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There is something mysterious about homo sapiens' organized violence behavior: How much of it is genetically driven (nature) versus culturally determined (nurtu

There is something mysterious about homo sapiens' organized violence behavior: How much of it is genetically driven (nature) versus culturally determined (nurture)? Random individual violence does not seem to be innate except as an aberration. You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis of millions (an environment that was presumably never encoded / selected-for in our DNA) and not really worry that one of the thousands individuals you come across will simply go berserk for the fun (or benefit) of it. "Rage" of various forms happens, but typically under intense stress conditions. But give a group of individuals the slightest pretense in the form of some arbitrary cultural narrative and they will engage in acts of incredible cruelty and dehumanization of random "other" groups. Competition for actual resources seems just a fig leaf. Clan dominance in some imagined anthroposphere is typically the real driver. Think e.g., two football fan clubs attacking each other in ritualistic or actual murder. Its supposed to be fun, there is nothing real at stake, yet somehow group violence is triggered. This behavior is so pervasive in history (and pre-history) that it is almost certainly based on genetic traits. But maybe what was once a "positive" feature is now a millstone around our neck. In a crowded planet with ever advancing technological capabilities large-scale violence based on arbitrary cultural concoctions is simply not a scenario we want to have in front of us. Feels like maybe the most critical aspect of our own species we need to understand and somehow "manage" - assuming its at all possible. Do we have a survival strategy?

