Re: Aggression, human nature and paleopsychology

From: Rebecca Moise (rebeccamoise_at_cs.com)
Date: 10/18/04 

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:54:51 +0000 (UTC)

Instincts are not good or bad in themselves but more or less
appropriate to the environment in which they are activated. In this
respect Freud's word "id," with its negative connotations, is
unfortunate. Our instincts cause problems for us in today's world due
to our no longer living in the environment in which they evolved.
Human beings share with other animals instinctual inhibitions against
killing members of our own species. Even Nazis spoke of the "special
kind of courage" it took to murder unresisting men, women and
children. More than other animals we may ignore or override
instinctual inhibitions, but nature takes its toll. Iraqis and others
have vomited at the sight of recent beheadings. Feelings of horror at
killing takes its toll in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among
soldiers. Living in a stressed environment our instincts are also
often not just regressed but disorganized and not developed. Fighting
instincts which originally evolved to protect us from predators may
emerge against members of our own species and effectively cancel our
inhibitions against fighting. This is because when we are attacked we
see the enemy as predators. It does not make sense to feel pity for
those who want to kill us or kill our children. When we are attacked,
or imagine we are attacked, or imagine we are threatened, an entirely
different set of instincts is activated. Only later does horror and
remorse set in when we realize that we have actually killed another
human being. One soldier said he died a bit inside when he killed
another person. (Psychopaths don't feel this way, but they possess a
disorganized instinct structure. I'm talking about someone with normal
emotional development who can still kill because at the time the
"enemy" is not sensed as being human.) What we call "civilization"
involves a reaction against warfare that is also, in part,
instinctual. Remarkably Freud made this point in his article "Why
War?" Why, then, do people fight and kill each other so much? We have
powerful fighting instincts going back to a time when our ancestors
were prey and our best (or only) defense against predation was to
fight. Then there were more than a million years of a hunting
adaptation in which old fighting impulses were brought into the
service of hunting and never fully neutralized. When hunting large
animals was no longer possible, and free movement across large
territories was restricted, the old fighting impulses started to be
expressed in war. "Civilization" represents an attempt now to
neutralize or override these strong tendencies, but it is uncertain
whether this can happen fast enough to save us from ourselves.

ragland66@webtv.net (Michael Ragland) wrote in message news:<ckhf8b$96l$1@darwin.ediacara.org>...
> AGGRESSION AND HUMAN NATURE
>
> In addition, as we have seen, to being an integral aspect of warfare,
> human aggression also raises some basic and profound questions
> concerning human nature itself. Certainly what we think about aggression
> has much to do with how we interpret human behavior and what it means to
> be human. It is useful, for example, to know how similar to and
> different from other species humans are in this respect. We shall also
> want to examine the role of intrahuman violence in human evolution and
> to ask whether such aggressive behavior can provide a meaningful
> explanation of war.
>
> There are essentially two positions concerning the nature of human
> aggression. These positions occupy points along the continuum of the
> "nature/nurture" controversy, having to do with the extent to which
> human behavior is instinctive or innate and the extent to which it is
> influenced by environmental factors such as cultural norms, parenting
> and peer influence. Before discussing each of these positions, I should
> note that those who hold the middle ground here-i.e., those who see
> human behavior as determined by the interaction of genetic makeup and
> environment, the proportions of which may vary according to a wide range
> of variables-form the majority of opinion on these issues.
>
> One school of thought holds that human aggression is innate or
> instinctive. Ultimately this can be seen as a modern version of the
> Christian doctrine of original sin. We can trace modern exponents of
> this position back at least as far as Sigmund Freud, who expounded the
> idea in Civilization and its Discontents that what he termed the life
> force was countered by an equally powerful death instinct. More recently
> the research of the ethologists Konrad Lorenz and Nikolas Tinbergen and
> the sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson also has been used as evidence for
> innate human aggression. In the 1960's these ideas were popularized by a
> number of writers, most prominently Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape, The
> Human Zoo) and Robert Ardrey (African Genesis, The Territorial
> Imperative). A number of novels and films also reflect these ideas,
> including William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Anthony Burgess' A
> Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's film of A Clockwork Orange, and the
> films of Sam Peckinpaugh, such as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs.
