Chocolate War Lesson One
Chocolate War Lesson One
English 1C Writing Assignment for Essay #1
Choice A
Develop a thesis that addresses The Chocolate War novel’s theme of dehumanization (death of the soul). You might consider the novel’s conflict between free will and determinism as you observe Jerry Renault struggle for his soul in the aftermath of his mother’s death. You might also consider the novel’s first sentence: “They murdered him.”
Choice B
Develop a thesis that addresses the similarities between Archie Costello and Brother Leon, especially as they pertain to the sin of pride, moral depravity, nihilism, and sadism (wanting to inflict cruelty upon others).
Choice C
Develop a thesis that compares the theme of evil in The Chocolate War and Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery.” See this commentary.
Choice D
Develop a thesis about the nature of bullying, especially as it pertains to the tribe and the tribe's selection of their potential victims. Consider the degree of cruelty behind bullying and that waging bullying against others is a form of both physical and psychological warfare. Consider what the victim does when he or she internalizes the bullying. Also consider the role of ingroup behavior and the Repugnant Cultural Other as explained by Alan Jacobs.
Ingroup Behavior and the Repugnant Cultural Other (adapted from Alan Jacobs' book How to Think)
We tend to gather in bubbles of like-minded people. We bond in part by demonizing outgroups deemed repulsive and repugnant. Borrowing from the writings of Susan Friend Harding, Jacobs refers to the Repugnant Cultural Other, a group so demonic that we must, as a sign of allegiance to our bubble, hate the RCO without knowing its details. We just see this vague abstraction, this preconceived stereotype, and we deliver hate toward the RCO accordingly.
America is divided by bubbles committed to demonizing the RCO, especially in politics.
Secular academics and evangelicals are each other’s RCO.
Red and Blue states are each other’s RCO.
Rural and urban areas are each other’s RCO.
“Gun people” and “Anti-Gun people” are each other’s RCO.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are people’s RCO.
Jacobs writes: “This is a profoundly unhealthy situation” because we lose commonality with others; we lose sympathy and empathy with others; we lose the idea that we are neighbors; we lose sight that we may share common ground in shared love of TV shows, concerns for our children, concerns for the middle class, etcetera.
Jacobs observes: “The cold divisive logic of the RCO impoverishes us, all of us, and brings us closer to that primitive state that the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes called ‘the war of every man against every man.’”
However, let us stop and make an important point: Critical thinking doesn’t mean that all RCOs are worthy of our understanding or sympathy. The white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville with their Bath-And-Beyond tiki torches are truly RCOs.
There are true, bona fide “deplorables,” to use a term made popular in recent times.
The trolls have pushed us into Lobster Society.
We are no longer thinking like civil citizens but fighting each other like lobsters for territory at the bottom of the ocean.
We too often abandon morality when we live under the rule of the Zero-Sum Game.
When we live for Zero-Sum Game, we become lobsters, for better and worse.
Balance Your Inner Lobster with Your Moral Sense
Adapted from Jordan Peterson Uses Lobster Society to Give Us 5 Essential Life Lessons
Rule 1: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back
Jordan Peterson's book 12 Rules for Life has a famous chapter comparing lobsters to humans. Peterson’s view of competition is dark and realistic, and it is the basis for his claim that we need to be self-reliant and abandon all naivete about our plight in this world.
Deeper Meaning
Peterson's analogy makes us realize what we’re up against in a world of competition, and he makes us identify negative feedback loops that make us prey to predators, and he helps us replace those negative feedback loops with positive ones in order to help us succeed in life.
Life Lesson #1: Our Territory Determines Our Quality of Life
Jordan Peterson observes that lobsters have survived for 350 million years, far longer than dinosaurs and humans, and that their survival instincts can give us some essential life lessons.
Competition for Territory
Like lobsters, we compete for territory because territory (zip code, if you will) determines our quality of life.
The rich live in premium locations and enjoy longest, healthy lives. The poor live in high-stress areas and live shorter, more sickly, more brutal lives.
I live in Torrance, about a mile and a half from the beach, and you can live 7 miles from here in the city of Wilmington, which is close to oil refineries known to produce spikes in asthma, heart disease, and cancer.
If you live a mile or closer to the freeway, you have increased risk for cancer, heart disease, and dementia.
