Quality of Life & Status - BLog Summary - Important

A huge and obvious conclusion has been arrived at in this blog - a summary of almost all the contents so far.

The physical basis of life is thankfully simple. We require water and food to sustain the body. A habitable environment - dry and warm enough. And we need to recognise (as with the solitary monk) if not physically particpate (the rest of us) in social life.

Clearly this state of affairs has existed throughout all of human existence for the very simple reason that if it hadn't we would have perished as a species.

The millions of years of evolution we can be fairly sure have selected for a successful version of the Homo Sapiens also. The last 2 thousand years do not significantly count in evolutionary terms. We are the same people, physically, as our ancestors who first crawled into the mists of history many thousands of years ago. Bring up a 10 thousand year old baby in the modern world and we can assume there would be no lack of ability in school, in life or in happiness. In reverse bring up a modern child in a 10 thousand year old society and the same must be true.

This challenges modern thinking however because of this idea of Progress. It is more than a simple idea. Upon its backed is based the whole logic of economics and politics. The continual striving for "improvement".

In the GCSE Science I was revising for my tutoring there is a statement - "Sustainable Development is the improving of the quality of life without damaging the environment.".

One must assume from this that Progress is seen as the improving of the "quality of life". When we talk of the Deveopled World and the Undeveloped World the planners are envisaging differences in the "quality of life". I had never realised this because you speak to anyone from these "worlds" and you know this is nonsense, even counter true. I would say there was a stronger argument that "quality of life" has diminished in Western society, than that it has improved - but I don't want to enter that argument here. In the end it all comes down to how you measure "quality of life" - and since that hasn't been determined (even Life itself hasn't been understood!) it is nonsensical to imagine that "quality of life" has increased or decreased - yet we do, but on what grounds? and why?!

The answer to that has become plainly simple in the last year of this blog. Consider how we in the West think about the Developed World and the Undeveloped World. Or, for that matter the 1st World and the 3rd World. Or, for that matter the Uncivilised World and the Civilised World. Or, for that matter the use of words like "Primitive" peoples. These words primative and uncivilised have a long history. We could also add the word Barbarians which is how the Greeks used to speak of foreigners (because they sounded like sheep) and the Romans referred to the uncivilised tribes outside the Roman Empire. More recently the measure has shifted from Civilisation to technology and Development. There is a strong status attached to these words. To become Civilised raises your national status. To become Developed these days does the same.

There is an unwritten rule, unproven, and unjustified, that I have been at root challenging in these pages and have been living my life to demonstrate the falseness of. The rule is that Quality of Life has anything to do with Status. I use as my inspiration some of the greatest men who ever lived: Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tze to name the principle men. All these rejected worldly status as worthless compared with the riches variously of heaven and wisdom. Yet the unexamined rules at play in Human history seem to make a connection between Civilisation and Development and Quality of Life.

Progress I state is not a feature of Quality of Life, but of Status.

The human race has missed a huge trick in its evolution. Competition is a fundamental feature of existence. It is the guiding principle which enables natural selection to work (fitness is defined through competition). It is the principle whichj limits populations. It is the principle which determines material quality of life.

The Malthusian Principle states that populations will rise until competition has reduced the quality of life to the point where the death rate equals the birth rate (and there is no population change). In such an environment there is plenty of opportunity for inequality as individuals compete for a greater share of resources. This is the origin of Status. There is no escaping that Status is a fundamental feature of physical life due to limited resources.

In evolutionary history stable solutions have had to solve the question of whether intra-specific competition in groups is greater than the costs of solitary living. Humans obviously gain a lot by group membership enough to off set the cost of competition. But competition in groups is fierce. Weak human individuals who fail to get social status will literally die - they will make room for the children of the successful. Social evolution will become ever more fierce as humans adapt to their own societies.

Long ago Human Life had stopped being a matter of physical struggle. There has been enough to feed everyone for many thousands of years. Progressively instead it has become a matter of status and winning the social struggle.

Human endeavour quite apart from being a struggle to Live has become a self-imposed struggle to out compete other humans - who are also forced into the same struggle. We have missed the trick to draw a line in the sand a truce in this endless and pointless game.

We work the longest hours of any primate - with the possible exception of the Chimpanzee. With all the technological progress we work the longest hours in human history (except during the very recent industrial revolutions) . Much celebrated drops in work hours are in reference to the last 2 hundred years, but not pre-industrial. The technological progress is not about making our lives better in any real sense, but about giving us the opportunity to raise our Status.

When the new invention comes it is a matter of social status to have it. A program in American history at the weenend showed the post war change to consumerism and the way that advertising exploited the idea of "out of date" so that consumers had to keep buying the "latest" thing. We are used to this fashion thinking now, but nothing ever "goes out of date" unless it is perishable! It is not about the material thing: it is about Status.

Globally then the struggle is not for Quality of Life in any real sense. Much quoted statistics like infant mortality etc are not a factor of Quality of Life! You can't measure Quality of Life so clearly - what exactly is QoL? They are struggles for Status. To become Developed not because it is good think per se, but because it rates the nations status higher.

People want Mercades cars in poor countries not because they need "mercedes" but because it raises their status.

As is often quoted there is plenty for everyone in this world but while grain rots in piles in America people starve. Of course it is all about Status. Those who thought bankers should not get paid have missed the point that salary is about status. People get jobs like this because of status not ability or utility.

Those who once belived that human endeavour was a practical and utilitarian thing for the welfare of man have missed a profound truth about Human Life. The greatest challenge we face is our own struggle to beat ourselves!

So when we look at the Undeveloped world without TVs actually it is not the lack of TVs that we lament, but the low status of people in these countries because we consider TVs as a measure of status.

I'm rushing now to make lunch: just notes. Many countries have limited population by having large monastic populations - liek Tibet where I think 40% of the population used to live in monasteries. This is a very healthy social invention (quite apart from the spiritual wealth) because it takes away the population pressure and thus the competition and thus the need for status and thus the hard work and thus the social antagonism and the conflict. Now that is Quality of Life! Buit they don't have TVs so we see them as lower status - but they shouldn't care.

Realising such a ridiculous state of affairs affords one thing : we can finally rise above the level of animals. In such a world of plenty we don't have to fight for status. It is just an idea. It is not real. It actually has nothing to do with Human Life. It is just a hangover from the material world where competition rules the lives of bacteria and protozoans and still rules of the lives of Humans who haven't looked around for a billion years.