The eight deadly sins of civilized humanity

The eight deadly sins of civilized mankind is the title of a book by Konrad Lorenz that was published in 1973, the same year that Lorenz received the Nobel Prize . In it, the author examines those processes which, in his opinion, contribute to the dehumanization of humanity. The text volume is based on a six-part series of lectures that were broadcast in November and December 1970 by Bayerischer Rundfunk and later by other radio stations. The origin from the radio medium is evident in the concise, pointed formulations, but is also reflected in the lack of evidence, comments and references.

Emergence

The first version of the chapters of the book appeared as part of a commemorative publication in honor of Eduard Baumgarten's 70th birthday . In the early 1940s, Baumgarten, as dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the Albertina in Königsberg , ensured that Konrad Lorenz was appointed to the chair of human psychology there. This version was already available in the early autumn of 1969. Lorenz gave the manuscript to his student Norbert Bischof to read it against, "who then saw himself compelled to seriously warn his mentor about some formulations". His critical remarks related above all to those passages that dealt with crime and the rebellion of the youth and made analogies between “diseases of society” and diseases in the medical sense. Lorenz then corrected some passages in the text and took over parts of Bishop's proposals, which he had presented to him in a nine-page statement.

In the autumn of the following year the text - which Lorenz called “Sermon” - was published as a radio essay in several parts : “My sermon, which was broadcast on the radio, met with an echo that amazed me. I received countless letters from people who asked for the printed text, and finally I was categorically asked by my best friends to make the text available to a wide readership. ”In 1972 Lorenz therefore set up the radio manuscripts for a third form of publication , the first edition of which was published as a paperback in 1973 ; by July 2009 it had 34 editions.

content

Konrad Lorenz derives his “naturalistic interpretation of human nature” from the sub-areas of biology, such as ecology and genetics , which at that time were urgently becoming public awareness , but mainly from the comparative behavioral research that he co-founded .

Lorenz writes in Chapter I (“Structural properties and functional disorders of living systems”) that it is “misleading to call humans an 'instinct-reduction being'”, and he justifies this as follows:

"Man undoubtedly lacks long chains of instinctual movements that are necessarily linked to one another , but as far as one can extrapolate from the results obtained in highly developed mammals , one can assume that he has not fewer but more genuinely instinctive drives than any animal."

As examples of such “human impulses”, Lorenz cites “hatred, love, friendship, anger, loyalty, attachment, mistrust, trust, etc., etc.” and explains that these colloquial words “denote all states that are ready for very specific ones Behaviors correspond, not unlike the expressions coined by scientific behavior research also do, such as aggressiveness, striving for hierarchy, territoriality, etc. (...). "

In 1975 Walter Schurian summarized Lorenz's cultural-philosophical axioms as follows:

"The history of human societies follows the same biological principles as in the animal kingdom."
"Social and economic realities and conditions are only of secondary importance, because they too are solely subject to natural laws."
"The influence of human cognitive abilities, forward-looking planning and self-fulfilling ability to act on cultural development are of secondary importance."

Based on his basic assumptions, Lorenz analyzes eight social phenomena in the following chapters of his book - "Processes of dehumanization" - which he interprets as a conflict between the biological nature of man and the behaviors enforced by the social environment: the overpopulation of the earth; the devastation of natural habitats; the excessive acceleration of all social processes; the urge to the immediate satisfaction of all needs ( hedonism ); genetic decay due to the loss of natural selection ; the loss of established traditions ; the increasing indoctrinability ; the nuclear weapons .

Structural properties and functional disorders of living systems (pp. 11–18)

As an ethologist, Konrad Lorenz understands animal and human behavior as a function of a system that develops during the tribal history of a species that takes place in geological time spans. The selection pressure of an environment on the conspecifics determines their viability and thus the further development of the species. Failures can build up as disturbances of very specific behavioral mechanisms, analogous to the disturbance of the systematic regulation of hormones by the thyroid (AT Kocher). Each hormone has a specific effect on the entire organism, and especially when hormones interact in opposite directions, the failure of one hormone disturbs the harmony of the effects and counter-effects and leads to overexcitability or idiocy.

