book notes

walking into a school (junior high, high school or even elementary) after reading this book is a strange experience. where before, I merely saw kids insulting other kids, chasing each other and running around, I began to see instinctually driven gambits for status and power. rather than trying to tease apart healthy and unhealthy behaviors using logic and reason (and inevitably coming to the conclusion that nothing makes sense and kids are stupid for doing the things they do), one begins to see patterns of behavior arise out of coping mechanisms; methods of protecting the self in very self-threatening environments.

more than mere observation, de waal also includes how much of this behavior is a social reality; flexible and normative, rather than irrefutable and inescapable. in-group and out-group behavioral characteristics can change with mental "clicking." the book provides experimental conditions in which the switches were flipped as well as theories about applications with humans.

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BOOK NOTES
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p1 of the million pages written over the centuries about human nature, none are as bleak as those of the last three decades-- and none as wrong. we hear that we have selfish genes, that human goodness is a sham, and that we act morally only to impress others. but if all that people care about is their own good, why does a day-old baby cry when it hears another baby cry? this is how empathy starts. not very sophisticated perhaps, but we can be sure that a newborn doesn't try to impress. we are born with impulses that draw us to others and that later in life make us care about them.

adam smith " empathy is changing places in fancy with the sufferer."

p4 we adore such behavior-- which is itself a case of empathy. but the same capacity to understand others also makes it possible to hurt them deliberately. both sympathy and cruelty rely on the ability to imagine how one's own behavior affects others. small-brained animals, such as sharks, certainly can hurt others, but they do so without the slightest idea of what others may feel..

p5 the chimpanzee demonstrates the violent side of human nature so well that few scientists write about any other side at all. but we are also intensely social creatures who rely on one another and actually need interaction with other people to lead sane and happy lives. next to death, solitary confinement is our most extreme punishment. our bodies and minds are not designed for lonely lives. we become hopelessly depressed in the absence of human company, and our health deteriorates. in one recent medical study, healthy volunteers exposed to cold and flu viruses got sick more easily if they had fewer friends and family around them.

p16 for both male and female bonobos, there is no dividing line between sexuality and affection.

p17 even though bonobos are usually great conciliators, they have these skills for a good reason: they are not above fighting. the bonobo provides a compelling example of social harmony precisely because underlying tensions remain visible. this paradox applies to us as well. in the same way that the ultimate test of a ship is how it holds up in a storm, we only fully trust a relation if it has survived occasional conflict.

p18 here at yerkes [national primate research center near atlanta] we're in the thick of male power politics, the never-ending saga of chimpanzee society. ultimately these battles are about females, which means that the fundamental difference between our two closest relatives is that one resolves sexual issues with power while the other resolves power issues with sex.

p20 "animals lack inhibitions," the argument went. they lack culture, so it must have been something animal-like, something in our genetic makeup that had burst through the veneer of civilization and pushed human decency aside.
this "veneer theory", as I call it, became a dominant theme in the post-war discussion. deep down, we humans are violent and amoral. a stream of popular books explored this issue by proposing that we have an un-containable aggressive drive that seeks an outlet in warfare, violence, and even sports. another theory was that our aggressiveness is novel, that we are the only primates that kill their own kind. our species never had the time to evolve the appropriate inhibitions. as a result, we don't have our fighting instinct under control as much as "professional predators" like wolves or lions. we're stuck with a violent temper that we're ill-equipped to master.
at the same time that ronald reagan and margaret thatcher preached that greed was good for society, good for the economy, and certainly good for those with anything to be greedy about, biologists published books in support of these views. richard dawkins's the selfish gene taught us that since evolution helps those who help themselves, selfishness should be looked at as a driving force for change rather than a flaw that drags us down. we may be nasty apes, but it makes sense that we are, and the world is a better lace for it.
a tiny problem--pointed out to no avail by nitpickers--was the mis-leading language of this genre of books. genes that produce successful traits spread in the population and hence promote themselves. but to call this "selfish" is nothing but a metaphor. a snowball rolling down the hill gathering more snow also promotes itself, but we generally don't call snowballs selfish. taken to its extreme, the everything-is-selfish position leads to a nightmarish world. having an excellent nose for shock value, these authors haul us to a hobbesian arena in which it's every man for himself, where people show generosity only to trick others. love is unheard of, sympathy is absent, and goodness a mere illusion. the best-known quote of those days, from biologist michael ghiselin, says it all, "scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed."
we should be happy that this dark, forbidding place is pure fantasy, that it differs radically from the actual world in which we laugh, cry, make love, and fawn over babies. authors of this fiction realize this and sometimes confide that the human condition is not as bad as they make it sound. the selfish gene is a good example. having argued that our genes know what is best for us, that they program every little wheel of the human survival machine, dawkins waits until the very last sentence of his book to reassure us that, in fact, we are welcome to chuck all those genes out the window: "we, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."
and so the end of the twentieth century emphasized our need to rise above nature. this view was advertised as darwinian, even though darwin had nothing to do with it. darwin believed, as I do, that our humaneness is grounded in the social instincts that we share with other animals. this is obviously a more optimistic view than the one proclaiming that we "alone on earth" can overcome our basic instincts. in the latter view, human decency is no more than a thin crust-- something we invented rather than inherited. and each time we do anything less than honorable, veneer theorists will remind us of the dreadful core underneath: "see, there's human nature!"

p 28 we can be pretty sure that the notorious synopsis of veneer theory concerned people only. no one would suggest that animals are pulling the wool over each other's eyes. this is why apes are crucial to the debate about the human condition. if they turn out to be better than brutes--even if only occasionally-- the notion of niceness as a human invention begins to wobble. and if true pillars of morality, such as sympathy and intentional altruism, can be found in other animals, we will be forced to reject veneer theory altogether. darwin was aware of these implications when he observed that "many animals certainly sympathize with each other's distress or danger."

p 31 alan greenspan "it is not that humans have become any more greedy that in generations past. it is that the avenues to express greed have grown so enormously."

anyone following evolutionary biology must have noticed a parallel change of heart...there was less talk of aggression and competition and more of connectedness, of how societies hang together, of the origins of caring and commitment. what was stressed was the enlightened self-interest of the individual within a larger whole. whenever interests overlap, competition will be constrained by the greater good.

p 32 by placing people in brain scanners and asking them to resolve moral dilemmas, experts have discovered that such dilemmas activate ancient emotional centers deeply embedded in the brain. instead of being a surface phenomenon in our expanded neocortex, moral decision-making apparently taps into millions of years of social evolution.

perhaps this sounds obvious, but it's monumentally at odds with the view of morality as a cultural or religious veneer... evolutionary authors were making the "beethoven error." by this, I mean the assumption that process and product need to resemble each other.
listening to ludwig van beethoven's perfectly structured music, one would never guess what his poorly heated apartment looked like. visitors complained that the composer lived in the dirtiest, smelliest, most disorderly place imaginable, strewn with wasting food, unemptied chamber pots, and filthy clothing. his two pianos buried under dust and papers. the maestro himself looked so slovenly that he was once arrested as a vagrant. no one asks how beethoven could have created his intricate sonatas and noble piano concertos in such a pigsty. we all know that wonderful things can originate under atrocious circumstances, that process and product are separate things, which is why the enjoyment of a good restaurant is rarely enhanced by a visit to its kitchen.

yet confusion between the two has led some to believe that since natural selection is a cruel, pitiless process of elimination it must produce cruel and pitiless creatures. a nasty process must produce nasty behavior, or so the thinking went. but nature's pressure cooker has created both fish that lunge at anything that moves (including their own offspring) and pilot whales, which are so attached to each other that they beach themselves together if one of them gets disoriented. natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, pure and simple. how they accomplish this is left open. any organism that can do better by becoming either more or less aggressive than the rest, more or less cooperative, or more or less caring will spread its genes. the process does not specify the road to success any more than the inside of a viennese apartment tells us what kind of music will be floating out its window.

p 42 two-against-one maneuvering is what lends chimpanzee power struggles both their richness and their danger. coalitions are key. no male can rule by himself, at least not for long, because the group as a whole can overthrow anybody. chimpanzees are so clever about banding together that a leader needs allies to fortify his position as well as the greater community's acceptance. staying on top is a balancing act between forcefully asserting dominance, keeping supporters happy, and avoiding mass revolt. if this sounds familiar, it's because human politics works exactly the same.

