by CKR
Robert Sapolsky has an outstanding article in the January/February Foreign Affairs. It answers some questions I’ve had for a long time.
Many arguments about human behavior from the behavior of other animals are not careful in the way they use evidence. Evidence is selected to prove points, frequently by those advocating a continuation of past behaviors. Groups of male chimpanzees patrol their territories and kill males from other chimpanzee groups. Therefore, humans can be expected to indulge in war. Rhesus monkey males have harems. Therefore human males can be expected to mess around. I wonder if the people making these arguments also reject evolution.
My objection to this sort of biological determinism has always been that humans have the facility to think and decide which behaviors suit their social arrangements best. Some biological determinists will shift to an argument similar to mine when it suits them: men are biologically determined to run off with twenty-year-olds when they reach middle age, but women must choose to please their mates. Ask Maureen Dowd.
I’ve felt that the argument for human thought and choice in action stands on its own, but, as a scientist, I have to be delighted when some experimental confirmation arrives, and that is what Sapolsky gives us.
Sapolsky studies the behavior of non-human primates. He’s got access to the data. His article is entitled “A Natural History of Peace.” It demonstrates that our primate relatives are capable of behavioral flexibility, away from hostility and toward getting along with each other.
And no, he’s not talking about bonobos, the sex-conquers-all hedonists of the primate world. He’s talking about chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys and baboons, just as willing as humans to dominate and kill their own. He cites several examples of extreme behavioral flexibility in getting along with others (like changes in behavior within hours), and lasting changes from a war to a peace culture.
And some evidence from our own kind: war and conflict has decreased significantly since the end of the Cold War. In 2003, there were 40 percent fewer conflicts than in 1992. That's from the Human Security Report.
Maybe we’re getting to be as smart as Sapolsky’s Forest Troop baboons.