Lorenz attributes the much more complex overall system of human drives to instincts (behavioral programs). Similar to the big cats, in humans the chains of instincts have dissolved into their individual parts in the course of the higher development of learning ability and insight (P. Leyhausen). Each of these parts can become its own drive. In the case of people with disturbed behavior, questions arise about the original function of a behavior in the overall context with the other behaviors and about the cause of the disturbance due to the over- or under-functioning of a subsystem (Ronald Hargreaves). The subsystems that work very closely together can hardly be distinguished from one another, because none of them can be imagined in its normal form without the others. This leads to the imprecise definition: "A system is everything that is uniform enough to deserve a name." (Paul Weiss)

Feelings are uniform enough and represent a willingness to behave in a very specific way, which biologists describe as aggressiveness, striving for ranking, territoriality, breeding, courtship or flight mood. The sensitivity of our language for psychological connections and the intuition of biologists open up the connection between the states of the soul and the willingness to act of a human drive system as a working hypothesis. Every drive is important as a member of a harmonious system, regardless of its moral content as a good or bad drive.

A structural property of all more highly integrated organic systems such as all mammals is the regulated circular motion. In it, several systems are intertwined in such a way that they mutually reinforce each other, until the slightest acceleration or the slightest hindrance leads to a swelling or ebbing of all system functions. These disturbed homeostasis are called control loops of positive feedback in a downward or upward trend. There is no brake or accelerator part, i.e. negative feedback so that the control loop can stabilize. Control loops of positive feedback arise from the development of a behavior towards an excessive failure or from a more serious error in the control mechanism.

Overpopulation (pp. 19–22)

life as a whole corresponds to a control loop with positive feedback and the system is unstable (signal is constantly being amplified, this leads to an avalanche due to the lack of negative feedback)
the excessive increase of man is the cause of most deadly sins
the gifts that man receives through insights into nature, advances in technology, chemical / medical sciences, thus lead to ruin
the capacity for social contact is constantly overwhelmed by people in the big city
love for one's neighbor is diluted in the masses of one's neighbor
the warm feelings are concentrated on a small number of friends, because we are not made to love all people ("not to get emotionally involved")
Being crammed together not only leads to exhaustion and silting up of interpersonal relationships, but also has a direct effect on triggering aggression

Control loops of positive feedback are not found in individual organisms, but in life as a whole, which gathers more and more energy, the more energy it has already gathered. Merciless powers of the inorganic, such as the laws of probability, usually limit the multiplication of life in the animal kingdom.

Only humanity threatens to suffocate on itself; their noblest and most differentiated qualities and abilities dissolve in the course of a cultural illness. The narrowness in modern cities helps to demarcate the area, utility people live in battery cages and are not able to love everyone beyond their circle of friends or acquaintances. That is why one keeps strangers at bay emotionally, and indifference to the suffering of others goes hand in hand with growing irritability and inner-species aggressiveness.

Processes that endanger humanity are - according to Konrad Lorenz et al. a .:

"The overpopulation of the earth, which forces each of us through the oversupply of social contacts to shield oneself from it in a fundamentally" inhuman "way, and which also has a direct trigger for aggression through the crowding of many individuals in a small space." 107)

Devastation of the natural habitat (pp. 23–31)

Ecology :

all living beings in a habitat are adapted to one another (including predators / prey as species)
Of course, the eater is interested in the survival of what has been eaten, a predator CAN never exterminate the prey (last predator pair has starved long before the last prey pair is tracked down)
Ecological change in humans is faster than that of other living beings (the pace is dictated by advances in technology )

Aesthetics :

The general and rapidly spreading alienation from living nature bears a large part of the blame for the aesthetic and ethical brutalisation of the people of civilization
they lack awe, they only see cheap human work
the comparison of the old center / modern periphery with “cultural disgrace” (mass unit dwellings) devouring the surrounding land with a histological picture of normal body tissue / malignant tumor shows astonishing analogies
if translated into “countable” aesthetically, an aesthetic reduction of v. a. Loss of information
Uniform, structurally poor tumor cells have lost the information for their role as a useful link and behave like a single-celled animal, a young embryonic cell: excessive and ruthless
the self-assessment of normal people is rightly based on the assertion of their individuality (in contrast to e.g. the ant)
The beauty of nature and the man-made cultural environment are obviously both necessary to keep people mentally and emotionally healthy
political and economic sacrifices must be made to natural beauty!