p 45 power is the prime mover of the male chimpanzee. it's a constant obsession, offering great benefits if obtained and intense bitterness if lost.

p 46 the fates that may befall those at the top are an inevitable part of the power drive. apart from the risk of injury or death, being in a position of power is stressful. this can be demonstrated by measuring cortisol, a stress hormone in the blood. ... among these highly competitive primates, cortisol levels depend on how good an individual is at managing social tensions. as in humans, this turns out to be matter of personality. some dominant males have high stress levels simply because they cannot tell the difference between a serious challenge by another male and neutral behavior that they shouldn't worry about. they are jumpy and paranoid. after all, if a rival walks by, it could be just because he needs to go from a to b, not because he wants to be a nuisance. when the hierarchy is in flux, misunderstandings accumulate, wrecking the nerves of males near the top. since stress compromises the immune system, it's not unusual for high-ranking primates to develop the ulcers and heart attacks also common in corporate CEO's.

p 48 one sees fighting machines evolved to defeat rivals in pursuit of the one currency recognized by natural selection: offspring produced. rank determines who will sow his seed far and wide and who will sow no seed at all. consequently, males are built to fight, with a tendency to probe rivals for weak spots and a certain blindness to danger. risk-taking is a male characteristic, as is the hiding of vulnerabilities. in the male primate world, you don't want to look weak. so it's no wonder that in modern society men go to the doctor less often than women and have trouble revealing their emotions even with an entire support group egging them on. the popular wisdom is that men have been socialized into hiding emotions, but it seems more likely that these attitudes are the product of being surrounded by others ready to seize any opportunity to bring them down.

p 49 similarly, upon meeting for the first time, men check each other out by picking something-- anything-- to fight over, often getting worked up about a topic they normally don't care about. they adopt threatening body postures-- legs apart and chests pushed out-- make expansive gestures, speak with booming voices, utter veiled insults, make risque jokes, and so on. they desperately want to find out where they stand relative to one another. they hope to impress the others sufficiently that the outcome will be in their favor.... what chimpanzees do with charging displays-- with their hair on end, drumming on anything that amplifies sound, uprooting little tress as they go-- the human male does in the more civilized manner of making mincemeat of someone else's arguments or, more primitively, giving others no time to open their mouths. clarification of the hierarchy is a top priority. invariable, the next encounter among the same men will be calmer, meaning that something has been settled, though it's hard to know what exactly that is.

p 55 with complex strategies come miscalculations. this is why we speak of political "skills": it's not so much who you are, but what you do. we are exquisitely attuned to power, responding quickly to any new configuration. if a businessman tries to get a contract with a large corporation, he will be in meeting after meeting with all sorts of people from which a picture emerges of rivalries, loyalties, and jealousies within the corporation he is visiting, such as who wants whose position, who feels excluded by whom, and who is on his way down or out. this picture is at least as valuable as the organizational chart of the company. we simply could not survive without our sensitivity to power dynamics.

power is all around us, continuously confirmed and contested, and perceived with great accuracy. but social scientists, politicians, and even laypeople treat it like a hot potato. we prefer to cover up underlying motives. anyone who, like machiavelli, breaks the spell by calling it like it is, risks his reputation. no one wants to be called "machiavellian," even though most of us are.

p 56 scientists used to consider the frequency band of 500 hertz and below in the human voice as meaningless noise, because when a voice is filtered, removing all higher frequencies, one hears nothing but a low-pitched hum. all words are lost. but then it was found that this low hum is an unconscious social instrument. it is different for each person, but in the course of a conversation people tend to converge. they settle on a single hum, and it is always the lower status person who does the adjusting.... below the radar or consciousness, we thus communicate status every time we talk with someone, whether in person or on the telephone.

p 58 humans remain sensitive to physical markers of status.

p 59 not only are we sensitive to hierarchies and the body language associated with them, we simply could not live without them. some people may wish them away, but harmony requires stability, and stability depends ultimately on a well-acknowledged social order... appropriate respect is the key to relaxed relations. only when rank issues have been settled will rivals reconcile and calm be restored.

the clearer the hierarchy, the less need for reinforcement. in chimpanzees, a stable hierarchy eliminates tensions so that confrontations become rare: subordinates avoid conflict and higher-ups have no reason to seek it. everybody is better off. the group can hang out together, groom each other, play and relax, because no one feels insecure.... as soon as one of them decides to challenge the existing order, though, play will be the first behavior to drop out. all of a sudden, they have more serious business to attend to.

status rituals among chimpanzees are not just about power, therefore, they are also about harmony... by lowering his or her body and looking up at alpha, the pant-grunter makes it obvious who is on top, which paves the way for peaceful, friendly relations. and not only that, clarification of hierarchy is essential for effective collaboration. this is why the most cooperative human enterprises, such as large corporations and the military, have the best-defined hierarchies. a chain of command beats democracy any time decisive action is needed. we spontaneously switch to a more hierarchical mode depending on the circumstances. in one study, ten-year-old boys at a summer camp were divided into two groups that competed against each other. out-group derogation quickly became common practice. on the other hand, in-group cohesiveness increased along with reinforcement of social norms and leader-follower behavior. the experiment demonstrated the binding quality of status hierarchies, which were reinforced as soon as concerted action was called for.

p 61 this brings me to the greatest paradox, which is that although positions within a hierarchy are born from contest, the hierarchical structure itself, once established, eliminates the need for further conflict. obviously, those lower on the scale would have preferred to be higher, but they settle for the next best thing, which is to be left in peace. the frequent exchange of status signals reassures bosses that there is no need for them to underline their position by force. even those who believe that humans are more egalitarian than chimpanzees will have to admit that our societies could not possibly function without an acknowledged order. we crave hierarchical transparency. imagine the misunderstandings we would run into if people never gave us the slightest clue about their position in relation to us, either in terms of appearance or in how they introduce themselves... we would be forced to continuously probe others while hoping not to offend the wrong person.

p 66 the chimpanzee is far more of a zoon politikon (political animal). this has to do with the way coalitions are formed as well with as the different nature of the female hierarchy. in both apes and humans, the female hierarchy is less contested and consequently requires less enforcement. women rarely think about themselves in hierarchical terms, and their relations are never as formalized as those among men. but undeniably there are women who command more respect than others. it is far more common for older women to dominate younger ones than the reverse. within a single social stratum, senior women seem to rule. traditionally, women exert their greatest influence in the family, where they don't need to fight, boast, or bluff their way to the top: they simply get there with age. personality, education, and family size certainly matter, and there are many subtle ways in which women compete, but all else being equal, seniority seems at least half the story when it comes to a woman's position among other women.

p 71 "strength is weakness" - the most powerful player is often the least attractive ally. joining them adds little to their strength which in turns results in fewer benefits. throwing weight behind a weaker player gives one far more leverage and also translates into more prestige and benefits. "weakness is strength" - minor players can position themselves at an intersection that offers great advantage.

p 72 coalition theory also considers "minimally winning coalitions" in which players prefer to be part of a coalition that is large enough to be victorious yet small enough for them to make a difference within it. inasmuch as siding with the strongest party dilutes payoffs, it's rarely the first choice. even if in the foreseeable future the united states will be the most powerful player on the global stage, both economically and militarily, this by no means guarantees its inclusion in winning coalitions. on the contrary, resentment will build automatically, leading to counterbalancing coalitions among the remaining powers.

p 73 there is no abundance of love between the french and germans nor between the chinese and russians, but these strange bedfellows had come together after the u.s. government had abandoned consensus-building, which until then had permitted it to act as the world's most powerful player without upsetting international alliances. isolation was setting in. the end of u.s. diplomacy had called forth a counter alignment that ten years earlier would have been unimaginable.

p74 there was a time when anthropologists saw egalitarianism as a passive, peace-loving arrangement in which people were at their best, loving and valuing each other. I'm not saying that such states are out of the question... but from a biological perspective, they're unsustainable. at some point, self-interest will rear its ugly head... and people will clash over resources. egalitarianism is NOT based on mutual love and even less on passivity. it's an actively maintained condition that recognizes the universal human desire to control and dominate. instead of denying the will to power, egalitarians know it all too well. they deal with it every day.

