.

    Another breach is apparent in the lack of citizen participation in government.  The ultimate price we have been paying for lack of citizen participation has been war.  With problems such as the overstressed environment and war, we have been trapped by the epigenetic rule of no integrated assessment.  Our governance processes have not been designed to adequately assess the potential future consequences of the interaction between these problems and the problem of automatic control by our genes.

    Another breach is caused by the role of uncontrolled deception.  In our political process, many of our national legislators claim to be in favor of campaign finance reform, but then find circuitous ways of covering their tracks as they pay back major contributors to their campaigns.  This is an example of being controlled by the epigenetic rule of deception: our tendency to deceive others, and ourselves many times unconsciously.  The effects of these two epigenetic rules, no integrated assessment and deception, are closely related.  The tendency not to make integrated assessments allows our legislators to deceive us because our political processes are not adequate designed to make the paybacks to major contributors visible. Without a more adequate understanding of human nature, we have a tendency not to dig deeply enough to realize the deceptions others are committing and their consequences.

    Three other epigenetic rules referred to earlier are likely to cause breaches in reciprocity in today's world where unconscious control by our genes still holds sway:  The Strangers Rule; the tendency to experience anxiety when we are alone in a first encounter with someone new and strange. The criminal justice system has been dominated by unconscious control by the stranger's rule and the breaches that were left unhealed as a consequence.  A second rule: Two Part Classification; our tendency to sort into two categories, black/white, and kin/non-kin, in-group/out-group. Offenders were regarded as criminals rather than as young people who needed to be taught how to cooperate.   A third rule:  Obedience to Authority; challenging a powerful leader was apt to be dangerous in ancient times.  When unconsciously carried over into today's world, several of our legislators go unchallenged even when obvious breaches in reciprocity are evidenced by gross disregard of the public's wishes---disregard serious enough to call for campaign finance reform, but still not serious enough for it to take effect.

    Insights on another way you can become conscious of how your genes are controlling you have been provided by Randolph Nesse of the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program at the University of Michigan.  He points out that each of our emotions is aroused only in specific circumstances.  A companion insight is that each emotion is useful only in certain circumstances.  Each of our emotions was designed into our genes to increase people's ability to cope with threats and opportunities under those circumstances.  Core emotions on everybody's list are: fear, anger, happiness, sadness, and love.  Next time you become embarrassed, notice the specific circumstances.  Did becoming embarrassed help you to deal with the situation?

    Your genes are controlling you as you experience many emotions.  Several of the emotions are listed on Page 96 of the Appendix. Emotions energize behavior which in ancient times led to the survival of your ancestors.   Emotions enhanced individual and group reproductive success.  Learning  to become conscious of how your emotions are controlling you can be helped by reviewing this list from time to time.  As you do this, think about which ones are serving you as energizers that encourage you to take action. Examples: aroused, confident, concerned, curious, daring, eager, exhilarated, hopeful,-- the list goes on.  Also, think about which ones motivate you to heal breaches in reciprocity.  Examples: several of the previous examples, plus loving, touching, warm, secure, reconciling and even guilty.  You will find that periodic review of this list will help you to become more aware of their roles and effects.

    Other insights about how your genes are controlling you have been provided by E.O. Wilson. He points out that our species has retained hereditary traits that add greatly to our destructive impact on people and the physical world. He holds humanity up to a mirror:

            We are tribal and aggressively territorial. We are oriented by selfish sexual
            and reproductive drives. Cooperation beyond the family and tribal levels
            comes hard. Individuals place themselves first, family second, tribe third
            and the rest of the world a distant fourth. Our genes predispose us to plan
            ahead for one or two generations at most. We respond swiftly, and often
            ferociously, to slight challenges to our status and tribal security.

    Wilson feels that these traits call for a reconsideration of our self image as a species.  The ethical issues these traits raise are so basic.  They are likely to require some redirection of science and technology, subjects which he addresses in Consilience.

    Unconscious control by our genes leaves us vulnerable to these negative traits and gets us into trouble in today's world. That is the problem that natural democracy addresses. Defining it in this way sets the stage for the next step. In Consilience, Wilson says there is no genetic destiny outside our free will. We must decide what we wish to become.

