Are we biologically doomed to eternal ethnic conflict?
Here's what a fictional social scientist says about it in one of the testimonies:
I am a specialist in the study of the neurological basis of nationalism. I am Professor of the Neuro-Psychology at the University of Rochester. We have separated nationalism into two distinct psychological effects. The first is in-group cohesion. This is regulated by the neurotransmitter oxytocin produced in the hypothalamus. When someone is identified as one of one’s own kind, oxytocin is released, and the subject is likely to make altruistic decisions with respect to one’s own kind. We call this the “tend and defend” response.
On the other hand, out-group hatred, when someone is identified as foreign or a threat to one’s own kind, the neurotransmitter norepinephrine is released and the prototypical “fight or flight” reaction ensues.
We set up an experiment among white American students, all of whom clamed to have no prejudices against any ethnic group. We gave them a simple hypothetical problem: they had to choose whom to allow on an airplane sent to rescue a group of people from an island in the path of a tsunami. When the names were Anglo-Saxon, blood levels of oxytocin increased, the fMRI showed that areas of the brain that were linked to compassion lit up, and the decisions were made quite rapidly. When the same group of students were shown names that were Arab, African-American, Chinese, German or Russian, norepinephrine levels increased, the fMRI showed that areas of the brain linked to fear lit up, and decision-making slowed down.
Ethnocentrism, nationalism, as it were, seems to be hard-wired into our brains. It probably arose as a product of normal evolution. Those humans who banded together for mutual protection were more likely to survive. Those humans who were suspicious and alert to foreigners were more likely to survive. Perhaps there is a nurtured element as well. We did not delve into how we learn to identify some people as in-group or brothers and some as out-group or others.
Some of us are able to override these lower-level cognitive functions. Many of the college students in our study, after some hesitation, nevertheless chose a balance of foreign names to be rescued.
You remind me of a parallel that occurred to me some time ago. With your Renaissance-man aptitude for humanities, science, medicine, religion, and empathy, you are extremely well-equipped to evaluate it.
ReplyDeleteI posit that any banding-together of organisms subject to evolutionary pressures (i.e., one that survives and gives rise to itself-with-minor-variation) will have similarities to an immune system, a tribe of social animals, a political party, a mind composed of a conclave of modules, a software UI, and similar complex systems.
Adopting the standpoint of the band/tribe/party/system, the principles look like these:
1. Individual members of the band bear obligate tags from a previous stage in evolution.
2. These tags are repurposed to identify self and nonself.
3. The sensory functions of individual organisms are well-attuned to such tags.
4. As bands differentiate and compete for similar ecological niches, these sensory functions will become especially well-attuned to distinguishing between truly-self and nearly-self.
5. Each band will have at least one caste that attacks nearly-self entities.
6. Advanced bands (i.e., complex, well-adapted/long-evolved bands) will also have a caste that can modulate or even suppress such attacks.
Here's how the mapping might work, using "ethnicity" as an example.
1. Individual humans obligatorily bear evidence of their ancestors (phenotypic expressions of genotype) and upbringing (culture, language, religion, ...).
2. An ethnicity forms around a particular happenstance of phenotype+culture; surviving ethnicities become "fit" in the sense that they consistently give rise to themselves.
3. Individual humans are sensitive to differences in ethnicities.
4. Individual humans are particularly sensitive to differences in ethnicities that are very close to their own. (Most Europeans are poor at distinguishing Korean from Japanese; most Christians are poor at distinguishing Shaivism from Vaishnavism).
5. All successful human bands have a history of excluding out-group members, very often through a soldier caste that wields force and/or a priest caste that wields knowledge/religion/charisma.
6. Many human ethnic bands also have within their ranks such castes as merchants, ambassadors, translators, mystics, and (recently) scientists, whose allegiance is partly to a trans-ethnic or supra-ethnic ideal or cause.
I submit that the mapping works equally well with bands formed on the basis of religious doctrine, bands of T-cells, bands of Republicans, and bands of software modules in service of a common unifying goal. Some of these bands (like ant colonies) are unconscious and self-organizing; others have some elements of conscious design or oversight.
What a provocative theory, Paul! It implies a natural history of increasing homogeneity within the group or band, and increasing hostility towards members of the out-group. It would lead me to despair if you hadn't thrown in the tempering effect of #6. I invite you to expand your model, perhaps including some of the following issues that don't seem to be part of it:
DeleteAcculturation: Minorities often assimilate into the dominant culture, vanishing in all but a few token ways (e.g., Irish-Americans) particularly in America where there are relatively few barriers and many rewards for doing that. Other groups are able to acculturate through integration of the dominant culture into their own, maintaining key aspects of each (e.g., Japan adopting American culture after WWII).
Cultural cooperation or symbiosis: Increased contact between nations sometimes leads to increased tolerance, inter-dependence and appreciation.Since becoming major trade partners with the US, Germans and Japanese have been increasingly valued for their industriousness,and attention to detail and quality. In nature, symbiotic partnerships are common between insects and plants, ruminants and termites and cellulose-digesting bacteria, fungi and algae within lichens, and algae within coral, to name just a few. Indeed, humans could not survive without bacterial flora in the gut, and because they outnumber us 10-to-one, it's been suggested that we evolved to be a survival mechanism for those bacteria.
Multiculturalism: American culture is particularly (uniquely) tolerant of ethnic diversity, integrating food, language, music, art, and spiritual practices.
Endosymbiont Theory: Originally put forth by Mereschkowski and championed by Lynn Margulis Sagan, the theory is an alternative to natural variation as instrumental to evolution. If it's true, and evidence is certainly on its side, many important cellular organelles such as chloroplasts and mitochondria had their start as bacteria that were subsumed into prokaryotic organisms; macrophages may have had their start as integrated amoebas; other cell types unique to the immune system (e.g., T cells and dendritic cells) may have had a similar start; indeed, mammalian evolution may owe its impetus to the successful incorporation of a retrovirus (a theory discussed in my next novel, btw). Biologically, we may owe much of who we are to a process akin to integrative multiculturalism.
I choose to be hopeful that such forces will mitigate our tendency to alienate, derogate and attack perceived out-groups.