Social Animals have Two Modes of Being

By Denis Rancourt, PhD


This article was first published on Dissident Voice:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/07/social-animals-have-two-modes-of-being/


I want to describe what I think is a fundamental truth about the individual bio-psychology of social animals, including humans.

Setting for the model

The setting for my model is arguably the greatest current scientific revolution: The formal realization and empirical demonstration that virtually all of social behaviour and individual psychology is encased in the evolutionary, biological and metabolic reality of dominance hierarchy.

For example, see Sapolsky’s influential 2005 review of primate studies [1], and my critical review of medicine [2]. The metabolism of the monoamine neurotransmitter serotonin and the associated evolutionary biology is now an established area of science [3][4][5][6]. In my opinion, the said area of science, although far from complete, constitutes a foundational building block of the new tectonic-plate theory of social science, whether social scientists are aware of it yet or not. And it has started to infuse the popular culture [7].

This knowledge implies that the metabolic biochemistry of dominance locks us in. No socialism theory that presumes altruistic cooperation as its organizing principle can ever work. Non-hierarchical anarchism and its libertarian cousin are useful conceptual end-points that can never be sustainably achieved. The best we can do is to have a responsive and optimally (evolutionarily) beneficial dominance hierarchy that is actively prevented from exercising pathological excess [8].

The model

In this setting, I propose that the animal has two modes of being, which are binary end-points on an attitudinal, self-image and behavioural psychological-state-scape.

I’m not saying that each individual is permanently in one or the other mode of being. Rather, I propose that the individual shifts and slides into one or the other mode depending on his immediate social circumstances and on his history (biological and metabolic memory) of being predominantly in one mode or the other.

The modes of being that I propose map onto the social dominance hierarchy, and are consistent with the roles of different individuals within the hierarchy.

Specifically, one mode is the mode (and strategy) adopted by the dominated individual. This mode is one were the individual seeks “fairness” and minimal aggressions in their environment. The individual seeks a “safe space” and has no actual design to displace dominants. The culture of individuals that coalesce into such a stratum of the hierarchy is one where “kindness” and “being a good person” are the highest social values that are encouraged and rewarded. Altruism and “goodiness” are elevated to a status meriting religious indulgences. Viciousness actuated by enforcers within the social stratum is turned towards violators of this code.

The other mode is the mode (and strategy) adopted by the individual who intends to be and to remain dominant. It is an outlook of waging and winning battles for dominance. This is the climber with a “killer’s instinct”, prepared to joust for relative advantage and eager to dominate.

These modes are distinct mental and physiological states of being. They occur inside the individual and cannot always be ascertained reliably from outside indicators. For example, climbers in a corporate or government office hierarchy may achieve success by “kissing ass” rather than by confronting superiors. Advancement in these institutions may arise from actuation of the goodiness mode rather than the competitive mode, or competition within an office level may be the selector used by superiors. Anything is possible in a given corporate enterprise, in terms of utilization of intrinsic human behaviours.

The two distinct modes are real regarding the individual’s experience and bodily biochemistry, in the circumstances, rather than ascertainable from superficial outside features such as house or car or ring size.

The psychological-state-scape is binary in the two modes because the metabolic physiologies of the two modes are incompatible. The holistic state of being cannot be both simultaneously. Different blood biochemistries and tissue and organ responses are in play. It’s one or the other: Vying for dominance or accepting subservience. Fight or flight. Challenge or hide. More than a billion years of evolution ain’t goin anywhere.

“Bosses” will find each other to fight. Subservient individuals, subservient in the circumstances, will lower their eyes, group to the edges of the room and exchange vital information about who is “a nice person”.

Application to politics

The establishment bosses that run the Left, more than the Right, exploit the population of individuals that are most easily corralled into the goodiness mode and seduced by goodiness promises.

The boss propaganda (mainstream media, institutional messaging) is clearly designed in this direction: human rights, minority rights, environmentalism, democracy, participation… whereas the state continues its vicious wars of dominance world-wide and its violent apartheid of aboriginal and low economic classes and of non-violent Criminal Code offenders.

It is a textbook illustration. Extreme social justice warriorism and safe-space obsessionism are, in my opinion, pathological and predictable outcomes of unchecked exploitation by those who ride the Left.

