Psycho-Social Dynamics and the Prospects for Mankind
Institute of Communications Research University of Illinois
Pugwash is the name of a little town in Canada where the first meeting of a group of scientists from East and West then mostly nuclear physical scientists was held. They were deeply concerned about what politicians and the military were doing with their brain-child. This first conference, held in 1957, was stimulated by The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (Bertrand and Albert respectively), issued in 1955 on the 10th anniversary of the dropping of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. This Manifesto is very much worth quoting (in small part): We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt...we haveto learn to think in a new way... to ask ourselves...what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties... Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?... We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
But have we learned to think in a new way? The answer must be a resounding "NO!" The problem, of course, is how to get from here (old ways of thinking) to there (new ways).
I refer to certain dynamic processes in human thinking as the "Neanderthal Mentality" precisely because they are so primitive and so universal in humans. Most of us recognize these processes in others but remain blissfully unaware of them in ourselves.
Neanderthal Thinking
Perhaps the most primitive dynamic is what I call Pollyannaism after the blindly optimistic heroine of a novel by Eleanor Porter early in this century. Put bluntly, it is simply easier for humans mentally to process affectively positive perceived things, words, and sentences (pleasant, gratifying) than affectively negative (unpleasant, threatening) ones. I am reminded of a Frank and Ernest comic strip, in which Frank says: "Yesterday, for just one moment, all the world news came into focus for me and I got a glimpse of what is really happening. Boy! I hope that never happens again!"
Psycho-logic is a related dynamic the easier mental processing of congruent as compared with incongruent sentences and I say "related" because incongruence is itself a kind of negativity. Thus when we compare congruent sentences, which must be conjoined by "and" (e.g., Tom is tall ("and") strong or Tom is short ("and") weak), with incongruent ones, which must be conjoined by "but" (e.g., Tom is tall ("but") weak or Tom is short ("but") strong), we find that congruent "ands" are much more quickly produced than incongruent "buts."
Psycho-logic runs rampant in international relations, making bogey men of the opponents in every human conflict if the WEs are good, kind, fair, and so forth, then the THEYs must be equivalently bad, cruel, and unfair. In the 19605, many Americans found it hard to believe that the Russians and the Chinese could have become enemies two negs combined by a neg relation - "Must be a Communist trick!" Exactly the same behavior like sending (potential) combat troops to friendly nations bordering on an enemy is acceptable if the noble WEs do it, but completely unacceptable (even dastardly!) if the bestial THEYs do it. Thus the Neanderthal within strives to force a complicated world into his own oversimplified mold, grossly distorting it in the process.
Cognitive Stereotypy is yet another psycho-logic dynamism. As our Neanderthal's emotional stress increases beyond some optimum level, his stronger (most habitual) tendencies become relatively more so and his weaker (least habitual) relatively less so thus a shift toward blind stereotypy and awayfrom creative flexibility. Paradoxically, the greater the anxiety and need for a novel solution to a problem, the lesslikely the Neanderthal mentality is to discover it. There have been many studies on group decision-making under stress, indicating that "groupthink" causes reduction in perceived alternatives, reality testing, and moral judgment presumably as a function of intense desire for solidarity.
Another pair of Reinforcement principles concern the effectiveness of both reward and punishment in inducing changes in thinking and behaving: first, that immediate reinforcement ismore effective than remote; second, that concrete reinforcement is more effective than symbolic. For the problems that face humanity today, these tend to be correlated the more immediate tending to be the more concrete (money in the hand for a profitable arms contract) and the more remote tending to be the more symbolic (the possibility that nuclear proliferation could result in a nuclear war).
Now, when you combine Pollyannism with these reinforcement factors, you get a very depressing interaction: the more people can avoid thinking about negatives (like there being no more fuel for cars or a nuclear holocaust), the less likely they are to try to do anything about them until too late.
Science and Technology
We live in a highly lethal society. The stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the United States and the Soviet Union have reached the explosive equivalent of some thirty tons of TNT for every man, woman, and child on the planet! A second threat arises from the fact that every nuclear reactor of any type now at work, produces as a by product plutonium 239, probably the most toxic substance known. A third threat is that no one knows how to store the waste products, which will remain dangerous for half a million years.