Like lobsters, we compete for where we will live. We compete for territory.
Life Lesson #2: The world we live in a zero-sum game.
Zero-sum game means that if you win the game you will have wealth, resources, good health, and top-ranking social hierarchy.
If you lose in the zero-sum game, you will suffer poverty, deprivation, sickliness and low-ranking status for overwhelming majority. The crisis of being poor is the poor have the worst healthcare, but the poor get struck with the worst diseases.
This is a brutal principle. A winner in some category of life, reproductive success, the arts, business, home ownership in premium coastal locations comes with someone else paying the price.
Luxury Hotel
Someone enjoys staying in a luxury hotel in Hawaii that costs thousands of dollars a night.
Someone cleans the bathroom of that luxury hotel for minimum wage and lives in brutal conditions to make sure that hotel customer has the best and cleanest amenities.
If you get the bad end of the stick, the world doesn’t care because the world’s default setting is to ignore you and assign you zero worth. This brutal condition compels us to take responsibility for our own station in life. If we don’t fight for our territory, like the lobster fights for his, we are doomed.
Life Lesson #3: We exist in a pecking order that affects our serotonin levels.
We are in a constant competition for resources in a fight to win ranking on what Peterson calls a “pecking order” for quality of life and reproductive success.
Pecking order, largely based on income, for humans, determines neurochemistry, which elevates serotonin in lobster victory and elevates octopamine in defeat. These hormones affect body language, either bold and proud or cowering and ashamed.
This body language propels us into a perpetual feedback loop, leading us to Life Lesson #3.
Life Lesson #4: Our success or failure in life depends on what kind of constant feedback loop we set into motion.
Our social status ranking affects others’ perception of us, and how we see others perceive us affects our hormones, and our hormones, manifest in body language, affect how people perceive us, so that we exist in a constant feedback loop.
High serotonin levels make people attracted to us, which in turn elevate our serotonin levels even more, creating a positive feedback loop.
The converse is also true: Low serotonin levels make us repellent to others, which in turn lowers our serotonin levels even more, creating a negative feedback loop.
Bullied People
Peterson uses example of an adolescent who was bullied and who reacts to life’s challenges based on being a bullying victim. He becomes fragile, whiny, and helpless with low levels of serotonin, making him more vulnerable to further bullying, which reinforces his negative view of the world.
His groveling, defeatist body language, cowering before some catastrophe, sets him up as a victim for future bullies.
Unloved Depressed People
Depressed people feel useless. A lot of depressed people never received love as children. They grow up with low levels of serotonin. They give depressed vibes to others who turn away from the depressed who in turn feel unloved, a perception that makes them even more depressed, and so the negative feedback loop continues.
The can continue to lead a miserable life defined by this negative feedback loop, or they can do something about it by creating a positive feedback loop.
How is this achieved, and do you really want to achieve this? If you do, please listen:
Principle #5: You Are Responsible for Creating a Positive Feedback Loop
Taking care of yourself, your fitness, your nutrition, your sleep, your limited screen time on social media, your body posture, to name some examples, can create a positive feedback loop. Respecting yourself causes others to respect you, which in turn reinforces your self-respect.
“People, like lobsters, size each other up” (40), so you need to take care of yourself.
Self-care is the first step in the road to achieving a positive feedback loop.
The Obvious Isn’t the Commonly Practiced
Taking care of yourself may sound obvious, but most people don’t take care of themselves.
Here’s an example: Up to 30% of people never fill their doctors’ prescriptions for their illnesses. Another 50% who do fill their prescriptions don’t follow the instructions.
Most people follow prescription instructions for their pets more than they do themselves.
We can conclude that most people like their pets more than they like themselves.
They may not even be aware of how they abuse and neglect themselves in a sign of zero self-worth.
You have to want to value yourself and you have to show this through self-care.
Examples of Self-Care
Social Media Excess
By posting too much on social media, you’re advertising your loneliness and neediness. You’re making yourself appear like a weak lobster in the social media universe, and others will avoid you, causing you to feel rejected, ensuing more feelings of loneliness, neediness, and depression, which will create a negative feedback loop.
Defend your honor and your self-respect by cutting back on social media, achieving excellence in your fitness and studies, and creating a positive feedback loop through those pursuits.
