12.02.06
From the Mouths of Babes
An eight-year-old tells us pretty much all we need to know. Listen and learn.
Empathy. It’s the basis of the Golden Rule. The central idea of every widely celebrated legitimate religion.
10.26.06
Linking Behavior with Policy
Dave and Mrs Robinson at Orcinus look at a series of violent attacks by men on women and ask “what is going wrong with us in America?” They examine mysogyny and its relationship to fascism. It’s a thought-provoking read well worth the effort. We suspect that mysogyny and fascism are manifestations of a particular sort of hierarchical, authoritarian world view that arises naturally in humans. And to understand its natural origins and some of its possible ramafications we turn to the field of evolutionary biology.
Our exploration starts with the picture of alpha male baboons killing suckling infants. And we ask why? Do they hate suckling infants? What is it about suckling infants that drives them to infanticide? The evolutionary forces at work are pretty well explained by Robert Sapolsky in his lectures on the Neurobiology of the Brain presented by the Learning Company. Sapolsky holds a chair at Stanford in the field of evolutionay biology and is involved in research on brain function and in research about primate behavior. So he is in a pretty good position to explain why one finds this behavior in gorillas, lions, and baboons. And he is in a good position to understand human behavior as well.
His series of 24 lectures systematically develops an integrated model of causation for behavior in all animals. While it falls far shy of the sort of predictive exactitude of Newton’s equations of particle motion, it manages to explain rationally quite a lot of human and animal behavior that is otherwise difficult to explain. In fact, between the fields of evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, and game theory, there seems to be quite a lot of hope for explaining just about all of human behavior and to do it without resorting to the kinds of speculations that filled the field of psychology. The field approaches the point at which the categories that define behavior are well defined, the physiological models are confirmed by experiment, and the relationships between categorical variables are defined quantitatively and mathematically. It may be some time before the work is done, but most of what exists is very solid science.
Midway through his lectures Sapolsky completely destroys the behaviorist models that were popular in the 1950’s. Behaviorism imagines that all behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning. Behaviorism is an idea that prompts us to pay monetary rewards to our children for good grades and to spank them when we are angry at them for doing something we do not like. It is simple, straightforward conditioning. This kind of ‘conditioning,’ we are tempted to believe, makes them better people. If by better, we mean things like, “better able to avoid being caught when misbehaving,” or “motivated predominantly by greed and fear,” then there is no question that behaviorism has its minor successes. But more generally, it is based on incorrect assumptions and produces bad results. Not surprisingly, behaviorism is a model loved by people who tend to be authoritarian, because it justifies whatever cruel treatment authoritarians mete out to their children.
In any case, Sapolsky spends quite a lot of time developing the idea that behavior is considerably more complicated than behaviorists assume it to be. Some behaviors we are born with but are refined over time. Many behaviors and coping strategies are moderated by different hormonal levels. And so on. The series of lectures makes it clear that it is impossible to get a clear vision about what motivates behavior without knowing something about brain physiology and chemistry, without knowing anything about evolutionary forces, and without knowing the first thing about game theory.
The purpose in bringing up this lecture series, however, is to introduce an idea about culture and how integrally tied it can be to biology. Sapolsky starts with two skulls. He tells us ” Suppose you found these two skulls and all you knew was that this one was the skull of a male of one species and that one was the skull of a female, what could you tell about their culture?”
Before we start to answer that, think about the premise: I can tell something about the culture of a species by examining two skulls, one male and one female. If, in fact, I could do this it would mean that there is a rather profound interrelationship between culture and physiology. Each had an effect on the other. In any species they co-evolve. The external forces at work in this coevolution involve things like diet and biological niche. Behavior derives not just from choices and experience, but from a process of evolution.
