Lincoln and the American Superorganism

Two things on my mind: 1) how Lincoln ranks #2 behind Jefferson as the USA’s greatest environmental philosopher, and 2) how during the Civil War he prophetically used the concept of superorganism to explain and defend the integrity of the Union.

The ecological concept of superorganism is featured in a new study of ants written by E O Wilson and Bert Hoelldobler. Hoelldobler summarizes:

Leafcutter ants make unbelievable nest structures. They have castles underground that go eight meters deep, that have a surface of about 50 square meters, and all sort of channels, chambers. It’s a beautifully constructed piece of art, and not one ant would be able to do this; this is an emergent structure of interactions that follow certain rules of thumb that we don’t understand yet. Almost as complicated as the brain. Put a couple million individuals — tiny little brains — together, and they interact according to certain rules that create an emergent pattern. The end result is these fantastic nests. And not only that, these collectives of little brains — if you take a picture of the brain, a brain consists of a couple million or billion neurons. The members of an ant colony [are neurons that form] a little brain. These are millions of brains connected in a way we don’t understand yet.

It’s as exciting as understanding the pattern of a brain. We try to understand the connections of these millions of ants that creates this caste system, complex communication and foraging and territorial strategies, and it’s all done by these interactions. When you look at these things, you can’t avoid saying, at this stage an insect colony functions like an organism. A superorganism. And you can go forward and say, this is an extended phenotype: selection doesn’t work on individual level, but on the whole colony.

Sociobiologists are wary of applying their conclusions about insects to human history because they don’t want to get stuck in the ideology of biological determinism; yet Hoelldobler continues:

So do we learn from this about humans? I’m very careful, because human society is a society built on a cultural fundamental basis. But there are biological rules to our social behavior: no question. We are one of the few species to evolve social systems. What is common in all these social systems is a division of labor; and once this was evolutionarily rendered, it became incredibly successful. This is true for almost any society: once they reach a high division of labor, they have enormous successes due to division of labor. And the second thing, once a society becomes almost like an organism, it becomes very tightly interconnected.

In our early past, in our still-biological past, 15,000 years ago we were hunter gatherers. We showed group cohesiveness and discrimination against other groups. It was adaptive. It was quite understandable that we evolved traits of group recognition, and making sure we recognized foreigners. This is my conviction that this is probably the early basis for our unfortunate xenophobic behavior that is still in us. It’s a behavior that is now terribly maladaptive. I keep always citing David Hume — that just because there is an atavistic trait in us, it doesn’t justify that we live it.

Superorganism is a word that describes “group cohesiveness”—whether that group be ants or humans who unite themselves through “social systems”; and we’ll consider how Lincoln applied the concept to explain and defend the “group cohesiveness” of US citizens in a moment. But first, I want to point out that, while Hoelldobler roughly equates ant colonies and national culture, our concept of biocitizen as a citizen of the planet (and not just a nation), lets us understand human history in a slightly different and perhaps more profound and useful way. When we think of Japan or Italy, we think of food—of sushi and tomato sauce. Their unique cuisines are evidence that their societies are superorganisms nested inside a larger superorganism, for sushi is the result of the perpetual interaction of Japanese people with their biomes, which are themselves expressions of geology and climate. Hoelldobler emphasizes the “division of labor” as an essential aspect of “group cohesiveness.” I won’t argue against that observation, but point out that when I use the concept of superorganism to understand human history, I do it with a much wider perspective. I’m much more interested in how human society is only a part of the larger superorganism James Lovelock calls Gaia. Whether we are aware of it yet or not, all humans are biocitizens who behave as a “plain members and citizens” of a local and global biotic community that “include[s] soils, waters, plants, animals, or collectively: the land.” That we destroy the earth, the superorganism that vivifies our transitory national cultures, is a sign we ignore our status as biocitizens; and the reason we ignore our status is that we get paid to do so. Our present form of “group cohesiveness” is dictated by industrial capitalism with its individualist dog-eat-dog/Goldman Sachs-dominated “caste system” and its suicidal manner of producing food, shelter and clothing.