Diet and Exercise
Defend your honor and your self-respect by no longer larding your diet with excessive sugars and processed foods and getting “punk fed, which will result in metabolic syndrome, dyspepsia, fatigue, and diabetes, having the cumulative effects of being a Weak Lobster. Instead, eat whole foods and find exercise that you enjoy doing consistently so that you show yourself and others that you care about yourself so that you can create a positive feedback loop.
College Studies
Defend your honor and your self-respect by “going all in” your college studies instead of approaching college with a sullen, half-hearted, slovenly cowardice that tells yourself and the world that you’re too scared and weak-hearted to be successful.
In the realm of social media, diet, exercise, and college studies, you need to cultivate Lobster Strength and Dignity to protect your territory.
Serotonin Affects Your Personality
Self-care increases your serotonin levels.
Jordan Peterson reminds us that physical and attitudinal changes mentioned in the above examples don’t just hormonally alter our body and change our body language; they change our spirit and psychology in a way that steers us toward success.
Respond to a Challenge; Don’t Brace Yourself for Catastrophe
Making the above changes is the first step in “responding to a challenge rather than bracing for a catastrophe” (40).
Your Posture Changes Your Psychology
Peterson calls his lobster chapter “Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back.”
To stand up straight with your shoulders back is not just a physical posture; it is a position you take with your mind to defend your honor and self-respect. Such a posture is the first responsibility: To take charge of how you react to a world rife with challenges, competition, and evil.
To stand up straight with your shoulders back makes you attentive to others so you can read social cues and respond appropriately.
To slouch like a sad sack sends your brain signals deep inside your head so you become oblivious to the outside world around you and clueless you become a victim.
Reject Victim Mentality by Taking Responsibility for Protecting Your Self Interests
Reject the victim mentality and replace the victim with a more heroic version of yourself. This is the essence of Peterson’s message in this chapter.
Review of Lobster Society in the Human World
One. Understand that the world’s default setting is to ignore you, so that you are responsible for carving out your own territory.
Two. Understand you can redirect your negative feedback loop through self-care and create positive feedback loop that will point you to success.
Three. Understand that you can only rely on yourself to create a positive feedback loop. There is no guarantee that you will find a mentor or benevolent human being to guide you.
I never had a mentor, and I had to find my own way, but I do two mentorships at my college.
I do Puente and Project Success. Recently, I’ve mentored a student who got into Berkeley law school, a student who got into Morehouse screen writing program, a student who got a civil engineering job, and a student who got an electrical engineering job.
I give myself zero credit for these students’ success. They saw the stakes that were before them, they rose to the occasion, they fought through adversity, poverty, unsupportive parents, moving from their native country, and even depression.
But they made it because, even though they didn’t know it, they followed the principles of lobster society.
The lobster has survived for 350 million years for a reason: Its instincts are correct because the lobster has a proven track record, so we’d be wise to learn from those instincts.
Living Like a Lobster Is Only Half the Answer
The lobster by itself is not a teacher of salvation. The lobster is only part of a healthy human being
Lobster competition in world of social media tribalism and structural inequality has resulted in a loss of balance.
Knowing that we compete against one another is a brutal reality that we should understand.
A Moral Sense
However, our Inner Lobster needs to be balanced by our Moral Sense, which consists of moral laws, empathy, cooperation, and universal humanitarian values.
When we fail to achieve a balance between our Lobster and our Moral Sense, we endanger ourselves.
Too much Inner Lobster makes us vulnerable to the barbarian throng: “every man for himself,” “dog eat dog,” “fight tooth and claw,” “only strong survive in the jungle,” and so on.
Living in a world ruled by the barbarian throng is a world gone to chaos.
Too Much Morality?
But living too much on the Moral Sense side of the equation makes us weak, passive, and naive to external invaders, predators, and clever enemies. We must have some of the Alpha Lobster’s defensive instincts and swagger to protect ourselves.
So a balance must be achieved for our self-preservation.
In America, the balance is out of whack:
One. Rapid globalization scares the hell out of us.
Two. Rapid automation scares the hell out of us.
Three. Structural inequality making it more and more impossible for regular folks to afford housing, healthcare, and education scare the hell out of us.
Four. White people, especially of an older generation, are scared that America doesn’t look as white as it did when they were young so that racist political demagogues appeal to these white people’s worst instincts. Racism, including racist hate crimes, are on the rise.
