I play pond hockey. After we whack the puck around a while, and we’re soaked in sweat and sagging, I shout, “Next goal wins!” Then, no matter how exhausted I am, I skate like a maniac to score that last goal.
So are humans innately aggressive? Of course we are, and some of us more than others. My aggression emerges not only in hockey games but also in spats over whether war — not just aggression, or violence, but deadly group violence — has deep evolutionary roots.
Prominent skeptic Michael Shermer mocks those who, like me, doubt the deep-roots theory of war. He calls us “blank slaters & Peace & Harmony Mafia.” That decsription, Shermer explains, refers to those “who adhere to the blank slate theory of human nature and those rather aggressive anthropologists who insist that war is a recent invention and that our ancestors lived in relative peace and harmony with one another and nature.”
This is a common tactic of deep-rooters, to suggest that if you reject the war-is-innate theory, you must reject all biological predispositions and believe that our ancestors were peaceful “noble savages.” “Rather aggressive anthropologists” is Shermer’s sly way of implying that, if you aggressively oppose the deep-roots theory, you contradict yourself.
I have never disputed—nor do I know any scholar who disputes — that humans have genetically-based capacities for aggression, anger, vengeance. I also accept that our hominid ancestors, and especially males — whose aggression is much more likely to culminate in violence —occasionally killed each other fighting over females, food or other “resources.”
What I dispute is that we have an innate predisposition for war — or, as anthropologist Richard Wrangham describes it, “lethal coalitionary aggression”— dating back millions of years to our common ancestor with chimpanzees.
Shermer claims there is “massive,” “copious” evidence that war reaches far back into the Paleolithic era and is “part of our evolved nature.” Actually, evidence of group violence dates back only about 12,000 years.
Do our predispositions toward aggression underpin outbreaks of lethal violence, including war? Of course they do, but that doesn’t mean war is innate, any more than it means hockey is innate.
Consider another analogy, between aggression and language. Scientists have compiled copious evidence that our capacity for language is innate, evolving more than one hundred thousand years ago. Our “language instinct” (Steven Pinker’s phrase) clearly enabled the independent inventions of written communication by various societies thousands of years ago. But that does not mean reading and writing are innate. These are recent cultural innovations, and so is war.
Like writing, war emerged independently among early societies — including simple ones, like hunter-gatherers — toward the end of the Paleolithic. Then war spread like a virus, infecting even societies that wanted no part of it. If your neighbor attacks, you can either flee, surrender or fight back.
Shermer suggests that my “tireless” criticism of the deep-roots theory is driven by emotion. He’s right, in this sense: I loathe war, and I loathe the deep-roots theory, because I believe it contributes to the fatalistic acceptance of our era’s militarism.
My most recent survey of student at Stevens found that 124 out of 142, or 87 percent, believe war will never end, and they often defend their outlook with some version of the deep-roots claim.
If the deep-roots theory were empirically validated, I would explain to my students that we can and do overcome biologically-driven impulses. But the deep-roots theory does not withstand scrutiny. That is the main reason why I tirelessly criticize it.
I’d much rather be playing hockey.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his ScientificAmerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