toss1 3y ago
Yup >>But give a group of individuals the slightest pretense in the form of some arbitrary cultural narrative ... "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." — Voltaire c.1765
adolph 3y ago
> Do we have a survival strategy? If one frames organized violence as a means rather than an ends, then it is possible to see an answer other than the survival strategy of “be the best at organized violence.”
- nologic01 3y ago
  I don't see this working in the long-term. It assumes that one can win "once-and-for-all", whereas the splintering in competing factions and the pursuit of group objectives with violent means seems a recurrent pattern. Historically even in absolute monarchies (where you would think power relations have been settled would be paralyzed by internal strife, infighting clans etc.) Now, all this would be just the normal human history (and as per the article, pre-history). What changes the dynamic is the advancement of science and technology. If we assume that it is accruing monotonically (which has been the case for several centuries), then if the same social dynamic or emergent organized violence continues, at as some point even a small group that drifts into a state of feeling aggrieved could prompt vast destruction.
  - itsacomment 3y ago
    >Historically even in absolute monarchies (where you would think power relations have been settled would be paralyzed by internal strife, infighting clans etc.) This isn't surprising at all given that "absolute monarchy" was more of a marketing term than a description of reality. England, which rather decisively cut off their monarchs' pretensions at absolute power, was far more centralized than whatever the fuck the different parlements (sp?) of France or the Spanish cortez were doing during the absolutist age.
- lazide 3y ago
  Until the next person who doesn't see it that way starts slaughtering people, and you have no defense? Or are you proposing a genetic breeding/selection program to weed out such tendencies? A "final solution" to violence, perhaps?
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    It's closely related to narcissism and sociopathy. Murdering Cluster B people might be a little extreme, and most non-Cluster B people will feel uncomfortable with that idea. But most violence is demonstrably driven by certain personality types who lead the violence and normalise it. Excluding those types from leadership positions of all kinds as soon as they show evidence of toxicity is unlikely to make things worse. The alternative is on a scale from small cults to megadeaths. (Perhaps gigadeaths on a bad day.) And we already exclude most of the population from leadership and power anyway, using other reasons as an excuse.
sorokod 3y ago
You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis of millions Megapolis implies society, structure and rules. Also machinery to enforce these rules. Not an example demonstrating that violent individuals are an aberration.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  The same forces that make organized violence probably also drive out individual violence. The group monopolizes violence.
  - sorokod 3y ago
    I would say that group violence is channeling the violence of individuals to achieve some goal a group might have. Chimp Empire is worth watching in this context.
  - ptsneves 3y ago
    The most basic definition of state is that it is some institution with the monopoly of violence. Think of it, who in all myriad society organisations and hierarchies has the legitimacy to use force? The state. Even murder is allowed and trained for, if you are part of the state organisation, normally called armed forces. Many anarchists in the XIX century despised the idea of state because accepting it means accepting organised violence and importantly a monopoly on it.
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      Reaching aaaall the way back to high school, this is basic locke theory of government. You give up a freedom to gain some protection against the jerks who would use that freedom against you. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/ It does seem to me that most political arguments fall into this category
      - ptsneves 3y ago
        I would argue that the OG of state violence monopoly is Thomas Hobbes and the concept of sovereign as the deposit of the individual’s ability for violence. Will read the link though. In Portugal there is also philosophy in high school and with time I realize that it was the most practical and important class I ever had and at the time me and my colleagues completely missed its value.
thesumofall 3y ago
Why We Fight by Mike Martin is a great recent book about this. It argues that our tendency to war is indeed an effect of evolution but that the historic trend to us forming larger and larger groups has significantly reduced violence
mytailorisrich 3y ago
Violence between groups exist in other animals as well. My take is that this is a natural consequence of competition for resources. The more individuals or groups are organised, the more violence becomes organised as a logical consequence. We have evolved as social animals members of tight groups and this seems to be quite old looking at chimpanzees and gorillas, for example. So this 'tribal' streak is probably embedded in us to this day.
- type0 3y ago
  I don't think gorillas show violent tribal behavior. They rely on their silver-back male to defend the group in a same way lions do. Baboons on the other hand have right out wars involving the whole group as do chimps and some other primates.
antonkar 3y ago
It’s evolutionary to see danger in strangers because historically it was better to overestimate danger then underestimate it for your survival. You can only react once if someone hits you with a stone from their back. So people and groups overestimate danger that they will be hurt/diminished in some way and then attack when they see the slightest sign of a threat. It can be used to manipulate crowds, just say their children are in danger because of the out-group. Can really recommend the book on the exact mechanics of anger by the most influential psychologist of our times https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Hate-Cognitive-Hostility-Violence/dp/0060932007 https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Hate-Cognitive-Hostility-Vi...
usefulcat 3y ago
> Competition for actual resources seems just a fig leaf. More often than not, and very broadly speaking, the fight is over mindshare: tribal beliefs and allegiances. Differences of religion, politics, nationality or ethnicity are nearly always perceived to be far greater than they actually are.
- specialist 3y ago
  I keep thinking back on a space opera conflict involving many domains of species. There are mammalian, avian, reptile, etc. They've formed coalitions in an effort to catch some highly valuable fugitive humans. (IIRC from Brin's Uplift Wars universe. Star Tide Rising?) The machine's weapons of choice are algorithms, code, simulations, viruses. No physical violence. But still very high stakes, like mind wipes.
Xeoncross 3y ago
I don't see a disconnect between those two states. As individuals we want acceptance, respect and love. It's abnormal for someone to randomly, attack others when they are alone and already vulnerable feeling. Normal people crave community and do not attempt acts that result in their ridicule and/or rejection. Only outliers like psychopaths continuously break societal norms. As groups we form bonds and have our place/role. Protecting what we have and those we love seems natural as does protecting the society, world view, or leader(s) our group supports. Therefore, I would expect individual violence to be much less than group violence in intensity, duration and occurrence.
fsckboy 3y ago
>Random individual violence does not seem to be innate except as an aberration. You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis of millions (an environment that was presumably never encoded / selected-for in our DNA) and not really worry that one of the thousands individuals you come across will simply go berserk for the fun (or benefit) of it. "Rage" of various forms happens, but typically under intense stress conditions. to me this analysis is not starting off in the right direction. We're talking about Neolithic people here so it's appropriate to use more straight up evolutionary law of the jungle thinking. Sudden violence is in us from the get go. Look at so many other mammals, they use violence with each other to sort things out at the drop of a hat. Look at how we portray cowboys, and indians (or fasts, and furiouses?). I'm not even saying that the picture is accurate to history, I'm saying the picture is accurate to how we think, viscerally, and such films excite us, not because of memories because we were there, we weren't. Just because it's how we think. So I'd start out the analysis with, we are violent animals at the base of our brain, or is it at the base of our evolution, but animals don't kill each other that often. On top of that we are extremely social animals, you can walk down the street surrounded by strangers and not hit them. But also on top of that we are thinking, calculating, theory of mind imagining: this person has been irking me for awhile now, if I secretly kill them, my problems will be solved. I'm not saying it's anywhere near that simple or that that's accurate, but we need to think that way. We've seen some papers recently here that said it's not appropriate to think we have 3 brains in 3 layers, wrestling with each other, because they're more intertwingled than that. So this kind of noodling only takes us so far, but I have the sense that it's the right kind of thinking. I don't think our violence is aberrant at all, but we did "invent" being extremely social, and then etiquette, and then even the term aberrance to talk about some behaviors which are unusual within that framework. Rabies might be aberrant behavior in dogs, and anxiety conditions, but otherwise they're pretty basic. And anxiety is so prevalent we have to assume it's adaptive anyway. Starting with Freud, an aspect of psychology that is not as widely understood as it should be is the notion of unconscious thought, and unconscious motivation. (The term subconscious is associated with a more woo-woo theory of Jung's, that we share subconsious awareness with other people, is why unconscious is the usual term.) It's very difficult for people to grasp that they don't actually know what they are thinking, but it does leak out. If you are talking to somebody and say "I'm not saying that you're X, I'm saying that you are Y", you are definitely thinking that they are X, or at least a substantial part of you is. That's where you got the idea to deny it from. It can be broken down plainly in computer programmer terms. While the brain isn't "just like a computer", in order for you to compare X and Y you have to use the subroutine or the struct or the class for X and the other one for Y, they are separated at some place in your mind. You can't say X without the X part of the brain lighting up. What makes you say "I'm not calling you X" is another part of your brain lighting up to say "this is an unpleasant thought, better not be accused of saying it, that will be socially awkward". "Children blurt out the truth, children say what we are all thinking." We have additional brain processes that children have not developed yet, but we didn't lose the thoughts they have, that's why we understand them. It's all that shame and judgement we fear from other people and apply to ourselves that starts to tear our coherent ideal self (that we think we are) apart. So, imho we don't get anywhere by imagining we are a "good people" walking around who sometimes aberr; we are complicated collections of competing selfish ideas, some of which are nasty.
yencabulator 3y ago
> This behavior is so pervasive in history (and pre-history) that it is almost certainly based on genetic traits. Chimpanzees wage wars and go on raids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

