avatarElle Beau ❇︎

Summary

The article "Peaceful Humanity or Not?" refutes the notion that humans are inherently violent and competitive by presenting evidence of genetic predisposition towards sharing, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence among early humans and some modern societies.

Abstract

In the detailed response titled "Peaceful Humanity or Not?", the author challenges the assertion that humans are naturally prone to violence and competition. Drawing on scientific research and anthropological studies, the author argues that humans, as a highly social species, are hardwired for cooperation and altruism. The article cites examples such as the willingness of hungry babies to share food and the peaceful interactions of hunter-gatherer tribes, suggesting that these behaviors are not only observed in controlled environments but are also part of our evolutionary heritage. The author emphasizes that the rise of patriarchal dominance hierarchies, particularly after the agricultural revolution, introduced conditions that led to increased violence and inequality, contrasting sharply with the egalitarian and cooperative nature of earlier human societies. The piece concludes that understanding our species' capacity for cooperation is crucial for addressing modern challenges and fostering a more peaceful and equitable world.

Opinions

  • The author believes that the tendency towards violence and competition often attributed to human nature is more reflective of patriarchal dominance hierarchies than an inherent trait of our species.
  • There is a strong emphasis on scientific evidence that supports the genetic basis for human cooperation and sharing, referencing studies on social connectivity and the behavior of infants.
  • The article suggests that the portrayal of early humans as warlike is a cultural construct rather than an accurate reflection of our evolutionary past, supported by the peaceful and egalitarian interactions observed in true hunter-gatherer societies.
  • The author posits that the agricultural revolution marked a significant shift towards violence and social inequality, which was not characteristic of earlier human societies.
  • The piece argues that the propensity for cooperation and pro-social behavior has been a key factor in human survival and success, countering the narrative that humans are naturally competitive and selfish.
  • The author asserts that the belief in humans as naturally violent overlooks the overwhelming evidence from various disciplines that points to our species' inherent capacity for peace and cooperation.

Peaceful Humanity or Not?

A rebuttal to an assertion that humans are naturally violent and competitive

Photo by Ian Macharia on Unsplash

This is a response to a comment made on one of my stories, about Large Scale Violence Only Began with the Agricultural Revolution. The comment was long and detailed, and I appreciate the thought and substance that went into it. Still, I don’t agree with the writer’s assertions and my response is also long and detailed so that I could further support my points. It was substantive enough that I decided it could make it into a stand alone story.

What you are describing is more patriarchal dominance hierarchy culture, than human nature. There’s ample scientific evidence that sharing and cooperation are hardwired genetic aspects of humans as a highly social species.

For example, even hungry babies will often share food with strangers.

A lot of New World tribes (and others) were taken advantage of because they were so open and willing to share with the conquerors who came upon them. Saying that we are naturally distrustful of and antagonistic to “the other” is not borne out in this context. To say nothing of all of the scientific data about how humans are genetically hardwired for cooperation.

“Social psychologists have long speculated that the self is a much more social phenomenon than it intuitively feels like from the inside. There have certainly been studies over the years that are consistent with this idea, however, neuroscience is bringing new data to bear that speaks directly to this idea.” Scientific American

Without getting the chance to actually read the things you’ve cited, I’m going to reiterate: “As R. Brian Ferguson, an anthropologist who studies war said after reviewing the published work of dozens of other researchers, “Views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the evidence but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking” — in other words, patriarchal dominance hierarchy beliefs that cannot conceive of anything other than that way of interacting with each other. This is despite all that we know about how true band hunter-gatherer groups interact with each other which is totally and completely antithetical to what you are describing. They not only share with each other but have cooperative relationships with neighboring tribes — something that led to evolutionary advantages for humans.

It has been hypothesized that cumulative culture and extensive non-kin cooperation allowed Homo sapiens to replace other hominin species in the Pleistocene and facilitated the biological dominance of our species in the Holocene.

But, between-band interactions may also be important for understanding the unique nature of our species. Inter-band social networks are hypothesized to explain evolved brain expansion [6], [7], extensive non-kin cooperation [8], [9], [10] and the emergence of cumulative culture [11], [12], [13].

The picture you are painting has no resonance with what we know about the cultures of H/G tribes. It has no basis in what we know about the evolutionary properties of being such an intensely social species.

Contrary to what Fox News and faulty science would say, it takes a huge effort to turn boys and men into killers. From primatologists to evolutionary anthropologists, we know that neither women nor men are killers by nature.

Indeed, the research, from Darwin onwards, is overwhelming that we survived and thrived as a species because our biological and social propensity to live in connection and close cooperation with others is vastly stronger than any propensity to kill or harm each other. (emphasis mine)

Of course, humans do have the capability of violence, murder, and war, but it takes certain conditions as well as the override of the cultures that we know actively maintained peace and cohesion by maintaining reverse hierarchies. That only takes place widely around the time that patriarchal dominance hierarchies first arise — around the time of the agricultural revolution — as is supported in my original story on that topic.

