Moral Landscapes

10/08/2025

The concept of “conservatism” has been part of western culture since the 19th century. Edmund Burke (1962), one of its most honored founders, emphasized maintaining a community’s traditions. These are practices that worked over generations to support wellbeing, which by extension support a diversity of approaches to living well.

According to Burke, abstract ideas from outside of a community were to be weighed for their benefit to the local community, not imposed on them from without. Also vital for Burke’s philosophy is a partnership among the community’s living, dead and future members, strikingly similar to American Indian ethics of keeping in mind the “seventh generation” when making decisions. ..
..Understanding the dangers of Burkean ideas as tending toward rigidity and the condoning of mistreatment of women and minorities, C.A. Bowers suggested a mindful conservatism that includes participatory democracy—everyone participates in decision making. Consensual democracy is part of species’ history over hundreds of thousands of years, a characteristic that distinguishes from our ape cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos (Boehm, 1999; Hrdy, 2009)....

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Can we return to the wisdom of prior generations?

10/01/2024

Join us next week!

09/25/2024

I am delighted to be a speaker online at The Art of Breastfeeding conference Oct 14-15! Come join us!
https://www.facebook.com/lalecheleagueinternational/posts/pfbid0qCZ7eJ4Kb5FsrQFdNPTo23owNJ5N8XvjVJviiy9jGtWxMbUhBJqPCer3npeYcttVl

09/10/2024

Yesterday, ten retired senior military officials endorsed Harris, saying she “is the best—and only—presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief…. Frankly stated, Donald Trump is a danger to our national security and our democracy. His own former National Security Advisors, Defense Secretaries, and Chiefs of Staff have said so.”

A group of 10 retired top U.S. military officials endorsed U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in a letter made public on Monday, saying she is the only presidential candidate fit to serve as the nation's commander in chief and calling her Republican rival Donald Trump "a danger to our national securi...

07/23/2024

Is Male Domination Normal?
Nope. Species abnormal. Know your evolution.

As a result of culture and brain co-evolution, mothers banded together to help one another with caregiving. Meeting the 24/7 needs of babies is exhausting because they are so immature for so long. Unlike most mammalian mothers, human mothers shared breastfeeding and other kinds of support with one another.

Other ape mothers, who live in dominance hierarchies, are highly possessive of their offspring presumably because of dangers of infanticide by male dominators and rival females. Mother-offspring isolation does not foster the types of skills that are seen to develop within cooperative breeding communities, where allomothers, with mother present, help with infant care and later with child provisioning after weaning (around age 4). Children learn to relate to multiple others (not just mother), leading to wider attachment and greater social flexibility (Hrdy, 2009). Cooperative child raising led to capacities for shared intentionality, something that chimpanzees, in comparison to young human children, do not demonstrate (Tomasello, 2009).
https://open.substack.com/pub/darcianarvaez/p/species-normal-humans-dont-act-like?r=cu04m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

07/21/2024

The next time you hear someone argue that humans are like chimpanzees, tell them they are a few million years behind the story.

Sarah Hrdy opened her book Mothers and Others by asking the reader to imagine human passengers on a plane replaced by chimpanzees. Instead of cooperation and toleration of close contact, bumping, and baby crying that are routinely experienced when traveling with strangers, she imagines that few passengers would arrive at their destination with body parts intact. Clearly, humans are not like chimps....Read more:

Humans evolved greater sociality than chimpanzees.

07/07/2024

Authoritarianism is on the rise and support for democracy on the wane. Why?

Over seventy years ago in reaction to the rise of Na**sm and the resulting Holocaust in Germany, Adorno and colleagues (1950) studied and identified nine features of the “authoritarian syndrome.” Anyone watching the USA today can recognize most of these characteristics in political figures and in some citizens:

• Authoritarian aggression (aggression to enforce hierarchy and norms)
• Authoritarian submission (submissive to accepted authority figures)
• Support for conventional values (at least superficially and for others)
• Preoccupation with toughness and power (and fear of vulnerability)
• Cynicism about human nature
• Mental rigidity and a proclivity to engage in stereotypical thinking
• Reluctance to engage in introspection (low self-awareness)
• Tendency to project one’s undesirable traits onto others (scapegoating)
• Sexual inhibition

These are all species-abnormal traits.1 Interestingly, these also were characteristic of conquistadors, Victorian elite men, and many European colonizers. The syndrome seems to be spreading today.