Back to the skulls. It is clear that there is a difference between the two skulls. The brain cavities of both are about the same. But on the male skull, the canines are grossly enlarged. They present prominently, almost like the tusks of a boar. On the female they are almost indistinguishable from other teeth. What does this tell us? Probably it should tell us that the canines of the males are used for some different function than the canines of the female. Any person who has been bitten by a dog would recognize how those large fang-like canines of the male skull might have been used effectively as weapons. The second marked difference is around the eye sockets. In the males there are huge, prominent boney ridges that would cause eyebrows to protrude by quite a lot and make the head look much bigger. The evolutionary benefits of these ridges is much harder to discern without knowing something about the species from which the skulls were derived.
The marked difference in the skulls suggests a marked difference in social roles between males and females in the culture. This marked difference is a characteristic of species known as tournament species. In tournament species males have a single function: to inseminate females. They have no other function in society. All their energy in life is expended getting to this point. Little or none is spent thereafter in actually raising children.
The skulls once belonged to baboons. The baboon is a highly intelligent ape that lives in low trees on the African savannah. If one looks at a baboon troupe it is easy to tell which are male and which are female. Males have a pronounced ridge around their eyes that is colored a brilliant red. And they have prominent canines. Males are aggressive. A troupe is composed of a group of females and their younger offspring. There is also a single alpha male. The alpha male mates with all the females. From time to time, the alpha male is kicked out and replaced with another. Depending on which source of information you believe, the alpha male is overthrown by a slightly younger underling, or he is cast out by the harem. Either way, his reign does not last years - perhaps it lasts a year, perhaps it does not.
It turns out that sometimes when an alpha male gains power he slaughters all the suckling infants. The consequence is that the females in his harem come into estrus sooner, and he can mate with them sooner. Once a male baboon has mated with a female, his job is done. He has no more to add to the society. His only purpose in hanging around might be to passively secure his own offspring until they are weaned. He won’t invest anythning in protecting them, but at least they will not be slaughtered prematurely while he is still alpha male. It is not uncommon for an alpha male’s reign to be too short to mate with all the females. And it is rare that he might survive two years in the harem.
Only thirty percent of the males will ever mate in their lifetimes, so the typical male baboon is not a happy camper. The younger males spend their lives jockeying for social position. How does one get a top position? It is a matter of speculation, but we expect that it takes an immense amount of patience, and it requires some cruelty. The idea is to discover weaknesses in others and exploit those weaknesses in various sorts of displays and confrontations that demonsrate superiority. If baboons had language, it would involve teasing and taunting. But they don’t speak so instead, if one is starting out, one attacks the lowest ranking guy. Then one might work one’s way up the heirarchy. The amount of fight put up by an opponent or the opponent’s rank may not be so important as winning, so one would tend to pick on males of lower status. Winning boosts social rank and it boosts testosterone level which is responsible for those prominent eyebrows. And those prominent eyebrows are part of the basis of choice of alpha male. So sometimes one beats up whomever one can.
I was exposed to baboon culture when I was seven. I was in Africa and I was in a place where baboons just happened to be hanging out. I was standing idly, looking at the baboons and one young male came up to me and tried to bite me. I responded by dodging to avoid attack. Presumably in baboon parlance that meant that I had let him win that round. Who knows, perhaps that attack set him on the fast-track to mating rights sometime down the line. For decades I wondered what I had done to provoke the attack. But when I learned about baboon culture I realized that, in fact, it was my existence as an easy target that prompted the attack. I was being used as a tool by a young male baboon to gain higher social status. See how it works?
This idea works to explain almost any kind of behavior among humans that we imagine to be mean-spirited and uncooperative. Much of the behavior males are inclined to commit is rather like the behavior of this male baboon. It is oriented at sorting out which males have dibs on mating rights and which get left out entirely. If one happens to be in the in-crowd, then it is just tough-bananas to anyone farther down the line. But if one happens not to be in the in-crowd, then one will be angry, depressed, or simply check-out of societal life. Recent history in America suggests that one would buy a Glock and try to get even with society for setting up the game in this way.