in egalitarian societies, men trying to dominate others are systematically undermined, and male pride is frowned upon.... leaders who become bullies, are self-aggrandizing, fail to redistribute goods, and deal with outsiders to their own advantage quickly lose the respect and support of their community.

since it's hard to survive without any leadership at all, egalitarians often permit certain men to act as first among equals. the keyword here is "permit," because the whole group will guard against abuses. in doing so, they emply social tools typical of our lineage, but ones we share with our primate relatives.

p 76 if those at the lower end of the social scale collectively draw a line in the sand, threatening serious consequences if those at the upper end step over it, we have the beginnings of what in legal terms is called a constitution.

p 77 if top-ranking individuals can well, to settle disputes, for one. instead of having everybody take sides, what better way to handle the situation than by investing authority in a single person, a council of elders, or a government to serve the greater good by keeping order and finding solutions to disagreements? by definition, egalitarian societies lack the social hierarchy that could impose its will in disputes, hence they depend on arbitration. impartiality is the key. taken up by the judiciary in modern society, arbitration protects society against its greatest enemy: festering discord.

p 77-78 one might think that apes would support their relatives, friends, and allies. this is indeed true for most members of an ape society, but the male in control follows different rules. as alpha, luit seemed to place himself ABOVE the conflicting parties, his intercessions aimed at the restoration of peace rather than at aiding his friends... he was the only impartial chimpanzee, meaning that he dissociated his job as arbiter from his social preferences.... high-ranking chimps in the wild are effective at heading off, stopping, or ameliorating conflicts.

..the control role can be performed by the second-in-command and the group has a say in who performs it. if the control role is an umbrella shielding the weak against the strong, it's held up by the community as a whole. its members throw their weight behind the most effective arbitrator, providing him with the broad base needed to guarantee peace and order. this is important, because even the smallest squabble between two juveniles can escalate into something far worse. juvenile fights induce tensions among mothers, with each mother inclined to protect her own offspring.... having a higher authority take care of these problems-- and being secure in the knowledge that he will do so with fairness and minimum force-- is a relief for all.

p 79 what we see in the chimp, then, is a halfway station between the rigid hierarchies of monkeys, on the one hand, and the human tendency toward equality on the other. people never reach perfect equality, of course, not even in small-scale societies. and leveling the human hierarchy is a continuous struggle for the simple reason that we are born to strive for status. to the degree that it is achieved, egalitarianism requires subordinates to unite and watch over their own interests. the politicians themselves may be in it for the power, but the electorate is focused on their service. no wonder politicians would rather talk about the latter than the former.

when we elect leaders, we in effect tell them "you can be high up there in the capital so long as we find you useful." democracy thus elegantly satisfies two human tendencies at once: the will to power and the desire to hold it in check.

p 80 we know that the public structure is one thing and the reality of who can do what to whom quite another.

this double-layered nature of society is intriguing. its formal structure must be transparent to serve its function, yet behind it we find murkier influences. an individual can be powerful without being at the top or, conversely, be at the top without having much sway.

we are adept at figuring out what's going on behind the scenes at our workplace and at realizing that following the social ladder to the letter will not get us anywhere. there are always high-ranking persons of little consequence and low-ranking ones that one needs to befriend. the formal structure does get reinforced at times of crisis but, overall, we humans tend to establish a loose order of crisscrossing influences.

p 82 consciously or unconsciously, social dominance is always on our minds. we display typical primate facial expressions, such as retracting our lips to expose our teeth and gums when we need to clarify our social position. the human smile derives from an appeasement signal. in myriad ways our behavior, even at its friendliest, hints at the possibility of aggression. we bring flowers or a bottle of wine when invading other peoples' territories, and we greet each other by waving an open hand, a gesture thought to originate from showing the absence of weapons. we formalize our hierarchies-- through body postures and tone of voice-- to the point that an experienced observer can tell in only a few minutes who is high or low on the totem pole. we talk about human behaviors such as "ass-kissing" "groveling," and "chest-pounding" that constitute official behavioral categories in [primatology] suggesting a past in which hierarchies were acted out more physically.

p 83 in humans and in chimps, males who stand up for the oppressed are the most loved and respected. support from below stabilizes the top.

p 84 democracy is an active process: it takes effort to reduce inequality. that the more dominance-oriented, more aggressive of our closest relatives best demonstrates the tendencies upon which democracy ultimately rests is not surprising if we look at democracy as born from violence, as it most certainly is in human history. it is something we fight for. it has never been handed to us for free; it has always been wrested from the powerful. the irony is that we probably never would have reached this point, never would have evolved the necessary solidarity at the base, had we not been such hierarchical animals to begin with.

SEX
p 86 we humans set sex apart from our social lives, or at least we try to, but in bonobo society the two are fully intertwined. it's a human irony that all that our fig leaves seem to accomplish is insatiable sexual curiosity.

p 89 surveys grossly underestimate women's sex lives: everybody, especially women, is reluctant to reveal the truth. we know this, because there is a way of getting women to talk. hook up college students to a fake lie-detector machine, and young women report almost twice as many sex partners as women feeling no such pressure. in fact, they report as many partners as their male counterparts. so men and women may be far more similar than sex surveys have made us believe.

sex and sexual desire are supposed to go underground when the workday starts. a sharp boundary between the social and the sexual is universally human. not, however, that it's perfectly maintained.

p 90 we desperately need this boundary as our societies are constructed around family units involving paternal care as well as the maternal care natural to all mammals. every human society has nuclear families, whereas apes have none.... if sex is a source of tension, one way to keep the peace is by limiting its visibility. humans take this even further, hiding not only the act itself but also covering up any around or arousable body parts.

p 93 euphemisms born from squeamishness have no place in scientific discourse.

VIOLENCE
p 129 the majority of people in the majority of wars have been driven by something other than aggression. human warfare is systematic and cold-blooded, making it an almost new phenomenon.

the critical word is "almost." tendencies toward group identification, xenophobia, and lethal conflict-- all of which do occur in nature-- have combined with our highly developed planning capacities to "elevate" human violence to its inhuman level. the study of animal behavior may not be much help when it comes to things like genocide, but if we move away from nation-states, looking instead at human behavior in small-scale societies, the differences are not that great anymore. like chimpanzees, people are strongly territorial and value the lives of those outside their group less than those within. it has been speculated that chimpanzees would not hesitate to use knives and guns if they had them, and similarly, preliterate people would probably not hesitate to escalate their conflicts if they had the technology.

p 133 few instances that have been seen leave little doubt, though, that we're dealing with targeted, deliberate killing-- in other words, "murder"... the attackers showed a degree of coordination and abuse not seen during aggression within their own community. the chimps acted almost the way they do toward prey, treating the enemy as if it belonged to another species.

p 134 us-versus-them thinking comes remarkably easily to us. in one psychological experiment, people were randomly assigned different colored badges, pens and notepads and simply labeled the "blues" and the "greens." all they were asked to do was evaluate each other's presentations. they liked the presentations by people with their own color designation the best. in a more elaborate fabrication of group identity, students were assigned the roles of guards and prisoners in a prison game. they werre supposed to spend two weeks together in a basement at stanford university. six days into it, however, the experiment had to be broken off because the "guards" had become increasingly arrogant, abusive, and cruel and the "prisoners" started to revolt. had the students forgotten that it was just an experiment and their roles had been decided by the flip of a coin?
... apart from the striking similarities with the brutality and sexual undertones in the stanford prison experiment, the guards and the prisoners at abu ghraib were of different races, different religions, and spoke different languages. this made their dehumanization even easier for the guards.

p 135 the in-group always finds reasons to see itself as superior. depicted as less than human, the out-group enhances the solidarity and self-worth of the in-groupp. it's a trick as old as man, but the psychology may in fact precede our species. beyond just the identification with a group, which is widespread in animals, are two other characteristics we have in common with chimps. the first, as we have seen, is a loathing of the out-group to the point of dehumanization. the gulf between in-group and out-group is so huge that aggression falls into two categories: one contained and ritualized within the group, the other all-out gratuitous, and lethal between groups.