Every species of animal, plant or fungus belongs to nature and is adapted to one another in its respective biotope. Predatory and prey animals form a community of interests as species, not as individuals. If the population density of the prey falls below a certain level, the predator perishes. Often the species eaten has distinct advantages over the species that eat it, as sick and careless prey animals become victims and mediocrity survives. Two forms of life (e.g. grass and horses) can be dependent on each other. The laws that govern such interactions in ecology are similar to human economics. Human ecology is changing many times faster than that of all other living beings. The rush of today leaves no time to examine or consider. Man commits an ecological ruin of his environment, which will later threaten him with hunger. In addition, he takes damage to his soul because the aesthetic and ethical brutality of civilization leads to a loss of awe. With the help of shape perception and the formation of analogies, Lorenz compares the edges of tumors with aerial photographs of the outskirts of cities.

Processes that endanger humanity are - according to Konrad Lorenz: "The devastation of the natural habitat, which not only destroys the external environment in which we live, but also in humans themselves all awe of the beauty and grandeur of a creation that stands above them . "(P. 107)

Human race against itself (pp. 32–38)

Konrad Lorenz believes that the natural competitive properties of humans have been removed from their natural overall context with the help of technology and can thus become independent without restraint. Under the unnatural competitive pressure caused in this way, inhumane values such as greed for money and lack of time are increasingly prevailing, which are promoted accordingly by economic policy . Hasty fear and anxious haste increase each other, lead to relegation, existential and decision-making fears, limit the possibilities and the time for thinking about yourself and the environment (reflection) and are reasons to become numb with alcohol, tablets or worse. As a result of the fed back increases in production and needs, these forms of luxury gain more and more influence.

Processes that endanger mankind are - according to Konrad Lorenz - “… the race of mankind against itself, which is driving the development of technology to our ruin ever faster, making people blind to all true values and taking their time to be truly incumbent on human activity for reflection. "(p. 107)

Heat death of feeling (p. 39–50)

Konrad Lorenz believes that due to the vicissitudes of life, an emotional state of equilibrium of tenacious indolence has developed, from which, under the constant bombardment of positive and negative stimuli, they developed the ability to foresight and increased their willingness to take risks in times of need. The reward for the risk was an excess that freed the tenacious indolence of the state of equilibrium from the severity of the distress caused by distress, which shone as a sparkling joy, creating a contrast. Getting used to abundance made you comfortable and sluggish and listless, a completely natural way of drawing strength for bad times in nature's market.

In rich societies, the market situation of the pleasure-displeasure economy has shifted in the direction of avoidance of discomfort: the principle of inertia dominates more and more, and getting used to natural pleasure without deprivation leaves little opportunity for real pleasure. The instinctively innate and culturally superimposed behavior of courtship and pairing are forgotten in favor of less strenuous promiscuity , even the grief over the death of loved ones is suppressed as unpleasant, the feelings flatten. Instead of a stimulation level in which one earns reward for effort, the ups and downs of life are socially leveled, and opportunities to develop joy, for example after strenuous walks on the summit, are rejected out of convenience.

Desperate boredom spreads along with the inadequate ability to overcome, and the emotional heat death in the flattening of feelings no longer allows the joy and suffering that result from human relationships. Even the development of a vice to increase pleasure through a particularly ingenious combination of sexual stimuli (the indolence vibrates) and a constant alternation of these stimuli before the lust-killing habit (which longs for expectation) becomes too strenuous, or the unlimited striving for pleasure through the progressive one Dwindling of the ability to experience pleasure pushes for ever stronger stimulus situations and increases the weariness up to the danger of addiction and suicide.

Suicide survivors - sometimes struck with consequential damage from blindness or paraplegia - are often more satisfied with their self-inflicted disability than without it. In the educational system, elements of experiential education should take a preventive approach to obstacles that have built up in oneself and prevent the indolence and getting used to the natural pleasure without barriers and its drying up without measure in boredom, because that is better than cure.