>
> The basic thesis of this position, based upon evidence derived from
> human evolution and history, the behavior of other species-especially
> non-human primates, our closest animal relatives-and data from
> contemporary societies, is that human beings have instinctive tendencies
> toward violent aggression, and that the course of human evolution seems
> to have favored those less inhibited from killing fellow humans. Such
> views represent a form of genetic determinism and consequently imply a
> pessimistic image of human nature in the sense that violent aggression
> must therefore be inevitable.
>
> Proponents of the idea of innate human violent aggression have been
> criticized for making extensive generalizations about human behavior
> based upon limited and not necessarily analogous animal behavior.
> Arguments against this position make the following points: 1)
> generalizations about human aggression based upon studies of animal
> aggression tend to ignore significant differences within and between
> species; 2) there are many different kinds of animal aggression, none of
> which are necessarily related to human aggression; 3) human beings are
> much more complex and flexible in their behavior than the species-such
> as ants and other insects-whose behavior has been used to formulate
> generalizations about instinctive aggression; 4) there is little hard
> genetic or biological evidence that supports this position; 5) behavior
> and experience restricted at most to 20% of the male population (i.e.,
> warfare) can hardly be characterized as universal human behavior.
>
> The other school of thought holds that aggression is almost entirely
> learned or acquired and that no specific behavior is genetically
> determined. Accordingly, humans are capable of any kind of behavior,
> including aggression. All humans have a capacity for aggression, but its
> degree, form and direction are determined by culturally determined
> patterns of behavior. It's been suggested, for example, that the need
> for individuals and groups to control aspects of the environment in
> order to assure survival may result under some circumstances in the
> generation of aggressive behavior. Moreover, even if it is not innate,
> most interpretations of human evolutionary history indicate at the least
> a considerable potential for violent aggression.
>
> Let us look more closely at some of the evidence of animal and human
> behavior. We may begin by examining some general aspects of aggression
> that seem to be characteristic of most animal species. It can be seen
> that in most species aggression fulfills a number of adaptive functions,
> including protection against predators, protection of relatively
> helpless infants, maintenance of order through the establishment of a
> stable hierarchy, enabling groups to reach food, establishing
> territoriality in order to maintain spacing of groups in order to assure
> an adequate supply of food and permitting dominant animals access to
> preferred mates. In most animal societies such aggressive encounters
> produce few serious injuries or deaths (which would be maladaptive in
> terms of group and species survival) by means of the fight-or-flight
> response and the existence of a dominance hierarchy, which tends to
> reduce conflict because each individual knows and generally adheres to
> his or her social rank. Conversely, it has been noted that crowding
> and/or scarce resources tend to result in an increase in aggression.
>
> Primates, the order of the animal kingdom to which human beings belong,
> are neither more or less aggressive, as a group, than other orders.
> However, the order of primates, which is exceptionally diverse, contains
> more than two hundred species found throughout the world and represents
> several distinct evolutionary grades in terms of physiological and
> social complexity; therefore it is difficult to make inclusive
> generalizations at this level of analysis. Moreover, aggression in
> primates varies considerably according to species and environmental
> context. In most cases, aggression functions to minimize divisiveness
> within the social group and most aggressive encounters are highly
> ritualized. However, as mentioned above, when overpopulation or
> population density reaches crisis levels, an inherent potential for
> aggressive and violent behavior is activated, expressed largely as an
> increasingly hostile attitude by males toward females and the young. It
> has thus been suggested that this potential for aggressive violence
> serves as a social device to reduce violence when population levels are
> stable and to increase violence when the equilibrium between population
> and available resources is upset.
>
> Since humans apparently first became scavengers and later hunters at a
> fairly early point in their evolution, it has also been suggested that
> social carnivores such as lions, wolves and hyenas may also represent a
> useful analogue in respect to social structure and aggressive behavior.