p 135 so us-versus-them among chimpanzees is a socially constructed distinction in which even well-known individuals can become enemies if they happen to hang out with the wrong crowd or live in the wrong area. in humans, ethnic groups that used to get along reasonably well may all of a sudden turn against each other, as the hutus and tusis did in rwanda and the serbs, croats, and muslims in bosnia. what kind of mental switch is flipped that changes people's attitudes? and what kind of switch turns chimpanzee group mates into each other's deadliest foes? I suspect the switches operate similarly in humans and apes and are controlled by the perception of shared versus competing interests. so long as individuals feel a common purpose, they suppress negative feelings. but as soon as the common purpose is gone, tensions rise to the surface.

p 136 both humans and chimps are gentle, or at least restrained, toward members of their own group, yet both can be monsters to those on the outside.... the in-group versus out-group distinction is fundamental when it comes to love and hate.

p 137 even ants, which definitely have warlike DNA, are not violent as long as they have plenty of space and food. what would be the point? it's only when one colony's interests collide with those of another that such behavior makes sense. war is not an insuppressible urge. it is an option.

nevertheless, it cannot be coincidental that the only animals in which gangs of males expand their territory by deliberately exterminating neighboring males happen to be humans and chimpanzees. what is the chance of such tendencies evolving independently in two closely related animals? the human patter most similar to that of the apes is known as "lethal raiding." raids consist of a group of men launching a surprise attack when they have the upper hand, hence when there's little chance that they will suffer themselves. the goal is to kill other men and abduct women and girls. like the territorial viiolence among chimpanzees, human raids are not exactly acts of bravery. surprise, trickery, ambush, and the avoidance of daylight are favored tactics. the majority of hunter-gatherer societies follow this pattern, waging war every couple of years.

p 138 territorial aggression was always a potential, but one exercised on a small scale only, perhaps until man settled down and began to accumulate possessions. this would mean that, instead of having waged war for millions of years, we first knew sporadic intergroup conflict, which only recently developed into actual warfare.

... though one aspect of human behavior that the chimp cannot illuminate is something we do even more than wage war: maintain peace. peace is common among human societies, as is the trading of goods, the sharing of river water, and intermarriage. here chimps have nothing to tell us, since they lack any friendly ties between groups. all they know is varying degrees of hostility. this means that to understand human intergroup relations at a primal level, we need to look beyond the chimpanzee as an ancestral model.

p 139 instead of focusing on human aggression as the issue, hence the chimpanzee as the species, as has been done ever since the killer ape theory cam along, my attention is drawn to a less brutal ape on the sidelines of this debate. and the behavior of this ape illuminates a different capacity: the capacity for peace.

p 140 the overlapping ranges and mingling at the borders of bonobo communities stand in stark contrast to how chimp groups interact. when the mist lifes from the evolutionary pressures that shaped bonobo society, perhaps we will understand how they have managed to escape what many people consider the worst scourge of humanity: our xenophobia and our tendency to discount the lives of our enemies. is it because bonobos fight, if they fight at all, not for a fatherland, but for a motherland? males of any species naturally try to monopolize females, but once female bonobos achieved the upper hand, males may have lost control to the extent that females copulate freely with whomever they want, including neighbors. this mad male territorial competitiion obsolete. first, sexual mingling of course translates into reproduction, which means that neighboring groups may include your relatives: enemy males may be brothers, fathers, and sons. and second, it makes no sense for males to risk life and limb to get to females who are already happy to have sex with them.

bonobos show us the conditions under which peaceful relations between groups may evolve. similar conditions apply to us. all human societies know intermarriage, hence gene flow between groups, which makes deadly aggression counterproductive. even though one may gain by defeating another group over territory, there are drawbacks, such as lives lost on your own side, kin killed on the other side, and reduced trading opportunities. the latter may not apply to apes, but is a significant factor in the human case. ouur intergroup relations are therefore inherently ambivalent: a hostile undertone is often combined with a desire for harmony. the bonobo nicely illustrates the same ambivalence. their neighborhood relations are far from idyllic-- they seem to take every opportunity to underline territorial boundaries-- yeet they keep the door open to de-escalation and friendly contact.

even if female migration creates genetic exchange in chimpanzees, hostility between their communities precludes the free sexual relations seen in bonobos. no one knows what came first-- the absence of reproductioon between groups or the severe hostility-- but the two obviously amplify each other, thus creeating a perpetual cycle of violence among chimps.

the upshot is that humans share intergroup behavior with both chimps and bonobos. when relations between human societies are bad, they are worse tahn bettween chimps, but when they are good, they are better than between bonobos. our warfare exceeds the chimanzee's "animal" violence in alarming ways. but at the same time the payoffs from neighborly relations are richer than in bonobos. human groups do a lot more than mingle and have sex. they exchange goods and services, have ceremonial feasts, allow one another to travel through, and arrange common defenses against hostile third parties. when it comes to intergroup relations, we beat our close relatives on borth the positive and the negative end of the scale.

p 142 ... there's a big difference in how violence is portrayed in different societies. and which do we value most: harmony or competitiveness? this is the problem with the human species. somewhere in all of this resides a true human nature, but it's stretched in so many different directions that it's difficult to say whether we're naturally competitive or naturally community-building. in fact, we are both, but each society reaches its own balance. in america, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." in japan, "the nail that stands out gets pounded into the ground."

does this variability mean that we cannot learn from other primates? it's not that simple. first, each species has its own way of handling conflict. chimps are more confrontational than bonobos. but also within each species, like in humans, we find variation from group to group. we see "cultures" of violence and "cultures" of peace. and the latter are made possible by our universal primate ability to iron out differences.

it seems that many social animals know how to reconcile, and for good reason. conflict is inevitable, yet at the same time animals depend on one another. they forage for food together, warn each other of predators, and stand united against enemies. they need to maintain good relationships despite occasional flare-ups, just like any married couple.

golden monkeys do it with hand-holding, chimpanzees with a kiss on the mouth, bonobos with sex, and tonkean macaques with clasping and lip-smacking. each species follows its own peacemaking protocol.... one example seen among apes but never monkeys: after one individual has attacked and bitten another, he or she returns to inspect the inflicted injury. the aggressor knows exactly where to look... this suggests an underrstanding of cause and effect along the lines o "if I have bitten you, you must now have a gash in the same spot." it suggests that the ape takes another's perspective, realizing the impact of its own behavior on somebody else. we may even speculate that they regret their actions, just as we often do.

p 144 the definition of reconciliation (a friendly reunion between opponents not long after a fight) is straightforward, but the emotions involved are hard to pinpoint. the least that occurs, but this is already truly remarkable, is that negative emotions, such as aggression and fear, are overcome in order to move to a positive interaction, such as a kiss. the bad feelings are reduced or left behind. we experience this transition from hostility to normalization as "forgiveness." forgiveness is sometimes touted as uniquely human, even uniquely Christian, but it may be a natural tendency for cooperative animals.

only animals without memories could possibly ignore conflict. as soon as social events are stored in long-term memory, as in most animals and humans, there is a need to overcome the past for the sake of the future. primates form friendships, expressed in grooming, travelling together, and defending each other. that fights create anxiety about the state of the relationship is suggested by an unexpected indicator. just as college students scratch their heads during a tough exam, self-scratching in other primates indicates unease. if one takes notes on self-scratching, as some researchers have done, it turns out that both parties involved in a fight scratch themselves a lot, but stop after having been groomed by their opponent. we can surmise that they were worried about their relationship an reassured by the reunion.

people raising young apes at home say that, after a reprimand fo unruly behavior, there is an overwhelming desire to partch things up. the ape sulks and whimpers until he can't stand it anymore. then he jumps into his adoptive parent's lap, wrapping both arms around her, squeezing the air ouot of her. this is often followed by an audible sigh of relief once he's being comforted by the parent.

p 145 primates learn peacemaking early in life. as with everything related to attachment, it starts with the mother-infant bond...

p 146 weaning conflict is life's first negotiation conducted with a social partner absolutely needed for survival. it contains all the right ingredients: conflicting intersts, oveerlapping interests, and a cycling through positive and negative encounters that results in some sort of compromise. maintaining the all-important tie with mother dspite discord lays the groundwork for laterr conflit resolution.

reconcilitations with peers are next in importance and are learned early in life as well....

