The eCrozier

Smart people, for a long time now, have been trying to figure out how we humans evolved, grew, and developed into what we’ve become in the 21st Century. And as they’ve tried to figure it out, the old “nature vs. nurture” argument always seems to be at least on the edge of the investigation. That’s as it should be. There’s plenty of evidence that both our genes and our cultural environment have shaped what we’ve become. There are always people out there, however, who are looking for that one thing that will explain it all and be the definitive factor. The smart and wise ones though, at least from my perspective, resist such things and are much more modest in what they propose and think we can ever know with any kind of certainty.

Enter Richard Wrangham, one of the smart and wise ones, and his new book, “The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution.” Wrangham is a biological anthropologist at Harvard who has studied chimpanzees and bonobos, as well as humans, for years. His basic contention in the book is that we humans evolved paradoxically exhibiting throughout the capacity for violence, but also the virtue of collaboration and conflict resolution. Wrangham notes, however, that our violence has been of two kinds: reactive and proactive aggression. In the evolutionary process apes and our forbearers learned to punish “reactive aggression” through planned, coordinated “proactive aggression,” thus punishing those who violated social norms before they could wreak any more havoc. Over time, this reduced the number of people contributing to the gene pool who were reactively aggressive and increased, by default, those who were more inclined toward community and sharing. In other words, proactively aggressive behavior by the community thwarted less virtuous forms of aggression and made possible the growth of civilized society.

That’s a lot to wrap one’s head around, to be sure. I’m thankful Wrangham notes his theory should not be over-subscribed or be used in the wrong hands as way of justifying violence toward people who violate social norms. After all, in referring to the so-called “virtues” of proactive aggression, he writes: “proactive aggression is [also] responsible for execution, war, massacre, slavery, hazing, ritual sacrifice, torture, lynchings, gang wars, political purges, and similar abuses of power.” That means that while proactive violence by the community brought us social order and civilized society, it also has the means to oppress and subjugate those who aren’t in power, whether that power is held by the state or by any group. Alas, a double-edged sword both literally and figuratively.

That’s why Wrangham says we humans are, at the same time, “the best and worst of species” and is modest in his claims as to what evolution can really tell us (or help us with). In the end, it doesn’t really matter much about what’s more significant: nature or nurture? Neither helps us get closer to a peaceful and just society. And neither precludes or guarantees such a desired outcome. We still are faced with the hard work of building a humane culture through the frail instrumentality of one another. But we should be hopeful, even as we are clear-eyed about our human sin and vice. The long arc of human history does appear to be heading toward something better.

+Scott