An Imaginary Interview with Dr Humberto Maturana

Today, in our "market-oriented" cultures, we continually hear that competition is the natural way for humans, just as, it is claimed, it is in nature. This, we are told, is "survival of the fittest, the strongest", and it will ultimately yield "progress".

Yet, strangely ... when we observe our reaction to people in misfortune or disaster (where a "competitive" advantage immediately presents itself), we generally find ourselves feeling sympathy, caring and nurturance ... when we are in work, we find we are most satisfied and productive when we cooperate with our fellow workers ... when our closest pets experience us in sadness or bereavement, there is something about their presence that we humans might call empathy for our condition.

So, in these observations in daily life, I claim that we do not see "competition" operating, we see love, mutual respect, caring. If a coherent explanation of humanness could show that human beings are biologically loving (cooperative) beings, and that "competition" and "hierarchy" and "control" are cultural impositions which negate our humanness, how would our awareness be changed, and how might our behaviours come to differ?

I am a biologist who is interested in explaining humanness, so I am interested in explaining what takes place in daily life, and in explaining how, over evolutionary time, humanness arose.

What is a human being? What do we see when we claim someone to be human? I say that a human being is a living system living in conversations, where a conversation is an entwining of language and emotion ... as the emotion changes, the language changes, as the language changes the emotion changes. I claim that rationality emerges in language, that all rationalities are founded in emotions, and so there are an infinite number of rationalities, or realities. We experience this in daily life when in love we can do certain things, things which make sense or are coherent, which we cannot do when we are in anger.

I also claim that language is our human manner of living together, and is not a communication "tool". It is a coordination, or dance, of behaviours that has become more complex. For instance, pointing is an operation in language, where we humans look in the direction of the pointing and not at the finger, while my cat, outside of language, only looks at my finger. I claim that language takes place as one coordinated dance or behaviour coordinates a second, that we live in it, that it can only arise in a mutual dance (and so always requires two beings), and that love is central to the development of this increased complexity and therefore to what makes us human.

How is this so? Well, language involves dramatically increased complexity in relationship and for language to be conserved, and to become a manner of living, this increased complexity of relationship must be maintained. The only way this can take place is where the beings live in mutual respect, caring, and love. If the relationship is one of competition, control or aggression, there will be fracture or parting or withdrawal or death, and language will not be conserved. So I claim that for language to have arisen and to have begun to be conserved some 3 million years ago, the beings in which this took place must have been living in love, and, for a lineage to have formed, this must have existed in their biology.

In other words, I am saying that, understanding language in the way I do, it follows logically that human beings have evolved as biologically loving beings, otherwise language would never have become our manner of living.

How is it then that the history of humanity in the last 3,000 years speaks so much of war, misery, and injustice. I claim that to be human is to be capable of anything which humans can do. Humans can love and can hate, can nurture and can kill, can heal and can torture, and they can do all these things once language is established and conserved. All possibilities are open to us once language has become our manner of living, and what results will in general be formed within the prevailing culture.

Our European culture is one of patriarchy, and patriarchy has appropriation (or ownership) as central ... appropriation of land, of fertility, of objects of all sort, of life itself (we only need look to recent decisions in patent law to see this). So, in patriarchy, control and hierarchy and negation become conserved, and humanness becomes incidental.

Yet within our culture, I think we continue to live a love-based childhood, and that patriarchy becomes impressed on us only as we grow into adulthood. This results in a fundamental schism for us, memories of humanness coexisting with the negation of humanness.

That this is so can be a compelling awareness, for in recognising this, we have the possibility of a different world, a world based in love, mutual respect and care, where the experience of the other is one of acceptance simply because he or she is a human being. That is a world based in humanness, and that is a world I, personally, prefer.

(Footnote: I want to emphasise that I am not saying this as an opinion, nor am I trying to sway anyone to agree with me, nor do I have privileged access to the "truth" ... I claim that all our "truths" arise, and only arise, as preferences in our coexistence. As a scientist, I simply want to rigorously explain, clearly stating my starting point and central proposition. In the space here provided, I have not been able to do all this, not been able to argue from first principles. I can only claim that, given more time and space, I can adequately support what I say.)

You can contact David at dmendes@netspace.net.au or visit the Maturana section of his website