toss1 3y ago

Yup >>But give a group of individuals the slightest pretense in the form of some arbitrary cultural narrative ... "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." — Voltaire c.1765

adolph 3y ago

> Do we have a survival strategy? If one frames organized violence as a means rather than an ends, then it is possible to see an answer other than the survival strategy of “be the best at organized violence.”

nologic01 3y ago
I don't see this working in the long-term. It assumes that one can win "once-and-for-all", whereas the splintering in competing factions and the pursuit of group objectives with violent means seems a recurrent pattern. Historically even in absolute monarchies (where you would think power relations have been settled would be paralyzed by internal strife, infighting clans etc.) Now, all this would be just the normal human history (and as per the article, pre-history). What changes the dynamic is the advancement of science and technology. If we assume that it is accruing monotonically (which has been the case for several centuries), then if the same social dynamic or emergent organized violence continues, at as some point even a small group that drifts into a state of feeling aggrieved could prompt vast destruction.
- itsacomment 3y ago
  >Historically even in absolute monarchies (where you would think power relations have been settled would be paralyzed by internal strife, infighting clans etc.) This isn't surprising at all given that "absolute monarchy" was more of a marketing term than a description of reality. England, which rather decisively cut off their monarchs' pretensions at absolute power, was far more centralized than whatever the fuck the different parlements (sp?) of France or the Spanish cortez were doing during the absolutist age.
lazide 3y ago
Until the next person who doesn't see it that way starts slaughtering people, and you have no defense? Or are you proposing a genetic breeding/selection program to weed out such tendencies? A "final solution" to violence, perhaps?
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  It's closely related to narcissism and sociopathy. Murdering Cluster B people might be a little extreme, and most non-Cluster B people will feel uncomfortable with that idea. But most violence is demonstrably driven by certain personality types who lead the violence and normalise it. Excluding those types from leadership positions of all kinds as soon as they show evidence of toxicity is unlikely to make things worse. The alternative is on a scale from small cults to megadeaths. (Perhaps gigadeaths on a bad day.) And we already exclude most of the population from leadership and power anyway, using other reasons as an excuse.