Now, it turns out that baboons are actually at the far end of the spectrum of what evolutionary biologists call ‘tournament’ cultures. The level of differentiation in physiology between male and female is pretty high in this species and so is the level of exclusion of lower-status males. There are a number of mammals with mating cultures that allot mating rights by status within the tribe, but there are few mammal species where there is a complete ‘winner-take-all’ mating culture. There are some pack animals that have alpha male and female members with exclusive mating rights, and such packs are highly hierarchical. And there are some burrowing mammals whose societies are arranged in the same way. Of course, ants and bees are at the extreme end in one sense - their females are organized in highly hierarchical structure with only one fertile member per colony; but most of the males end up mating, literally.
At the other end of the spectrum we find birds and bats. Mating culture for birds and bats is called pair-bonding. Pair-bonding is a culture that tends to evolve in highly intelligent, long-lived species who expend great resources nurturing young. In pair-bonding species, behavior between mates tends to be highly cooperative and reciprocal and the cultures of the species that practice pair-bonding tend to extend this cooperative sensibility in other practices. In other words, a culture of equality and cooperation within the family naturally extends cooperation beyond family boundaries. I am thinking about a National Geographic film on pink flamingoes that shows flamingoes doing a kind of large-scale dance on their native lake in East Africa. I am thinking about Sapolsky’s comment that among vampire bats, every female is expected to share food with the children of other females, and that if she fails to do so, her own child does not get fed. And I am thinking of geese flying in the classic vee pattern as they make their long migrations. These are all cooperative gestures that tend to go beyond even the sort of kin-selection that biologists tend to be so fond of talking about.
What does any of this have to do with anything? Right now America is suffering politically, economically, and socially because we, as Americans, have taken on a dysfunctional view of how people best interact. In the parlance of evolutionary biologists, we have adopted a culture in America that resembles that of a tournament species. All public discourse is framed in terms of competition. None is framed in terms of doing what is best for all involved. All public discourse is framed in terms of “what’s in it for me?” And the what is always material, stuff. The sexual revolution was not completely helpful either. We properly laud it for promoting economic freedom for women. But it also tended to discourage the close relationships of pair-bonding. If we value close, caring relationships more than stuff and status, we need to think about how to change our culture so that we are a little better in these respects.
One metaphor for tournament species is the ‘king.’ The king is owner of all he surveys. There is no limit on his power, there is nothing beyond his grasp. To the extent that we are beings that live vicariously, the king manages to live out our life for us, convincing us that we are powerful, and glorious. Only problem is that a king is rarely just a figure-head. A king has real political power. And if he is a male, he will have a temptation to arrogate ever more political power to himself and his station. Only rarely does this fail to completely undermine the integrity of the man himself - reducing him either to a wastrel status or to some sort of warring crusader. Understanding this temptation, the framers of America’s Constitution separated the powers of government into the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judiciary. And they did this to check concentration of power, to make men more equal in terms of political and economic power. They did this to help Americans live cooperatively together.
Pair bonding is a vital part of human culture because it is the metaphor upon which notions of equality and most kinds of cooperative behavior are built. Get rid of pair-bonding or undermine its symbolic importance in humans and the kinds of cruelty that must occur are too terrible to imagine. Notions of inherent human rights will become inconvenient and then they will disappear completely. The idea of human dignity for which we all loved Pope John Paul II will be doomed to extinction. Human bodies will become biological machines to be exploited by the people who are in the best position to take advantage of their services. All that will matter then will be power and status. And all men’s efforts will be to derive incremental levels of one or the other or employ what they have to get what they want.
We are not arguing that competition is bad. It brings many material things we value; but we are arguing that a society that lacks basic fairness - one that encourages people to care deeply about each other individually and corporately - lacks a kind of basic humanity. We end up being reduced to not much more than baboons with bigger brains and more destructive fire-power. And we end up experiencing precisely the kinds of problems we see in the US today: Income concentrated in the upper 1 percent of the population, the rise of authoritarian structures and values, a rising sense of anger, frustration, futility among people in all classes - especially among men toward the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, and dehumanization of people in the workplace, in the marketplace, and in the home.