psychologists tend to focus onn abnormal or problematic behavior, such as bullying, so that we know startlingly little about the spontaneous, normal ways in which conflict is reduced or overcome. in defense of this lamentable situation, one scientist in the room argued that human reconciliation is far more complex than in monkeys, influenced as it is by education and culture. in other primates, he said, it's mere instinct.

p 148 peacemaking is an acquired social skill rather than an instinct. it's part of social culture. each group reaches its own balance betweeen competition and cooperation. this is as true for monkeys as it is for people. I'm from a culture that is characterized by consensus-building, perhaps because the dutch live at high density on land wrested from a formidable comon enemy, the North Sea. other countries, such as the United States, encourage individualism and self-reliance rather than group loyalty. this may have to do with mobility and empty space. in the old days, if people didn't get along, they could always settle elsewhere. conflict resolution may not have been emphasized to the degree preferable now that the united states has become a more crowded place. science should study the skills that normally prevent the escalation of conflict and keep aggression in check. do we teach our children to stand up for themselves or to find mutually agreeable solutions? do we teach them rights or responsibilities? human cultures show incredible contrasts in this regard, and a recent discovery shows similar variability among wild primates.

p 149 two chief conclusions from this natural experiment are loud and clear: behavior observed in nature may be a product of culture, and even the fiercest primates do not forever need to stay this way. perhaps this applies to us as well.

p 150 if women have an edge when it comes to pacifism, however, it may not be because they're good at repairing what has been broken. I see the strength of women in conflict prevention and their distaste for violence. but they're not necessarily good at the diffusion of tensions once these have arisen. the latter is, in fact, a male forte.

[male chimpanzees] cycle through fights and reunions, whereas females have a preemptive attitude toward conflict. unlike males, they take care to stay on good terms with those with whom they enjoy close ties, such as offspring and best friends, and they let aggression run its ugly course when it comes to their rivals.

p 151 reconciliations among male chimps may be edgy, sometimes even unsuccessful, but they never include trickery. males carry their tensions on their sleeves.

bonobo females reconcile far more readily than their chimpanzee counterparts. asserting collective dominance and relying on an extensive network of alliances induces a need for female solidarity. without carefully servicing their ties, they could never stay on top. conversely, bonobo males reconcile less than chimpanzee males. here again, the reason is a practical one: bonobo males lack the intense cooperation in hunting, political alliances, and territorial defense that forces male chimpanzees to preserve unity. the tendency to reconcile, then, is a political calculation that varies by species, by gender, and by society. paradoxically, the level of aggression says little about peacemaking: the more aggressive gender may be best at making peace and the more peaceful gender worst.

the main reason for peacemaking is not peace per se, but shared purpose. for example, after the 9/11 attack on the world trade center in new york, tensions between the races in the city dropped. nine months after september 2001, when asked how they saw race relations, new yorkers of all races called these relations more often good than bad. in the years before, they had ovewhelmingly called them mmore often bad than good. the post-attack feeling of "we're in this together" fostered exceptional unity and made people far more accepting and conciliatory than usual. ethnic out-groups were all of a sudden seen as belonging to a citywide in-group.

this makes sense in view of theories about why reconciliation evolved in species as diverse as hyenas, baboons, and humans. mutual dependency forsters harmony. there was a time when biologists cared only about winning and losing: winning was good, losing bad. every population had its "hawks" and "doves," and the doves had a tough time staying alive. the problem is that who wins and who loses is only half the story. if one's livelihood depends on working together, as it does for myriad animals, those who initiate fights risk losing something far more important than the conflict at han. sometimes one cannot win a fight without losing a friend. in order to be successful, social animals need to be hawks AS WELL AS doves. new theories emphasize reconciliation, compromise, and the need for good relationships. in other words, patching things up is not done for the sake of being nice, but in order to maintain cooperation.

pragmatic solutions to conflict, such as formation of the EU, are typically male. I say this without chauvinism, equally aware that males are also responsible for the worst excesses of violence when peace attempts fail. one of the very few studies on the different ways genders manage disagreements focused on children's games. it found girls playing in smaller groups and less competitively than boys,. the average girls' game didn't last long, however, because girls were not nearly as good as boys at resolving disputes. boys quarreled all the time, debating the rules like little lawyers, but this never meant the end of the game. after an interrruption, they would simple continue. among girls, however, a quarrel usually meant that the game broke up. no efforts would be made to get the team back together again.

butovskaya, m., verbeek, p., ljungberg, t., and lunardini, a. (2001) "a multi-cultural view of peacemaking among young children." in _natural conflict resolution, aureli, f., and de waal, f. b. m. (eds.), pp. 243-258. berkeley, ca: university of california press.

lever, j. (1976) "sex difference in the games children play." _social problems_ 23: p 478-487.

p 155 if conflict is like bad weather, women try to stay out of it, whereas men buy an umbrella. women are peacekepers, men peacemakers. women's friendships are often seen as more profound and intimate than men's, which are more geared toward action, such as going to a sports event together. consequently, women see conflict as a threat to cherished connections. women are extremely good at [avoiding confrontation at all cost] as evident from the lasting bonds they enjoy. but the depth of their relationships aso means that if a fight does erupt, they're unable to say "nothing personal." everything is intensely personal. this makes stepping back from discord, once it has burst through the surface, harder than for men.

p 157 celebrations demonstrate the need for physical contact at momets of exhilaration. this need is typical of all primates and easy for us to understand. we reach out to each other when our sports team wins or when a student graduates but also at upsetting times, such as funerals or following a calamity. this need for body contact is hardwired. some cultures foster distance between people, yet a society devoid of body contact would not be truly human.

our fellow priamtes understand this need for contact, too. they not only seek it for themselves, but also foster contact between others if doing so might ameliorate a strained relationship.... more sophisticated fostering of contact can be observed when male chimpanzees fail to reconcile after a confrontation. they will sometimes sit a couple of yards apart as if waiting for their adversary to make the first move. the uneasiness between them is obvious from mthe way they look in all directions-- the sky, the grass, their own body-- while scrupulously avoiding eye contact. such a deadlock may last for half an hour or more, but can be broken by a third party.

a female will approach one of the males, and after having groomed him for awhile, will slowly walk toward the other. if the first male follows, he doesso right behind her without ever looking at the other male. sometimes the female looks around to check and may return to tug the arm of a reluctant male in order to make him follow. when the female sits down close to the second male, both males will groom her, one on each side, until she simply walks off and leaves them to groom each other. the males will pant, splutter, and smack more loudly than before the female's departure, sound with which chimps indicate their enthusiasm for the grooming. such go-betweeen behavior, calle "mediation," allows male rivals to approach each other without taking any initiativ, without making eye contact, and perhaps without losing face.

mediation promotes peace in the community by bringing the disputants together. interestingly, it's only female chimps who mediate and only the oldest and highest ranking among them. this is not so surprising, because if a male were to approach one of the rivals he'd just be perceived as party to the conflict. given the propensity of male chimps to form alliance, his presence cannot be neutral. on the other hand, if a young female, especially one with swollen genitals, weere to approach one of the two males, this would be interpreted sexually and would also increase tensions.

p 159 humans, of course, can barely coexist without intermediaries. this hold true in any socity, large or small. harmonization of clashing interests is institutionalized ad guided by social influences including the role of elders, foreign dimplomacy, the court system, conciliatory feasts, and compensatory payments.

the common good is nothing to sneeze at. or, as keith richards said to mick jagger when the rolling stones almost broke up, "this is bigger than the both of us, baby."

