This is just one more "proof" of René Girard's mimetic theory. The scapegoat mechanism at the core of all human societies was heavily explained and documented 50 years ago. René Girard, whose theories heavily influenced the world vision of Peter Thiel and many more, is still dramatically absent in this kind of articles. I'm not sure why. His mimetic theory absolutely revolutionized the field of anthropology, theology, and many more should come.
I strongly suggest reading Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Changed my life.
Same here, last year I devoured tons of writing on mimetic theory. And now I'm moving on to think about how we reconcile mimetic theory with theories of origin of consciousness, so this article was quite useful.
Where I would push back slightly on your comment: what's described in the article isn't scapegoating in the Girardian sense of the word. Because if when a man kills multiple others, then is killed for doing so, he actually is guilty (and a scapegoat isn't). But... it is likely rather the source of the development of scapegoating.
I think that scapegoating then develops when there is chaos in a society that isn't caused by the actions of an individual or the individual responsible can't be discovered. These primitive humans has seen already that violence/chaos can be stopped by putting an end to the cause of it, such as in the case of a violent man. There's chaos, there must be a cause, so who do we blame? Violá, our scapegoat.
I really wonder how these ideas are such a revelation, we are still domesticating people just look at the prison system, what do you think that's all about?
I'm not sure I can summarize such a global theory in a comment, but basically, he started from a simple truth : the mimetic nature of humans. You want what you want, not because of the intrinsic qualities of objects, but because you're imitating others. Inevitably, this leads to rivalry and conflict. Animals deal with this violence with what we call dominance patterns : the loser will very often yield to the now dominant animal, and the entire society will be ruled with complex hierarchies based on this. However, humans are too mimetic to be able to end violence like that. In our species, unrestricted violence ends in death. It can then rapidly spread across the community and bring chaos. The way primitive humans have dealt with this conflict is to turn the blame on someone else, the scapegoat, which suddenly turns into a primitive sacred being. At first, he is seen as an evil being responsible for all the chaos. Then, after being sacrificed, he is seen as the ultimate savior of the community. You now have the mechanism creating primitive religions.
English isn't my native language, I hope I've been clear enough so that you can imagine the enormous consequences of such a ground-breaking theory on every aspect of human life. I suggest reading the books.
Funny, Freud suggested something very similar in _Totem and Taboo_, and faced a lot of ridicule for it. Would be interesting if he were finally vindicated to some extent.
He's been vindicated time and time again, his theories are the most influential of any one writer in psychology. I took a great books course and had to struggle through MULTIPLE made up case studies, and pretend these are "great" when it's just BS. Still, thousands reading his works every year and universities vindicating his theories doesn't mean he didn't fabricate data, espouse cocaine use, and all of the other negatives people bring up time and again.
Freud is far from 'vindicated'. At least over here (The Netherlands, and probably most of Western Europe/US), Freud is seen as an important figure historically, but (most of?) his work is not considered valid.
EDIT: I mean in academia; I suppose his ideas are still quite popular culturally.
Common sense would tell you there's some truth to it. For centuries we killed murderers and rapists and thus removed them from the gene pool. Data shows testosterone levels, which are correlated with violence, have dropped massively over the last few decades, whether that is genetic or environmental and to what extent for each is up for debate
WWI and WII basically selected to kill off Europe's bravest and most nationalistic men, those who immediately signed up to fight and were thrown in the meat grinder.
I'm partly convinced that's why America is so different from Europe, we managed to avoid most of the carnage of those wars
Don't forget that immigrants to America were probably skewed toward certain personality types. And, of course, all personality traits are heritable to some degree.
There is a neat paper I can't find which runs the numbers. So from memory:
For about 1000 years, we know that west-european states executed about 1% of each generation. Assume it's the most violent 1%, and that violence is 50% heritable. Plugging these into standard formulas for animal breeding, and I believe the answer is that this explains about half the decline in the murder rate over this period.
Obviously there are some giant caveats here. But it's super-interesting that a back-of-the-envelope calculation gets you the right order of magnitude.
I'm dubious though of wars doing much. The big 20th C meat-grinder was largely conscripts. And anyway I'm not sure how correlated with blood-thirst most recruiting was. Whereas getting yourself hanged for murder in peacetime was pretty tightly correlated.
I assume sshine was talking about Freud's conjectures on evolutionary biology and the evolutionary conservatism of archaic structures in the brain.
