On Men and Animals

The following is my answer to a response received to an earlier post titled "Diamonds in the Rough"

Dear A... Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate your recognition that there are relative cultures of peace in the world (such as the Scandinavian), that we have as much capacity for good as we have for evil, and your confidence that we can change. I would be interested in knowing how you think that change might be achieved. On the other hand, I am concerned at your apparent acceptance of the myth according to which man is by nature conflictual and aggressive, and that a universal consensus toward peace and harmony is necessarily ‘Utopian’. Also, I do not believe that our cultural, social and religious differences are what need to be overcome, but rather our attitude towards those differences, which leads us to see them as threats instead of opportunities and wealth (see my earlier post on Why Politics & Religion make Good Table Topics).

I could not help noticing that you called this dialogue a “debate”, an unfortunate term that tends to infect the tone of a discussion. A dialogue is a joint search for truth, while a debate is a struggle to win over an opponent. In a dialogue, people suspend judgment, listen carefully to each other and try to learn from each other, while people come into debates with a position to defend, and listen only for points to be refuted. I discuss this difference at greater length in my post on “God vs. Science”, and a great book on the subject is "The Argument Culture -- Moving from Debate to Dialogue" by Deborah Tannen (New York: Random House Inc., 1998).

Whether you choose debate or dialogue as your preferred approach, there are certain things that can only get you into trouble. One is trying to blithely sweep aside entire libraries of research and analyses, which lay the foundations for various well-established disciplines, by using sweeping statements like “the data is skew(er)ed”. Of course, all data --scientific or otherwise-- is necessarily skewed, partly because even the best models are by nature only limited representations of reality, not reality itself, and partly because observation changes behavior, as the ‘new physics’ has clearly shown. So skewering aside, the fact that people’s behavior is highly influenced by their sense of identity (and that the former can be modified by altering the latter) is the basis for a broad range of important fields, from discourse analysis and social psychology to advertising and propaganda.

Another stumbling block that you may want to avoid is the reductionist fallacy, which can be described as trying to explain phenomena of a higher order using theories or models that were developed to explain phenomena of a lower order. For example, if there actually were any research showing that plums do not change their nature by calling them apples (which I doubt exist), this data would only apply to the vegetable kingdom, which has shown no signs of understanding human language, and not to humans, who have.

A further example of the reductionist fallacy is calling man an animal, which is analytically about as useful as calling an animal a plant or calling a plant a mineral, especially for the sciences you mention: history, sociology and psychology. Of course, each higher order encompasses the lower orders and therefore CAN be studied from that perspective, but if statements like “a plant is a mineral”, or "an animal is a plant", or “man is an animal” mean that they are ONLY that, then you risk losing sight of some of their most important aspects, which are what make them very different from those lower orders of existence.

Actually, I was surprised that you would support such a pseudo-scientific claim, given your earlier support of Christianity, since most Christians seem to interpret the Bible as supporting a view of humans as (actually or potentially) spiritual beings. It makes me wonder when people seem willing to put aside such basic religious tenets in favor of ‘bad science’, while adhering adamantly to questionable man-made dogmas (‘fallen nature’, etc.) in the face of reinterpretations based on more solid theology, such as the ones put forward in the site I referred you to, called “Christianity Renewed”.

Be that as it may, and spirituality aside, the mere fact that humans are singularly capable of forming and applying abstract concepts (such as individual and collective identities) makes studying this aspect of humanity useful, to say the least. To refute this, one would have to demonstrate some sign of such abstraction in animals, which of course is absent, following a basic scientific principle that all effects have causes and all causes have effects.

Another problem with defining man as an animal is the way that animals themselves are popularly characterized, which usually involves descriptions of innate penchants for violence, aggression, self-centeredness, competition, merely material motivations, etc., which in turn is used to justify the military industrial complex, today’s distorted version of capitalism, and world dominance by small elites, as well as “genocide, colonialism, and suppression of the weak”. You can see more on this in my blog post titled “On Human Nature”.