    I've been through this process of becoming conscious of how my genes are controlling others and me so many times that it has become second nature. I instantly notice which epigenetic rules are tending to control my and others behavior and feelings. I keep that image of the double helix DNA near the top of my mind. In any situation, that image flashes up and I get an immediate answer to the question, "What is going on?" I've had so much experience in answering that question that I get several answers almost immediately --- which epigenetic rules are influencing my thoughts and behavior, which rules are probably influencing others' thoughts and behavior. There are feelings of confidence and ability to influence that come with this.
 
Step 2. Learn how to decide how you want your genes controlling you.

    There are several ways to help in this decision about how you want your genes controlling you. One is to think about the personal choices you would like to be able to make, with more freedom to make them than you may have now.

          The use of the voting technology described in Chapter 7 will disclose personal priorities as follows:
           Develop into all I'm capable of being
           Achieve high and joyous levels of creativity and intelligence
           Have personal control over my destiny
           Have adequate systems for resolving human conflict
           Have a longer productive life
           Have mental and physical health
           Have highly effective ways to share my thinking
           Conquer the unknown
           Maximize my joy of shared experiences

    A second way to help in this decision is to think about the advantages of taking on the responsibility for making that decision, --advantages for you and all of us -- our families, our friends, our community, our world.  The tests of natural democracy reported in Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 provide clues to these possibilities:

   * We'll be the ones to say what happens to us.
   * We'll avoid "Big Brother" and a planned, regimented society.
   * We'll be doing the things that give us pleasure.
   * We'll personally develop faster into all we're capable of being.
   * We'll achieve exaltation from discovery, enthusiasm, triumph, self-esteem, meaningfulness, love and belonging; we'll help our children to do the same.
   * We'll have much greater educational opportunities and opportunities for second and third careers.
   * We'll be better able to afford the kinds of material things, experiences, and services that add to the quality of our lives.
   * We'll be able to live much longer in full health and vigor.
   * We'll be making very important contributions to society and we'll feel good about that.

     A third way is to decide which epigenetic rules you want to allow control over you.  The logic of this is that these rules are the genes' ways of controlling you.  Several of these rules have been listed in the first section of this chapter. The rule that has proven to be most helpful in governance is: Reciprocity: the Tendency to Reciprocate, to do things for each other and return favors done for us. You will want the Reciprocity rule controlling you as you learn how to participate in natural democracy.

     A fourth way is to choose which emotions you want controlling you. Feeling the way you want to feel is one of the essential freedoms of natural democracy.  No one likes to be told how to feel; however, having decided to choose reciprocity as the primary epigenetic rule controlling you, the question is which emotion or combination of emotions will help you to function in a reciprocal mode.  The core emotions mentioned in Step 1 were fear, anger, happiness, sadness, and love.  You are probably going to find yourself choosing to be controlled by all five of these at various times in natural democracy. You are likely to find that you will need fear because it will help you to keep in mind the dangers of terrorism and nuclear weapons in war.  You will probably find that anger is going to be useful as a motivator.  Current breaches in reciprocity that are likely to ignite the emotion of anger include crime and the abandonment of children.  Happiness is going to be welcome as a reward for the progress you'll be making toward great goals.  Sadness will be needed also as a motivator.  Sadness about the suffering of children will fuel several of the decisions to be made in natural governance and democracy.  My colleagues in the tests would tell you that love will be a necessity.  It is the key emotion for discovering opportunities for reciprocity.  John Gorczyk and others show that it love brings about forgiveness and repentance.

    A fifth way is to choose the great goals toward which you want to head.  As we were conducting the Lexington test in 1975 (Chapter 5), we in the project leadership had in mind several candidates for great goals.  We labeled our list "Draft of Excessively Presumptuous Statements of One Version of Great Goals of the Human Race".  The memories of WWII were ringing in my ears as I wrote.  Here are some extracts.

