Conscience from Consciousness
 by Andy Gilman

It's normal for texts in the great books cannons of the east and west to have a lot in common. These writings are all a part of The Great Conversation, addressing the perennial questions of humanity over millennia. A thread emerged recently among our recently scheduled great books seminars that was not intended, but which was surprising and thought provoking. The seminars were:
 
June 1, 2019 The Theory of the Leisure Class - Part One by Thorstein Veblen
 
May 19, 2019 Responsibility and Judgement  (selections) 
by Hannah Arendt

January 26, 2019 Structural Anthropology - Part One by Claude Levi-Strauss

Beginning with Structural Anthropology, we see Levi-Strauss take a systematic approach to the subject, following the recent advances realized in linguistics, centered around the concept of the phoneme... a simple unit whereupon a structure could be understood. What became very surprising was Levi-Strauss' first simple unit - the relationship between the maternal uncle and his nephew. Adjacent to this relationship was the dynamic between the mother and her brother, and also between the husband and wife. But behind these structures there was an imperative of the incest taboo. To avoid incest there are a myriad of structures, rituals, and traditions of women exchange among social groups.   

When a scientific line of inquiry reduces a phenomenon (like a hot bowl of your favorite soup) to a collection of bound molecules in motion, we sometimes find the account lacking the essence of the thing being studied, even if the reduction produces new knowledge. In the case of the imperative of the incest taboo, the seminar participants' reaction was not that the essence of the thing (i.e. the marriage) was missing, rather that the origin of the structure has an ugly beginning, and that perhaps all of the extrapolation and ceremony give a false impression of what is actually essential. Namely, are we fooling ourselves about what things mean? 
 
On June 1, we read and discussed the first half of The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen. As with Structural Anthropology, there were several surprises waiting for the group. Veblen posits that the origin of property stems from men's capture of women as spoils of conquest, which also extends to men's capture of other men as slaves. This text is concerned with society's development of a leisure class stemming from this warrior class, and to the showing of wealth to establish class differentiation, but the overlap with Lev-Strauss was striking both in terms of the transfer of women but also in describing the origins of daily life as violent, barbaric, and, again, ugly. 

Even if Veblen's and Levi-Strauss' accounts are not completely accurate, most agreed that the descriptions rang generally true, and at very least the investigations were highly thought provoking. But we were a little sickened. When we think of marriage, parenthood, business building, property ownership, societal gathering, and so on, we understand that there are veiled origins, and we also expect that our earliest beginnings must have been similar to what we see in the animal kingdom today. But we paused at barbarism. One avenue of thought then emerged which gave us some hope: we have evolved beyond our origins, and we didn't just upgrade the facade.

Conscience from Consciousness. In May, we read and discussed selections from Responsibility and Judgement by Hannah Arendt. She offered the following proposal: Conscience grows out of consciousness, just as judgement grows out of thinking. Arendt describes the trails of Nazi leaders, as well as examples of racism in our country, and she concludes that every one of us must examine our lives, and that in our actions we must be prepared to live with ourselves. We must be able to look ourselves in the mirror and face the ever-present judge that is there. We have awareness (consciousness) and interact with our environment, but beyond that a sense of goodness has evolved in us, even if its origins were merely practical (such as avoiding incest). Life is self-preserving and posits a self-value. Goodness is how life best thrives, much more so than through barbarism. If this is not true, then Nazism is only wrong because they lost the war.
 
While incest taboo may have evolved due to inviable offspring, the taboo now is much more informed by the damage a sexual relationship would cause in a familiar relationship that flourishes not just without this dynamic, but also because of its absence (e.g. a father and daughter), and this is good. Finally, while there may be a love, hate, and eventual armistice in self knowledge, or in origin knowledge, there is real cause for interest in how our nature has soared above our messy beginnings.