Back to Basics #22

I hate and detest that animal called Man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. […] I have got materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale ["Man is a rational animal"] and to show it should be only rationis capax [= capable of reason]. — Jonathan Swift to Alexander Pope, 29 Sept. 1725 (spelling [etc.] modernized)

            I graduated high school in the winter of 1961, so I entered college in mid-year. I pledged a fraternity, was elected president of my pledge class, and, therefore, began to attend meetings of JIFC, the Junior Interfraternity Council: IFC for pledges.

            The first meeting I attended droned on, and on, and finally the reporter present got bored and left, and there was a pause. And then we were told to "Get into your groups," and I joined the nearest one.

            I was asked to introduce myself and tell my story. "Uh, my name is Rich; I'm new," I said; "I'm midyear and just pledged, so I have no stories; I'll just listen."

            And listen I did as the discussion went round the group, and I heard tales of some pretty horrendous hazing.

            Every year, it turned out, IFC instructed JIFC to report on pledge training; and every year JIFC produced a whitewash. Until 1961 and a guy I'll call Greg was elected to the JIFC leadership and decided to prepare a carefully researched, true, bombshell report.

            Greg succeeded, and there were some immediate and serious shakeups in pledge training.

            I greatly respected Greg and his project and did my best to implement it when I "activated" in my fraternity. My fraternity didn't really haze pledges (not by the standards of the horror stories I heard), but "neophytes" going through initiation — that process needed some toning down. And after bad experiences with the pledge class following mine, it became clear our pledge policy needed some tightening up, and I was one of the people who researched the topic and suggested changes.

            I was in Specialized Chemistry as a freshman and sophomore – a concentrated program for students dedicated to a career in biochem — and lacked time and interest in IFC politics; but insofar as I involved myself in such matters, I was Greg's ally.

            Eventually, though, Greg started pushing for additional reforms that would have moved pledge training pretty much into what IFC's public relations operation advertised.

            I came to oppose Greg. We argued respectfully and civilly (and mostly privately) but with increasing repetition and frustration.

            Finally I checked to be sure I correctly remembered Greg's major — it was Philosophy — and I asked him how he saw people. "Man," he said, "is a rational animal." "Ah," I said. "No; human beings are animals capable of reason."

            And we agreed to disagree.

            Greg's goal to totally clean up pledge policy and "informal initiation" (hell week) flowed logically and elegantly from his idea of human nature. My growing resistance to Greg's project was rooted in increasing conviction that "Man" was just an abstraction, and of limited use, and that real-world people could be reasoned with but had a whole lot of other motivations.

            It is not all that rational to value things by what they cost us rather than by some sense of intrinsic value, or even market price; but we do tend to value things by cost, and "Greeks," street gangs, and the Marines are on to something when they insist on rigorous initiations. As with raising children, so with handling pledges or recruits: ethics prohibit brutality; effectiveness suggests the sort of rigor guys — and some gals — can be (maybe perversely) proud of, and which exacts a price: which insists on an investment in the group.

            It's downright weird that young people raised in a republic seem to more "naturally" accept given authority — parents, teachers, cops — than that of peer they elect. But, "Hey — we elected you; we can diselect you; screw you!" (I cleaned that up a bit) is a fairly common attitude. The volunteer military has less of a problem in this area — they don't pretend to any kind of democracy — but Fraternities and street gangs need to condition new members into obedience to peer authority, and often to have their initiates violate some taboos of the larger society.

            I eventually learned that the folk traditions of my chapter of my fraternity paralleled in some creepy ways military Basic Training and some patterns of initiation as a very ancient rite of passage.

            We can argue about fraternity initiations; humans are, indeed, animals capable of reason, so argument can work. Still, my major point here is that the argument might not get very far.

            That is, we probably can't argue very profitably if we have a radical disagreement — from the roots — on whether fraternities (or gangs or the Marines) should exist at all, and certainly not if we disagree profoundly on something so basic as how we see human nature, or even like the term.

            Picture, then, that circling debate between Greg and me. Now throw in, say, someone who quotes from Walter A. Miller Jr.'s fine Christian SF novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz  “You don’t have a soul . . . You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”

            Usually, people get into nasty arguments because the people involved are just freakin' irrational; sometimes we strongly disagree precisely because we are capable of reason and apply that reason to very basic and very different premises about people, society, and the world.

            For me, the rule that "humans are not rational animals but animals capable of reason" means we all have to try extra hard to be polite and civil and sensible and pragmatic — but I hardly expect everyone to agree even with that modest assertion.