Much of that work is on its surface unremarkable today, though not at the time. But as it wasn't really central to his most influential work, it also hasn't been (IMHO) particularly influential
It really is. In modern context "evolution" doesn't mean "any type of evolution e.g. Lamarckian evolution, evolution from natural selection or Pokemon evolution from leveling up". It really just means "evolution from natural selection" which is not only a novel idea proposed by Darwin, but Darwin also pioneered to research on this idea (i.e. going around the world and collecting specimens that could potentially falsify his hypothesis but instead support it).
That Plato thought your mind transfers from your previous souls and this is called "evolution" is simply an accident of language.
Bonobos compete for genetic dominance at the level of sperm. They are what we would call promiscuous, the females mate with multiple partners. He with the greatest volume of seamen and sperm washes out the competition. There's no need to be aggressive in person. Bonobo testicles are very large compared to, say, humans. Southern right whales are very similar in their mating habits. On the other hand, species where the male physically secures the females - elk, blue whales, humans, have much smaller testes and rely on physical ability to fend off other male challengers and secure their own genetic future. These traits were set in place long before "culture" developed. Culture is the result of these physical / genetic traits, not the cause.
Yeah of course. Violence, like all traits, is moderately heritable 1. Europeans engaged in a multi century eugenics program after the Christian church took over society 2. They executed 2% of their most violent every generation. This resulted in a severe decline in criminality across the European population group.
Neoteny is the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. The constellation of traits that emerge when selecting for friendliness (foxes: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox) seem to be neotenous. So dogs are puppies, cats are kittens, and men and women are children.
Friendly people are selected for, by the benefits of cooperation, trade and civilization.
tl;dr the civilization of humans was their domestication
In my reading of the TFA, it's not. It's the idea that less aggressive individual were naturally selected, partly via sexual selection of the males by the females, partly by pruning of the most violent individuals by the whole group.
Nothing to do with the domestication of one group by another.
I agree. But there's no reason that nobility could not also have domesticated peasants.
However, it's arguably not about the group "pruning of the most violent individuals". Rather, it's about pruning individuals with low social status who resort to violence. That is, individuals who don't follow orders. Morgan's Black Man (aka 13) is an interesting take on this.
And yes, I do mention science fiction and fantasy ~frequently. And I do like Richard Morgan's stuff, and people who are independent, and often violent, are a recurring theme.
But actually, it's Matthew Stover's "Caine" series that I love the best. His central theme is Aleister Crowley's Law of Thelema: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. ... Love is the law, love under will."
And there's a key point that's often missed by assholes. If you habitually hurt others, except in self defense, others will choose to exile, imprison or kill you. Because, you know, that's an expression of their love for each other.
And if I were really going on about it, I'd get into William S. Burroughs' stuff about killing the assholes (5-10% of the population) who impose their will on others. But I won't.
I see that theory about female selection being pushed a lot lately, but it's a fairly easily debunked theory.
Female selection didn't occur in human society. Females didn't get to choose who they married. Rather it was the men who decided which females marry which male.
Also, there is far less diversity in the Y chromosome than the X. The best possible explanation is during ancient tribal war, the winning side killed all the males of the losing tribe and bred with the females.
Also, we have evidence that the greatest genetic winners are warriors/leaders like genghis khan and charlemagne.
Historical, genetic and biological evidence debunks the female selection theory.
As for the "pruning of violent individuals by the whole group". That too is nonsense. It is the most violent group who establishes order. Law and order isn't anything the group decided on. Rather law and order is something a small group of violent elites forced on the masses.
Think about the US. The group didn't vote on independence. Rather it was a small group of violent elites. During the revolution, at most 30% of the colonial population supported independence.
Think about the current world order ( aka international order ). Nobody voted for it. It was forced on the world by 2 world wars, 1 cold war and 200 million dead people.
Or look at china. Tens of millions of people died in order for order to be enforced on that gigantic nation.
The idea that female selection or pruning of violent individuals is how humans tamed themselves simply isn't true. Also, the idea that humans tamed themselves is simply a lie as well. We were tamed through law, order and lots of violence. Also, full bellies and distractions ( bread and circuses ) helped.