As a backlash against the overly successful establishment Left propaganda and institutional capture, individuals who are inhabited by the competition mode react in revolt by violating the goodiness rules of expression and behaviour, causing generalized and amplified outrage. They break the taboos, express racism, use the N-word, graffiti swastikas, speak their minds, and trigger and troll the masses.

The establishment bosses that run the Right have not been keen to use this relatively unmanageable population and have been only tentative in exploring how to use it. Trump changed that. There is no denying that Trump unsettled traditional Republican forces.

This does not mean that all Right-thinking voters are competition-mode individuals, not by any stretch. Most Right-thinking voters are conservatives who seek the “safe space” of traditional family and religious values. They are horrified at the prospect of an eroded institutional framework that could threaten this safe space and they seek the good-person representatives that would protect them.

The establishment bosses that exploit both the Left and the Right understand that goodiness is a winning electoral formula, since most individuals in a dominance hierarchy are goodiness-mode followers rather that competition-mode individuals who vie for higher echelons. This is the nature of a stable dominance hierarchy: Most people just want to be oppressed fairly, to know their place and to be safe. In a so-called “democracy”, since show elections are required, the only question is the flavour of the goodiness.

A problem arises when the flavours of goodiness are so different that the other side is threatened when institutions are captured. Then many will feel they are in danger and the conditions are ripe for competition-mode redress.

In these circumstances, the Right voters shift to seeking and supporting competition-mode leaders that will fight back on their behalf, and more of the Right adopts a competition-style stance. It could have gone the other way, like it did for decades. The Right could have accepted defeat, accepted the humiliation of being “bad persons”, and sought refuge in their own spaces. The Right could have stayed in a social state with most of its individuals in the goodiness mode being pampered by goodiness-mode representatives promising elusive “justice”.

In Canada, I think Preston Manning was a goodiness organizer (reform by rational argument) whereas Harper organized a coup and dismantled as much Left capture of institutions as possible. The Left stuck with goodiness and turned it on, screaming about the Right’s demolition of “human rights”, “environmental protection” and “democracy”. We got Trudeau. Now the Right is rightly pointing to some of the pathologies of going too far with Left goodiness, and its managers are exaggerating the institutional threats against family and against human nature itself, no less.

So goes the seesaw of political manipulation, perfectly in resonance with the intrinsic modes of being of the individual. The individuals naturally self-organize and are corralled into protective communities, both within and between strata of the hierarchy.

Application to religion

Institutionally organized religion is a perfected system of goodiness rules, which stabilizes and strengthens a dominance hierarchy. Even environmentalism can be understood as such a state religion [9].

Religious belief and practice, for most people, is deeply ingrained in the goodiness mode of being of the individual, as should be obvious from my above description. The rituals of recycling, healthy lifestyle practice, donations to The United Way and so on, while they have no positive effect on population health, systemic negative class bias or “the planet”, nurture and solidify a prolonged and robust adoption by the individual of the goodiness mode of being.

As long as a majority of citizens reside in the goodiness mode of being, the dominance hierarchy cannot be challenge and major displacements will not occur. Public peace will prevail.

Of course religious seminal texts, nowadays including much of the so-called scientific literature, are more complex than state propaganda and can be used, as needed or desired, to incite individuals into the competitive mode of being, into the confrontational state, to be manipulated by political organizations.

This is actively seen today in Zionist Israel with Torah and holocaust scholarship, where the texts are used to incite and rationalize genocidal displacement, confinement and suppression of the native population. Interestingly, hard science (genetics) has established that white European Jews that have always run the modern state of Israel do not have a relevant ancestry that originated in Palestine.[10] If science mattered.

Conclusion and verification

It is in our animal and human nature — inherited on our evolutionary path — to occupy either the goodiness or competitive modes of being, which represent biochemical and physiological states of either accepting or challenging the dominance of others.

The reality of my model of individual modes of being can be tested (experienced) by experimentation with LSD, which alters serotonin metabolism.[11] A common description of mild LSD experiences is that the subject is able to escape their persona and become conscious of their identity programing and conscious of the identity or motivational programming of others.[12] Dominance hierarchy is dissolved by blocking serotonin receptors on neurons. No wonder that’s illegal.