This view of human nature is often argued using allegedly scientific bases, so I find it useful to refer people to the five propositions of the “Seville Statement on Violence”, drawn up during the International Year of Peace by a large group of Nobel award recipients, anthropologists, psychiatrists, economists, biologist, ethnologists, and other scientists from all over the world. The Seville Statement establishes that:

(1) It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors. Although fighting occurs widely throughout animal species, only a few cases of destructive intra-species fighting between organized groups have ever been reported among naturally living species, and none of these involve the use of tools designed to be weapons. Normal predatory feeding upon other species cannot be equated with intra-species violence. Warfare is a peculiarly human phenomenon and does not occur in other animals.

The fact that warfare has changed so radically over time indicates that it is a product of culture. Its biological connection is primarily through language, which makes possible the coordination of groups, the transmission of technology, and the use of tools. War is biologically possible, but it is not inevitable, as evidenced by its variation in occurrence and nature over time and space. There are cultures that have not engaged in war for centuries, and there are cultures that have engaged in war frequently at some times and not at others.

(2) It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature. While genes are involved at all levels of nervous system function, they provide a developmental potential that can be actualized only in conjunction with the ecological and social environment. While individuals vary in their predispositions to be affected by their experience, it is the interaction between their genetic endowment and conditions of nurturance that determines their personalities. Except for rare pathologies, genes do not produce individuals necessarily predisposed to violence. Neither do they determine the opposite. While genes are co-involved in establishing our behavioral capacities, they do not by themselves specify the outcome.

(3) It is scientifically incorrect to say that in the course of human evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behavior more than for other kinds of behavior. In all well-studied species, status within the group is achieved by the ability to cooperate and to fulfill social functions relevant to the structure of that group. 'Dominance' involves social bindings and affiliations; it is not simply a matter of the possession and use of superior physical power, although it does involve aggressive behaviors. Where genetic selection for aggressive behavior has been artificially induced in animals, it has rapidly succeeded in producing hyper-aggressive individuals. This indicates that aggression was not maximally selected under natural conditions. When such experimentally created hyper-aggressive animals are present in a social group, they either disrupt its social structure or are driven out. Violence is neither in our evolutionary legacy nor in our genes.

(4) It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans have a 'violent brain'. While we do have the neural apparatus to act violently, it is not automatically activated by internal or external stimuli. Like higher primates and unlike other animals, our higher neural processes filter such stimuli before they can be acted upon. How we act is shaped by how we have been conditioned and socialized. There is nothing in our neurophysiology that compels us to react violently.

(5) It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by 'instinct' or any single motivation. The emergence of modern warfare has been a journey from the primacy of emotional and motivational factors, sometimes called 'instincts', to the primacy of cognitive factors. Modern war involves institutional use of personal characteristics such as obedience, suggestibility, and idealism, social skills such as language, and rational considerations such as cost-calculation, planning, and information processing. The technology of modern war has exaggerated traits associated with violence both in the training of actual combatants and in the preparation of support for war in the general population. As a result of this exaggeration, such traits are often mistaken to be the causes rather than the consequences of the process.

The Seville Statement on Violence concludes that biology does not condemn humanity to war, and that humanity can be freed from the bondage of biological pessimism and empowered with confidence to undertake the transformational tasks needed in the years to come. Although these tasks are mainly institutional and collective, they also rest upon the consciousness of individual participants for whom pessimism and optimism are crucial factors. Just as 'wars begin in the minds of men', peace also begins in our minds. The same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace. The responsibility lies with each of us.

So I would encourage you join me and many other peace activists in studying and promulgating the many scientific evidences that belie and refute the prevailing myth that human beings are inherently egotistic and aggressive, instead of supporting it. A good starting place might be Michael Karlberg’s “Beyond the Culture of Contest”. In this way you would be helping to overcome historical conceptual errors that are currently among the greatest obstacles to achieving a world of peace and harmony.