A MODERN AND WORLDLY PERSPECTIVE
Capable Capable
Capable Capable

Is all fair in love and life?
Arnold Siegel —April 7, 2014

You want what you want; you will it. Who doesn’t? Yet, there can be obstacles to getting it. Sometimes you don’t get it because it is just not available—especially if what you want is a person—someone in particular—a specific mate who does not want you back.

Often what stops you from getting what you want is confrontation with a rival. A  biological legacy to which we are all heir—the rivalrous or antagonistic impulse—has kicked in. Individuals encounter each other and their wills clash—sometimes viciously but always righteously. This clash may be over something significant. But sometimes not; sometimes you can’t let anyone “get away” with any infraction of what you deem fair play, no matter how trivial. Sometimes there’s no reason at all; you’re just tenaciously unwilling to let anyone else prevail.

If you clearly lose one of these confrontations, what we refer to as the punitive impulse may be excited. Your blood boils. For more on the clash, listen to, or read, my podcast titled, Clash of wills, abridged, posted on November 19, 2012.

The revenge, malice and resentment that arise from the excitation of the punitive impulse are systemic undercurrents alive in each of us. These, and other selected traits to which the human iteration of evolution is subject, prevailed, presumably to adapt us to a specific ecological niche in which we might survive. (This is not to say, of course, that these traits are mirrored by what the civilized discourse considers moral.)

Nonetheless, malice and other traits to which we are subject are “resources,” influential pieces of our systemic intelligence. Rather naturally, we harbor feelings of wanting to hurt others or to be unkind to them. Some humans have used this trait horrifically. The rest of us use it casually, for example, through spite, indifference or nastiness, or through the deliberate misrepresentation of the character and intentions of others.

In the ScienceTimes (New York Times, April 1, 2014), Natalie Angier discusses spite as a negative trait . . . “often sublimated as righteousness, as when you take your own sour time pulling out of a parking space because you notice another car is waiting for it and you’ll show that vulture who’s boss here, even though you’re wasting your own time, too.”

She goes on to say, ‘“Evolutionary theorists, by contrast, are studying what might be viewed as the brighter side of spite, and the role it may have played in the origin of more admirable traits like a cooperative spirit and a sense of fair play.” For example (using game theory models), “when selfish players intent on maximizing their profits regularly punish other selfish players or exclude them from the group, the net outcome is an overall decline in selfish exchanges to a reasonably stable state . . . It’s like the Mafia. They end up reducing crime in the areas they inhabit.”

Interesting. Yes, what’s in our DNA has its way with us. From its (not-rationally-ordered) bullish and bullying spin, all may be fair in love and life. However, as a result of your study of this subject matter, you have added an informed and open mind to your systemic intelligence.

It’s not perfect; a lopsidedly-subjective confirmation bias is a piece of its furniture and can play havoc with your autonomy. Still, if you fail to overcome the punitive impulse, what you feel is out-of-control, no matter how many biological justifications you can cite. So, you find in the higher range of normative ideals (aims idealized by human beings) that you reject expressions of this impulse, if not as base human nature, then because they are cruel and militate against your responsibility for self-transcendence.

Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes. 

Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and the leader of its
Workshops and Advanced Classes.