What happened in the decade between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies in the thinking of the military industrial complex was a subtle shift from the goal of disarmament to theconcept of arms control a concept which puts no real ceiling on the arms race and promises very profitable competition and proliferation. SALTS I and II were agreements to increase nuclear capabilities on both sides. And what is the cost of all this to mankind? In 1975 only about $25 billion went for aid to the Third World as compared with about $250 billion for military expenditures; world expenditure for medical research was only $4 billion as compared with $25 billion for military research and development and so on.
How does the military/industrial complex maintain its public support? There is a remarkable coincidence between heavily advertised "scare campaigns" and the pre-voting debates in the House and Senate an application of Immediate Reinforcement, for the public (fear of the Russian bogey) and for their Congressional representatives (fear of losing support in elections). Surely any objective observer (e.g., from some extra-terrestial civilization) would conclude that mankind hasgone insane.
Resources and theEnvironment
It has been estimated that, if we were to stop all use of spray-cans now, we would already have lost more than 10 percent of the ozone layer. But such statistics don't touch the slow killing " the black lung, the brown lung, the silicosis, asbestosis, and uranium poisoning, and the variety of cancers associated with these conditions. And, of course, even such statistics are hard to come by, because industry fights tooth and nail to keep them concealed. The problems of energy and environmental destruction/pollution are intimately related, of course. If the growth of the nuclear power industry matches the expectations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), there will be more than 125,000 tons of nuclear waste accumulating from the operation of some 500 large reactors by the year 2000. All of this nuclear waste must be kept isolated from the biosphere for half a million years what, in our human perspective, is essentially forever!
And what about the automobile? Tris Coffin, editor of The Washington Spectator, gives us some grim facts: the average American family is spending more on transportation than on food; the U.S. public spends more than $100 billion a year on auto purchases, insurance, taxes, repairs, and gas and oil; we have "one car for every two residents" of the U.S., which translates into about two cars per family of median wealth.
National and InternationalSocial Structures
Multinational corporations based mainly in the rich and powerful nations of the West have expanded over the globe, gouging the "have nots" to bring even higher standards of living to the "haves." And these corporations are making incredible profits from this rather one-sided exchange; some of the largest multi-nationals are wealthier than many small nations on our shrinking planet. Since the highest level of real political authority is the nation-state, this economic expansion is going on practically without any effective controls.
It would seem obvious that a stronginternational government is required to monitor and contain this global phenomenon. Yet the Neanderthals within us resist any movement toward internationalism even ratification of an agreement to turn control of the Panama Canal over to the country which contains it by year 2000! The most glaring inconsistency of our time is that we humans are already living in a highly interdependent world and yet are trying to run it with competing national rather than a common international government at the highest level.
Pressures of Population andfor Development
An important underlying problem for mankind is the pressure of an exponentially increasing population. Given 1975 rates total fertility, 4.5, and life expectancy, 55 years the world population would theoretically reach 24 billion by the year 2075. Obviously, our planet's resources would.be hard put to support such a population. As far as the overdeveloped "have" nations are concerned, it is clear that the destruction of the ozone layer and pollution of the environment is in no small part a function of the sheer numbers of people pushing the. button, being kept warmer in the winters and cooler in the summers, and tossing their refuse around.
The problems of population and development both relate to the struggle of the "have-nots" to raise their standard of living— particularly since development in this sense has typically been accompanied by lower fertility rates and in an equitably balanced interdependent world there would be no necessary correlation between standard of living and level of industrialization for individual countries (any more than there is for individual states of the U.S.). On the side of the underdeveloped countries, the grim truth of the matter is that, if increasing food supplies are not accompanied by birth control, then population production willoutrun food production by the year2000 at the latest. The relative failure of the government in India to damp the national birth rate contrasts with the relative success in Mainland China, where strong community social pressures have been applied.
On the side of the overdeveloped countries, an equally grim fact is that, within the past decade or so, there has been a marked increase in demand for beef and pork. Producing meat is a badnutritional bargain, because it takes about eight pounds of grain to make just one pound of meat. The obvious answer is to shift the dietary habits of affluent people in the "Have" countries which would not only be most intensely resisted by these peoples but also fought tooth and nail by the agriculture and food industries!