> Compared to non-human primates, for whom finding food and consuming it
> are closely related activities, the relationship between these behaviors
> in social carnivores is more separable and complex, especially during
> times of scarcity. Thus among social carnivores distinctions can be
> observed between aggression and killing and between aggression between
> members of the same species and that directed toward other species.
> Within these species cooperation appears to predominate against
> aggression.
>
> When we compare humans to other species of social predators, however, a
> number of differences become apparent. Although humans have also become
> highly efficient predators, this development has occurred relatively
> recently in evolutionary terms compared to other social predators. Thus
> humans may lack to some extent the inhibitions against killing fellow
> members of their own species that operate in other species. When we
> compare the behavior of humans to other social predators in this
> respect, humans seem much more willing and able to kill their own kind,
> behavior which in the long run must be seen in evolutionary terms as
> self-destructive or maladaptive.
>
> When compared with the behavior of other species, human aggression
> displays a number of unique features, features which seem to have
> resulted from the course of human evolution over the last three or four
> million years. It would appear, for instance, that the development of
> the cerebral cortex in the human brain, which has among other things
> expanded the capacity for learned behavior, has enabled humans to ignore
> or override instincts limiting aggressive behaviors. Unlike animals,
> therefore, humans seem to have no biological way of knowing how much
> aggression is sufficient to obtain their objectives. Humans also have
> the ability to imagine and respond to the thought of aggression, leading
> to preemptive murder and warfare. Other uniquely human aggressive
> characteristics include: 1) groups organized by principles of social
> organization, such as legal systems or the state; 2) deliberate,
> sanctioned killing of individuals outside socially defined boundaries;
> 3) regular, systematic and large-scale killing of members of their own
> species; 4) conflict over conceptual realities such as freedom, justice,
> religion, etc., thus giving a larger scope to aggression.
>
> Having earlier seen that aggression for the most part serves adaptive
> functions in animal species, we now must ask what functions aggression
> and warfare might serve in human society and whether such functions are
> adaptive or maladaptive. As in other animal species, aggression may aid
> in the achievement of certain needs or purposes; in addition, however,
> it may serve as means to less immediate ends such as the achievement and
> maintenance of freedom or obtaining land and resources. We cannot rule
> out the possibility that under some circumstances this kind of
> aggression may be functional or adaptive. On the other hand, given our
> current understanding of the consequences of such aggression and the
> availability of other means of attaining the goals mentioned above, it
> may be that such aggression should be viewed as largely dysfunctional or
> maladaptive. It is difficult to give a categorical answer here. It may
> be that aggression was adaptive at an earlier point in human evolution,
> when we were competing with other species for survival, but that our
> conceptual ability and creative intelligence which has allowed us to
> override inhibitions against killing has become increasingly
> dysfunctional now that we have achieved dominance over other animals. It
> may also be that even today aggression might be adaptive in some
> circumstances and maladaptive in others.
>
> ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
> de Waal, Frans, Peacemaking Among Primates, Cambridge: Harvard
> University Press, 1989. Provocative and stimulating analysis bearing on
> human capabilities and tendencies toward aggression.
> Eibl-Eibesfeld, Irenaus, The Biology of Peace and War: Men, Animals and
> Aggression, New York: The Viking Press, 1979. Recommended.
> Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents, New York: W. W. Norton
> & Co., 1961. Classic psychoanalytical essay detailing Freud's belief in
> conflict of life and death instincts.
> Fried, Morton, Marvin Harris and Robert Murphey, eds., War: The
> Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, Garden City: The Natural
> History Press, 1968.
> Groebel, Jo and Robert A. Hinde, eds., Aggression and War: Their
> Biological and Social Bases, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
> 1989.
> Lorenz, Konrad, On Aggression, London: Methuen, 1963. Classic
> ethological work suggesting innate human aggressiveness, strongly
> influencing popular books by Ardrey, Morris, etc.
