Text 474, 98 rader
Skriven 2004-10-22 21:42:00 av Rebecca Moise (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: Aggression, human nat
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William Morse <wdmorse@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message
news:<cl65sk$arj$1@darwin.ediacara.org>...
> rebeccamoise@cs.com (Rebecca Moise) wrote in
> news:cl1e3b$1vur$1@darwin.ediacara.org: 
> 
> > 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 do not necessarily disagree. Note I said both hunting large animals
no longer possible and free movement across large territories was
restricted.

Humans being our closest ecological competitors what I think happened
in the original adaptation is incresed tension within the group
leading initially, not to war but to splitting of the group and one
part moving away. This would alleviate competition and also spread
members of the species over available territory. Inhibition against
people killing one another is part of this. For this to work it would
be necessary to have places available to move to. Joining together to
kill large animals early humans were able to create a society in which
all obtained benefits of dominance. This replaced members of the group
fighting one another for dominance. When this "safe" outlet for
striving for dominance became limited or no longer available, tension
within the group grew. There might begin to be charges of witchcraft
or sorcery. There ight be feelings that members act "arrogant," or no
longer adhere to earlier rules of strict equality. Some group of men
or another would find their companions impossible to live with, split
off and move elsewhere. When this no longer was possible, tension
within the group grew to the point they might join together to start
attacking their neighbors. The first group would then become predators
in the eyes of these neighbors prompting a counterattack. Why do I not
think this happened regularly as opposed to rarely (when things
started to get crowded)? For one thing groups depended on outside
groups to obtain wives, given the incest taboo. War, when it started,
disrupted the system of obtaining wives. Also it seems that the
earliest cave paintings depict hunting animals, not war, which, if it
existed, would have more emotional pull. Also humans fight wars as if
they were fighting animals, not other human beings. If they had
regularly fought other human beings over millions of years, we would
have evolved "instincts" more appropriate to the situation. If it had
existed for millions of years war would not be the "problem" it is not
only for us today but early civilizations as well. That it is a
problem suggests that it is relatively new.

> While I agree with some of what you say about the crossover between 
> fighting predators of other species and fighting  human predators, I 
> disagree strongly with the theory that war only started when hunting 
> large animals was no longer possible. As in other species, conspecifics 
> are humans' closest ecological competitors, so it is expected that humans 
> will learn to practice war if the benefits exceed the costs. It may be 
> significant in this context to note that the name given for a people in 
> its own language very frequently translates to something like "the real 
> people", making it easy to treat other groups as somewhat less than 
> human. Of course large scale warfare only becomes possible with high 
> population densities, which did not occur until the widespread adoption 
> of agriculture. This is more likely to account for the apparent 
> association of warfare with the decline of hunting.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Bill Morse
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