The next day, at my strangely-scheduled orientation, there was a heckler present. That was only the second time in ten years. He was a pretty nice heckler, the type who only coughs, shuffles his feet, and whispers too loud during your speech. (The bad ones shout while you are speaking.) His main effort came the second I finished my comments. He jumped to his feet and shouted before anyone could applaud:

"Your human-equality story does not make sense!" Absolutely bewildered, the only response my shocked brain could produce was the expression: "What!"

His answer cut right to the heart of the actual weakness of the presentation. My orientation implied, but did not establish with overwhelming persuasiveness, the proposition that species-preservation constitutes a genetic half of the individual's life value that controls one's own happiness. In brief, he said this:

You are asserting that the equality concept is based on the fact that the peasants say they feel equal to us. Well, just because they feel that way does not mean that we have to respect that feeling. A snake or bear, if they could talk, would say the same thing. We would still not consider them equal.

Hence, he was asserting that actually there is no Natural Law reason, or no Natural Duty reason, why we should protect others for our own satisfaction or greater feeling of spiritual well-being.

Fortunately, for me, the crowd shouted him down; because I knew that, logically, he had a point. He had opened grounds for a rational argument. And when you are reinforcing values (attitudes) to inspire immediate changes of behavior, you cannot be effective if your words leave the audience in doubt. Your audience must experience a finger-snapping conviction. This heckler had tried to create a defeating doubt. He saw that he had failed and slipped out; but he left me shaken. Was it a happenstance attack? Or was it tied to the news about the price on our heads? We were working in four crucial countries, and enjoying impressive effectiveness everywhere, especially in Vietnam.

I was deeply shaken. The ideological foundation of the entire program was under a noteworthy attack.

I reported the situation to military intelligence. The officer advised me to move my living quarters for the family to a protected area. I did. I also reported the new developments to my headquarters in Washington. A message came back from my Contract Officer, who had never lived abroad, advising me not to be "paranoid." That was especially character building.

Human nature has a strong self-preservation drive, so strong in fact that we consider its various expressions to constitute natural rights.

Equally strong though, and probably with a slight edge, human nature contains a species-preservation drive as a felt set of natural duties. Many parents feel these natural duties toward their children so strongly that many cannot resist their compulsions even when the children on any logical grounds don't deserve the continuing loyalty and sacrifice.

Similarly, if our nation (in-group) is attacked, we feel a duty to risk ourselves defending it if absolutely necessary. This inclination is so strong that when avowed pacifists in pacifistic (Buddhist and Hindu) nations are questioned (needled) about their willingness to fight if their families or religious groups are attacked, they answer simply, "Well sure, that is only natural."

In fact, these natural duties of the Natural Law are felt so strongly, I have found, that men who consider themselves cowards cannot rely on their own avowed self-protecting cowardice when their loved ones or in-groups are threatened.

The scholarly Abraham Maslow identified the altruistic [species-preserving] tendencies or feelings as an intrinsic conscience, or if neglected, as an intrinsic guilt. Consequently, the punishments for violations of the Natural Law do not come from outside or not (just) from divine forces; they come from inside the human psyche. Also one’s natural duties are not just the other side of others' natural rights. They exist independently of others' rights. The duties, similar to rights, are felt expressions of one's own natural drives.

That is, if we do not show proper respect for other persons, it makes us sick. It gives us tensions, ulcers, cancer, or less happiness than we could have enjoyed from being considerate and respectful.

You will hear a few values-free psychologists glibly voice the cliché, "We humans do not possess a good gene." Or, "to search for such a gene," others say, "would be like looking for the needle in the haystack." Actually, what confronts us in those clichés involves another old adage: failing to see the forest for the trees. The altruistic genes in human nature do not compare to the proverbial lost needle, they constitute half of the entire life-supporting stack of hay.

If you agree with those thoughts, you have endorsed the Natural Law. It is stronger than positive law because it is inescapable.

And it is no longer just the priests and preachers who are saying it, more and more medical doctors agree: hating makes one sick; love can help make us well again. (Just the act of smiling, apparently helps.) Incidentally, if you have ulcers, don't feel guilty.

The penalty from the Natural Law works from both sides. If your altruistic tendencies run out of control (from the control of your equally natural reasoning powers), that too, it appears, can make you sick. That is, if you try too hard, worry too much, or blame yourself excessively, for that wayward child or the failings of another loved one, despite your respectable efforts, that too can make you sick. Back to the heckler problem-the ideological question (attack) on the species-preserving tendency (or felt duty) as I analyzed it, was this: The heckler probably represented an anti-war group inside the military. Such groups were well-organized and well-financed in the Pacific area during the Vietnam conflict. Usually they attracted disgruntled, college-educated American soldiers who had been drafted-one that I met openly admitted that he carried a Communist membership card. These men, who quite generally had been indoctrinated in college to the philosophy of ethical relativism, would be receptive to the argument that the species-preserving concept was merely a mask to promote unwarranted patriotism. Two or three loud hecklers on the edges of a GI audience, I knew, could render our programs ineffective in all four countries. This was certainly true in Vietnam where confusion about the validity of the cause was already prevalent.