Processes that endanger humanity are - according to Konrad Lorenz “... the disappearance of all strong feelings and affects through effeminacy. Advances in technology and pharmacology encourage increasing intolerance to anything that causes the slightest discomfort. This disappears people's ability to experience those joys that can only be gained through hard effort in overcoming obstacles. The naturally intended undulations of the contrasts of joy and sorrow ebb away in imperceptible oscillations of nameless boredom. ”(P. 107)

Genetic decay (pp. 51–67)

Altruistic behavior in swarms of jackdaws means - according to K. Lorenz - often a danger for the individual and harbors a problem for the general public: On the one hand, these groups have better chances of survival because of the altruism of their members, on the other hand, social parasites within these groups have even better chances of survival, because they plant themselves the lower selection pressure that weighs on them, and thus endanger the survivability of the whole group.

Lorenz transfers this biological mechanism to cell cultures with asexually multiplying cancer cells and to human societies with multiplying social parasites by analogy. Immature cancer cells are parasitic cells at an earlier stage of development, which can be fed by other cells and proliferate without regard to the whole. Cell cultures and human cultures have therefore developed immune systems from antibodies or from paragraphs under the internal and external selection pressure.

The basis of all legal systems is natural law, a highly differentiated system of innate behavior that plays the eternal basic melody that repeatedly leads to atrocities against outsiders and bullying against minorities within societies, hard but just like the thyroid gland in coping with the hormonal balance.

Fortunately, these drives are superimposed culturally and form a right under concerted subsystems the current legal system in tension between lynchings and "cuddly justice." These two extremes of opinion formation (turnip or petting) represent the function of a regulatory legal system that tends to oscillate. The public is lazy and loves oversimplified exaggerations, and the opposition takes extreme positions to balance the prevailing opinion. If the prevailing opinion collapses, the pendulum swings to the equally exaggerated side of the opposition. Because there are real individual or collective values on both sides, undamped oscillations can build up to the point of controller disaster. Disorientation goes hand in hand with a lack of selection for simple goodness and decency and leads to genetic instincts.

Breeding animal breeds usually lose the developmentally youngest and most differentiated instincts in favor of developmentally primitive feeding and reproductive instincts and tend to neoteny. Mankind also breeds itself (and does not know what it is doing), is subject to constant fetalization and develops characteristics such as cosmopolitanism and playfulness, which leads to further failures in social behavior if values are not observed. It is not the people who suffer from their deficiency symptoms that are bad, deficiency is simply “bad”, and since it is actively hostile to everything that society perceives as good or decent, religious fundamentalists rightly mean the devil be loose.

Processes that endanger humanity are - according to Konrad Lorenz: "Genetic decay. Within modern civilization there are - apart from natural legal feelings and some traditional legal traditions - no factors that exert selection pressure on the development and maintenance of social norms of behavior, although these become more and more necessary as the society grows. It cannot be ruled out that many of the infantilisms that turn large parts of today's 'rebellious' youth into social parasites may be genetically determined. "(P. 108)

Breaking down tradition (pp. 68–83)

Konrad Lorenz makes a comparison between the development of cultures and the biological evolution of Homo sapiens . In his opinion, cultures develop powers of ten faster than the species of Homo sapiens . Both developments are under a selection pressure that thoroughly tests everything new until the tried and tested is integrated into the development of knowledge or species. Since more and more natural selection criteria are being abolished by humanity itself, excessive luxury formations arise as circular movements of positive feedback .

Similar to an economic market, cultural selection decides what goes into culture as the norm of a custom or habit. In doing so, it assumes an unquestionable character, so that people alienated from their historical roots can no longer distinguish which norms are important or unimportant for maintaining the system. Systems are, so to speak, skeletons for a symbolic organism, and without understanding the repercussions, it is dangerous if the flesh, for example, abolishes the kneecaps. Lorenz warns that only an intervention in the human genome would be even more arrogant .