Endnotes

[1] “The Influence of Social Hierarchy on Primate Health”, by R.M. Sapolsky. Science, 29 April 2005, vol. 308, pages 648-652. DOI: 10.1126/science.1106477. http://pinniped.net/sapolsky2005.pdf

[2] “Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis”, by Denis Rancourt, Research Gate, December 2015, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285574571_Cancer_arises_from_stress-induced_breakdown_of_tissue_homeostasis

[3] “Serotonin, social status and aggression”, by Donald Edwards and Edward Kravitzt, 1997, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, vol. 7, pages 812-819. http://animalnecessity.com/doc/research/Serenin/Serotonin-Social-Status.pdf

[4] “Serotonin modulates behavioral reactions to unfairness”, by Molly J. Crockett et al., Science, 2008 June 27; 320(5884): 1739. doi:10.1126/science.1155577. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2504725/

[5] “Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior through effects on harm aversion”, by Molly J. Crockett et al., PNAS, October 5, 2010, vol. 107, no. 40, 17433-17438. http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/107/40/17433.full.pdf

[6] “Serotonin and Dominance”, by Anna Ziomkiewicz, January 2016, In: Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1440-1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310586509_Serotonin_and_Dominance

[7] “Jordan Peterson and the Threat of Working-class Intellectual and Attitudinal Liberation”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, June 3, 2018. https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/06/jordan-peterson-and-the-threat-of-working-class-intellectual-and-attitudinal-liberation/

[8] “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, September 7, 2017. https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/09/cause-of-usa-meltdown-and-collapse-of-civil-rights/

[9] “The Climate Religion”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, September 15, 2016. https://dissidentvoice.org/2016/09/the-climate-religion/

[10] “A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages”, by Marta D. Costa et al., Nature Communications, vol. 4, Article number: 2543 (2013). https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543

[11] “Serotonin and Hallucinogens”, by GK Aghajanian and GJ Marek, Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 21, pages 16S–23S (1999). https://www.nature.com/articles/1395318

[12] “Larry Hagman 'All Politicians Should Use LSD'”, interview of Larry Hagman, YouTube, November 24, 2012 upload by xBehindthetruthx. https://youtu.be/UBanX4kpswo

Urban landowner rights versus zoning bylaw practice in Old Ottawa East by Denis Rancourt

This article was first published in the July 1, 2018 issue of the Ontario Landowners Association:

http://www.ontariolandowners.ca/news/urban-landowner-rights-versus-zoning-bylaw-practice-in-old-ottawa-east-by-denis-rancourt/

Basically, a small neighbourhood in Ottawa is being devastated by large three-storey multi-unit buildings being built next to family homes, sometimes encasing and isolating a given home or small cluster of homes. The general bylaw prohibits three-story buildings on the small lot sizes. The City’s Committee of Adjustment is allowing this abuse by improperly using a loop-hole in the law. The Committee has virtually always decided that erecting a different species of building onto too small a lot size constitutes a “minor variance” from the bylaw. On the contrary, the bylaw is intended to protect residents from exactly this type of de facto expropriation. ...

Here is the article:


I’m a volunteer researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (ocla.ca) and I have seen many non-stop government violations of individual rights in several arenas but recently I got a front-row seat at the violations of my own landowner rights.

I fought them and won. This is how I did it.

Landowner rights are two-sided: You have a right to use your property. And you have a right not to be subjected to undue nuisance from other landowner’s uses of their property. The latter is the so-called nuisance tort of common law.

In an urban or community environment, the municipality or city in addition is given statutory rights intended to optimize service provision and to minimize conflicting ambitions. The resulting creatures are called zoning bylaws, which are enforced by police powers.

Virtually all the problems arise at the boundaries between lots and between differently zoned areas, where owners on either side of the boundaries have different designs.

Badly zoned residential areas allow multiple and changing problem boundaries between lots, where constant impositions are forced on established residents by changing uses of lots. This can in-effect amount to forced expropriation out of one’s residential neighbourhood that historically had a definite character and lifestyle culture.

My own neighbourhood of Old Ottawa East (formerly Archville, which was incorporated as the village of Ottawa East in 1888 and in 1907 was amalgamated with the growing community of Ottawa) is particularly bad in this regard. The bylaw zoning allows both single-family dwellings to co-exist with rental multi-unit four-floor-level buildings. And it allows single-family dwellings to be demolished and replaced with such multi-unit buildings.

