A collection of thirteenth-century songs made famous by Carl Orff in 1937 is Carmina Burana. Almost everyone has heard Orff’s opening song “O Fortuna” because the music occurs in numerous movies—too many movies according to some. That aside, the inspiration for Orff’s Carmina Burana was a collection of poems found in a Bavarian monastery.* A theme that runs through the poems is a lover’s problematic assurance to his beloved that his love is constant. Think trust. Or, as Ringo Star sings about it, “It Don’t Come Easy.”
Is it possible that humans have always had a problem trusting one another? Think of that old Adam and Eve joke:
Eve: “Do you love me?”
Adam” “Who else?”
You could argue that a very long time ago trust came more easily. Think tribal life in hunter-gatherer times. Eve and Adam knew each other—and no other. In small bands of people everyone knows everyone. Not so today. Stroll the sidewalk of Broadway in New York City about noon. See anyone you know? Live in a large apartment complex. Know much about anyone you see? Evolutionary psychologists argue that social contracts require both inferences and trust.** You might argue that your brain is well equipped to handle social agreements among people from diverse tribes. You know whom to trust. You can detect the untrustworthy.
Today we find ourselves in social contracts with people we never meet personally. People online. Imagine transporting one of our ancient hunter-gatherer tribesman into a world that houses such cyberpeople. But you say, “Maybe the ancient ones would have difficulty and maybe even some isolated Amazonian tribesman would have the same difficulty when removed from the locals and placed in a cosmopolitan or cyber setting, but look at what dating services have been able to accomplish among people of our time. Couples meet in those numerous online dating services, and many of them go on to get married. Certainly, their success indicates we have the wherewithal to recognize the trustworthiness of someone else. Certainly, they demonstrate that even online, people can determine whether constancy is in the cards. We’ve evolved.”
I ask, “Given the biology of a bisexual species that traditionally assigns a stronger mother-child bond than father-child bond, isn’t trust an issue of different degree for females than males? Once males serve a biological purpose, aren’t they a bit freer to wander out of the social contract? Can we see how a modern Eve, rather than a modern Adam, might ask that question about love and constancy?”
“Not really,” you say. “Don’t ignore that women can also be inconstant, especially in an age and in places where people pride themselves on their individual freedom. Women can be inconstant lovers even if they are mothers. I’ve read the stories in The Enquirer and seen the movies on Lifetime Movie Network.”
Eight centuries ago the authors—some of them monks?—of Carmina Burana knew that inconstancy is a problem for lovers. Maybe for all people in relationships of all kinds. Everyone has to make a “probability judgment” in a social contract, and a key component of any contract is that both sides will be trustworthy and constant. However, as Robyn Dawes writes, “On the basis of what is observed, we are asked to make some inference about what is unobserved, and that inference is uncertain.”*** Think online dating. What can be observed? What must be left to inference until one has an actual face-to-face experience with another? All online daters make probability judgments on uncertain inferences about the “unobserved.”
In judging trustworthiness and constancy, all of us believe we are experts. Yet, to some degree, all of us have the potential to be duped as much by our false inferences as by inconstant acquaintances and even untrustworthy charlatans out to take advantage of us. That’s what makes us wary. Social contracts in some form are inevitable and have been so for the life of the species. Maybe the structure of our brains has evolved to accommodate a planet with seven billion individuals and maybe we all acquire a certain amount of training in writing and carrying out social contracts. Yes, such contracts might have been simpler in simpler times, but we’re long past that now—unless we choose to strike out as new Adams and Eves to make reliable inferences in some isolated place.
I suppose one takeaway is that we should ask ourselves about inferences we all make about the “unobserved.” You make those inferences when you are on jury duty, and your sense in such a circumstance probably derives from a heightened awareness. After all, the destiny of another lies in what you conclude on the basis of inferences about the “unobserved.” But in matters of love and daily social contracts of any kind, are any of us as aware of those underlying inferences? You might say, “Definitely, and especially when anyone considers marriage or long-term commitments, such as co-habitation. The destiny of another and our own destiny depend on the reliability of those inferences.”
Ah! True love and constancy. And ah! Inferences about the unobserved. No wonder that for many, “It don’t come easy.”
*One might wonder why poems centered on a theme of love’s constancy might have been found in a monastery, but maybe the monks were among the few literate people in thirteenth-century Bavaria capable of reading anything.