Five. Social media generates news algorithms based on their personality profiles that silo social media users into isolating political bubbles so that they hear only what they want to hear based on cognitive biases.
Six. Americans are more and more divided along political lines to the point that a recent poll shows that more parents fear their children will marry someone of the “wrong political persuasion” over a different religious faith.
Seven. Americans no longer see their fellow Americans as sharing a common goal but as enemies who must be destroyed through trolls on social media or even worse methods resulting in what some are calling a “soft civil war.”
Eight. A lot of social media trolls are connected to Alt-Right racist and nationalist movements, and these trolls, which would be laughed at as a fringe movement just 10 years ago, feel empowered as they see mainstream politicians pushing for their cause.
Nine. National unity and shared purpose has taken a back seat to Zero-Sum Game: winners and losers.
Ten. Critical thinking, civil discussions in the marketplace of ideas, is no longer the priority: It’s now blood sport: Kill your enemy because their loss is your gain.
Lobster society has taken over critical thinking and our Moral Sense.
With the loss of critical thinking, with the loss of national unity, with tooth-and-claw Zero-Sum Game being the top priority, America exists in a state of huge chaos and instability. Hate crimes are on the rise. Racism is more flagrant and outspoken to the degree that one of my African-American students recently had “KKK” spray painted on his car in the parking lot of this college.
We are in trouble.
The Lobster without moral balance is an ugly creature hellbent on destruction.
We need our Inner Lobster, but we need it to be balanced.
Lobster Society in The Chocolate War
The Chocolate War Lesson One Study Questions (Chapters 1-13)
One. The novel’s first sentence is “They murdered him,” which suggests a death is taking place. Since no one physically dies in the novel, what kind of “murder” are we talking about?
Peer pressure too often compels us to abandon individual conscience and obey the whims of the tribe, and too often the tribe’s whims veer to violence or scapegoating random targets. Why?
Because, for one, obedience to evil is looked at as a sign of loyalty.
Further, demonizing “The Other” is a way to strengthen the tribe’s bonds.
Thirdly, bullying the “out group” is a common tactic tribes use to assert their power and identity.
Therefore, tribes or groups often build cohesion by rationalizing cruel schemes against others.
When an individual is faced with committing acts of cruelty, that person must live according to his conscience or go along with the tribe to establish his acceptance and belonging.
Individual Conscience Vs. The Tribe’s Collective Mentality
To live in accordance with our conscience often results in a tribe rejecting us because we don’t play their game, or in same cases the assertion of our conscience results in us rejecting the tribe.
For example, I am a white man, and a few times in my life a white stranger, assuming that I belong to his tribe, has uttered a racist joke to me because he assumes I will find the joke amusing, and if I were laugh at his stupid joke, which I would never do, I would reinforce our white tribal bonds.
Presented with such a situation, I can either fake laugh at his joke, show indifference to his joke by ignoring it, or tell him the truth: His joke is not only not funny; it is offensive.
The white stranger shouldn’t assume our shared skin color makes us part of the same “family” because it doesn’t. In fact, the white stranger’s racist joke has had the opposite effect: He has clearly demonstrated that he belongs to a tribe that I find loathsome, despicable, and unworthy of my consideration.
Another example would be we want to belong to a cool clique, but over time we realize this clique is a bunch of superficial snobs who brag about all their accomplishments and deride those people who the snobs deem to be their inferiors. For a while, we may have played the snob’s game to ingratiate the snobs’ favor, but eventually we found the snobs to be back-stabbing, superficial sycophants and ladder-climbers unworthy of our friendship.
In the case of the white racist “jokester” or the back-stabbing ladder-climbing sycophants, we used our critical thinking skills to analyze a particular tribe, and in the final analysis we used our informed opinion to reject the tribe.
Using Critical Thinking Vs. Drinking the Kool-Aid
But some tribes aren’t so flagrantly repulsive and easy to identify as the heinous groups described above. Sometimes a tribe can be seductive because it seems cool, it seems desirable, it seems to exist for our best interests. Certain tribes have a “hook” that pulls us in and sometimes even the smartest of us “drink the Kool-Aid” and desire to conform to Tribe X, Y, or Z.