> Montagu, Ashley, The Nature of Human Aggression, New York: Oxford
> University Press, 1976. One of the strongest and most detailed responses
> to the work of Lorenz, Tinbergen, etc.
> Morris, Desmond, The Naked Ape, London: Jonathan Cape, 1967. Popular
> book based in part on work of Lorenz, advocating the "killer ape"
> hypothesis.
> Neuman, Gerard, Origins of Human Aggression, New York: Human Sciences
> Press, 1987.
> Otten, Charlotte M., ed., Aggression and Evolution, Lexington, MA: Xerox
> College Publishing, 1973. Contains some interesting papers.
> Return to HUX 530's Index...
> Go to the previous section...
> Go to the next section...
> HUXCRSGD.530 - http://www.csudh.edu/hux/syllabi/530/now_3.html
> Copyright © 1999 California State University Dominguez Hills
>
>
>
> Social Chaos But No Help From Social Science
> May 16, 2004
> by Kent Bailey
>
> The past one hundred years has seen more progress in the physical
> sciences than in all prior human history.  Not so for the social
> sciences.  Rather than trading on new discoveries the social sciences
> specialize in erecting new fads, disposing of them in a few decades, and
> then going on to even newer fads.  Freudian psychoanalysis has been
> debunked, behaviorism hangs by a mere thread, and now cognitivists have
> triumphantly "discovered" that  people have the capacity to think
> after all!.  Worse still, the social sciences are so handicapped by
> political correctness that the most urgent issues of the day are either
> censored or simply denied.
>
> While the social sciences flounder, DNA research, evolutionary
> psychology, and the brain sciences are slowly unraveling the "truth" of
> the human condition.  For example, human beings are so genetically
> similar (over 99% overlap in DNA) to chimpanzees that we are basically a
> chimpanzee that stands upright and has a very large brain.  It should,
> thus, come as no surprise that human beings are very chimpanzee-like in
> our motives, feelings, preferences, and a good number of our
> behaviors.  Nor should we be surprised that our chimpanzeeness
> overcomes and dominates our humanness with regularity.  In my view,
> this is the most important insight about our species of this or any
> other century.
>
> Human paleopsychology was designed to address these issues.  This
> approach is premised on two basic assumptions: first, human beings have
> an ancient and rich evolutionary history, and, second, this ancient
> history is thoroughly involved in everything we feel, think, and
> do?personally, politically, and morally.  According to
> neuroscientist Paul MacLean's venerable Triune Brain Theory, the human
> brain is composed of a primeval reptilian segment, a later  mammalian
> segment, and a relatively recent neocortical segment.  These three
> levels correspond roughly to instincts (reptilian), feelings
> (mammalian), and thoughts (neocortex). In 1983, I asked professor
> MacLean if it made sense to speak of "regressing down the triune brain"
> or "progressing up the triune brain"?  He averred that it made perfect
> sense.  My 1987 book, Human Paleopsychology: Applications to
> Aggression and Pathological Processes (Erlbaum) was dedicated to MacLean
> and his work.
>
> Human beings are literally designed to "regress" down the triune brain
> with ease, but "progressing" up is unnatural, difficult, and requires
> years of  cultural shaping and formal education in industrialized
> societies.  Simply speaking, when regressive processes are set against
> progressive ones, regression tends to win.  Partying tends to win out
> over studying, impulsivity over self-control, amorality over morality,
> and disorder over order.  Human Paleopsychogy focuses on individual
> and social breakdowns of cultural, moral, religious, and economic
> systems that have taken thousands of years to reach their present
> form.  Yet, with the slightest provocation in the form of social
> malaise, insult, drug or alcohol intake, exposure to pornography, or
> even sudden changes in the stock market, we see that good will, manners
> and civility, social order, and concern with "higher things" can
> disappear in an instant. 