**A book worth a look: Dawes, Robyn M., Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally. Boulder, CO, Westview Press. 2001, p. 72. An online article worth a look: Cosmides, Leda and John Tooby, “Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer,” Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Section entitled “Reasoning Instincts: An Example.” http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html
***Dawes, p. 72.
Is it possible that humans have always had a problem trusting one another? Think of that old Adam and Eve joke:
Eve: “Do you love me?”
Adam” “Who else?”
You could argue that a very long time ago trust came more easily. Think tribal life in hunter-gatherer times. Eve and Adam knew each other—and no other. In small bands of people everyone knows everyone. Not so today. Stroll the sidewalk of Broadway in New York City about noon. See anyone you know? Live in a large apartment complex. Know much about anyone you see? Evolutionary psychologists argue that social contracts require both inferences and trust.** You might argue that your brain is well equipped to handle social agreements among people from diverse tribes. You know whom to trust. You can detect the untrustworthy.
Today we find ourselves in social contracts with people we never meet personally. People online. Imagine transporting one of our ancient hunter-gatherer tribesman into a world that houses such cyberpeople. But you say, “Maybe the ancient ones would have difficulty and maybe even some isolated Amazonian tribesman would have the same difficulty when removed from the locals and placed in a cosmopolitan or cyber setting, but look at what dating services have been able to accomplish among people of our time. Couples meet in those numerous online dating services, and many of them go on to get married. Certainly, their success indicates we have the wherewithal to recognize the trustworthiness of someone else. Certainly, they demonstrate that even online, people can determine whether constancy is in the cards. We’ve evolved.”
I ask, “Given the biology of a bisexual species that traditionally assigns a stronger mother-child bond than father-child bond, isn’t trust an issue of different degree for females than males? Once males serve a biological purpose, aren’t they a bit freer to wander out of the social contract? Can we see how a modern Eve, rather than a modern Adam, might ask that question about love and constancy?”
“Not really,” you say. “Don’t ignore that women can also be inconstant, especially in an age and in places where people pride themselves on their individual freedom. Women can be inconstant lovers even if they are mothers. I’ve read the stories in The Enquirer and seen the movies on Lifetime Movie Network.”
Eight centuries ago the authors—some of them monks?—of Carmina Burana knew that inconstancy is a problem for lovers. Maybe for all people in relationships of all kinds. Everyone has to make a “probability judgment” in a social contract, and a key component of any contract is that both sides will be trustworthy and constant. However, as Robyn Dawes writes, “On the basis of what is observed, we are asked to make some inference about what is unobserved, and that inference is uncertain.”*** Think online dating. What can be observed? What must be left to inference until one has an actual face-to-face experience with another? All online daters make probability judgments on uncertain inferences about the “unobserved.”
In judging trustworthiness and constancy, all of us believe we are experts. Yet, to some degree, all of us have the potential to be duped as much by our false inferences as by inconstant acquaintances and even untrustworthy charlatans out to take advantage of us. That’s what makes us wary. Social contracts in some form are inevitable and have been so for the life of the species. Maybe the structure of our brains has evolved to accommodate a planet with seven billion individuals and maybe we all acquire a certain amount of training in writing and carrying out social contracts. Yes, such contracts might have been simpler in simpler times, but we’re long past that now—unless we choose to strike out as new Adams and Eves to make reliable inferences in some isolated place.
I suppose one takeaway is that we should ask ourselves about inferences we all make about the “unobserved.” You make those inferences when you are on jury duty, and your sense in such a circumstance probably derives from a heightened awareness. After all, the destiny of another lies in what you conclude on the basis of inferences about the “unobserved.” But in matters of love and daily social contracts of any kind, are any of us as aware of those underlying inferences? You might say, “Definitely, and especially when anyone considers marriage or long-term commitments, such as co-habitation. The destiny of another and our own destiny depend on the reliability of those inferences.”
Ah! True love and constancy. And ah! Inferences about the unobserved. No wonder that for many, “It don’t come easy.”
*One might wonder why poems centered on a theme of love’s constancy might have been found in a monastery, but maybe the monks were among the few literate people in thirteenth-century Bavaria capable of reading anything.
**A book worth a look: Dawes, Robyn M., Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally. Boulder, CO, Westview Press. 2001, p. 72. An online article worth a look: Cosmides, Leda and John Tooby, “Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer,” Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Section entitled “Reasoning Instincts: An Example.” http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html
***Dawes, p. 72.
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