Most crucial is the question of wholesale vs. specialized development. Strong imitative tendencies have led to general opting for wholesale development on the "Have" model technological, economic, military, and other such development in parallel across the board. This model also is congruent with the assumption that the autonomous nation-state is the natural even the inevitable highest form of human social-political organization. But note: if we were to move into One World, politically and otherwise, then the whole conception of development could shift from wholesale to specialized, and the unique contributions of particular developing countries could be stressed.
Arms Races
The psycho-dynamics of "uncalculat- escalation into arms races follow directly from the nature of Neanderthal thinking, talking, and decision-making. Following the dictates of psycho-logic, Mr. Everyman (in high places as well as low) easily turns the WEs into heroes and the THEYs into villians, there by forcing any conflict in which his WEs are involved into a kind of Holy War. Given his pollyannaistic bent attempting to grasp the reassuring and push away the threatening aspects of his world he willingly supports demands for more and more billions to guarantee that "WE are the strongest nation on earth"! Given his tendency toward cognitive stereotypy, the more his anxieties are increased by events or scare stories in the mass media, paradoxically the more difficult the Neanderthal in him makes it to comprehend any alternatives. And, since Mr. Everyman is less influenced by reinforcements that are remote and symbolic than he is by those that are immediate and concrete, he simply does not have the creative imagination to make immediate and concrete the horrors of possible nuclear catastrophes.
"Calculated" escalation is designed to push the villianous THEYs beyond their risk ceiling before the heroic WEs reach theirs. This strategy has four salient features: first, the steps are unilaterally initiated; second, each step propels the opponent into reciprocating if possible, with more aggressive steps of his own; third, such steps are necessarily graduated in nature by the unpredictability of technological break throughs, by the limitations imposed by logistics, and by the oscillating level of perceived threat. But calculated escalation is obviously a tension-increasing process, the termination of which is a military resolution victory, defeat, or even (in our time) mutual annihilation.
Peace Races
Now, if we change this last feature of calculated escalation shift it from tension-induction to tension-reduction we have the essence of a calculatedde-escalation strategy in conflict situations. It is one in which nation A devises patterns of small steps, well within its own limits of security, designed to reduce tensions and induce reciprocating steps from nation B. If such unilateral initiatives are persistently applied and reciprocation is obtained, then the margin for risk-taking is widened and somewhat larger steps can be taken. Both sides, in effect, begin edging down the tension ladder, and both are moving within what they perceive as reasonable limits of national security toward a political rather than a military resolution.
The focus of my own long-term concern at the inter-nation level has been the rationalization of a strategy alternative whose technical name is graduatedand reciprocated initiatives in tensionreduction. While doodling at a conference in the early sixties, I realized that the initials of this mind-boggling phrase spelled GRIT and, although I generally take a dim view of acronyms, this one was not only easy for people to remember but also suggested the kind of determination and patience required to apply it successfully! However, being unconventional in international affairs, the GRIT strategy is open to suspicion abroad and resistance at home. Therefore, it is necessary to spell out the ground-rules for this particular "game."
Rules for Maintaining Security
Rule 1: Unilateral initiatives must notreduce one's capacity to inflict unacceptable nuclear retaliation should onebe attacked at that level. Nuclear capacity can serve rational foreign policy (a) if it is viewed not only as a deterrent but also as a security base from which to take limited risks in the direction of reducing tensions, (b) if the retaliatory, second-strike nature of the capacity is made explicit, and (c) if only the minimum capacity required for effective deterrence is maintained and the arms race damped.
Rule 2: Unilateral initiatives must notcripple one's capacity to meet conventional aggression with appropriatelygraded conventional response. Conventional forces are the front-line of deterrence and they must be maintained at rough parity in regions of confrontation. But the absolute level at which the balance is maintained is variable. The general rule would be to initiate unilateral moves in the regions of least tension and gradually extend them to what were originally the most tense regions.