THE ESCAPE GOAT
p 159 "victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan," as the saying goes. accepting responsibility for something that went wrong is not our strong point. in politics, we take the blame game for granted. since no one wants it at his or herr doorstep, blame tends to travel. this is the ugly way of resolving disputes: instead of reconciliation, celebration, and mediation, trouble arising at the top is dispatched to the bottom.

p 160 what makes scapegoating so effective is that it's a double-edged sword. first, it releasess tension among the dominants. attacking an innocent harmless bystander is obviously less risky than attacking e ach other. second, it rallies the higher-ups around a common cause. while threatening the scapegoat, they bond with each other, sometimes mounting and embracing, indicating that they stand united. it's a total charade, or course: pprimates often pick enemies that hardly matter.

p 161 a well-established group usually does not have a particular individual who is always chased into the corner. in fact, the absence of a whipping boy is a sure sign that things have settled down. but displacement of aggression does not necessarily end up at the bottom of the social ladder. alpha threatens beta, who immediately starts looking around for gamma. beta then threatens gamma while glancing around at alpha, because the ideal outcome is that alpha takes beta's side. displacement aggression can trickle down four or five steps before it peters out. it's often of low intensity-- the equivalent of name-calling or door-slamming-- but still permits the higher-ups to let off steam. and everyone in the group knows what's going on: subordinates go into hiding at the first signn of tensions near the top.

for modern man, scapegoating refers to inappropriate demonization, vilification, accusation, and persecution. the mainstays of this behavior-- the innocence of the victim and a violent release of tensions-- are stsrikingly similar among humans and other animals. the quintessential example is pain-induced aggression in rats. place two rats on an iron grid through whih they are given an electric shock, and the moment they feel the pain they attack each other. like people who hit their thumb with a hammer, the rats never hesitate to "fault" somebody else.

we surround this proces with symbolism and pick victims based on things like skin color, religion, or a foreign accent. we also take care never to admit to the sham that scapegoating actually is. in this regard, we're more sophisticated than other animals. but it's undeniable that scapegoating is one of the most basic, most powerrful, least conscious psychological reflexes of the human species, one shared with so many other animals that it may well be hardwired.

... it's depressing to learn that we share this tendency-- which creates so many innocent victims-- with rats, monkeys, and apes. it's a deeply ingrained tactic to keep stress at bay at the expense of fairness and justice.

p 166 since cliques are in competition with each other, crowding induces frictions. but not only does aggression go up between matrilines, grooming does as well. this meas that females are working hard to keep tensions at bay by grooming outside their matrilines. as a result, the effect of crowding on monkeys is far less dramatic than one might think.
we speak of "coping" meaning that primates have ways of countering the effects of reduced space.

...in cramped quarters, chimps actually reduce aggression. they're a bit like people on ann elevator or city bus, who ease frictions by minimizing large body movements, eye contact, and loud talking. these are small-scale adjustments, but it's also possible for entire cultures to adapt to the amount of space available. people in crowded countries often stress tranquility, harmony, deference, modulated voice levels, and respect of privacy even if walls are literally paper-thin.
our sophisticated ability to adapt to a particular socio-ecology explains why the number of people perr square mile has no bearing whatsoever on murder rates. some nations with sky-high homicide rates, like russia and colombia, have very low population density, and among those with the lowest murderr rates, we find japan and the netherlands, countries filled to the brim with people. this also applis to urban areas, where most crimes occur. the world's most densely packed metropolis is tokyo, and one of the most sprawling is los angeles. nevertheless, los angeles has about fifteen murders annually for every one hundred thousand people compared with tokyo's under two.

in 1950, the world counted 2.5 billion people. we're now at around 6.5 billion. this is a steep climb since dating began, two millennia ago, when the human population of the entire world was estimated at between 200 and 400 million. if crowding indeed leads to aggression, we would be in for total combustion. fortunately, we hail from a long line of social animals capable of adjusting to all sorts of conditions, including unnatural ones like crowded pens, city streets, and shopping malls. the adjustment may not be without effort, and the exuberent celebrations each spring at the Arnhem Zoo certainly indicte that chimps prefer a less crowded existence. but adjustment is preferable to the frightening alternative predicted on the basis of Calhoun's rat experiment.

I should add, though, that Calhoun's results may not entirely have been the product of crowding. since the rats were given only a few food hoppers, competition probably played a role as well. this is a warning for our own species in an ever more populous world. we have a natural, under-appreciated talent to handle crowding, but crowding combined with scarcity of resources is an entirely different story, one that might well lead to the vice and misery malthus foresaw.

malthus haad an incredibly callous political outlook, though. he believe that any assistance given to the poor negates the natural process according to which these people are supposed to die off. if there was one right that man didn't possess, he said, it was a right to subsistence that he himself could not purchase. malthus inspired a system of thought, known as social darwinism, devoid of compassion. accordingly, self-interest is society's lifeblood, which translates into progress for the strong at the expense of the weak. this justification of disproportionate resources in the hands of a happy few was successfully exported to the new world, where it led john d. rockefeller to portray the growth of a business as "merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God."

given the popular us and abuse of evolutionary theory, it's hardly surprising that darwinism and natural selection have become synonymous with unchecked competition. darwin himself, however, was anything but a social darwinist. on the contrary, he believed there was room for kindness in both human nature and in the natural world. we urgently need this kindness, because the question facing a growing world population is not so much whether or not we can handle crowding, but if we will be fair and just in the distribution of resources. will we go for our close relatives can teach us some important lessons here. they show us that compassion is not a recent weakness going against the grain of nature but a formidable power that is as much a part of who and what we are as the competitive tendencies it seeks to overcome.

p 171 that animals help each other is far from a enw observation, but it's puzzling nonetheless. if all that matters is survival of the fittest, shouldn't animals refrain from anything that fails to benefit themselves? why help another get ahead? there are two main theories: first, that such behavior evolved to help kin and offspring, hence individuals who are genetically related. this promotes the helper's genes as well. this "blood is thicker than water" theory explains, for example, the sacrifice of bees, who give their lives for their hive and queen when stinging an intruder. the second theory follows an "if youu scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" logic: if animals help those who return the favor, both parties stand to gain. mutual aid can explain political alliances.

both theories concern the evolution of behavior, but neither tells us much about actual motives. evolution depends on the success of a trait over millions of years; motives spring from the here and now. for example, sex serves reproduction, yet when animals, couple, it's not out of a desire to reproduce. they don't know the connection: sexual urges are separate from the reason sex exists. motivations lead a life of their own, which is why we describe them in terms of preferences, desires, and intentions rather than survival value.

p 172 early human societies must have been optimal breeding grounds for "survival of the kindest" aimed at family and potential reciprocators. once this sensibility had come into existence, its range expanded. at some point, sympathy for others became a goal in itself: the centerpiece of human morality and an essential aspect of religion. thus, christianity urges us to love our neighbors as ourselves, clothe the naked, feed the poor, and tend the sick. it is good to realize, though, that in stressing kindness, religions are enforcing what is already part of our humanity. they are not turning human behavior around, only underlining pre-existing capacities.

how could it be otherwise? one cannot sow the seeds of morality on unwilling soil any more than one can train a cat to fetch the newspaper.

p 174 children over one year of age already comfort family members instructed to feign sadness ( sobbing), pain (crying "ouch"), or distress (coughing and choking. this is a milestone in their development: an aversive experience in someone they know draws out a concerned response, such as patting and rubbing the victim's injury. because expressions of sympathy emerge in virtually all members of our species, they are as natural an achievement as the first step.

p 175 the empathic response is one of the strongest there is, in fact stronger than the ape's proverbial desire for bananas.... at its simplest, empathy is the ability to be affected by the state of another individual or creature. this can be just body movement, such as when we mimic the behavior of others. we put our arms behind our head if others do the same and follow our colleagues at a meeting in crossing or uncrossing our legs, leaning forward or backward, adjusting our hair, putting elbows on the table, and so on. we do this unconsciously, especially with companions whom we like, which explains why couples who have lived together for a long time often resemble each other. their demeanor and body language have converged. knowing the power of body mimicry, researchers can manipulate people's feelings about each other. being with someone who adopts deviating body postures-- because she has been told to do so-- results in fewer good feelings about her than being with someone who dutifully copies every move we make. when people say they "click," or are falling in love, they are unconsciously influenced by the amount of reflexive body mimicry they have engaged in as well ass other subtle signs of openness to the other, such as keeping their legs apart or closed, raising or folding their arms, and so on.

p 177 monkeys scratch themselves if they see another do so, and apes yawn while watching a video of a yawning ape. we do the same, and not only in relation to our own kind. a research team at the university of parma in italy first reported that monkeys have special brain cells that become active not only i the monkey grasps an object with its hand but also if it merely watches another do so. since these cells are activated as much by doing as by seeing someone else do, they are known as mirror neurons. social animals relate to each other at a level far more basic than scientists previously suspected. we are hardwired to connect with those around us and to resonate with them, also emotionally. it's a fully automated process. asked to watch photographs of facial expressions, we involuntarily copy the expressions seen. wee do so even if the photo is shown subliminally, that is, if it appears for only a few milliseconds. unaware of the expression, our facial muscles nevertheless echo it. we do the same in real life, as reflected in the classic louis armstrong lines "when you're smilin'... the whole world smiles with you."

