On Excellence as Morality - Part 6

The last five entries have been excerpts on my pseudo-treatise on Excellence. I continue today.


D. The Motors of Evolution


As I described, the motor of Teilhard’s first tier of evolution was random collisions of ever more complex particles until at last one emerged that advanced via a new motor. Natural selection has been the motor of the second tier, Life.

But what has been the motor of human advancement? What is the single exclusive trait that nature has rewarded humans allowing us to advance from the early pre-hominid ape-man through the failed versions known as Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal to our current status?

What do we possess in greater capacity than any other life form that has ever existed? There have been larger, stronger, faster creatures. Some with better eyesight, hearing, smell, etc. If the root of our prominence isn’t physical, our exterior aspects, then it must be contained within our interior aspects.

The obvious question is to ask were we smarter? Not necessarily. Recent studies have looked at their technologies and social practices and concluded that the intelligence ascribed to both Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals should be expanded to be very close to our concurrent forebears. Without a live specimen to examine we can only guess at the strength or weakness of any attempt to qualify or quantify how Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal interior aspects compare to those of the Homo Sapiens alive when they were. But does that undermine our inquiry? I think we can continue.

What I see that sets us apart is the need to be excellent. Our history is rife with examples of excellent actions that resulted in the interior advancement of our species. (Remember, biologically we are practically identical to both the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, variations of the jaw bone and brow ridge notwithstanding.) But we are driven to seek new and better ways to do things. We were first to make new and better tools, initiate new and better farming and hunting techniques allowing our populations to out-grow those of our hominid competitors. Thus allowing humans to dominate the natural resources and ultimately assimilate or destroy the other hominid strains.

Our communities advanced beyond family units via job specialization and asset exchange, leading to economies. Social structure began to be dominated by exaltation seeking demagogues. We experimented with new social tools and structures, looked into the possibilities these developments offered, even beyond their original primary intention. We began to find sub-communities specializing in engineering, architecture, music, drawings, sculptures and clothing fashions so as to appeal even more to more dynamic imaginations. Remember, conceiving of possibilities creates no excellence. It is only through putting our ideas into action do we advance. The prime motivation for putting our ideas into action is to improve our lot. Make things better or easier. Make things, including ourselves, better. Something I can rephrase as becoming more excellent. It is because of this activation of ideas that we need others to achieve excellence.

No hermit ever lived a growing, vibrant lifestyle. It is only through activating our ideas for improvement with others in a community that has enabled humans to bring about individual and community advancement. We are all born with strengths and weaknesses. It is only by relying on the offered strengths of others are we individually able to overcome our own weaknesses and be excellent.

It is because of this network of human capability exchange that rules of behavior have arisen. We first called acceptable actions blessings and unacceptable actions sins. Soon we codified these rules of behavior into laws. Governments grew around the laws. At first, mostly monarchies, whose leading citizens developed into power and wealth hungry egotists. The laws evolved into controls meant to feed the whim of the monarch.

But through all this, industry, the arts and invention continued. More and more people clamored for education and independence stressing more and more limitations to be relieved from the tyrannical aspects of monarchies. The inevitable movement toward representative government culminated in the Declaration of Independence that declared that all men are created equal. That God endowed all with rights that superseded the monarch’s rules.

That there is a higher authority!

The government that grew from this spirit is currently the most successful of any other attempt at ruling a nation. (In a separate argument I am prepared to prove that this is true because the American system fosters excellence in its citizens better than any other system out there. This argument would take us too far afield from this discussion even though it relies on similar concepts.)

The United States of America is an obvious exemplar of the concept of a community of excellence that I will spell out below. Excellence flows from the idea that no one can be excellent alone. We need others to help us overcome our weaknesses so our strengths can energize our careers. It is those communities with the greater ability to include the most contributions from its members that are better able to thrive.

But before I describe the characteristics of those communities, I feel that establishing the fostering of excellence as beneficial, or moral, behavior would be appropriate.