The tribe could be a group of hipsters, artists, chess aficionados, animal rights justice warriors, international business club networkers, vape cool cats, Swiss luxury watch enthusiasts, street racers (who videotape their reckless antics on Facebook) fashion cognoscenti curators, self-aggrandizing social media mountebanks, etc. Whatever it is they’re selling, we want it, so we drink the Kool-Aid and once we drink the Kool-Aid, we surrender our critical thinking skills.
To obey peer pressure results in the abandonment of critical thinking, morality, and humanity. We become dehumanized. We lose our soul.
Why do we compromise our critical thinking and individual conscience to belong to a tribe?
Probably because many of us our too scared and too desperate to face the world alone as adults. We prefer to be like children wrapped in the cocoon of something that feels bigger and more powerful than us: some kind of tribe.
Belonging to the tribe results in dehumanization.
The Tribe offers us entrance and eventual belonging (and rank) in the Inner Circle, and gives us the power of authority to tell us what to do and what to believe, but we must comply and conform to the Tribe’s demands, especially those demands that exact cruelty upon others as some sadistic rite of passage that proves our tribal loyalty.
The more cruel we become, the more we lose our empathy, and the more we lose our empathy the more we lose our humanity.
As soon as we rationalize doing the tribe’s bidding, we murder our own soul.
At times, the tribe collectively murders our will to stand up for ourselves and others.
Tribalism can gradually lead to moral cowardice and evil.
Rationalizing wrong behavior makes us evil, but this evil doesn’t happen to us overnight. Evil and dehumanization come upon us gradually, so that we become inured to them. To become inured to something means to become acclimated and numbed to it regardless of how abnormal it is.
As we face the demands of the group, society, mainstream scripts that tell us how we can gain approval of others, we break down, get tired, give up, become apathetic, and we surrender to moral cowardice.
Such moral cowardice is a major theme in the novel. Such moral cowardice results in the death of the soul.
Another meaning of the “murder” is the way the group or tribe bullies, ostracizes, and scapegoats arbitrary targets as some sort of bonding ritual and these targets often break down and become despondent. Despondence is a soul-crushing form of spiritual death.
The tribe tests us constantly in order to insure our loyalty.
The tribe “tests” us, as The Goober tells his friend Jerry Renault, who is getting crushed during football practice.
What is being tested? Notions of manhood and loyalty to the tribe, and how that loyalty makes one willing to surrender individual morality and conscience to meet the tribe’s demands.
The Goober is the novel’s moral conscience.
Most people fail the test, which means they go along with the group with blind acceptance. But some people rock the boat, they “dare to disturb the universe” by speaking their conscience. The Goober is the novel’s conscience. Even though he is a relatively minor character, The Goober is the moral point of view.
Without The Goober’s moral perspective and judgment against the depravity he sees in The Vigils and the adult world embodied by Brother Leon, the novel would be overly nihilistic.
Belonging to the tribe results in dehumanization in the novel.
In the novel’s opening chapter we see images of nihilism, despair, and dehumanization: Jerry sees the other football players on the field as “grotesque unknown creatures,” pointing to their dehumanization. The football game is a metaphor for the game The Vigils play everyday, the game Brother Leon plays, a corrupt strategy for self-preservation and power.
Jerry himself feels dehumanized. Part of his dehumanization is the result of his cowardice, which prevents him from standing up for himself and results in self-loathing and self-hatred. He wishes he could have courage, but since his mother died of cancer and he had become more and more disconnected from his father and his own self, he has succumbed to feelings of helplessness and depression.
Jerry’s dehumanization is further felt through the unrelenting grief he suffers from his mother’s loss. The grief is so intense that it gradually breaks down his spirit so that he feels nothing, but lives in numb despair. Desperate to feel anything, he may be attracted to getting his body bashed in football practice just so he can feel something as a sign that he is still alive.
Jerry’s dehumanization is further emphasized by his impotent feeling of being just a cog in a machine, a worthless nonentity being asked to do meaningless tasks by mainstream society, tasks that will leave no reward. Jerry looks at his father who plays by society’s rules, and what does his father have: Nothing. His father’s wife is dead to cancer. His father has no passion for his job. His father simply gets by. In Jerry’s cynical eyes, Jerry’s father is a soulless peon crushed by his own self-complacent mediocrity, a nonentity powerless to stave off life’s tragedies.
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