The underestimation of the non-rational and the overestimation of the rational generated, as Lorenz sees it, in the generation conflict between the sixty-eighties and their parents, a hatred that is as strong as that which can build up between ethnic groups. Ethnic groups develop like sham types (Erik H. Erikson) and symbolically use clothing, behavior or accessories to differentiate themselves from the diversity of the other groups. Sixty-eighters paid close attention to the symbols of the adults and turned them into pseudo-rationalized provocations against the callousness of their parents' generation, who blamed them for famine, the Vietnam War , bureaucracy, etc. - for Lorenz a pure dysfunction of the development process in puberty: young people have to interact Break away from the traditions of their parents' home and replace them with more contemporary ones. The wish to fight for a good cause has a species conservation value ; otherwise it would not have been genetically integrated into humanity by nature. After this phase of " Sturm und Drangs " to loosen up cultural norms, the love for the traditional is revived. Between dismantling and rebuilding there is a time window of stability and defenselessness - molting cancers and pubescent adolescents are equal in this sense, Lorenz draws his analogy . Depending on when this defenselessness occurs, one can get stuck in a stage of solid parenting or be condemned to eternal late puberty.

Another cause of the sixty-eight conflict is the accelerated cultural development: In ancient and feudal stages of society the changes in the norms of behavior were so small that one could not distinguish oneself from that of one's father and fell into absolute identification (Thomas Mann: Josef und seine Brüder) . Since the Second World War , mild hospitalization symptoms in toddlers have been associated with the insecurity and conflict of their parents, diagnoses Lorenz. A limited ability to make contacts, which manifests itself as indifference in adulthood, and an environment in which children cannot experience the social experience advantage of their parents as a natural superiority make it difficult to internalize a hierarchy structure - according to Lorenz - without which there would be no family love, especially afterwards modern understanding ranks are uncreative love killers. Laissez-faire upbringing makes children unhappy neurotics because they feel genetically forced into the role of group leaders and vulnerable to a culturally hostile world in which no one likes them. Instead of understanding and sometimes gruff reprimands, they only come across the rubber wall of calm, pseudo-rationalizing phrases.

In addition to these social problems, according to Lorenz, the ethical reasons mentioned above would be added. Out of understanding and solidarity one does not distance oneself from hateful comrades, and since sensible considerations are weaker drives than instinctive elemental forces, the belief that one can only creatively build a new culture on the ruins of the old supports the destructive rage against everything.

Normally, it makes sense to protest to maintain the system. Young people often identify with young groups from an old culture and want to reform traditional behavioral norms together. If that is impossible, they satisfy their urge to identify and belong to groups in outsider groups, says Lorenz.

Processes that endanger humanity are - according to Konrad Lorenz: “The breaking of tradition. The effect is that a critical point is reached at which the younger generation no longer succeeds in communicating culturally with the older generation, let alone in identifying. They therefore treat them like a foreign ethnic group and treat them with national hatred. The reasons for this identification disorder are primarily the lack of contact between parents and children, which leads to pathological consequences even in infancy. "(P. 108)

Indoctrinability (pp. 84–105)

Konrad Lorenz believes that humanity is indoctrinated with the help of science and that science is shaped with the help of humanity in the sense of this task. Every hypothesis increases its validity claim with the help of verification, the search for evidence, and reduces it with the help of falsification, the search for contradictions. It thus forms an Archimedean point in the swamp of uncertainty and, proceeding from this point, approaches extra-subjective reality with the help of further hypotheses.

Hypotheses can be refuted or supplemented by more extensive hypotheses such as, for example, the theories of classical physics and quantum physics, which quantum physics limits its scope of application, but does not refute it. One assumes a universe with a single set of natural laws, although this may result in the inexplicable being lost from the perceptual horizon or misinterpreted because it occurs very rarely or is so small in its scope that one does not perceive it. If you can't find arguments for or against a hypothesis or theory, then you can't use it.

If hypotheses are confirmed again and again through experiments, they rock each other with the Archimedean points to theories. When such theories turn their professors into gurus, their students into disciples, and themselves with the help of the mass media into the doctrine of public opinion, they mechanically fend off any fundamental criticism for fear of loss of prestige or refutation with the help of denials, ignoring or repressing. So many beautiful hypotheses without a concrete statement and use value still get their exchange value.