To suggest that female selection simply "didn't occur in human society" is just nonsense. Utter nonsense. Over what evolutionary time period are you prepared to make this bold claim? Assuming you agree that females do select mates now, when in your opinion did the female-selection revolution come? Presumably it was already well established by the time Homer wrote of Penelope selecting suitors nearly 3 thousand years ago. And once established, how long did it take for women to evolve their current acutely sensitive awareness of male mate fitness?
Miles of copy have been written about mate selection strategies in humans and other species - it's a game of exquisitely delicate game theory, with complex strategies evolved over millennia. It's an arms race of epic proportions that is a fundamental driver of evolution. Our biology is shaped by it - women have concealed estrus, for example, as one more play in the intricate dance of information warfare that is mating.
But no, you casually dismiss it all as a "fairly easily debunked theory", somehow (?) supported by the fact that millions died in China in the 20th century.
Homer also wrote of Helen of Troy who was abducted and raped by Paris. Also a major western history stems from a couple of ancient greek warriors fighting over booty ( aka women they got from conquest ).
Also, Penelope didn't choose the least violent man. Her criteria for marriage was the most masculine man who could use Odysseus's bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads. So even if you are correct, my position still stands.
If you want to argue that female selection within narrow limits occurred, then so be it. That's not much of a selection. Using that reasoning, two male lion brothers taking over a pride, killing all the cubs and giving the females the option of mating between them is female selection.
I can't believe you are using greek myth and myth based on "nobility" to argue human selection. Maybe it's just me, but a british princess given the choice of marrying a german prince or a french prince doesn't represent "female selection" to me.
As I said, we have genetic evidence ( less diverse Y chromosomes ), historical evidence and biological evidence proving that the dominant evolutionary cause isn't female selection. It is males dominating and keeping their competitors away.
Look at the genetic "diversity" of mexico after the spanish conquest. Nearly 70% of the Y chromosomes are from european ancestory, 30% of the Y chromosome is from native ancestory, nearly 100% of the X chromosomes are from native ancestry. Do you think it was by "female selection" or the fact that spaniards brutally ruled over the natives and had the power to kill and mate with whomever they wanted?
A disproportionate portion black male Y chromosomes in the US are of european ancestry. Do you think it was because black slaves had a choice or because the white male slavers with the power had the power to have their way?
Do you think the genetic makeup of the US is a result of native female selection or because of conquest, genocide, rape, etc? Do you think pocahontas asked to be kidnapped, taken from her baby and her native husband and shipped to england?
Whatever female selection occurred happened within a male mating framework. That's my point. And the overarching driving factor in human evolution has been driven by males. You can't explain human history without it. You can't explain the current geography without it. The US isn't mostly white because of female selection. China isn't mostly chinese because of female selection.
Second, arranged marriage is normally set up by people who largely share DNA with those getting married. (the parents negotiate) Since the DNA is pretty much the same, genetically it's as if the bride herself got to choose.
Third, opinion of the bride was not universally ignored.
1. Both partners cheated, I don't know enough historically to say if one gender cheated more, but I'd guess it's pretty even in monogamous cultures and in non-monogamous cultures there usually was a dominant gender that was permitted to be non-monogamous and the vast majority of these allowed non-monogamous activity on the part of males (I'm including having multiple wives here once dedicated relationships entered society, not just non-binding relationships, that last category was actually, to my understanding, dominated by female choice, but it's a very tiny sliver)
2. I don't see how this favors either gender in particular, outside of the general trend of a society to be more matriarchal or patriarchal (and most people have lived in societies that have skewed towards the patriarchal end)
3. I agree but given the skew of societies I'd say that the opinion of the bride was ignored more often than the opinion of the husband.
There are comments all over the place so I'd clarify my overall point, it appears that male-driven choice and female-driven choice have both contributed, neither gender was entirely sidelined or even close to that state, but from what I've seen male choice has traditionally had a larger voice in terms of reproduction. So females did select in multiple ways, (anyone who says it's all males is being silly) but their selection power was below the selection power held by males.
I think you missed a very important detail: Everything you wrote talks in terms of groups. There's a cutoff level of aggression past which individuals wouldn't be able to function as a group.
Evolution doesn't work in terms of positively selecting the "strong", it works by selecting out the "weak". In this case, the point isn't that we positively selected the most peaceful. Instead, we selected out those so violent they wouldn't even be able to organise into a tribe.
> Evolution doesn't work in terms of positively selecting the "strong", it works by selecting out the "weak".
