It’s a paradox—being a human in today’s world. For one thing, as I wrote recently, some of our central social and economic institutions, along with the habits of thought that go with them, are based on old ideas and beliefs that have gone obsolete. But these batty ideas still live on in entrenched institutions that originally embodied them, and still govern how we actually live day-by-day.
One critic of ideas that should be dead but live on anyway calls them “vampires” of the mind, and “the philosophical undead.” Another writer, economist John Quiggin, turns the spotlight on “zombie economics“—that is, “dead [economic] ideas that still walk among us.”
Others use more academic and less colorful descriptions. Sociologist Brian Singer, for instance, writes that the idea of the social contract as the basis for social and political life no longer has standing in today’s social sciences. It’s simply not credible, either as fact or as theory; but it still won’t die. In his own words, the notion that human society came into being as a rational contract between naturally separate individuals gives way to “the empirical basis of the cultural critique,” surviving only “as a technical fable to uphold and elaborate the normative dimensions [the values] of [our own] political life.”
Institutions that still embody undead ideas remain central to our present way of life. They include the (impossible to realize) self-regulating capitalist economy, predatory corporations guided solely by the bottom line, and even in some respects our institutions of democratic governance.
John Quiggin 2012 Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us. Princeton University Press. Joseph Rouse 2002. Review Essay: Vampires: Social Constructivism, Realism, and Other Philosophical Undead. History and Theory 41:60-78. Brian C.J. Singer 1996 Cultural versus Contractual Nations. History and Theory 35(3): 309-337.
What does it mean—dead, defunct ideas holding onto an “undead” lease on life within everyday institutions and habits of thought? Well, for one, it means that we live every day as if we didn’t know what we do know about the complexities of being human, and about the complicated relationships between human civilization and the natural world. Let me revisit three of these zombie ideas that still rule our lives even though they have gone obsolete—or, at least, should now be seen in larger contexts and in a new light, and perhaps questioned more deeply.
1. The Undead Myth of Human Exceptionalism
One vampire of the mind falls under the rubric of “exceptionalism:” Humans are exceptional—not just unique, but absolutely separate and different from everything else on Earth or in the universe. With our difference, largely even defining it, comes divine entitlement to rule over all kinds of brute matter as well as over the beasts of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea.
The notion that humans are a separate creation and meant to rule over the merely natural world probably began to take root a long time ago with the invention of agriculture, when people did begin to dominate local nature in fact. It became a mainstay of civilized life with the rise of cities, advancing technology, and the expansion of empires.
This idea essentially died, however, when Darwin showed that we were not separately created to rule over the Earth, but rather evolved within and as part of it. We face its failure in real terms in the impressive list of civilizations that have collapsed as a result of over-exploiting their local environments, and as we face the looming consequences of our own carelessly disrupted climate and ecological systems that we are part of. Humility and Respect offer proper antidotes to the inflated hubris that poisons the bite of this vampire of the mind.
2. The Undead Myth of the “Invisible Hand” and other Cannot-Fail “Market Mechanisms.”
The second undead idea I’ll mention is the quaint notion that mechanistic principles like those that govern some aspects of physical reality also apply in human society—and that social and economic life can be understood and manipulated on that basis. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), often credited with this idea, “interpreted self-interest as ‘the moral equivalent of the force of gravity in nature'” and tried to understand the role of individual citizens within the state “by analogy with the mechanical functioning of a clock.”
Many influential political and economic thinkers followed Hobbes’s lead—and surprisingly many still do today. This belief in social mechanism got somewhat less simplistic (but no less misguided) as it became more firmly enshrined in political philosophy and practice. But later science itself, especially since the mid-twentieth-century, progressively undermined and even outright refuted it.
The undead ghosts of mechanistic social philosophy live on, however, in the souls of economists and policy-makers who hold on to their faith in the infallibility of market mechanisms to govern our lives and advance human wellbeing. Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow says “There has always been a purist streak in economics that wants everything to follow neatly from greed, rationality, and equilibrium, with no ifs, ands, or buts” (quoted by economics writer Jeff Madrick, p. 78). As Madrick and many others see, we face the real-time failure of such notions in the growing severity of economic instability and crises, and the relentless advance of runaway inequality that undermines the effective realization of democratic ideals.
“Free market” extremism results in ever-worsening inequality. It’s not hard to see why. The so-called “free” market (which actually is structured and maintained by a complex network of laws) institutionalizes competition in an environment of private property and limited resources. The “invisible hand” of that “zero-sum game” automatically creates and maintains inequality. It’s built into its very nature to do that, as the winners accumulate wealth that gives them the means within the system to tilt the odds ever more in their favor.
That legally-mandated competition does make for a dynamic economy in which hard work and business smarts might be rewarded. If well-managed, its natural inequality-producing dynamic controlled and mitigated, it expands wealth for society as a whole. But that’s a big “if”; that part’s very hard to get right. As resources become more concentrated, many of those who benefit the most use their wealth to fight regulations that would level the playing field, limit their own acquisitive aims, or protect public goods.