Towards the end of the 19th century, Wilhelm Wundt did not refer to the scientification of psychology, despite Darwin, to biology, but to the atomic model. Behavior seemed to be composed of elements and to be triggered by reflexes, the occurrence of which, in the simultaneous consideration of the physiological and the psychological, were assessed as decisive elements of all nerve processes. Behavior could be combined well with Pavlov's results on the development of conditioned reflexes and supported behaviorism in its claim to be able to explain and condition all behavior on the basis of the reflex and the conditioned reaction. The Archimedean point of a democratic tabula rasa principle and the firm belief in the unlimited ability of man to refine and adapt to an ideal social state gave rise to a behavioristic mania for feasibility. The use value of a theory without affirmative or contradicting arguments for the question of how human behavior is controlled in one way and no other has turned into an exchange value in the service of utilitarian goals.

Similar to totalitarian regimes - according to K. Lorenz - people today are prevented from their individual development by a sophisticated system of manipulations because, as parts of alienated crowds, they are exposed to advertising technology in the mass media that is based on scientific knowledge and the cause of a circular movement of positive feedback which is developing into a throwaway society in which large companies only offer monotonous standardized goods. The cultural history of fashion from its origins as an ethnic costume to the clothing appropriate to the class of the early modern period to today's fashionable status symbols is evidence of this undesirable development, which has also affected sciences that align their field of activity with the demand of people who, especially as individuals, are as modern as possible want to shine successfully at the forefront of the crowd in the simplest way.

Natural science means simplification, classification, knowledge, experiment. In the building of the science system, physics, as the most mature natural science, forms the coarse ground floor, the clearest and simplest basis on which the increased and more finely ramified analysis of chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology etc. relate. In doing so, it is not the inherent laws of the more specialized natural sciences that are dissolved, but their limits, at the interface of which new sciences such as biochemistry arise. The reference to the simple and unambiguous, but also technical-physical knowledge to explain human behavior devalues biology to a side arm of physics and also subjects behavioral research to this trend, although all regularities result from the function of biological structures (environmental conditions and that adapted behavior). Without their description, one cannot classify and understand the causes that really determine behavior. The reference to the simpler chemistry and physics while largely disregarding the much more complex biological contexts detaches the behavior from its overall biological context and examines it atomistically without considering the way in which it is inserted into the overall context - according to K. Lorenz.

The reduction in the direction of physics does not even notice the special biological structure in which the subsystems come together and from which the system properties of the whole system can only be understood - these relationships remain in the blind spot (Nicolai Hartmann / Paul Weiss). And it is to be feared that more and more scientific areas such as sociology, psychology and, more recently, brain research and genetics will be subjected to this scientific and technical trend.

In biology, too, the physical fashion creates exact fetishes for itself, filters out structure-bound system properties and creates the appearance of simplicity, which on the one hand repels the feeling that accompanies the behavior as something indecent, but on the other hand does not recognize its objective results as the results of its subjective feeling of indecency This realization remains with the researcher, completely caught up in the fetishistic status symbols of exactness, in the blind spot (Donald Griffin). Instead, he freezes with scorn when other researchers seek essential insights into the nature of behavior through compassionate observation and description.

Some blame science for the deadly sins listed. On the contrary, K. Lorenz believes that scientists, as underage children of their time, are afflicted by the dehumanizing phenomena of civilization and only help mankind to develop into its own dead end. K. Lorenz fears the very worst, but it serves them right, whoever doesn't want to hear has to feel.

