From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 23:03:54 -0400

Oliver Sparrow wrote:
> 
> OK "how" word. Try ethnology, around the issue of dominance in pack
> animals. Low status animals receive worse rations, have poorly operating
> immune systesm and die of stress related ailments. Yup, there's a market
> for Tagamet amongst low status wolves, chaps. All the caribou hooves you
> can carry away. But note: having low status animals in the pack increases
> the well being of the others: they have better function immune systems, clearly
> feel on top of matters. The low order individual is helping the group to feel
> competence. Thus pecking order normalised social order, vitaites source
> of conflict and, in addition, creates functionality. Thus them what have the genes
> plus cultural transmission required for pecking orders to be set up (a) generate
> the conditions is which it is possibel for a miserable animal to know that it is
> miserable specifically because its peers despise it and (b) this situation
> improves the survivability of the rest - and their genes. Ain't momma nature
> a *sweetie*? All this, and cancer too.
> 
> _________________________________________________
> 
>   Oliver Sparrow
>   ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk


Wow!  And I thought I'd heard them all. Of course, the fact that the 
dominant members of the pack have less stress doesn't seem at all 
unreasonable, but the conclusion that the suffering of the underlings 
is selected for because it benefits the overlings, that seems a bit of a 
stretch, don't you think? (Sheesh! These guys never cease to amaze me.) 
For one thing, group selection has been largely ruled out by most 
responsible authors going all the way back to J.B.S. Haldane. Who's 
the author on this?  For a couple of papers on the _maladaptiveness_ 
of emotional disorder see DeCantanzaro and Eysenck in my bibliography. 
These are both symposiums so you get the opinions of dozens and dozens 
of leading authorities.

Of course, the primary advantage of theories like the one you have 
mentioned is not so much their plausibility, as the fact that they 
pretty much stick to the unspoken dictates of staying securely in 
the physical realm. And of course, its a lot more pleasant than the 
sort of gloom and doom scenario I am proposing. Obviously, if your 
primary objective is not to make waves you've got a winner. But you 
want to remember that, as a _psychical_ scientist, one whose chief 
concern is with _psychical_ anomalies, my concern is not 
with anomalous behavior, but rather with what I see as its underlying 
cause, i.e., feelings of worthlessness. That's a little tougher 
assignment if you don't mind my saying so. Wolves can do all 
the domance things you mention with feelings of fear. So why has nature 
added all this ego related baggage? It really does look just a little 
strange, don't you think?

Here's a brief list of other theories I am aware of that have also tried
to force the ugly daughter's foot (anomlous human behavior) into 
Cinderella's slipper (theory of natural selection):

1. The reason Evel Knievel jumped across the Snake River canyon is because 
he was suffering from a subconscious displaced territorial aggression (Lorenz -
ethology).

2. The reason Evel Knievel jumped across the Snake River canyon is because 
he was having to suppress sexual urges a little too much and the psychical 
energy just has to find another avenue (early Freud).

3. The reason Evel Knievel jumped across the Snake River canyon is because 
his mother took the bottle out of his mouth before he was finished feeding 
just one too many times (behaviorist's generalization theory - Thorndike).

4. The reason Evel Knievel jumped across the Snake River canyon is because 
there was a significant probability that it will benefit similar copies of his 
DNA, e.g. the DNA of a passing bird or what have you (kin selection a la 
E.O. Wilson, The Society for Philosophy and Psychology, etc.).

5. The reason Evel Knievel jumped across the Snake River canyon is because 
was was trying to maximize his sense of self worth..etc... (Phil Roberts, Jr.).

Notice that it is number five that the man on the street and non-academics  
like myself regard as making a lot of sense and that the other four are, sadly,
typical of the sort of contrived nonsense that passes for knowledge in the 
halls of higher learning.

My authority on kin selection is not Wilson, but Dawkins. The conclusion he 
draws near the end of 'The Selfish Gene' is that, if anything, kin selection 
has made some of the more extreme altruism in man (e.g. self-endangering 
Greenpeacers)even more anomalous. And Peter Singer has become so convinced 
of the inadequacy of genetic explanations that he has gone so far as 
to say much the same thing I have been saying for the past twenty five years, 
albeit in far more restricted terms. He suggests (The Expanding Circle) that 
"in the thought of reasoning beings, reason takes on a logic of its own which 
leads to its extensions beyond the bounds of the group". It does, but 
anomalous altruism is only half the picture, as I have explained below.

 
Feelings of Worthlessness from the Perspective of So-called Cognitive Science
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5476