When you’ve said this, “Despite intermarriage, rich ethnographic evidence exists of forager groups raiding each other for women” you aren’t talking about true H/G bands or you are describing ones that have had contact with outsiders and been corrupted by it. As anthropologist Dr. Peter Grey points out,

During the 20th century, anthropologists discovered and studied dozens of different hunter-gatherer societies, in various remote parts of the world, who had been nearly untouched by modern influences. Wherever they were found — in Africa, Asia, South America, or elsewhere; in deserts or in jungles — these societies had many characteristics in common. The people lived in small bands, of about 20 to 50 persons (including children) per band, who moved from camp to camp within a relatively circumscribed area to follow the available game and edible vegetation. The people had friends and relatives in neighboring bands and maintained peaceful relationships with neighboring bands. Warfare was unknown to most of these societies, and where it was known it was the result of interactions with warlike groups of people who were not hunter-gatherers. In each of these societies, the dominant cultural ethos was one that emphasized individual autonomy, non-directive childrearing methods, nonviolence, sharing, cooperation, and consensual decision-making. Their core value, which underlay all of the rest, was that of the equality of individuals.”

“There are some variations from culture to culture, of course, and not all of the cultures are quite as peaceful and fully egalitarian as others, but the generalities are the same. One anthropologist after another has been amazed by the degree of equality, individual autonomy, indulgent treatment of children, cooperation, and sharing in the hunter-gatherer culture that he or she studied. When you read about “warlike primitive tribes,” or about indigenous people who held slaves, or about tribal cultures with gross inequalities between men and women, you are not reading about band hunter-gatherers.”

Your understanding of “known forager behavior” seems to be wildly off base, in direct contravention of Dr. Gray’s assessments and I might add, any description of hunter-gatherers that I’ve ever read in the several years that I’ve been studying this topic.

Your comments on Çatalhöyük’s seem to support my thesis, not refute it. How could a relatively recent culture create the situation Dr. Raymond Kelly envisioned — one of peaceful co-existence due to ample resources? Isn’t it a lot more likely that it was an extension of the cultures that had always been everywhere rather than some new social development? After all, population densities at this time are much higher than most of the timeframes that I’ve been describing.

Once patriarchal dominance hierarchies emerge, they spread rapidly simply because they are so destabilizing. As we’ve seen, once we have them, it’s pretty hard to get rid of them. It would have been next to impossible to have created the peaceful, egalitarian culture that we know existed in that region out of a history of violent competition and ongoing strife, both within and outside of the community.

“In a demographic simulation that Omkar Deshpande, Marcus Feldman and I conducted at Stanford University, California, we found that, rather than imparting advantages to the group, unequal access to resources is inherently destabilising and greatly raises the chance of group extinction in stable environments.”

Counterintuitively, the fact that inequality was so destabilizing caused these societies to spread by creating an incentive to migrate in search of further resources. Patriarchal dominance hierarchies are only so ubiquitous because they are so destructive.

You’ve said that we must improve our cooperation in order to survive as a species but this seems out of sync with your beliefs that humans are naturally competitive, violent, and selfish. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to write your comment, but I remain unconvinced. The scientific evidence to the contrary, from a wide variety of disciplines, is too compelling.

Humans not only survived and thrived due to their genetic predisposition to cooperate and enforce pro-social mores. This has nothing to do with being “noble savages,” it’s a survival strategy — one that worked rather well. Believing that we’ve never lived any differently than we have in the past 6–9 thousand years when the social structure changed dramatically ignores all the evidence to the contrary.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2021 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.

Edit: Here is some additional supporting data:

(Anthropologist Christopher) Boehm’s research has led him to believe that much of the evolutionary basis for moral behavior stems from group pressure. Not only are bad actions punished, but good actions are rewarded. When a person does something for another person — a prosocial act, as it’s called — they are rewarded not only by group approval but also by an increase of dopamine and other pleasurable hormones in their blood. Group cooperation triggers higher levels of oxytocin, for example, which promotes everything from breast-feeding in women to higher levels of trust and group bonding in men. Both reactions impart a powerful sensation of well-being. Oxytocin creates a feedback loop of good-feeling and group loyalty that ultimately leads members to “self-sacrifice to promote group welfare,” in the words of one study.

Junger, Sebastian. Tribe (p. 27). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

You might say that only applies to those within your in-group but this is not born out in real life situations where entire cities full of diverse populations banded together to help each other in times of war or natural disaster.

Communities that have been devastated by natural or man-made disasters almost never lapse into chaos and disorder; if anything, they become more just, more egalitarian, and more deliberately fair to individuals. (Despite erroneous news reports, New Orleans experienced a drop in crime rates after Hurricane Katrina, and much of the “looting” turned out to be people looking for food.)

Before the war, projections for psychiatric breakdown in England ran as high as four million people, but as the Blitz progressed, psychiatric hospitals around the country saw admissions go down. Emergency services in London reported an average of only two cases of “bomb neuroses” a week. Psychiatrists watched in puzzlement as long-standing patients saw their symptoms subside during the period of intense air raids. Voluntary admissions to psychiatric wards noticeably declined, and even epileptics reported having fewer seizures.

According to German psychologists who compared notes with their American counterparts after the war, it was the untouched cities where civilian morale suffered the most. Thirty years later, H. A. Lyons would document an almost identical phenomenon in riot-torn Belfast.

As people come together to face an existential threat, Fritz found, class differences are temporarily erased, income disparities become irrelevant, race is overlooked, and individuals are assessed simply by what they are willing to do for the group. It is a kind of fleeting social utopia that, Fritz felt, is enormously gratifying to the average person and downright therapeutic to people suffering from mental illness.

Junger, Sebastian. Tribe (pp. 53–54). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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