Rule 3: Unilateral initiatives must begraduated in.risk according to the degree of reciprocation obtained from anopponent. This is the self-regulating characteristic of GRIT that keeps the process within reasonable limits of security. If bona fide reciprocations of appropriate magnitude are obtained, the magnitude and significance of subsequent steps can be increased; if not, then the process continues with steps of about the same magnitude of risk. The relative risk thus remains roughly constant throughout the process.
Rule 4: Unilateral initiatives shouldbe diversified in nature, both as tosphere of action and as to geographicallocus of application. The reason is two-fold: first, in maintaining security, diversification minimizes weakening one's position in any one sphere (e.g. nuclear submarines) or any one geographical locus (e.g., Europe); second, in inducing reciprocation, diversification keeps applying the pressure of initiatives having a common tension-reducing intent (and, one hopes, effect), but does not "threaten" the opponent by pushing steadily in the same sphere or locus and thereby limiting his options in reciprocating.
Rules for Inducing Reciprocation
Rule 5: Unilateral initiatives must bedesigned and communicated so as toemphasize a sincere intent to reducetensions. Escalation and de-escalation strategies cannot be "mixed" in the sense that military men talk about the "optimum mix" of weapon systems. The reason is psychological: reactions to threats (aggressive impulses) are incompatible with reactions to promises (conciliatory impulses); each strategythus destroys the credibility of the other. It is therefore essential that a complete shift in basic policy be clearly signaled at the beginning. Control over de-escalation strategies must be just as tight and pervasive as control over war-waging strategies, if actions implying incompatible intents are not to intrude and disrupt the process.
Rule 6: Unilateral initiatives shouldbe publicly announced at some reasonable interval prior to their executionand identified as part of a deliberatepolicy of reducing tensions. Prior announcements minimize the potentially unstabilizing effect of unilateral acts, and their identification with a total GRIT strategy helps shape the opponent's interpretation of them. However, the GRIT process cannot begin with a large, precipitate, and potentially unstabilizing unilateral action. This could be interpreted by the opponent as lack of confidence in one's capabilities, and might thereby encourage him to take even more aggressive actions.
Rule 7: Unilateral initiatives shouldinclude in their announcement explicitinvitation to reciprocation in someform. The purpose of this "rule" is to increase pressure on an opponent by making it clear that reciprocation of appropriate form and magnitude is essential to the momentum of GRIT and to bring to bear pressures of world opinion. However, exactly specifying the form and magnitude of reciprocation, so that it has the tone of a demand rather than an invitation, carries an implied threat of retaliation if the demand is not met. It is the occurrence of reciprocation in any form, yet having the same tension-reducing intent, that is critical. Speaking psychologically, the greatest conciliatory impact upon an opponent in a conflict situation is produced by his own, voluntaryact of reciprocating.
Rules for Demonstrating theGenuineness of Initiativesand Reciprocations
Rule 8: Unilateral initiatives thathave been announced must be executed on schedule regardless of any priorcommitments to reciprocate on the partof the opponent. This is the best indication of the firmness and sincerity of one's own intent to reduce tensions. The control over what and how much is committed is the graduated nature of the process; at the time-point when each initiative is announced, the calculation has been made (in terms of prior reciprocation history) that this step can be taken within reasonable limits of security.
Rule 9: Unilateral initiatives shouldbe continued over a considerable period, regardless of the degree or evenabsence of reciprocation. Like the steady pounding on a nail, pressure toward reciprocating builds up as announced act follows announced act of a tension-reducing nature, even though the individual acts may be small in significance. It is this characteristic of GRIT which at once justifies the use of the acronym and raises the hackles of most military men!
Rule 10: Unilateral initiatives must beas unambiguous and as susceptible toverification as possible. Although actions do speak louder than words, even overt deeds are liable to misinterpretation, Nations in conflict have intense mutual suspicions and therefore place a heavy emphasis on mutual secrecy. The strategy of GRIT can be directly applied to this problem: particularly in the early stages, when the risk potentials are small, initiatives whose face-validities are very high should be designed and they can operate to reduce gradually suspicion and resistance to verification procedures. This should accelerate as the GRIT process continues.
