FOLK CODES Vs THE MONKEY DRIVE

I was reading an interesting blog the other day by James. (The title was "James" but I can't find it any more, so no link.) He’s got a section on his philosophy, where he says that our ideas about what we should do in life derive from how we see ourselves. He uses some neat arguments to dismiss the idea that we are souls, and concludes that we are essentially animals. (Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that this last point is correct. If you doubt it, you can find the point argued in depth by John Gray in Straw Dogs.) James thinks it follows from this that the good life is just one where you breed successfully and do what you can to ensure the health & prosperity of your kids. Family values, then? Not quite. What should your attitude be towards killing your enemies, and their kids?

Let’s call James's idea the monkey drive: spread your genes, increase your territory, look after your own (narrowly or broadly defined, but certainly not running to the whole species!) It’s the kind of theory that sits well with a neo-Darwinian “selfish gene” explanation of life. If philosophical background is needed, it could be aligned with many of the ideas of Nietzsche, especially in A Genealogy of Morals.

Nietzsche – and James – present a powerful challenge to the fragmentary, sometimes contradictory, but almost universally held codes of “folk morality”. We use these ideas to “teach our kids the difference between right and wrong”, criticise the selfish motives of a politician, or say what a great guy (or girl) a friend is. From these everyday examples, right up to the defining moral certainties about Auschwitz or the genocide in Rwanda, we draw from folk codes and implicitly criticise the monkey drive.

But are we on philosophically shaky ground?

Nietzsche’s challenge would go something like this. We are animals. We are at our happiest when following the monkey drive, which he called the Will To Power, i.e. rutting, being free from “status anxiety”, lording it over others, admiring our patch of ground after its latest makeover… (These are my interpretations: Nietzsche himself would have gone into an anti-bourgeois rage over home/garden makeover shows!) Folk morality derives from profoundly unnatural Judeo-Christian ideas, which arose as a historical accident as this culture attempted to assert itself over the worldly power of the Roman Empire. (He was aware of the irony of “altruism” being the banner of a whole people’s Will To Power.)

Anyway, these codes involve continually suppressing the monkey drive, resulting in feelings of alienation and guilt in their adherents. The most extreme examples, for example those found in the Sermon of the Mount – or, more recently, in Gandhi’s ideals – are sheer absurdities. Rather than teaching us how to live better lives in the world, they derive their authority from the groundless belief in a life to come, the great hereafter.

There have been valiant philosophical attempts, before and after Nietzsche, to answer this kind of challenge, usually by watering down the monkey drive so that it becomes a kind of enlightened self-interest (although it remains clear that the version in fact “works” in worldly terms is more a kind of concealed selfishness: cheat the system, make as much money as you can, rip people off, etc. Just don’t advertise the fact that you’re doing it.)

Without a more satisfactory answer, we have no recourse to the folk codes, “the difference between right and wrong” as conventionally thought of. What is your answer to Nietzsche?