Human nature and solutions to conflict
Here is a quote from an article about competitiveness in the Aug21 edition of the Business week. The results from the quoted experiment are simply illuminating as to how possibly the seemingly interminable conflicts over resources and religion can be possibly solved.
Beginning of quote
Beginning of quote
"Stanford University biologist Robert M. Sapolsky wrote in the January issue of Foreign Affairs about two groups of savanna baboons he studied in the 1980s in Kenya. One group was getting fat and happy from the garbage they dined on daily from a nearby tourist lodge, but they were attacked nearly every morning by the most combative males from a forest-dwelling baboon group nearby.
It turns out the garbage was contaminated with tuberculosis bacteria. The disease soon killed off both the garbage-dump baboons and the forest baboon males that had been elbowing in on their spoils. As a result, the forest tribe was left with only the less-aggressive, friendly males, and double its previous female-to-male ratio. "The social consequences were dramatic," writes Sapolsky.
Aggression in the forest tribe was far less frequent. There was more reciprocal grooming and hanging out, and females were less defensive now that there were more of them. But most surprising, outsider aggressor males that joined the tribe quickly adapted to this Elysian setting, becoming less aggressive and more social as well. Some 20 years later the tribe's unique social order remains in place, even though all the original laid-back males have died out. "The most plausible explanation is that this troop's special culture is not passed on actively but simply emerges, facilitated by the actions of the resident members," writes Sapolsky.
In other words, the resident males and females treat newcomers well, even if they are aggressors. As a result, the new males relax and adopt the behavior of the group. Perhaps culture can trump our genetic imperative to compete -- or at least get us to stop stealing each other's food. "
End of quote
Now it is not that hard to evolutionally link us the human beings with the baboons in the study. Two crucial inferences can be drawn out right with striking parallels to the global political environment. The first one is that the war mongering strong baboons of both the groups are eventually the cause of each others destruction and second that the period of tranquility follows with a readjustment of the population according to the available resources. The remarkable fact is that such a pacified group is able to absorb and reform the aggressive tendencies of alien intruders albeit under the condition that the number of the intruders is not large enough to massacre the pacifists.
Now this study holds a striking parallel to the way the human society behaved over the last century. A period of ravenous imperliasm to grab resources along with rise of hawkish tendencies all over the world led to two bloody global conflicts resulting ultimately in the demise of the war mongers. This broadly has been followed by a period of relative calm making once the most militarist states of Germany, France and Japan one of the strongest global advocates of pacifism. The US not as deeply affected by the vagaries of total war (and Russia for a good period driven by ill fated belief in powers of the omniscient dictators) haven't lost faith in the military solutions to conflicts. The resulting cold war itself didn't ever degenrate to hot war because of rational pacifists prevailing over Dr Strangelove elements. Unfortunately since then the conflicts seem to be rising in the global scale with several flash points allover the world.
Of course the key issue of resource crunch for an ever increasing population seems unresolved. But we human beings have science and technology on our side to boost productivity and better manage or even create new resources. The way Malthus' predictions have been defied time and again is a pointer to such hopefulness. But the other key criterion of having a large group of pacifists which should be able to recondition any aberrant aggresive elements seems unfulfilled. From this regard the pursuit of bold diplomacy to solve chronic causes of injustice and hence breeding grounds for conflicts needs to be pursued at the earnest. Violence seems to have a strong network externality (borrowing from management parlance) i.e. it feeds on itself creating an uncontrollable spiral until a tipping point is reached where all the key players in the violent acts from both sides are annihilated. This tipping point needn't be achieved again at the cost of millions of lives like in the last century but by marginalising the causes and agents of conflict through the force of the civil society be through democracy or by religious edicts.
Hopfully this interesting finding gets picked up by politicians worldwide who sadly seem to be following down the path of force to control violence which inadevertently is causing it to become stronger than ever.
It turns out the garbage was contaminated with tuberculosis bacteria. The disease soon killed off both the garbage-dump baboons and the forest baboon males that had been elbowing in on their spoils. As a result, the forest tribe was left with only the less-aggressive, friendly males, and double its previous female-to-male ratio. "The social consequences were dramatic," writes Sapolsky.
Aggression in the forest tribe was far less frequent. There was more reciprocal grooming and hanging out, and females were less defensive now that there were more of them. But most surprising, outsider aggressor males that joined the tribe quickly adapted to this Elysian setting, becoming less aggressive and more social as well. Some 20 years later the tribe's unique social order remains in place, even though all the original laid-back males have died out. "The most plausible explanation is that this troop's special culture is not passed on actively but simply emerges, facilitated by the actions of the resident members," writes Sapolsky.
In other words, the resident males and females treat newcomers well, even if they are aggressors. As a result, the new males relax and adopt the behavior of the group. Perhaps culture can trump our genetic imperative to compete -- or at least get us to stop stealing each other's food. "
End of quote
Now it is not that hard to evolutionally link us the human beings with the baboons in the study. Two crucial inferences can be drawn out right with striking parallels to the global political environment. The first one is that the war mongering strong baboons of both the groups are eventually the cause of each others destruction and second that the period of tranquility follows with a readjustment of the population according to the available resources. The remarkable fact is that such a pacified group is able to absorb and reform the aggressive tendencies of alien intruders albeit under the condition that the number of the intruders is not large enough to massacre the pacifists.
Now this study holds a striking parallel to the way the human society behaved over the last century. A period of ravenous imperliasm to grab resources along with rise of hawkish tendencies all over the world led to two bloody global conflicts resulting ultimately in the demise of the war mongers. This broadly has been followed by a period of relative calm making once the most militarist states of Germany, France and Japan one of the strongest global advocates of pacifism. The US not as deeply affected by the vagaries of total war (and Russia for a good period driven by ill fated belief in powers of the omniscient dictators) haven't lost faith in the military solutions to conflicts. The resulting cold war itself didn't ever degenrate to hot war because of rational pacifists prevailing over Dr Strangelove elements. Unfortunately since then the conflicts seem to be rising in the global scale with several flash points allover the world.
Of course the key issue of resource crunch for an ever increasing population seems unresolved. But we human beings have science and technology on our side to boost productivity and better manage or even create new resources. The way Malthus' predictions have been defied time and again is a pointer to such hopefulness. But the other key criterion of having a large group of pacifists which should be able to recondition any aberrant aggresive elements seems unfulfilled. From this regard the pursuit of bold diplomacy to solve chronic causes of injustice and hence breeding grounds for conflicts needs to be pursued at the earnest. Violence seems to have a strong network externality (borrowing from management parlance) i.e. it feeds on itself creating an uncontrollable spiral until a tipping point is reached where all the key players in the violent acts from both sides are annihilated. This tipping point needn't be achieved again at the cost of millions of lives like in the last century but by marginalising the causes and agents of conflict through the force of the civil society be through democracy or by religious edicts.
Hopfully this interesting finding gets picked up by politicians worldwide who sadly seem to be following down the path of force to control violence which inadevertently is causing it to become stronger than ever.
posted by abecedarian @ 10:12 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The study on baboon is indeed interesting, but I doubt if you can so easily apply it to Humans. Firstly, there is too much diversity in terms of race, religion etc. Secondly, Outsiders/Agressors are not always minority as in this case. Hence a peaceful co-existence is not always a solution.
Well said Point5 ... but then again all academic exercises are essentailly studies based on simplistic assumptions. The challenge and hard work lies in bridging the gap between what is probable to the what is actually achievable. And that is not a small task even in hard sciences forget about more complex social sciences.
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