Some Applications of GRITStrategy
Over the past 15 years or so, there has been considerable experimentation with the GRIT strategy but mostly in the psychological laboratory. However there have been sporadic GRIT-like moves in the real world for example, in the early sixties, at the time of the graduated and reciprocated pullback of U.S. and Soviet tanks, which were lined up practically snout-to-snout at the height of the Berlin Crisis. But for the most part in recent history, these have been one-shot affairs, always tentatively made, and never reflecting any genuine change in basic strategy.
The one exception to this dictum was "The Kennedy Experiment." This realworld test of a strategy of calculated de-escalation was conducted in the period from June to November 1963. The first step was President Kennedy's speech at American University on June 10, in which he outlined what he called "A Strategy of Peace," praised the Russians for their accomplishments, noted that "our problems are man made... and can be solved by man," and then announced the first unilateral initiative the United States was stopping all nuclear tests in the atmosphere and would not resume them unless another country did. On June 15, Premier Khruschev reciprocated with a speech welcoming the U.S. initiative, and he announced that he had ordered production of strategic bombers to be halted. A series of reciprocative actions followed including ones in communication, economic, and nuclear test-ban areas.
Had this real world experiment in calculated de-escalation been a success? To most of the initiatives taken by either side, the other reciprocated, and the reciprocations were roughly proportional in significance. What about psychological impact? I do not think that anyone who lived through that period will deny that there was a definite warming of American attitudes toward Russians, and the same is reported for Russian attitudes toward Americans they even coined their own name for the new strategy, "the policy of mutual example"!
However, the novelty of GRIT does raise shrieks of incredulity from hawks and clucks of worry even from doves. Doesn't any novel approach such asthis involve too much risk? Anything we do in the nuclear age means taking risks. Escalating conflicts which involve another nuclear power unquestionably carry the greatest risk. Simply doing nothing remaining frozen in a status quo that is already at much too high a level of tension is certainly not without risk over the long run. GRIT also involves risk. But the riskcomes in small packages!
Given its objective and subjective states circa 1980, what are mankind's prospects for reaching the year 2000 in anything like its present shape? I think that nearly all objective problems could be resolved as we move toward the year 2000 but not by science and technology alone. We must also address the subjective problems some how meet the Russell-Einstein challenge by trying to create massive changes in our ways of thinking.
Where Are Our FearsRational?
We have a very rational basis for fear in the military use of nuclear science and technology. Each superpower was already capable of destroying at least once-over the other's civilization more than a decade ago. Yet driven by psycho-logic (the noble WEs must always be stronger than the evil THEYs), reassured by pollyannaism (a nuclear holocaust never could really happen), and with the military/industrial com; plexes getting immense power and/or profits from it all both superpowers continued spending billions of dollars/ rubles in a nuclear arms race that is piling overkill upon overkill.
On both energy and environmental issues, we humans also have reasons for anxiety. The prime problems are short-sighted production and use of forms of energy without regard to resultant effects upon resources and upon the environment. Inexhaustible sources of energy, from the sun, the tides and the winds, have hardly been tapped in part, at least, because they can't be turned on and off to maximize profits. However, societal shifts to these alternative energy sources, while potentially yielding massive amounts of energy, will require equally massive changes in lifestyle.
Pressures of population and expectations for development are reciprocally related typically, the greater the pressure, the dimmer the prospects for satisfying rising expectations for development. Procreation of young humans is driven, of course, by the psycho-social dynamic of immediate and concrete reinforcement, and it is not surprising that societal control over population growth is difficult. However, it should be obvious that population growth also puts ever-increasing demands on the use of energy and other dwindling resources. Strong social incentives for birth control, along with dissemination of the means for accomplishing it, will be required.
What with independent nation-states as the highest political units in a world that, by most other criteria, is already extremely interdependent, our national and international social (and political) structures are entirely inappropriate for our times. Witness, on the one hand the completely ineffective role of the U.N. in recent years. Witness, on theother hand, the way multinational corporations have been successfully ripping off the natural resources of the planet for profits that are both excessive and distributed with little relation to their human sources. It is the lack of effective international governance that has fostered these anachronistic states of affairs.
Where May Our Hopes Lie?
