HUX 530 - WAR & HUMAN EXPERIENCE
In addition, as we have seen, to being an integral aspect of warfare, human aggression also raises some basic and profound questions concerning human nature itself. Certainly what we think about aggression has much to do with how we interpret human behavior and what it means to be human. It is useful, for example, to know how similar to and different from other species humans are in this respect. We shall also want to examine the role of intrahuman violence in human evolution and to ask whether such aggressive behavior can provide a meaningful explanation of war.
There are essentially two positions concerning the nature of human aggression. These positions occupy points along the continuum of the "nature/nurture" controversy, having to do with the extent to which human behavior is instinctive or innate and the extent to which it is influenced by environmental factors such as cultural norms, parenting and peer influence. Before discussing each of these positions, I should note that those who hold the middle ground here-i.e., those who see human behavior as determined by the interaction of genetic makeup and environment, the proportions of which may vary according to a wide range of variables-form the majority of opinion on these issues.
One school of thought holds that human aggression is innate or instinctive. Ultimately this can be seen as a modern version of the Christian doctrine of original sin. We can trace modern exponents of this position back at least as far as Sigmund Freud, who expounded the idea in Civilization and its Discontents that what he termed the life force was countered by an equally powerful death instinct. More recently the research of the ethologists Konrad Lorenz and Nikolas Tinbergen and the sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson also has been used as evidence for innate human aggression. In the 1960's these ideas were popularized by a number of writers, most prominently Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape, The Human Zoo) and Robert Ardrey (African Genesis, The Territorial Imperative). A number of novels and films also reflect these ideas, including William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's film of A Clockwork Orange, and the films of Sam Peckinpaugh, such as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs.
The basic thesis of this position, based upon evidence derived from human evolution and history, the behavior of other species-especially non-human primates, our closest animal relatives-and data from contemporary societies, is that human beings have instinctive tendencies toward violent aggression, and that the course of human evolution seems to have favored those less inhibited from killing fellow humans. Such views represent a form of genetic determinism and consequently imply a pessimistic image of human nature in the sense that violent aggression must therefore be inevitable.
Proponents of the idea of innate human violent aggression have been criticized for making extensive generalizations about human behavior based upon limited and not necessarily analogous animal behavior. Arguments against this position make the following points: 1) generalizations about human aggression based upon studies of animal aggression tend to ignore significant differences within and between species; 2) there are many different kinds of animal aggression, none of which are necessarily related to human aggression; 3) human beings are much more complex and flexible in their behavior than the species-such as ants and other insects-whose behavior has been used to formulate generalizations about instinctive aggression; 4) there is little hard genetic or biological evidence that supports this position; 5) behavior and experience restricted at most to 20% of the male population (i.e., warfare) can hardly be characterized as universal human behavior.
The other school of thought holds that aggression is almost entirely learned or acquired and that no specific behavior is genetically determined. Accordingly, humans are capable of any kind of behavior, including aggression. All humans have a capacity for aggression, but its degree, form and direction are determined by culturally determined patterns of behavior. It's been suggested, for example, that the need for individuals and groups to control aspects of the environment in order to assure survival may result under some circumstances in the generation of aggressive behavior. Moreover, even if it is not innate, most interpretations of human evolutionary history indicate at the least a considerable potential for violent aggression.
Let us look more closely at some of the evidence of animal and human behavior. We may begin by examining some general aspects of aggression that seem to be characteristic of most animal species. It can be seen that in most species aggression fulfills a number of adaptive functions, including protection against predators, protection of relatively helpless infants, maintenance of order through the establishment of a stable hierarchy, enabling groups to reach food, establishing territoriality in order to maintain spacing of groups in order to assure an adequate supply of food and permitting dominant animals access to preferred mates. In most animal societies such aggressive encounters produce few serious injuries or deaths (which would be maladaptive in terms of group and species survival) by means of the fight-or-flight response and the existence of a dominance hierarchy, which tends to reduce conflict because each individual knows and generally adheres to his or her social rank. Conversely, it has been noted that crowding and/or scarce resources tend to result in an increase in aggression.
Primates, the order of the animal kingdom to which human beings belong, are neither more or less aggressive, as a group, than other orders. However, the order of primates, which is exceptionally diverse, contains more than two hundred species found throughout the world and represents several distinct evolutionary grades in terms of physiological and social complexity; therefore it is difficult to make inclusive generalizations at this level of analysis. Moreover, aggression in primates varies considerably according to species and environmental context. In most cases, aggression functions to minimize divisiveness within the social group and most aggressive encounters are highly ritualized. However, as mentioned above, when overpopulation or population density reaches crisis levels, an inherent potential for aggressive and violent behavior is activated, expressed largely as an increasingly hostile attitude by males toward females and the young. It has thus been suggested that this potential for aggressive violence serves as a social device to reduce violence when population levels are stable and to increase violence when the equilibrium between population and available resources is upset.
Since humans apparently first became scavengers and later hunters at a fairly early point in their evolution, it has also been suggested that social carnivores such as lions, wolves and hyenas may also represent a useful analogue in respect to social structure and aggressive behavior. Compared to non-human primates, for whom finding food and consuming it are closely related activities, the relationship between these behaviors in social carnivores is more separable and complex, especially during times of scarcity. Thus among social carnivores distinctions can be observed between aggression and killing and between aggression between members of the same species and that directed toward other species. Within these species cooperation appears to predominate against aggression.
When we compare humans to other species of social predators, however, a number of differences become apparent. Although humans have also become highly efficient predators, this development has occurred relatively recently in evolutionary terms compared to other social predators. Thus humans may lack to some extent the inhibitions against killing fellow members of their own species that operate in other species. When we compare the behavior of humans to other social predators in this respect, humans seem much more willing and able to kill their own kind, behavior which in the long run must be seen in evolutionary terms as self-destructive or maladaptive.
When compared with the behavior of other species, human aggression displays a number of unique features, features which seem to have resulted from the course of human evolution over the last three or four million years. It would appear, for instance, that the development of the cerebral cortex in the human brain, which has among other things expanded the capacity for learned behavior, has enabled humans to ignore or override instincts limiting aggressive behaviors. Unlike animals, therefore, humans seem to have no biological way of knowing how much aggression is sufficient to obtain their objectives. Humans also have the ability to imagine and respond to the thought of aggression, leading to preemptive murder and warfare. Other uniquely human aggressive characteristics include: 1) groups organized by principles of social organization, such as legal systems or the state; 2) deliberate, sanctioned killing of individuals outside socially defined boundaries; 3) regular, systematic and large-scale killing of members of their own species; 4) conflict over conceptual realities such as freedom, justice, religion, etc., thus giving a larger scope to aggression.
Having earlier seen that aggression for the most part serves adaptive functions in animal species, we now must ask what functions aggression and warfare might serve in human society and whether such functions are adaptive or maladaptive. As in other animal species, aggression may aid in the achievement of certain needs or purposes; in addition, however, it may serve as means to less immediate ends such as the achievement and maintenance of freedom or obtaining land and resources. We cannot rule out the possibility that under some circumstances this kind of aggression may be functional or adaptive. On the other hand, given our current understanding of the consequences of such aggression and the availability of other means of attaining the goals mentioned above, it may be that such aggression should be viewed as largely dysfunctional or maladaptive. It is difficult to give a categorical answer here. It may be that aggression was adaptive at an earlier point in human evolution, when we were competing with other species for survival, but that our conceptual ability and creative intelligence which has allowed us to override inhibitions against killing has become increasingly dysfunctional now that we have achieved dominance over other animals. It may also be that even today aggression might be adaptive in some circumstances and maladaptive in others.