Karl Rove has been most successful in exploiting this rage and frustration for political gain. Rove and company understand that humans have a capacity to identify with a powerful group and to do so in a profound manner. And all that group has to do is give them power by proxy, allow them to live vicariously. The idea of power by proxy explains the rather extreme power professional sports can exert on its fans. It als explains the power of winning elections by starting new and hopeful wars abroad. Furthermore, it explains the ever widening gender gap between those who would vote Democratic and those who would vote Republican; women tend to be just a little less awed by naked power.
Most of all it explains the reason that Rove Republicans are so frequently compared to leaders in post- WWI Germany. Both political groups exploited the same socioeconomic group using the same political techniques. Both groups marginalized women and erected highly authoritarian hierarchies of power that exploited a sense of economic victimhood. The biggest difference is that in Germany, the victims were victimized by forces external to that nation, but in America, the victims are victimized by the very parties they endorse. The economic woes in Germany were imposed by the French. The economic woes in the US were imposed by free-traders, mostly Republicans.
Authoritarians seek empire and absolute power. But authority always invites abuse. And abuse always invites violent opposition. The price of absolute authority in the English tradition has generally been loss of face along with loss of everything north of the third cervical vertebra. Similarly, the price of empire is almost always higher than it was originally assumed to be. Hitler’s collapsed under its own weight. Arguably, so did Russia’s and Rome’s and Gengis Khan’s.
Only the English seem to have studied enough history to have learned its lessons; they gracefully backed out of Inda and southern Africa, and gave Canada and Australia ever more autonomy. Now, England’s children bear many of her best features, and several nearly or almost overshadow her in one respect or another. But all still generally act in her interest. That is not something that can be said for the extended lands of many other imperial powers. What explains the difference? England’s behavior in these cases is the polar opposite of the tournament-style authoritarian empire-builders of history. Perhaps it is not accidental that this style of foreign policy arose in a tiny nation with a long tradition of weak central rule. And a lot of Queens as monarchs.
This is a far-ranging view of tournament vs pair-bonding behavior and cultures in humans. So we must ask ourselves what sorts of things will cause us to live out the peace-loving cooperative lives that we covet? How must we look at ourselves? What must our culture be and what must it do? Put simply, we must change our culture? It is a big question and one we cannot begin to answer well or completely, but we will offer some thoughts.
The basic idea is that we must understand the power of cooperation in both an economic sense and in a personal sense. We must be reasonable, sober, and fair in public discourse, understanding and choosing policies that favor everyone over those that favor ourselves. We must be hopeful and optimistic, but we must also be open to seeing problems and looking for solutions. We must abandon faith-based government and depend instead on rational knowledge that is based on fact and evidence. We must look to science to help us solve every problem that involves matter. We must teach ethics and good citizenship and base the cirriculum on a solid understanding of cooperation and game theory and its applications throughout civic life. We must encourage people to find spiritual meaning for themselves but never let religious organizatins publically claim exclusivity to goodness.
When I asked myself what is wrong with our culture, the first thing that came to my mind was Paris Hilton. Not because she herself is bad, but because she strikes me as a symbol of much of what is bad. She projects the sensibility that she pretty much gets anything she wants from anyone at any time. Which woman would not covet such economic and sexual power? What male human could fail to find her sexually attractive? Paris Hilton is part of a long line of women who are famous for their sex appeal. I don’t have anything against sex appeal, but I think when it is traded as currency the practice can sometimes degrade the quality of discourse on intimacy and its charms. The brutal thing about this practice is that women who fail to successfully exploit their fame and turn it into real political and economic power find their fame a flash-in-the pan phenomenon. They can wake up one day looking just a little less cute and sexy and find they have been dumped for ten younger, cuter sexier women. When this happens, they are used up. Society has eaten them up and spit them out.