>
> The process whereby this occurs is termed phylogenetic regression and it
> refers to the sudden stripping away of the thin veneer of culture and
> the complementary re-activation of ancient evolved programs of
> selfishness, tribality and xenophobia, aggression, sexuality, and the
> like.  In other words, when highly stressed and/or provoked, a person
> easily slips back into earlier evolutionarily adaptive programs that may
> have served our ancestors well in precultural times but may be
> amoral/immoral, socially chaotic, illegal, and even pathological
> today.   For example, sexual promiscuity and male gang behavior in
> hunting contexts may have served young men well 30,000 years ago, but
> activation of these tendencies today in the absence of moral, religious,
> legal, or other constraints can easily lead to rape, gang warfare, or
> even worst case scenarios like the "inexplicable" murderous actions of
> the two young men in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. Human
> paleopsychology tries to make sense of these "inexplicable" events and
> others including serial murder involving cannibalism, body mutilation,
> and storage of body parts, mothers brutally killing their infants and
> young children, and even phenemona such as rage killing, road rage, and
> the brutal initiation ritual of the Glenbrook North High School sorority
> girls who literally outdid their chimpanzee cousins in chaotic
> violence. 
>
> Readers, is there any other way to explain these dramatic phenomena?
>
> Kent Bailey [kbailey(at)vcu.org]
> Kent G. Bailey is professor emeritus of clinical psychology at Virginia
> Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.  His major focus is on
> how ancient evolutionary processes affect current human affairs.  
> His major monograph is Human Paleopsychology: Applications to Aggression
> and Pathological Processes.  Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987.
> AD
>
> Amazon.com
>
> Reviewer:"btillier" (Calgary, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
>
> Bailey presents the next logical step in our understanding of human
> nature and psychology. Building on the works of E. O. Wilson
> (sociobiology) and others, he outlines the idea of a continuum of deep
> seated evolutionary rules. These rules have evolved over eons of
> primate, and then human, development. These rules have been integrated
> into our genes because they increased our adaptability to our
> environment and thus, individuals with these rules were preferentially
> selected. Bailey points out that most of our recent development as Homo
> sapiens has been in a primitive survival mode - a hunter gatherer type
> of setting. It stands to reason that many of the rules involve
> aggressive behaviours. The "holdover" of these ancient rules continues
> in our natural responses - in the way we see and respond to the world
> and they therefore continue to influence our behaviour today. Thus, all
> of the adaptive rules selected over millions of years of evolution are
> still lurking within us. In the last blink of our evolution, man has
> created culture and societal norms and rules. Our higher cognitive
> functions allow us to rise above our animal heritage and to develop
> cognitive, volitional control of our behaviour. Today, the individual
> has to juggle various opposing forces, both from within and from
> external sources. We have to control and direct many of the lower
> impulses in the face of our new and largely foreign cultural and
> societal demands. Most of the time, socialization wins, but as Bailey
> describes, sometimes we regress to our lower templates and instincts.
> The result of regression is usually pathology and mayhem. A wonderful
> book indeed.

Relevant Pages

  • Interview with E.O. Wilson
    ... Konrad Lorenz wrote that animals of the same species sometimes by ... mortali­ty due to direct aggression during war in the modern area. ... There are about 9.500 known species of ants, many of whom you studied, ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: What men and women look for in each other
    ... humans do not have instincts in the strictest sense of the meaning. ... the less instincts animals need. ... Entire species do not behave in identical ways. ...
    (alt.true-crime)
  • Re: What men and women look for in each other
    ... humans do not have instincts in the strictest sense of the meaning. ... the less instincts animals need. ... Entire species do not behave in identical ways. ...
    (alt.true-crime)
  • Zoo Torah: Correction, and The Religion of Conservation Part II
    ... The Religion of Conservation, Part II ... "Even the least of creatures should be extremely important in his eyes ... species is surviving, not if any given individual is surviving. ... though it did allow the slaughter of animals of that species. ...
    (soc.culture.jewish.moderated)
  • Re: Zoo Torah: The Religion of Conservation, part one
    ... >>> it was a protected species. ... many people take conservation very seriously. ... And does Judaism have anything to say ... Animals and plants can be of tremendous value to mankind in many ...
    (soc.culture.jewish.moderated)