This is what that looks like for my neighbour at 39 Chestnut Avenue (the small white house):

My neighbour is in a wheelchair and her house was adapted for her at great expense. She is now suddenly surrounded by noisy air-conditioning units, shade-casting buildings, privacy-vitiating high windows, and many near-proximity noisy neighbours. She opposed the out-of-character developments but the Committee of Adjustment (“Committee”) and the Ontario Municipal Board (“Board”), in their infinite wisdom, decided that the developments were “minor variances” and were “desirable for the appropriate development”.

In my own recent case, my wonderful immediate neighbour died of cancer and her husband moved to a managed home. They owned two lots because the second was a large vegetable garden and a utility building. They supplied their extended family and many neighbours with tons of vegetables.

The developer who bought the two lots made applications to sever the lots into three and so-called “minor variance” applications to build a large two-unit three-story building and a large single-unit home. Full-lot-footprint affairs.

This would have had deleterious effects on my family’s enjoyment of our property.

It was the beginning of my crash course in the corrupt practice of “minor variances” in Ontario. I was to learn that the minor variance provision (s. 45(1)) of the Planning Act is unconstitutional, and that both the Committee and the Board most-often do not have jurisdiction to approve variances.

I also learned that Ontario is the only province in Canada whose bylaw-variance provision in its planning act sets a jurisdictional threshold as “minor variance”, without defining “minor” and without providing the established criteria of undue harm from compliance with the bylaw and absence of injury to neighbouring properties.

I talked to many people and decided, with my wife’s permission and support, to make full legal arguments against the applications. I’m not a lawyer but I have made constitutional arguments before in the courts.

The staff of the Committee and of the Board were professional, competent and helpful, a nice change compared to Ontario courts!

I was shocked by the Committee at its hearing of my challenge because it did things that no administrative tribunal in Canada is supposed to do:

    It expressly stated that it would not hear or receive any constitutional arguments whatsoever.
    It expressly stated that it would not hear or receive any challenge to its jurisdiction to decide the minor variance applications.

These statements by the Chair of the Committee, Helena Prockiw, are equivalent to deciding that the constitution and the Charter do not apply in a committee of adjustment hearing and that, unlike with the mere Supreme Court of Canada, the jurisdiction of the Committee cannot be challenged.

I expressed my dismay to no avail.

Only one out of five Committee members opposed the variance applications, even though a strict interim control bylaw was in force that was grossly violated, in addition to the general bylaw.

I then filed a notice of appeal to the Board. The developer hired two lawyers from a large law firm and lined up an expert witness. The partner at the firm in an email to me said: “We are of the preliminary view that your constitutional argument is not properly brought to the OMB, but should be the subject matter of a court Application. You may wish to research this before filing your notices.”

That is plain wrong and is echoed by City lawyers. So you have to be careful.

Then I filed my Notice of Constitutional Question, in view of the scheduled Board hearing, to the Attorney Generals (Ontario and Canada). When the Attorney General of Ontario’s counsel responded to me, there was no mention that “your constitutional argument is not properly brought to the OMB”, to the contrary.

My Notice of Constitutional Question prompted the City to request standing to intervene at the Board on the constitutional question. The Board in-effect granted this and I advised that I did not object.

Next I served and filed my full legal argument, with much of my evidence and a description of what my main expert witness would say. I also sent it to the Attorney Generals and to the City’s lawyer. The 53-page document is posted on the OCLA web site here:

http://ocla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/PUB-OMB-PL180027-Appellant-Rancourt-submissions-of-2018-05-08.pdf

It tells the full story in evidence and lays out the legal arguments.

Here are all my legal arguments, in notice of appeal format:

>>>>Unconstitutionality and Violation of Charter rights

    Section 45(1) of the Planning Act (henceforth, the Act) is unconstitutional because in-effect it infringes or denies the complainant’s s. 15(1) Charter right of equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination:

(a) The applicant’s common law property rights are kept intact, whereas the common law property rights (nuisance tort) of the complainant are prejudicially negated, disregarded and violated.

(b) The residents living near the applicant’s land are denied the full protection and benefit of the zoning bylaw whereas other residents are not.