sorokod 3y ago

You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis of millions Megapolis implies society, structure and rules. Also machinery to enforce these rules. Not an example demonstrating that violent individuals are an aberration.

jvanderbot 3y ago
The same forces that make organized violence probably also drive out individual violence. The group monopolizes violence.
- sorokod 3y ago
  I would say that group violence is channeling the violence of individuals to achieve some goal a group might have. Chimp Empire is worth watching in this context.
- ptsneves 3y ago
  The most basic definition of state is that it is some institution with the monopoly of violence. Think of it, who in all myriad society organisations and hierarchies has the legitimacy to use force? The state. Even murder is allowed and trained for, if you are part of the state organisation, normally called armed forces. Many anarchists in the XIX century despised the idea of state because accepting it means accepting organised violence and importantly a monopoly on it.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    Reaching aaaall the way back to high school, this is basic locke theory of government. You give up a freedom to gain some protection against the jerks who would use that freedom against you. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/ It does seem to me that most political arguments fall into this category
    - ptsneves 3y ago
      I would argue that the OG of state violence monopoly is Thomas Hobbes and the concept of sovereign as the deposit of the individual’s ability for violence. Will read the link though. In Portugal there is also philosophy in high school and with time I realize that it was the most practical and important class I ever had and at the time me and my colleagues completely missed its value.

thesumofall 3y ago

Why We Fight by Mike Martin is a great recent book about this. It argues that our tendency to war is indeed an effect of evolution but that the historic trend to us forming larger and larger groups has significantly reduced violence

mytailorisrich 3y ago

Violence between groups exist in other animals as well. My take is that this is a natural consequence of competition for resources. The more individuals or groups are organised, the more violence becomes organised as a logical consequence. We have evolved as social animals members of tight groups and this seems to be quite old looking at chimpanzees and gorillas, for example. So this 'tribal' streak is probably embedded in us to this day.

type0 3y ago
I don't think gorillas show violent tribal behavior. They rely on their silver-back male to defend the group in a same way lions do. Baboons on the other hand have right out wars involving the whole group as do chimps and some other primates.

antonkar 3y ago

It’s evolutionary to see danger in strangers because historically it was better to overestimate danger then underestimate it for your survival. You can only react once if someone hits you with a stone from their back. So people and groups overestimate danger that they will be hurt/diminished in some way and then attack when they see the slightest sign of a threat. It can be used to manipulate crowds, just say their children are in danger because of the out-group. Can really recommend the book on the exact mechanics of anger by the most influential psychologist of our times https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Hate-Cognitive-Hostility-Violence/dp/0060932007 https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Hate-Cognitive-Hostility-Vi...

usefulcat 3y ago

> Competition for actual resources seems just a fig leaf. More often than not, and very broadly speaking, the fight is over mindshare: tribal beliefs and allegiances. Differences of religion, politics, nationality or ethnicity are nearly always perceived to be far greater than they actually are.

specialist 3y ago
I keep thinking back on a space opera conflict involving many domains of species. There are mammalian, avian, reptile, etc. They've formed coalitions in an effort to catch some highly valuable fugitive humans. (IIRC from Brin's Uplift Wars universe. Star Tide Rising?) The machine's weapons of choice are algorithms, code, simulations, viruses. No physical violence. But still very high stakes, like mind wipes.