Adorno and colleagues found that the home environment was fundamental to the formation of authoritarian features—specifically, having parents with these authoritarian characteristics. Such parents are aggressive and harsh towards children, even babies—for example, punishing them for not following expectations. They are cynical about the baby’s motives, projecting their own undesirable traits onto the child. And they are focused on maintaining power over the child (controlling sleeping, eating, etc.).

You might be thinking, ‘Aw, that’s German parents following N**i parenting manuals telling them to break their children’s spirits so they’d have control of them for life. What’s that got to do with us today? Most parents are not N**is.’ Ah, but parenting practices under today’s stressful conditions (e.g., in the USA) are exhibiting harshness and neglect, the very things that lead to authoritarianism. In a speeded-up world focused on money-making and efficiency, we are told it is normal for babies to cry, to s***k children, and for adults to control children’s birth timing and their lives afterward. Nope. Species abnormal.

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07/02/2024

A dear, heart-centered, brilliant mentor of mine has just passed, Colywn Trevarthen of the University of Edinburgh. He is known for his attunement to newborn babies and their 'communicative musicality.'

He spoke at a Notre Dame conference I hosted. Please watch his wonderful talk:

Learn more about the Evolved Nest at www.EvolvedNest.org2010 Notre Dame Symposium to Address Early Human ExperienceAbout Colony TrevarthanAfter training as a...

06/24/2024

We are Earth. Western science research confirms Indigenous wisdom.

"...When we learn to see our species as part of a much larger life form — as members of a planetary ensemble — our responsibility to Earth becomes clearer than ever. Fossil fuels, industrial agriculture and widespread pollution have not simply raised global temperature or “harmed the environment”; they have severely im­balanced the largest known living entity, hurling it into crisis. The speed and magnitude of this crisis are so great that, without the necessary interventions, Earth will require anywhere from thousands to mil­lions of years to fully recover on its own. In the process, it will become a world unlike any we have experienced, one potentially incapable of supporting modern human civilization and the ecosystems on which we currently depend.

For more than two centuries, Western science has re­garded the origin of life as something that happened on or in Earth, as if the planet were simply the setting for a singular phenomenon, the manger that housed a miracle. But the two cannot be separated in this way. Life does not merely reside on the planet; it is an extension of the planet. Life emerged from, is made of and returns to Earth. Earth is not simply a terrestrial planet with a bit of life on its surface; it’s a planet that came to life. Earth is a rock that broiled, gushed and bloomed: the flowering callus of a half-sealed Vesuvius suspended in a bubble of breath. Earth is a stone that eats starlight and radiates song, whirling through the inscrutable emptiness of space — pulsing, breathing, evolving — and just as vulnerable to death as we are."

Earth’s crust teems with subterranean life that we are only now beginning to understand.

06/21/2024

Come watch the film and join the discussion! https://www.localfutures.org/films/closer-to-home/

04/21/2024

The Unmentionable Reason Human Wellbeing is on the Rocks

The collapse of wellbeing in the USA continues. The reports year by year show a downward trajectory of wellbeing, especially for those under age 65. In comparison to members of all other advanced nations, USians of all ages and lifeways are at a health disadvantage, mentally and physically. And this was true even before the pandemic. Give thanks if you are over 65.

What happened in the last half century? Many sources for the decline are mentioned— single parent families; the breakdown of social trust; the “Western” diet of processed food; gun proliferation that leads to the highest source of child death; drug addiction and overdose; stress from racism, lack of support, overwork; a spotty, unjust health care system; environmental racism; toxins in foods, water, soil, air, consumer products. The list is long and each likely contributes to the decline in wellbeing.

But a deeper source of illbeing typically goes unmentioned, the mismatch between what babies need for optimal normal development and what is provided to them. Babies (0-3 or 3.5 years) must be distinguished from children because of babies’ incredible vulnerability and malleability—towards wellbeing or illbeing.

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The foundations of illbeing revealed.