Fortunately for human survival, formally uneducated, illiterate human beings, for all of their genetic history, managed these issues successfully. And despite the objections of an occasional GI self-styled killer, every group of GIs that I have ever addressed has seemed pleased to be referred to as defenders of life versus trained killers.

The expressed desires in these sentiments project reliably the possible role of the military as a constructive peace force if we intellectuals could upgrade our educational institutions into values reinforcing centers rather than mere fact-collecting organizations. The military academies and training programs would stay abreast.

In summary, species-preserving drive, according to the evidence that we have observed among most animal species and all observed races of humankind, expresses itself stronger than any other drive including self-preservation. Here is the key intellectual point reviewed, regarding acceptance of the dual life value: The fact that most animals possess the species-preserving drive destroys the assertion of some psychologists that such a natural inclination in humans would be impossible. In fact, an argument that human beings possess only self-preserving tendencies with no self-giving species-protecting tendencies at all, would rate us among the most reprehensible animals on earth; even rats and alligators will risk themselves for their young.

Twenty-five years later, in Vietnam, I began to hear identical stories about the same species-preserving phenomenon. It is strange but strong. It does not take individually targeted love to trigger it as most persons believe, and it does not work only for kinfolk (as in the sociobiology of communal insects). In combat, at least, according to my careful and persistent observations, it works among persons who hardly know one another's names, it works cross racially, it is triggered just from group belonging. This innate or instinct-like protective bonding is so powerful-that "old hands" in combat tend to resist association with, or even learning the names of, new replacements in order to avoid suffering felt when the new combat-incompetents are killed.

SUMMARY: LIFE, A SELF-AND-OTHERS VALUE

In summary, life is humankind's most basic natural, earthly value. But this is not primarily a selfish value. Species-preservation is the stronger half of the drive. For practical guidance from this fact of universal human nature, if you wish to travel the globe and avoid serious trouble, here are the two top rules:

1. You can get yourself into the second-most dangerous 'position anywhere in the world by threatening a person's life.

2. If that is second, what is the most dangerous action? The answer is obvious isn't it? By threatening someone's loved ones. That describes the most basic nature of the human animal.

This balanced-self and species-life value, as the basic value in human nature, may not as yet be recognized as an accepted scientific fact. That may require more scientific observation to establish it conclusively, especially in our excessively competitive (individualistic) society heavily conditioned toward the self.

Nonetheless, the Balanced Life Value is definitely a respectable scientific proposition for your consideration. Most important, have confidence in your own judgment.

You do not have to wait for experiences similar to mine on Iwo Jima for equally credible evidence. Talk with other observers who were in comparable realistic testing situations such as the Anzio beachhead or the battle for Tarawa, or Stalingrad, and listen to them.

Please do not place credence at all in any intuitive contradiction from the Ivory Towers of institutionalized education. Comparatively comfortable persons who make up our educationally elite, even the brilliant ones, in general, are out of touch with the common people and the controlling survival values of the world. They have allowed the values of materialism, relativism, and elitism to dominate their detailed daily lives and, therefore, saturate their thinking. This causes them to overlook the deepest causes of our modern problems and even to denounce such issues as "boring." At least a few of the more unusual scholarly elite, themselves, including a few college presidents, have admitted that our universities are overly-specialized anachronisms that produce cultural barbarism. Please stop ignoring the fact that our colleges train our high school teachers and administrators. That training is failing us and our children.

CRITIQUE

Other credible evidence of the human species-preserving nature comes out of the Nazi prison camps. Read for example, Survivor, by Terrence Des Pres, (Oxford University Press, 1976). He advises: "...the best of us did not live through that abomination; the best gave their lives so others could live."

Summarizing in legal terms, the Natural Law works not, as the scholars have speculated, indirectly in response to rationally perceived natural rights in general. Rather, it operates directly through psychic penalty or reward, respectively, for one’s personal rejection of, or deference to, one's own natural (emotional) duties. The late, great Professor Maslow saw something similar in human nature's intrinsic conscience and intrinsic guilt.

Of all the factors of human nature that we pieced together over the years, it was this relatively small feature that gave me the most personal satisfaction. This feature is the direct connection of the detailed earthly spiritual values to the rest of the system, that is, to life-protecting human nature. That specific feature came the closest to being my own perception rather than the mere result of endless observation or someone else's insight. Also it was the last piece to come, so it provided that satisfaction of filling-in that last little empty spot in the great puzzle. Here is a description of human nature with an explanation of that significant added feature.

