GUEST COLUMNIST: Instinct causes envy, not capitalism

John Mamoun, Guest Columnist John Mamoun, Guest Columnist Capitalism is good, and inequality is not a bad thing. Those are fighting words in today's liberal climate, yet inequality provides the medium for capitalistic initiative in a society. This justifies Social Darwinian societal structures, since capitalism has demonstrated itself to be the most effective economic system in the twentieth century for fostering aggregate economic growth in societies. Carl Sagan decried dominance hierarchies, probably because he believed them to lead to an unequal division of resources among people. And because they may also create an atmosphere of envy in society, contributing to man's unhappiness. But what Sagan didn't realize was dominance hierarchies do not lead to an envy atmosphere in society, which causes man's unhappiness. Instead the dominance hierarchies are created by a fundamental human instinct to establish envy rule systems -- in which the ownership of certain possessions carries varying degrees of prestige. The inability to acquire objects may also carry degrees of inadequacy. Not only is it an instinct of people to create such envy rule systems, but it is a natural instinct to respond to them -- to sense their rank on the resource possession hierarchy; whether these resources are sexual, monetary, social rank or objects. Their daily mood is also affected by how positively they view their relative possession rank. Capitalism does not cause these mood imbalances. But it is an aggregately profitable economic system, and thus greatly increases man's ability to acquire the goods he needs to survive. It is also the most clear-cut gratification of the human instinct to create envy rule systems. Ironically, capitalism imparts a willingness in people to follow and accept its rules without significant question. This is because the characteristics of the resource distribution dynamics are in flat parallel with those of an "ideal" envy rule system. Capitalism feeds off of the instinct, but does not create its chief effect of disparities in degrees of happiness in society. How did this instinct evolve? It may stem from the resource distribution logic of animal sexuality. The evolutionary stable phenomenon of males controlling many females while other males are sexually starved may have influenced the cognitive evolution of the human mind. It not only tolerates this state of affairs for sex but also for objects and self-esteem. But if capitalism so pointedly allows humans to express this instinct, does that mean it stimulates humans to create -- by following the system, -- the most extreme disparities of happiness in society? Not really, since the instinct will always manifest itself whenever inequalities of possession can possibly exist, and in extreme forms. It is also possible the combination of communism -- which repressed possession inequality -- and the monogamy mores of civilization contributed significantly to feelings of anxiety and neurosis among civilians in communist countries. Without the physical manifestations of these major forms of quantity inequalities, the minds of these civilians were cognitively deprived. This resulted from their inability to follow on a day-to-day basis the dynamic distribution of resources that were psychologically labeled with degrees of prestige. Finally, the instinct cannot be stifled, because the psychologic which dictates that ones mood should depend on ones object possession status is circular. It is practically impossible to logically disprove it due to its circularity, and because instinct is emotionally powerful and virtually everyone one earth functions in accordance with it.

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