This is incorrect. Evolution works by a differential in the rate of reproduction. If weak couples have three kids (who survive and reproduce in turn) each, while strong couples have seven, then there is a strong selective pressure on "strength" and the population will grow stronger and stronger over time, but nobody's getting selected out. Weaks are an ever dwindling share of the population, but in absolute terms their numbers are constantly growing.
And this kind of thing is common, as with selection for higher fertility and lower age of first reproduction in the New World.
But "tribalism" predates humans. Living in groups is a trait that humans inherited, not something we developed.
Now we may have refined it and grown it to form tribe of tribes, but the point still stands.
When it comes to humans, we have to talk in terms of groups because that's the human experience. Humans don't exist outside of a group. Humans never have existed outside of a group. The "group" is what we inherited from our non-human ancestors.
Also, my point isn't that we selected the most peaceful. It's that female selection isn't the drive force behind human "evolution" or the human "taming". Humans were tamed through sheer brutality and concentrated power along with bread and circuses.
Take away the bread and circuses and loosen the concentration of power and I doubt we'd be as tame as we are now.
Domesticated isn’t the same thing as non-violent or even ‘tame’ as the term is usually used. It doesn’t even mean civilised. Rottweilers are domesticated. A small pet dog ate half the face off its owner, while she was alive, in France when she collapsed at home and it got hungry, yet it was a normal domestic pet dog.
I would agree that communal group living as seen in many primates is a precursor to the sort of domestication we’re talking about here. It’s a first step on a long road.
Yes Genghis Khan was violent and brutal, but he was also an inspiring leader that built alliances and administered a vast empire. He ate his meals using utensils, at regular times of the day, was able to be cordial and open minded about strangers.
He was first and foremost extremely disciplined and self-controlled. He was able to be taught and trained as a child, learn rules and commands and was able to control his immediate biological needs and desires especially when under external discipline.
Even that isn’t the whole story though. Cows and pigs are domesticated and display all the adaptive characteristics that come with it.
I didn't say domestication was the same as non-violent or "tame" or civilized. I didn't even mention the word.
My point is that humans were tamed through brutality and force and bread and circuses. And just like you little dog, when we run out of bread and circuses or an authority, we are capable of being violent again.
It seems like you want to disagree with me but everything you wrote agrees with me so I'm not sure how to respond.
I originally wrote "female selection didn't happen much in human society" but changed it since those societies were rather fringe and aren't the dominant human society.
I know there were pockets of it. I remember watching a documentary on a small chinese ethnic group that practiced matriarchy and polygamy. But that's not the dominant nor the successful human society.
99% of human beings live in a patriarchical society. China, Europe, Americas, most of africa, Middle East, etc.
Edit: Here is the PBS documentary if anyone is interested.
Most of the matriarchies were in Africa, and they were decimated completely when European colonizers showed up.
There were a few matriarchies elsewhere, but not many.
Most human societies were patriarchies.
It would be interesting, from a purely scientific point of view, to see what the african matriarchies would have developed into? How does that sort of thing affect development? Etc.
Men are shaped, in their most formative years, by their mothers. That's nearly universal.
Consequently, you may want to consider Ghengis Khan's and Charlemagne's mothers... those two ladies, due to the manner in which the raised their offspring, had their genes spread throughout a good portion of the planet.
If females don't get to choose who they mate with and breed with, how would female selection theory work?
If tribe A conquers tribe B and kills all the males in tribe B and breeds with all the females in tribe B, how exactly is female selection involved here? Or even if the males in tribe B weren't killed but all the resources were taken by males in tribe A, where does female selection apply?
I think your theories are really interesting but there's a hole in this one. Tribe A also has parents. Not all reproduction happens through force. Female selection was probably happening in Tribe A.
The war scenario and arranged marriage mix things (which is one of the reasons what you say is interesting) but I don't think it's so black and white.
You created a single strawman scenario where female selection doesn't exist.
This doesn't invalidate literally hundreds of other possibilities where it could exist. Are you really serious about this right now? Do you not see flaws in the argument you constructed?
>> It's the idea that less aggressive individual were naturally selected, partly via sexual selection of the males by the females, partly by pruning of the most violent individuals by the whole group.