Processes that endanger humanity are - according to Konrad Lorenz: “The increase in human indoctrinability. The increase in the number of people united in a single cultural group, combined with the perfection of technical means for influencing public opinion, leads to a uniformization of views that has never existed in human history. In addition, the suggestive effect of a firmly believed doctrine grows with the number of its followers, perhaps even in geometric proportions. Already today there is an individual in some places who is aware of the effects of the mass media e.g. B. the television, deliberately withdrawn, viewed as pathological. The de-individualizing effects are welcome to all those who want to manipulate large crowds. Opinion formation, advertising technology and cleverly controlled fashion help the large producers on this side and the functionaries on the other side of the Iron Curtain to have equal power over the masses. ”(Pp. 108-109)

reception

As a “mixture of morality and science”, the book was already discussed by Spiegel in April 1973 - shortly after its publication . It was pointed out that this “combination of science, politics and morals” presented by Lorenz had “according to information from the publisher, sold 1000 pieces per day since it was published”. Lorenz sees himself as "the successor of the eloquent Augustinian barefooter and penitential preacher Abraham a Santa Clara ". It is criticized as contradicting, among other things, that Lorenz deplores the “deluding greed for money” of modern man and that he accuses “competition” of destroying “pretty much all values” and “in blindly and vandalism "conjure up the" ecological ruin "of the globe. On the other hand, the restoration of the understanding of performance and law and learning from "biologically and historically grown organizational forms" are required. Lorenz finds it noticeably easier to define what is "bad" for him than what is "good". In summary, it says in the Spiegel: "Obviously, the moralizing science replaces positions that have been vacated by the traditional moral guards."

In 1990, Franz Wuketits dealt in more detail with the book in his Lorenz biography: “This narrow volume, which caused controversy when it was first published and of which more than 300,000 copies have already been sold within the first five years, reckons man's sins against nature and against itself and sees itself as a contribution to the criticism of civilization. In a certain way it is an apocalyptic book, but at the same time - so typical for Lorenz - it is borne by optimism. "Lorenz viewed the world, the people and our culture through the eyes of the doctor and in this way not only the 'diseases' tries to diagnose our civilization, but also developed therapies for healing. ”After his book Das so-called Böse , Lorenz presented a paper for the second time,“ which met with both strong approval and rejection. Balanced reactions were rather rare. ”Wuketits justifies these extreme reactions in particular with the fact that some of Lorenz's analogies between nature and society brought the book“ close to the language of the Third Reich ”, for example“ when Lorenz compares criminals with cancerous sores, speaks of parasites and that sort of thing. "

source

Konrad Lorenz: The eight deadly sins of civilized humanity. Series Piper, Vol. 50, 1st edition, Munich 1973; 34th edition, Munich 2009, ISBN 3-492-20050-8 ( also published as an audio book by Auditorium-Netzwerk )

Individual evidence

^ Franz M. Wuketits: Konrad Lorenz. Life and work of a great naturalist. Munich and Zurich: Piper Verlag, 1990, p. 202. The presentation here follows the information in this book.
↑ quoted from the foreword, Lorenz 1973, p. 7.
↑ Sebastian Linke: Darwin's heirs in the media. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2007, p. 199.
↑ Lorenz, 1973, p. 14 f.
↑ Walter Schurian had been professor at the Institute for General and Applied Psychology at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster since 1973.
^ Walter Schurian, Antje Holländer: Konrad Lorenz and the youth . Psychologie heute , May 1975 (= issue 5/75), p. 61.
↑ so the name in the introductory text of the Piper Verlag (1973, p. 2)
↑ Father is missing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1973, p. 164 ( online ).
^ Franz M. Wuketits: Konrad Lorenz. Life and work of a great natural scientist, p. 191 f.
^ Franz M. Wuketits, p. 201.

[1] Franz M. Wuketits: Konrad Lorenz. Life and work of a great naturalist. Munich and Zurich: Piper Verlag, 1990, p. 202. The presentation here follows the information in this book.

[2] quoted from the foreword, Lorenz 1973, p. 7.

[3] Sebastian Linke: Darwin's heirs in the media. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2007, p. 199.

[4] Lorenz, 1973, p. 14 f.

[5] Walter Schurian had been professor at the Institute for General and Applied Psychology at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster since 1973.

[6] Walter Schurian, Antje Holländer: Konrad Lorenz and the youth . Psychologie heute , May 1975 (= issue 5/75), p. 61.

[7] so the name in the introductory text of the Piper Verlag (1973, p. 2)

[8] Father is missing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1973, p. 164 ( online ).

[9] Franz M. Wuketits: Konrad Lorenz. Life and work of a great natural scientist, p. 191 f.

[10] Franz M. Wuketits, p. 201.