So when I think of Paris Hilton, I actually feel sad for her. She has defined herself as a sort of rich sex-kitten; what happens when she loses appeal? What about all the young women who idolize her and try to emulate her? I am haunted by the same sense when I think of Madonna In Madonna’s case I feel sorry because I will never be able to take her seriously as a genuine person, she has spent her entire life re-inventing herself. She is a brand, not a person. It is as if Madonna has sold her very humanity. So even being successful at parlaying sexual appeal into money and power can take its toll.
The problem of tournament culture is much more broadly manifest in men. When I think of tournament culture and how it tends to cause high ranking males to copulate with vast numbers of parners I cannot help but think of a number of prominent and powerful Republican men who seem to have taken on the task of screwing an entire country - its people, its system of law, its constitution, and its young pages. And I wonder how these people sleep at night. Perhaps they are too busy with pages.
I think, too, of the movie Citizen Kane. For years I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why it was that at the end of the movie Kane is such a pathetic figure. I mean, he practically owns the world. For those who have not seen it, the movie starts with a boy of seven happily sledding on his sled, Rosebud. Young Kane inherits a small fortune, is whisked off to prep schools in the east, and at twenty operates a newspaper. He becomes very successful as a publisher and becomes a kingmaker. He builds a great castle on a hill and gradually takes on godlike proportions. But when he finally dies he is very alone and his last spoken word is “Rosebud.” In a single word, Kane mourns his total loss of humanity.
It light of the themes in this essay, it is not hard to see this movie as being about how living the life of the tournament culture enables men of great ambition and intellectual capacity to reap huge financial rewards, but how they will sometimes cause one to lose all that they really treasure in doing it.
What is it that we really treasure? Again, evolutionary biology and brain science can tell us, even though we know already. Read Aristotle or Hume. Or think about this experiment. People were put in an MRI that could detect when the brain releases dopamine. Dopamine release causes a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure in the brain. It is a kind of internal reward system. These research subjects were then engaged in playing the prisoner’s dilemma. The prisoners dilemma is a game where two people are put in a situation in which both can cooperate. If they cooperate, each reaps a moderate reward. Or both can cheat, in which case both get a moderate punishment. Or one could cheat and the other cooperate, in which case the cheater gets a big reward and the person who cooperated gets zip. Now, if the brain were purely rational, it would produce dopamine when one is rewarded most richly. So one would expect the release of dopamine when the rewards were the highest, when one cheated but his opponent cooperated.
But that’s not what happened. Subjects’ brains released dopamine when both parties cooperated. Our brains reward our cooperative behavior with good chemicals. Nature, you see, has conspired to make us socially supportive and interdependent beings. (It is possible that this does not happen in precisely the same way for everyone. For instance, it is possible that sociopaths experience a different brain chemistry.) The life of Kane we properly see as sad because it is sad. Kane has traded all that might give him true satisfaction for pure political power. When we live as Kane, we are sad. Kane has sacrificed a fulfilling social life to become perhaps the most powerful man in America. But he dies miserably unhappy.
The lesson we ought to learn is that if one wants to live in a world based on fulfilling relationships, one must build a culture that values relationships highly. If one wishes to build a world driven by popularity and power, one might build a culture that values only these qualities. The former will tend to pair-bonding; the latter will tend toward tournament behavior.
We have to choose what we want. Do we want lives based on happiness that comes from steady and meaningful relationships or do we want lives driven by competition and greed? Do we want a world of extensive and interlocking mutual support institutions or one made dysfunctional by sparring, scratching, taunting, srcreaming, displaying, and knifing and shooting? Do we want a world that is inclusive, embracing us for who we are including those flaws nature has dealt us, or do we want one that is exclusive, hierarchical, authoritarian, and abusive of the human spirit? It is time for us to choose the path to make us whole.
09.13.06
Reframing Sociobiology
Biology is, or rightly ought to be, more science than religion. This article suggests a possible shift in point-of-view within a particular part of the practice that might help to achieve this goal.