Social scientists surely do not know enough about humankind and its ways of thinking and behaving to offer detailed prescriptions. However, I think they do know enough to offer broadscale recommendations which, in the domain of primitive psycho-social dynamics, is what I have been trying to do here. We also face the problem of "social engineering": to what extent can it be, expanded and kept under control when applied to sensitive matters like population control, changing life styles, and even the adoption of novel political systems? In any case, I am convinced that the critical changes must come "from the top down," initiated by enlightened leadership in . positions of social influence and I'm not implying that such leadership and influence is possessed solely by people in government.
A basic issue here is ego-ism vs. alterism in the conduct of human affairs. Ego-ism is simply the flowering of Darwinian dynamics of evolution survival (and profit) of the fittest into an age when one species, humanoid primates, dominates the earth. Yet, most hopefully, it is this species that not innately like the ant, but adaptively through learning has found that ego-ism can be satisfied within alteristic social structures. Quite simply, alterism is putting the welfare of others above the welfare of the self with the realization that, in the long run, one's own welfare is intimately tied to that of others.
The free enterprise system which really isn't very "free" anymore, what with collusions of small numbers of giant corporations basically controlling the system is essentially ego-istic. What we have been moving into rapidly, even if imperceptibly, is what could fairly be called "The New Slavery": more than half of all the personal wealth in the U.S., for example, is now owned (and controlled) by only 6% of the population; 4.4% owns 74% of all federal bonds and securities and 78% of all state and local bonds.
Where the essentials of human existence are involved food, energy, a livable environment, and security for one's self and loved ones controls should be in the hands of society as a whole, not in the hands of ego-istic individuals. There are more alter-istic forms of political organization than either unbridled capitalism or unbridled communism, and I think this is the direction humankind must go if it is to survive with its nuclear technology. But it must be One World, under strong international control, or there will soon be no world. One World politically does not imply eliminating all ideological and cultural differences between social systems witness the cultural variations of the states of the United States. Indeed, I'd go even further and say that diversity should beencouraged in ideology as well as cuisine!
A prime example of Neanderthalic intolerance of semantic ambiguity is the deification of The Nation as the prime unit in international affairs. Since the flowing forests and oceans do not recognize these creations of the human mind, we put up boundary markers, erect walls and fortifications, establish border-crossing restrictions, try to impose language homogeneity within boundaries, define invisible territorial extensions into the seas, and brightly color our maps in different hues so that our children can learn just what is really where all to reaffirm that TheNation is, indeed, a unitary thing like other things that have names.
Some Rather GrimConclusions
Analysis of the Prospects for Mankind leads me to two inescapable conclusions: (1) that fears about its objective state circa 1980 A.D. are emminently justified; (2) that hope lies not so much in directly changing its objective state (in science and technology, etc.) but rather in changing its subjective state (ways of thinking and making decisions about objective problems) and this requires awareness of the effective, psycho-social dynamics I have stressed. But I have discovered and could have predicted, as a psychologist that, despite the mass of evidence, there is resistance to accepting these dynamics.
So now let me say something really horrifying: I think one of the most useful things that could happen (and soon) would be a genuine and majornuclear accident particularly in the military-weapons sphere with full television coverage. This would bring the prospects for survival in the nuclear age into focus and, despite the deaths of (probably) many thousands of human individuals, it could lead quickly to decisions that would result in saving the lives of many millions of humans (as well as other animal and vegetable species). The nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island was by no means "major" in contrast to what might have happened in terms of deaths and radiation effects in the rather densely populated surrounding area. It is worth noting, however, that the impact on the American public and thence upon their representatives in state and national governments was nevertheless most impressive.
We have also come very close to major nuclear accidents in the military nuclear sphere. Back in the early sixties, when B-52's were routinely carrying nuclear weapons, one jettisoned a bomb near Goldsboro, North Carolina; five of its six safety devices failed and this was a 24-megaton thermonuclear bomb, which would be equal to twelve World War lis in one bomb!
It would seem that our most brilliant scientists and most skilled technicians have quite unintentionally played a horrible practical joke on all living things on this little planet. They have given human beings incredible nuclear powers they are too immature psychologically and socially to handle. There is still hope but only intense efforts by alert, informed, and dedicated individual humans can enhance the prospects of mankind reaching the year 2000.