Xeoncross 3y ago

I don't see a disconnect between those two states. As individuals we want acceptance, respect and love. It's abnormal for someone to randomly, attack others when they are alone and already vulnerable feeling. Normal people crave community and do not attempt acts that result in their ridicule and/or rejection. Only outliers like psychopaths continuously break societal norms. As groups we form bonds and have our place/role. Protecting what we have and those we love seems natural as does protecting the society, world view, or leader(s) our group supports. Therefore, I would expect individual violence to be much less than group violence in intensity, duration and occurrence.

fsckboy 3y ago

>Random individual violence does not seem to be innate except as an aberration. You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis of millions (an environment that was presumably never encoded / selected-for in our DNA) and not really worry that one of the thousands individuals you come across will simply go berserk for the fun (or benefit) of it. "Rage" of various forms happens, but typically under intense stress conditions. to me this analysis is not starting off in the right direction. We're talking about Neolithic people here so it's appropriate to use more straight up evolutionary law of the jungle thinking. Sudden violence is in us from the get go. Look at so many other mammals, they use violence with each other to sort things out at the drop of a hat. Look at how we portray cowboys, and indians (or fasts, and furiouses?). I'm not even saying that the picture is accurate to history, I'm saying the picture is accurate to how we think, viscerally, and such films excite us, not because of memories because we were there, we weren't. Just because it's how we think. So I'd start out the analysis with, we are violent animals at the base of our brain, or is it at the base of our evolution, but animals don't kill each other that often. On top of that we are extremely social animals, you can walk down the street surrounded by strangers and not hit them. But also on top of that we are thinking, calculating, theory of mind imagining: this person has been irking me for awhile now, if I secretly kill them, my problems will be solved. I'm not saying it's anywhere near that simple or that that's accurate, but we need to think that way. We've seen some papers recently here that said it's not appropriate to think we have 3 brains in 3 layers, wrestling with each other, because they're more intertwingled than that. So this kind of noodling only takes us so far, but I have the sense that it's the right kind of thinking. I don't think our violence is aberrant at all, but we did "invent" being extremely social, and then etiquette, and then even the term aberrance to talk about some behaviors which are unusual within that framework. Rabies might be aberrant behavior in dogs, and anxiety conditions, but otherwise they're pretty basic. And anxiety is so prevalent we have to assume it's adaptive anyway. Starting with Freud, an aspect of psychology that is not as widely understood as it should be is the notion of unconscious thought, and unconscious motivation. (The term subconscious is associated with a more woo-woo theory of Jung's, that we share subconsious awareness with other people, is why unconscious is the usual term.) It's very difficult for people to grasp that they don't actually know what they are thinking, but it does leak out. If you are talking to somebody and say "I'm not saying that you're X, I'm saying that you are Y", you are definitely thinking that they are X, or at least a substantial part of you is. That's where you got the idea to deny it from. It can be broken down plainly in computer programmer terms. While the brain isn't "just like a computer", in order for you to compare X and Y you have to use the subroutine or the struct or the class for X and the other one for Y, they are separated at some place in your mind. You can't say X without the X part of the brain lighting up. What makes you say "I'm not calling you X" is another part of your brain lighting up to say "this is an unpleasant thought, better not be accused of saying it, that will be socially awkward". "Children blurt out the truth, children say what we are all thinking." We have additional brain processes that children have not developed yet, but we didn't lose the thoughts they have, that's why we understand them. It's all that shame and judgement we fear from other people and apply to ourselves that starts to tear our coherent ideal self (that we think we are) apart. So, imho we don't get anywhere by imagining we are a "good people" walking around who sometimes aberr; we are complicated collections of competing selfish ideas, some of which are nasty.

yencabulator 3y ago

> This behavior is so pervasive in history (and pre-history) that it is almost certainly based on genetic traits. Chimpanzees wage wars and go on raids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War