p 178... in classic experiments... one monkey stopped responding for five days and another one for twelve days after witnessing a companion being shocked each time they pulled a handle to get food for themselves. these monkeys were literally starving themselves to avoid inflicting pain on others.

in all of these studies, the likely explanation is not concern about the other's welfare, but distress caused by another's distress. such a response has enormous survival value. if others show fear and distress, there may be good reasons for you to be worried, too. if one bird in a flock on the ground suddenly takes off, all other birds will take off as well, before they even know what's going on. the on who stays behind may be prey. this is why panic spreads so quickly among people as well.

we have been programmed to thoroughly dislike seeing and hearing the pain of others. for example, young children often get teary-eyed and upset-- and run back to their mothers for reassurance-- when they see another child fall and cry. they are not worried about the other child, but overwhelmed by the emotions the other shows. it is only later in life, when children develop a distinction between self and other, that they separate vicarious emotions from their own. the development of empathy begins without any such distinction, however, perhaps similar to the way the vibrations of one string set off vibrations in another, producing a concerted sound. emotions tend to arouse matching emotions, from laughing and joy to the well-known phenomenon of a room full of crying toddlers. we know now that emotional contagion resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with animals as diverse as rats, dogs, elephants, and monkeys.

p 186 empathy is widespread among animals. it runs from body mimicry-- yawning when others yawn-- to emotional contagion in which the self resonates with fear or joy when it picks up fear or joy in others. at the highest level we find sympathy and targeted helping. perhaps empathy has reached its peak in our species, but several other animals come close. these animals understand the other's predicament well enough to offer optimal assistance.... they may not know the golden rule, but they surely seem to follow it.

p 187 kindness, we are told, is something people engage in only under pressure, and morality is little else than a veneer, a thin overlay hiding our selfish nature. but who actually lives in such a world? a bunch of piranhas driven to kindness because they want to impress each other would never develop the sort of societies we depend on. unconcerned about each other, piranhas lack morality as we know it.

mutual dependence is key. human societies are support systems within which weakness does not automatically spell death. the philosopher alasdair macintyre opens his book "dependent rational animals" by pointing out the extent of human vulnerability. during many life stages, especially when we are young and old, but also in between, we find ourselves in the caring hands of others. we are inherently needy. so why do western religion and philosophy pay so much more attention to the soul than the body? they depict us as cerebral, rational, and in charge of our destinies; never sick, hungry or lusty. that humans have bodies and emotions is acknowledged only as a weakness.

...without emotions, we would barely know which life choices to make, because choices are based on preferences, and preferences are ultimately emotional, without emotions we wouldn't store memories, because it's the emotions that make them salient. without emotions we would remain unmoved by others, who in turn would remain unmoved by us.

p 188 the reality is that we are bodies born from other bodies, bodies feeding other bodies, bodies having sex with other bodies, bodies seeking a shoulder to lean or cry on, bodies traveling long distances to be close to other bodies, and so on. would life be worth living without these connections and the emotions they arouse? how happy would we be, especially given that happiness too is an emotion?

we have become forgetful, according to macintyre, of how much our basic concerns are those of an animal. we celebrate rationality, but when push comes to shove we assign it little weight. as any parent who has tried to talk sense into a teenager knows, the persuasive power of logic is surprisingly limited. this is especially true in the moral domain.... human morality is firmly anchored in the social emotions, with empathy at its core. emotions are our compass. we have strong inhibitions against killing members of our own community, and our moral decisions reflect these feelings.

empathy is intensely interpersonal. it is activated by the presence, demeanor, and voice of others rather than by any objective evaluation. reading about the plight of someone who has fallen on hard times is really not the same as sharing a room with this person and listening to his story... our moral tendencies evolved in direct interaction with others whom we could hear, see, touch, and smell, and whose situation we understood by taking part in it. we're exquisitely attuned to the stream of emotional signals coming from other people's faces and postures, and we resonate with expressions of our own. actual people get under our skin in a way that an abstract problem never will.

p190 moral decision-making is driven by emotions... we are equipped with an internal compass that tell us how we ought to treat others. rationalizations often come after the fact, when we have already carried out the preordained reactions of our species.

p191 mencius "if men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm and distress. they will feel so, not as a ground on which they may gain the favor of the child's parents, nor as a ground on which they may seek the praise of their neighbors and friends, nor from a dislike to the reputation of having been unmoved by such a thing. from this case we may perceive that the feeling of commiseration is essential to man."

mencius rejected all possible selfish motives as too contrived, given the immediacy and force of the sympathetic impulse. manipulation of public opinion in entirely possible at other times, mencius said, but not at the moment a child is about to fall into a well.

p 192 punishment of transgressors relates to the second pillar of morality, which concerns resources.... we are talking bodies again, but now in a different way. stomachs need regular filling. the result is competition. having or not having, appropriating, stealing, reciprocity, fairness: all have to do with the division of resources, a top concern of human morality.

but perhaps I have a peculiar view of morality... morality has to do with either helping or (not) hurting. the two h's are interconnected. if you are drowning and I withhold assistance, I am in effect hurting you. my decision to help or not is by all accounts a moral one. anything unrelated to the two h's, even though presented as a moral issue, falls outside morality. it's most likely a mere convention.... by the age of two, children distinguish between moral principles ("do not steal") and cultural norms ("no pajamas at school"). they realize that breaking some rules harms others, but breaking other rules just violates expectations. the latter kind of rules are culturally variable.... conventions are often surrounded with the solemn language of morality, but in fact thy have little to do with it.

p 194 revenge is the flip side of reciprocity.

p 196 food sharing likely started as an incentive for hunters to hunt another day: there can't be joint hunting without joint payoffs... sharing makes sense only in relation to highly prized food that is hard to obtain and comes in amounts too large for a single individual.... sharing goes back to our hunting days, which explains why it is rare in other primates. the three primates best at public sharing-- that is sharing outside the family-- are humans, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys. all three love meat, they hunt in groups, ad they share even among adult males, which makes sense given that males do most of the hunting.

if a taste for meat is indeed at the root of sharing, it is hard to escape the conclusion that human morality is steeped in blood.... at the center of the original circle is something desired by many but obtainable only with exceptional strength or skill.

p 198 "this is the beauty of reciprocity: generosity pays."

p 202 gratitude is concerned with balance sheets. it makes us help those who have helped us. this must be its original function, even though now we apply the feeling more widely, being grateful for splendid weather or good health, for instance. that gratitude is a virtue may explain why it gets so much more attention than its ugly sister, revenge. revenge is concerned with balance sheets, too, but for the other of the two h's. bitterness toward those who hurt us is common, and here, too, feelings are translated into actions, such as the settling of scores. not only do we feel vengeful ourselves, we worry about these feelings in those whom we have offended, knowing how every chicken comes home to roost. we know the mechanism so well that we may in fact propose revenge upon ourselves, seeing the acceptance of punishment as the only way to restore the peace.

p 209 an egocentric sense of fairness is a fancy description of envy. it is the pain felt at the sight of those better off than we are. this is a far cry from the larger sense of fairness, the one that makes us also worry about those worse off than we are.... all one needs for the larger sense of fairness to develop is _anticipation_ of the resentment of _others_. there are excellent reasons to avoid arousing bad feelings. someone failing to share is excluded from feeding clusters. at worst, the one being envied risks being beaten up... we are getting close to what may be the source of the fairness principle: conflict avoidance.

p 210 from humble beginnings noble principles arise. it starts with resentment if you get less, then moves to concern about how others will react if you get more, and ends with declaring inequity a bad thing in general. thus, the sense of fairness is born. I like these step-by-step progressions, because this is how evolution must have worked. similarly, we can see how revenge may, via intermediate steps, lead to justice. the eye-for-an-eye mentality of primates serves "educational" purposes by attaching costs to undesirable behavior. although the human court system abhors raw emotions, there is no denying their role in our systems of justice.

jacoby believes that one measure of a civilization's sophistication is the distance between aggrieved individuals and satisfaction of their urge for vindication, noting that there is "persistent tension between uncontrolled vengeance as destroyer and controlled vengeance as an unavoidable component of justice."