That’s exactly what’s been happening over the last four decades. When the power of wealth gets too massively concentrated its owners can and do capture the reigns of (democratic?) government for their own special interests at the expense of social well-being as a whole. They siphon up ever more of the society’s resources, benefitting themselves, driving up inequality even more, and driving down the fortunes of the middle-class.
As the nation’s wealth concentrates at the top, large swathes of the populace see their fortunes decline, their lives become more insecure and their aspirations frustrated. They become vulnerable to charismatic authoritarian leaders who find some other vulnerable population (immigrants, Jews, Blacks) to blame. When that happens, we are on the slippery road to fascism.
“The most telling symptom of fascist politics,” writes Yale philosopher, Jason Stanley, “is division. It aims to separate a population into an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’” The fascist movement targets ideological enemies and frees all restraints in combating them, Stanley writes. “When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.”
Sound familiar? It should, in the wake of the Trump presidency, the January 6 insurrection, and the now-ongoing Congressional hearings into that event.
Along with political dangers, extreme inequality as one aspect of an exploitive system that also leads to ecological overshoot, figures prominently in the histories of past civilizational collapse. We’ve seen all this over and over; but the danger is still real. It is harsh but fair, and now especially timely, to signpost extreme inequality as a downhill road to societal decline and fascism.
3. The Undead Myth of the Inherent Wickedness of Human Nature.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): In the state of nature, before civilization, “the life of man was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The third zombie idea I’ll mention is that human beings by nature are incurably self-interested, even brutish, competitive and combative individuals who rationally got together and formed society, instituted laws, and subjected themselves to external authority to protect themselves from each other. This individualistic take on basic human nature justifies the blind faith in market mechanism that I just mentioned. It’s also the basis for the “contract theory of the state,” on which much democratic practice remains premised.
What we now know about the evolution of human beings as social beings, and as cultural beings, belies that simplistic Hobbesian view of human nature. Our reality is much more complex, ambiguous, and rich than that. Humans are not naturally atomistic, competitive individuals; but rather are inherently social by nature. We’re not always good; but goodness is part of our nature too, and basically defines us as human. Additionally, we are conscious, creative, artistic. We are sensitive to beauty, and have souls. All these are as much a part of human nature as are the one-dimensional, individualistic qualities that Hobbes highlighted before social science had gotten any real purchase as science.
Humans also are, however, cultural beings—and this means that the stories we tell ourselves may become the lives we live.
Is the Hobbesian story of human nature the one we really want to tell ourselves? In too many ways, we continue to live as if it were. We meet the failures of this notion of human nature in the same problems I noted above, as well as in the alienation, fear, and indifference to the suffering of others that pervade too much of modern life.
4. Why Not Reject Bad Zombie Ideas & Begin Living What We Know!
Even bad ideas, in some contexts, can have good aspects or outcomes in others. Individualism, for instance, in other contexts than those I mentioned above, supports respect for individuals and their fulfillment as humans, which certainly is a good thing. It’s one of the real advances and blessings of modernity.
Can we reject the bad ideas while holding on to positive values sometimes associated with them? Absolutely! In fact, what we now know about human nature, the new more complex ideas and understandings that we’re growing into, even better support those positive values—but that’s a discussion for another time.
Meanwhile, on balance those three undead zombie ideas I mentioned above must be among the worst ever. Their proponents would have us believe that we are entitled to rule unchecked over all of Earthly creation, yet at the same time are so inherently bad, self-interested and naturally governed by fear and greed that to save ourselves from each other we must set up, entrust ourselves to, blind social mechanisms modeled after physical mechanics.
Such notions ignore the growth of knowledge as a basis for more intelligent social action. When they become the basis for key institutions and guide policy, they lead toward ever more extreme inequality and social instability. They also altogether discount consciousness, conscience, and kindness as guides to policy, just when we need them most.
The proof is in the pudding: Those are silly (and dangerous) ideas. Yet a great deal of our entrenched institutions, politics, and everyday habits of thought remain based on them—consciously or unconsciously.
That’s of course what makes them undead. Otherwise we could say R.I.P. and move on. After all, we know that neither humans individually, nor human societies, and not even our economies, really function like clockwork mechanisms, nor like the solar system held together by the perfectly balanced forces of gravity and inertia. There is no “Invisible Hand,” and such “Market Mechanisms” as may exist do so only in the context of legislation and culturally grounded beliefs that support them. We are not machines, nor are human societies and cultures simple cause-and-effect mechanisms.
Human beings live and function rather as dynamic, creative, chaotic, living systems. What makes us truly unique is that we are conscious beings—increasingly so—and capable of learning and acting more in accord with the larger truths of our existence. If there is anything that makes us exceptional—maybe even divine—it is this: that we can and must learn to live consciously, guided by love, realistic humility, and respect, as responsible members of the larger complex communities of Earthly living beings within which we evolved and live.