    In the alternative, the complainant is discriminated against as an ordinary resident of a dwelling, acting in personal interest to protect his living environment, compared to a non-resident developer acting with a business interest.

    The said discrimination is established in the body of the decisions made by the Committee to grant the requested relief from the bylaws. It is quantitative and palpable, and is thus not saved by a s. 1 Oakes analysis. It is not prescribed by law nor demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

    The Committee refused to hear or consider the appellant’s constitutional argument. On the contrary, the Supreme Court has been clear that constitutional challenges should be heard by the administrative tribunal (hence the Committee, and now the Board): Cooper v. Canada, 1996 CanLII 152 (SCC), [1996] 3 S.C.R. 854.

>>>>Constitutional vagueness of the Planning Act

    Section 45(1) of the Act is unconstitutionally vague, in that it does not establish transparent boundaries for the domain of jurisdiction of the Committee to authorize variances from the provisions of the by-laws in effect (in this case the Interim Control Bylaw 2017-245 and the Zoning Bylaw 2008-250).

    The doctrine against vagueness in the laws is founded on two rationales: a law must provide fair notice to citizens and it must limit enforcement discretion, e.g.: R. v. Nova Scotia Pharmaceutical Society, [1992] 2 SCR 606, 1992 CanLII 72 (SCC).

    The doctrine against vagueness applies to all law, from the criminal code to regulatory enactments. Any provision of law, which does not satisfy both rationales of the doctrine against vagueness, is invalid and without force or effect.

>>>> Jurisdictional argument

    Section 45(1) of the Act provides conditional jurisdiction to the Committee and to the Board to authorize variance from provisions of bylaws enacted pursuant to the Act. The jurisdiction to authorize variance from bylaw provisions is limited to “minor” variances, which is a true jurisdictional question.

    The historical jurisprudence of allowing minor variances is to admit the difficulty of imposing codified bylaw conditions on the complexities of real land-use circumstances.

    Any jurisdictional question must be answered both objectively and correctly; it is not a matter of discretion; however the Act does not provide a definition of or a test for the jurisdictional threshold expressed as “minor”. Therefore s. 45(1) of the Act is unconstitutionally vague. In the alternative, if the impugned provision is not constitutionally vague (which is denied), then the meaning of “minor” must be taken from the common-law jurisprudence, not solely from Ontario case law that has developed in a statutory context in which a test for “minor” is not specified.

    On this basis, the Committee did not have the jurisdiction to substantially override the prohibitions of the Interim Control Bylaw 2017-245 passed by the elected Council, nor did it have the jurisdiction to override the general bylaw. The Board also does not have the jurisdiction to do so.

>>>> The variances are not desirable for appropriate development

    In the alternative, if s. 45(1) of the Planning Act is constitutional (which is denied) and if the Tribunal has jurisdiction (which is denied), then the applications should be denied because the applied-for variances are not desirable for the appropriate development of the lots:

    There are unacceptable and easily avoidable deleterious effects for the neighbours in this established community.
    There are unanswered and proven concerns of soil toxicity and public health, without a city plan to prevent health risk.

The following are some particulars in this regard. [And so on…]

Within hours, the applicant (developer) had abandoned all his applications and suggested that the hearing was not necessary.

He implemented a plan B and is now building two single-unit homes on the two original lots. He has been respectful, responsible and responsive to the community in the on-going building process.

I responded that I was willing to proceed with the constitutional questions, which I argued were not moot.

Within days, the Board released its formal order that the applications are denied for the reason that the applicant advised he would not make submissions. The matter of the appeal is closed.

However, the minor variance provision of the Planning Act remains unconstitutional and continues to be misused. It is unlawfully a planning instrument that gives the tribunals virtually unlimited discretion. Also, the general bylaw must be changed.

I’m helping neighbours and the community association to continue the battle, and some have adopted my legal arguments.

Recently, zoning law procedures have been overhauled in Ontario. The Board has been replaced by a “Local Planning Appeal Tribunal”. But, unfortunately, the “minor variance” statute provision and the legal culture in Ontario have not changed. Appeals of minor variance decisions are run essentially the same way as before. I will witness the procedural differences soon. I hope that things have not been made worst for ordinary landowners and residents.