Not buying the notion of females selecting more docile males. Women almost unversally tend to be attracted to alpha male characteristics and often get into trouble chasing that type of guy. The ones who want more docile men are often those who got burned by someone at the far end of the aggression spectrum. This is a form of selection, but it's not a mechanism that would change females natural preferences.
The thing is that if you are an established "alpha male" either in the hierarchical sense or in the sense that you are self-sufficient, there is little need to engage in intra-group aggression, and in fact that would likely be detrimental as others are more likely to want to strip you of leadership roles if you are violent to them.
So it's quite possible (but uncertain) that women are attracted to dominance and leadership but not so much to physical violence itself, especially if the women does not think it serves any purpose, or if it shows weakness ("can't get any respect, so resorts to physical violence").
>The thing is that if you are an established "alpha male" either in the hierarchical sense or in the sense that you are self-sufficient, there is little need to engage in intra-group aggression, and in fact that would likely be detrimental as others are more likely to want to strip you of leadership roles if you are violent to them.
The tribal and clan-based politics of most of human history would seem to disagree with you. It's only relatively recently, post Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, that "alpha-male status" wasn't often established or leadership imposed directly through violence, albeit mediated through some kind of "code of honor" which usually only applied amongst nobles.
Look at classical literature. Who are the heroes? Often not merely poets, scholars or subtle artisans - but the men who carve their name out of the world in blood, the soldiers and warrior-kings.
>> So it's quite possible (but uncertain) that women are attracted to dominance and leadership but not so much to physical violence itself, especially if the women does not think it serves any purpose, or if it shows weakness
Somewhat agreed. Some women enjoy watching physical male violence in various forms and circumstances - particularly if it involves protecting them or their children. Confidence pushed to the extreme ends to look like arrogance. Taking action can look like aggression. Face it, if you're a female and want your genes to survive, who should you mate with? Someone who can make their own way in the world and can defend himself against threats. The undesirable (to others) extreme of that is to leave a path of carnage in your wake (excessive dominance).
>> The thing is that if you are an established "alpha male" either in the hierarchical sense or in the sense that you are self-sufficient, there is little need to engage in intra-group aggression...
There may not be a need for it, but if that's what it took to get established what makes you think someone is going to turn that crap off? See Trump as an example. There's a lot of overlap between the desirable and undesirable traits - so much so that I don't think biological "instinct" is refined enough to tell the difference in many cases.
We're not talking about insects, or birds, we're talking about human beings. Humans don't select mates, we select partners with whom we may or may not mate, and the process of selection is social, mutual and complex.
>> We're not talking about insects, or birds, we're talking about human beings.
Well aren't we special then.
We're talking about evolution, so the part of "we select partners with whom we may or may not mate" where people don't mate is not even relevant. In fact, if there is a genetic component to not mating, it is selected against in evolutionary terms.
I thought we were talking about what people are attracted to (i.e. make one feel like mating), not who they like to hang out with - if you find both of those characteristics in one person that's great and I think we all strive for that. But don't kid yourself that humans don't have primitive instinctual drives governed by biology and evolution.
Incorrect, the theory is that human groups selectively killed unreasonably violent individuals, which over time led to a more docile/pacifist population. Not that pacifist though, as the countless wars and violent acts can attest.
New? This was part of the philosophy in Fight Club. I remember hearing Chuck Palahniuk talk about it. Ted Kaczynski (of all people) believed humans had domesticated ourselves. I'm not sure what to make of an article that boldly claims "Wrangham grapples fully for the first time" with a theory older than I am. Certainly the author of the article didn't do his homework. Perhaps in the book the author acknowledges he didn't come up with the theory - I can't say without reading it. But clearly someone is grossly misrepresenting the facts here.
> The notion that humans are a domesticated species is at least as old as ancient Greece. [...] Two thousand years later, the topic of human domestication re-emerged in the intuitions of an influential early anthropologist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.
And this is in the article:
> In fact, Wrangham’s notion of human evolution powered by self-domestication has an ancient lineage: The basic idea was first proposed by a disciple of Aristotle’s named Theophrastus and has been debated several times since the 18th century.
From TFA: “In fact, Wrangham’s notion of human evolution powered by self-domestication has an ancient lineage: The basic idea was first proposed by a disciple of Aristotle’s named Theophrastus and has been debated several times since the 18th century. This latest version, too, is bound to provoke controversy, but that’s what bold theorizing is supposed to do.“