HUMAN NATURE AS A COMPLETE
SYSTEM OF EARTHLY VALUES

Human nature is an integrated or wholistic mental-physical-spiritual-artistic human life supporting system controllable by reason. The resulting life-value is fairly evenly balanced between the self- and species-preservation drives. That life-value is so deeply cherished by healthy human beings that it impels us all, by nature, to consider our lives as equal in value to others. That is, our lives are considered just as important to us as anyone else's is to them. My clear perception of the earthly spiritual values stopped there with that equal value of human life.

All of the other moral and earthly spiritual values such as love, charity, honor, etc. seemed to be floating out in space-in the heavens-still coming down to humankind somehow through a mystical process. All the detailed values seemed more or less equal and subject to the arguments for ethical relativism.

Though I do not pretend to be an exemplary Christian, I study all of the major religions and I enjoy good church sermons. Those are the places where one can still find, delivered unequivocally, the strong moral lessons. During a perusal of the Christian Bible, I encountered, again, Christ's statement, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." The consideration of such life-sacrifices was in my mind from the effort at writing this book plus from the recent experiences in Vietnam. Despite my long familiarity with the citation, seeing it again in that spiritual (Biblical) context, somehow conveyed more vividly its implied message: this greatest of all spiritual (love) expressions in man-to-man relations (giving one's life for another) is also the strongest possible expression of the scientific species-preserving drive. From that little flash of light, the right question occurred to me: Could it be that all the moral, ethical, and earthly spiritual values are all various expressions of the species-preservation drive?

This was twenty-five years after I had first started the full-time search for the nature of human values. As I thought through each of the familiar moral, ethical, and earthly spiritual values (love. charity, compassion, loyalty, courage, honor, etc.) to see if they fit the species-preservation criterion, it was breathtaking to me as I perceived that each, in turn, did, indeed, comply. Each is a different expression of the human tendency to risk or gave of one's self for another where the only payoff - (when sincere and especially if secret) for the loss of wealth or status is psychological satisfaction. The theory of human nature and the universal values was complete. I saw at least a total outline of the basic Natural Law that governs humankind. (Doubtlessly, there are mistakes in my interpretation of ramifications, but the outline seems fairly solid.) And this small factor of the exact relationship of the various earthly spiritual values to human nature is of considerable importance just now in history with our inordinate concern for human rights with seldom a word or thought about human duties. That balance, too, along with a couple of other significant but smaller details about human nature as a system of values can now be spelled out. I'll include the explanation of (1) our natural rights and duties and how they work, (2) the issue of whether giving for the spiritual satisfaction is properly called altruism or selfishness, and (3) some detailed explanations of how expressions of the earthly spiritual values cause a risk to the self-half of the life value.

Rights. On the self-side of human nature, when the self-preserving drive expresses itself, it causes us to feel as if we possess certain natural rights that protect and support our individual mental, physical and material well-being-our self. Our society has become so attentive to these claims that everyone has become a little jumpy about being sued over anything by anybody. But on the other side of human nature, there is an inadequate societal concern for our natural duties.

Duties. When our species-preserving drive expresses itself in various ways, it creates feelings of natural duties. They cause us as individuals to risk or sacrifice some or all of our self-our social, physical, or material well-being-on behalf of others. The only inspiration for these drives, when genuinely expressed, are feelings of moral, ethical, and spiritual well-being, that is, feelings of maturity, wisdom, and especially, serenity. In the absence of proper attention to this half of our nature, our natural duties, the resulting guilt, resulting stress, resulting tensions, and resulting emptiness are not only filling our individual lives with unhappiness, but even the productivity of the entire nation is suffering.

It is not only better to give than to receive, it is necessary to maintain concern for others in order to maximize one's own health and happiness. (There is a problem here in the modern world of big government and organized charities. To derive the socially healthy satisfaction from giving, a donor probably needs a face-to-face relationship with the recipient. However, this person-to-person relationship would be difficult to achieve in a huge urbanized society.)

One of my top students observed that perhaps the greatest evil of big government, especially of communism, is the fact that it institutionalizes giving. That not only deprives us of the personal joy of giving, it makes us resentful of being forced to give indirectly, through taxes. (In passing, is there a way out of this dilemma? Something along these lines might be worthy of consideration: Charity could be decentralized for personalized giving through neighborhood churches, or Moral Study Centers for the non-believers-all run by persons who have accepted a vow of poverty, to reduce graft.)

Expressions of the self-preservation drive range from the demand for food to the desire for freedom. When satisfied, these self-sustaining values give life pleasure and afford security. When felt and expressed excessively, as selfishness, that is, to the hurt of others, both the selfish one and society suffer.

The species-preserving inclinations or values, range from love and charity through loyalty and honor to truth and courage. In all societies where I have studied, it is always said by those whom others identify as highly moral and spiritual persons that these values, even though they often cause material sacrifice, are what make life worth living. But when expressed excessively, out of weakness by a person, he or she often becomes a resentful victim of circumstances.