Konrad Lorenz : Man’s Race Against Himself
Konrad Lorenz
Civilized man's eight deadly sins
(1973)
Man’s Race Against Himself
Homo homini lupus — "Man is the predator of man” is, like Heinroth’s saw, an understatement. Man, as the only determining selection factor in the further evolution of his own species, is, unfortunately, in no way so harmless as even the most dangerous beast of prey. As no biological factor has ever done before, the competition between man and man works in direct opposition to all the forces of nature, destroying nearly all the values these have created, with a cold calculation dictated exclusively by value-blind commercial considerations. Under the pressure of interhuman competition, all that is good and useful, for humanity as a whole as well as for the individual human being, has been completely set aside. The overwhelming majority of people today value only that which brings commercial gain and is calculated to outflank fellow humans in the relentless race of competition. Every means serving this end appears, falsely, as a value in itself. Utilitarianism, with its destructive influence, may be defined as the mistaking of the means for the end. Money is a means. Colloquial language expresses this: we say, “He has the means.”
How many people today would understand if we tried to explain that money by itself does not represent any value ? The same applies to time: the saying “Time is money” means, to all those for whom money is an absolute value, that every second of saved time represents an equivalent worth. If we build airplanes to fly the Atlantic in ever-decreasing time spans, nobody asks what price we have paid for the necessary lengthening of the runway, for the greater speed of take-off and landing with all the associated greater risks, and for the volume of noise involved. The general opinion will be that the saving of half an hour is a value in itself and that no sacrifice can be too great in achieving it. Every car manufacturer must take care that the newest model is a little faster than the one before; every road must be widened; every corner enlarged, ostensibly in the interests of safety but in reality so that we can drive still faster — and more recklessly.
We must ask ourselves what does more damage to the mind of modern man: his blinding greed for money or his enervating haste. Whichever of the two it may be, it is clearly the intention of the governing powers, irrespective of their political ideology, to further them both and to stimulate, to the extent of hypertrophy, every motivation that drives people to compete. As far as I know, no deep psychological analysis of this motivation has been made, but, in my opinion, it is very probable that, beside greed for property or for higher social standing, or both, fear plays an essential role — fear of being overtaken in the race, fear of poverty, fear of making wrong decisions, fear of not being able to keep up with the whole nerve-racking situation. Anxiety in every form is certainly the basic factor undermining the health of modern man, causing high blood pressure, renal atrophy, cardiac infarction and other diseases.
Man rushes, not only because he is propelled by greed, for this alone would_ not induce him to ruin his own health, but because “he is driven“, and what drives him can only be fear.
Anxious haste and hasty fear help to rob man of his most essential properties. One of these is reflection. In my work Innate Bases of Learning, 1 have described how, in the mysterious process of becoming man, a decisive part was probably played by the fact that one day a creature inquisitively exploring its environment became aware of its own self in the field of its vision. This discovery of the self need not necessarily have arisen side by side with that astonishment at the hitherto taken-for-granted, which is the birth act of philosophy.
The mere fact that the groping and grasping hand, besides the groped for and grasped extraneous object, was seen and understood as a thing of the outside world, must have formed a new association, the effects of which were epoch-making. A being unaware of the existence of its own self cannot possibly develop conceptual thought, word language, conscience, and responsible morality. A being that ceases to reflect is in danger of losing all these specifically human attributes.
One of the worst effects of haste, or of the fear engendered by it, is the apparent inability of modern man to spend even the shortest time alone. He anxiously avoids every possibility of self-communion or meditation, as though he feared that reflection might present him with a ghastly self-portrait, such as that of Dorian Gray. The only explanation for the widespread addiction to noise — paradoxical considering how neurasthenic people are today — is that something has to be suppressed.
One day, when my wife and I were walking in the woods, we were surprised to hear the rapidly approaching, metallic sounds of a transistor radio. As its owner, a lone, sixteen-year-old cyclist, came into view, my wife remarked, “He’s afraid of hearing the birds sing.” I think he was only afraid of meeting himself. Why, otherwise, do perfectly intelligent people prefer the inane advertisements on television to their own company ? I am sure it is because it helps them to dispel reflection.