          Assure that the human race survives.
          Arrange for participation in decision-making worldwide about goals and priorities of the human race.
          Design institutions, which will permit everyone to work cooperatively and synergistically toward their great goals.
          Raise the ability to learn and understand; catalyze the  development of conditions that will provide everyone with the means by which to substantially raise his/her own intelligence; provide the human race with opportunities to take intelligent actions; deal successfully with new and trying situations, to become highly educated, and to experience the restful satisfaction from altruistic acts.
          Make all information available instantly, on demand as desired, to every human being on earth; provide completely ubiquitous, worldwide communication.
          Bring health to the world; provide everyone with the choice of living vigorously physically and mentally.
          Promote sustainable development; save what remains of our biological and ecological wealth.

    These seven goals are possibilities, but you decide what great goals you think are most important for you, including some that may not be listed here.  Then the stage is set for the next step in how for you to take control of how our genes are controlling us.

Step 3.  Learning how apply the understanding to generate solutions.
 
    The remaining chapters will map the routes toward natural governance and natural democracy.  There are several options for how to help and lead in making progress along these routes.  One is to serve as a consultant to organizations that will benefit from taking human nature into account.  There are several types of organizations to choose from:  town and state governments and government agencies, for example.  In this option, your tools will be the understanding of human nature and the techniques for switching from autopilot to self-piloting.

    There are many other organizations to choose from in taking on the task of introducing them to natural governance in order to better achieve their objectives. The common denominator in each case is that the implicit objective of the organization is to heal breaches that hinder progress toward great goals. Working with any one of the organizations or with several concurrently, you will probably find that, at first, they don't see their mission in human nature terms.  The word "implicit" is important because they may not yet understand their objective in the way that is obvious to you with your understanding of human nature.

    Your understanding prepares you to educate one or more of these organizations about how to be conscious of how their genes are controlling them and the people they want to influence. Your understanding also prepares you to educate them about how  to decide how they would rather have their genes controlling them and the people they want to influence in order to heal breaches in reciprocity, for example. Below is a list of typical organizations.

TYPICAL ORGANIZATIONS ENGAGED IN HEALING BREACHES IN RECIPROCITY

               Organization                       Examples of Breaches Being Healed

National Academy of Sciences                  Lack of appreciation of benefits of scientific research
United Nations Association                       Lack of education about sustainable development
Natural Resources Defense Council          Destruction of the natural environment
League of Women Voters                          Campaign finance reform deception
Harvard Medical International                   Environmental health hazards
Human Behavior and Evolution Society    Negative consequences of automatic piloting
State Agencies of Human Services             Crime; Poverty; Health hazards  

    This book provides techniques available for you to help organizations, either as consultants, as members, or as outside observers or commentators on their opportunities for eliminating breaches in reciprocity.  Whatever application you choose will require your own special interpretation of the information provided on natural governance and democracy.

    Other organizations that are working on healing breaches in governance processes as one of their missions include the World Future Society, the National Peace Foundation,  the American Humanist Association, Oxfam America, Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Wildlife Federation, the Center for Public Integrity, and the EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund.  They are working toward great goals, on their own terms.  They, too, are largely unaware of the opportunities to enhance their progress toward those goals through natural governance. Their progress is being inhibited by the autopiloting in the general population.  Lack of integrated assessment is keeping people outside of each of these organizations from realizing the importance of providing funding to support them.

    An example of these opportunities to use natural governance is to provide education about sustainable development.  The United Nations Association, with sustainability as part of its mission, would have ready access to natural democracy's decision-making processes at the local level, working globally through a World Parliament network, which will be described in Chapter 7.  Probable issues would include development of solar power and expanding use of the World Wide Web to save on energy consumption by reducing the need to transport people.  These issues would be added to local governance process agendas as people assume more of their share of the responsibility for the global environment.

READY FOR THE TESTS

    The three steps reported in this chapter provide the logic which we put to use in the tests of natural democracy. In reading the next chapters, you can use the same steps to help understand the process: first, be conscious of how your genes are controlling you and others; second, decide how you want your genes to be controlling you and others; and third, help and lead in bringing about natural governance and democracy.  Now you are prepared to judge the potential of this fundamental change in how we humans think about ourselves.