personal emotions are crucial. combined with an appreciation of how our behavior affects others, they create moral principles. this is the bottom-up approach: from emotion to a sense of fairness.

the big question of human morality is how we moved from interpersonal relations to a system that focuses on the greater good. I'm sure it isn't because we have the good of society foremost in mind. the first interest of every individual isn't the group, but itself and its immediate kin. but with increasing social integration, shared interests rose to the surface so that the community as a whole became a concern. we can see the beginnings of this when apes soothe relations between others. they broker reconciliations (bring parties together after a fight) and break up fights in an evenhanded manner in order to promote peace around them. this is because everybody has a stake in a cooperative atmosphere.

p 212 obviously, the most potent force to bring out a community sense is enmity with outsiders. it forces unity among elements normally at odds. in our own species, nothing is more obvious than that we band together against adversaries. this is why it's often suggested that the best guarantee for world peace would be an extraterrestrial enemy.... in the course of human evolution, out-group hostility enhanced in-group solidarity to the point that morality emerged. instead of merely ameliorating relation around us, as apes do, we have explicit teachings about the value of the community and the precedence it out to take over individual interests.

and so the profound irony is that our noblest achievement-- morality-- has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior-- warfare. the sense of community required by the former was provided by the latter. when we passed the tipping point between conflicting individual interests and shared interests, we ratcheted up the social pressure to make sure everyone contributed to the common good. we developed an incentive structure of approval and punishment-- including internalized punishments such as guilt and shame-- to encourage what's right and discourage what's wrong for the community. morality became our main tool to strengthen the social fabric.

p 213 emotions trump rules. this is why, when speaking of moral role models, we talk of their hearts, not their brains. we rely more on what we feel than what we think when solving moral dilemmas.

p 219 our lineage's state of nature is one of bonding and support to the degree that even someone with autism perceives it. or perhaps precisely such a person, since our obsession with the spoken word stand in the way of a full appreciation of nonverbal cues, such as postures, gestures, expressions, and tone of voice. without body cues our communication loses its emotional content and becomes mere technical information. we could just as easily use flashing cards with "I love you" or "I am angry." it is well-known that people whose faces lose their expressiveness because of some neurological disorder and who therefore cannot echo the emotions of others (such as by a smile or frown), plunge into abject loneliness. our species finds life barely worth living withouot the body language that cements us together.

origin stories that connection by presenting humans as loners who grudgingly came together are ignorant of primate evolution. we belong to a category of animals known among zoologists as "obligatorily gregarious," meaning that we have no option but to stick together. this is why fear of ostracism lurks in the corners of every human mind: being expelled is the worst thing that can befall us. it was so in biblical times, and it remains so today. evolution has instilled a need to belong and to feel accepted. we are social to our core.

p 220 everything is balanced around an optimum. being selfish is inevitable and necessary, but only up to a point. this is what I meant when I called human nature a janus head: we are the product of opposing forces, such as the need to think of our own interests and the need to get along. if I emphasize the latter, it's because of the traditional emphasis on the former. both are closely interconnected and contribute to survival. the very capacities that promote peace, such as reconciliation after a fight, would never have evolved in the absence of conflict. in a bipolar world, every capacity hints at its very opposite.

we have discussed specific paradoxes, such as the link between democracy and hierarchy, between the nuclear family and infanticide, and between fairness and competition. in each case, it takes several steps to get from the one to the other. but wherever we turn, social institutions result from an interplay between opposing forces. evolution is a dialectical process.

human nature, too, is inherently multidimensional, and the same applies to chimpanzee and bonobo nature. even if the chimp's nature is more violent and the bonobo's more peaceful, chimps do resolve conflicts and bonobos do compete.

being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathic than bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral. pure states are not nature's way. what's true for human society is also true for human nature. one can find both kindness and cruelty, nobility and vulgarity-- sometimes all in the same person. we're full of contradictions, but mostly tamed ones. talk of "tamed contradictions" may sound obscure, even mystical, but they're all around us.

on top of the inherent duality of human nature comes the role of intelligence. even if we customarily overestimate our rationality, there is no denying that human behavior is a combination of drive and intelligence. we exert little control over ancient urges for power, sex, safety, and food, but we habitually weigh the pros and cons of our actions before we engage in them. human behavior is seriously modified by experience. this may sound too obvious to even mention, but it is a radically different way of putting things than the way biologists used to talk. in the 1960's, almost every noticeable tendency of the human species was labeled an "instinct." the probably with the term "instinct," however, is that it downplays the role of learning and experience. a similar trend exists some contemporary circles, this time favoring the term "module." the human brain is compared to a swiss army knife to which evolution has one by one added modules for everything from face-recognition and tool-use to child care and friendship. unfortunately, no one knows exactly what a brain module is, and the evidence for their existence is no more tangible than the evidence for instincts.

it is undeniable that we have inborn predispositions, yet I don't see us as blind actors carrying out nature's genetic programs. I see us rather as improvisers who flexibly adjust to other improvisers on the scene with our genes offering hints and suggestions.

p 224 all three species face similar social dilemmas and need to overcome similar contradictions while going after status, mates, and resources. they apply their full brainpower to find solutions. true, our species looks farther ahead and weighs more options than the apes do, but this hardly seems a fundamental difference. even if we wield the better chess computer, we're still all playing chess.

p 229 we are sensitive to collective interests, but not to the point of giving up our individual ones. communism went under due to an economic incentive structure that was out of touch with human nature.

p 232 the top 1 percent of americans has more income to spend than the bottom 40 percent taken together. this is a huge cap compared with europe and japan. wilkinson argues that large income disparities erode the social fabric. they induce resentment and undermine trust, which causes stress to both the rich and the poor. no one feels at ease within such a system. the result is that the world's richest nation now has one of it poorest health records.

whatever one thinks of a political system, if it fails to promote its citizens' physical well-being, it has a problem. and so in the same way that communism collapsed due to a mismatch between ideology and human behavior, unmitigated capitalism may be unsustainable as it celebrates the material well-being of a few while shortchanging the rest. it denies the basic solidarity that makes life bearable. in doing so, it goes against a long evolutionary history of egalitarianism, which in turn relates to our cooperative nature. primate experiments show how cooperation breaks down if benefits aren't shared among all participants, and human behavior likely follows the same principle.

p 233 their term "social capital" refers to the public safety and sense of security derived from a predictable environment and dense social network. older neighborhoods in cities like chicago, new york, london, and paris do produce such social capital, but only because they were designed for people to live, work, do their shopping, and go to school in. this way people get to know each other and begin to share values. a young woman walking home in the evening will be surrounded by so many residents with a stake in safe streets that she can feel protected. she is surrounded by an unspoken neighborhood watch. th modern trend to physically separate places where human needs are satisfied disrupts this tradition, making us live at one place, shop at another, and work at yet another. it's a disaster for community building, not to mention the time, stress, and fuel it takes to move all those people around.

p 234 we are stuck with a human psychology shaped by millions of years of life in small communities so that we somehow need to structure the world around us in a way recognizable to this psychology. if we could manage to see people on the other continents as part of us, drawing them into our circle of reciprocity and empathy, we would be building upon, rather than going against, our nature.

empathy is the one weapon in the human repertoire able to rid us of the curse of xenophobia.

empathy is fragile, though. in our close relatives it is switched on by events within their community, such as a youngster in distress, but it is just as easily switched off with regard to outsiders or members of other species, such as prey... no ape can afford to feel pity for all living things all the time. this applies equally to humans. our evolutionary design makes it hard to identify with outsiders. we've been designed to hate our enemies, to ignore the needs of people we barely know, and to distrust anybody who doesn't look like us. even if within our communities we are largely cooperative, we become almost a different animal in our treatment of strangers.

p 236 the contrast between chimps and bonobos reminds me of a distinction by psychologists between HE and HA personalities. HE stands for "hierarchy-enhancing," meaning a personality who believes in law and order and harsh measures to keep everybody in place. HA, on the other hand, stands for "hierarchy-attenuating," meaning a personality who seeks to level the playing field. the point is not which tendency is more desirable, because it's only together that they create human society as we know it. our societies balance both types, having institutions that are either more HE, such as the criminal justice system, or more HA, such as civil rights movements and organizations that care for the poor.