I say “suicidal” because I’m thinking about BP and the Gulf of Mexico; no more shrimps for gumbo. No more “group cohesiveness” either as the economy crashes and humans flee the dying superorganism that is the Gulf. What is Jimmy Buffet going to do with his brand new 50 million $$ Margaritaville Hotel? The beaches in front of it are ruined. Our “maladaptation” as species is heart-breakingly apparent—

Now, what is so cool about Lincoln is that he didn’t have to read about superorganism theory to understand that US citizens, and government, were symbiotic parts of the superorganism of the land mapped as the USA. And what’s even cooler is that he claimed that the land hated slavery. Lincoln insisted that the “social system” called forth by it was the one Jefferson outlined in the Declaration of Independence, of a government based on principle of equality.

We find Lincoln’s articulation of the American Superorganism is in the Second Annual Message to Congress, which was delivered on December 1, 1862. It’s one of his longest, wide-ranging and difficult pronouncements—and his greatest. It contains every one of the political and moral themes we love him for expressing. Only a month after delivering it, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The Second Annual Message was his final appeal to the Confederates to end their war. He promised them “compensated emancipation”: if they ended slavery, the government would pay them for their lost “property.” But, they didn’t stop fighting, and when they lost and they got no money.

Tellingly, he begins by observing the biological connection of Americans to the land: “Since your last annual assembling another year of health and bountiful harvests has passed….”

Outlining “compensated emancipation” a few pages later, he describes the American Superorganism:

A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. “One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.” It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part. That portion of the earth’s surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is not well adapted for two or more. Its vast extent and its variety of climate and productions are of advantage in this age for one people, whatever they might have been in former ages.

What he’s saying is that our individual bodies, and our large-scale human histories, come and go while the earth remains “forever” our source-of-being and home. The earth—”its variety of climate and productions”—permit only “one national family.” Here Lincoln reveals his environmental philosophy: it’s not just him, a president, defending the Union. The American Superorganism defends it. All he’s doing is passing along its message.

The American Superorganism preserves the Union in these ways, said he:

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. ….

There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary upon which to divide. Trace through, from east to west, upon the line between the free and slave country. and we shall find a little more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors’ lines, over which people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their presence. …

The great interior region bounded east by the Alleghanies, north by the British dominions, west by the Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part of Tennessee, all of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of Dakota, Nebraska, and part of Colorado, already has above 10,000,000 people, and will have 50,000,000 within fifty years if not prevented by any political folly or mistake. It contains more than one-third of the country owned by the United States–certainly more than 1,000,000 square miles. Once half as populous as Massachusetts already is, it would have more than 75,000,000 people. A glance at the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great body of the Republic.

Lincoln goes on to explain that the “great interior region” is the home of future generations of US citizens, and that it is cut off from the coasts where their products will be shipped. This will not be allowed, he prophesizes.

And it wasn’t.

Conclusion:

The American Superorganism remains “the great body of the Republic.”

And Lincoln, the second greatest environmental philosopher in US history, is still correct:

Our national strife springs not from our permanent part; not from the land we inhabit: not from our national homestead. …. Our strife pertains to ourselves–to the passing generations of men–and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.

He fought to end the slavery of humans, and kept the US from committing suicide. Humbly and to the fullest extent I can, I fight to end the slavery of the earth, for the same reason: to keep US from committing suicide.

In one generation, we have to correct our “maladaption.” We can do that.

We can be biocitizens—mainly because we already are. We just need to awaken to, and be comfortable with, what we are; that’s what Biocitizen courses are designed to achieve. Our classes develop your vocabulary for describing and understanding the bios, the biomes, the biographies that tell the story of our environmental history,

We cannot escape history said Lincoln in his closing words. So we must change it, by changing ourselves—evolving beyond industrial capitalism, by rejecting (one little step at a time) every behavior that ignores our shared body with Gaia.

As Lincoln showed us, there is more freedom, equality, beauty, health, and happiness to be found in that shared sublime identity than in any other we have ever pretended, and failed, to establish. Let us abide with that which abideth forever.

Thank you Abe, for giving us your words, your morals, your environmental philosophy. We are, still, “the last best hope of earth”—

“The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just–a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”

Related posts:

1. A closer look @ our superorganism
2. American Animism: 4 discussions
3. what “native” means
4. Discovering American Romanticism (Where it Began)
5. American Animism: 4 Environmental Philosophy discussions