It is generally agreed that human social behavior, including aggression, is genetically constrained, but many argue about the extent and importance of that constraint. Some hold that the genetic leash is long, loose and inconsequential'0 but sociobiologists make a strong case that in many areas of complex human behavior, including aggression, the leash can be short and tight, and we would be well advised to know these limits and work within them.'1 Sociobiology draws on population genetic studies in animals and suggests that much as the foundations of modern medicine are built on fruit flies and colon bacteria, so we might learn about aggression and war from studies of creatures like the social insects. There are profound differences, of course, since there is an immense overlay of culture influencing human behavior in contrast with the fixed set of behavioral possibilities that insects inherit. One important example of a fixed insect-like behavioral pattern in humans is the universal display of anxiety of very young children in the presence of strangers. Apart from this type of exception, humans are not "hardwired" like insects. Instead, we inherit capacities and biases: capacities for certain behavioral patterns and biases to learn one or another of those available. Some behavior, aggression being a good example, is innate since it is easy to learn and hard to overcome.'2 Even though the human repertoire is huge it is bounded by finite genetic limits, and our behavioral biases are those that enhance the perpetuation of those genes best conferring biological fitness on the individual person. With a knowledge of the environmental history of a species the sociobiologist can predict the responses that will be selected for perpetuation. The territorial aggressive behavior of human hunter-gatherers, for example, conforms to ecological theory based on animal studies.'
Warfare itself is a selective force in human evolution. Groups with the best intragroup ability to cope with attacking groups survive, their genes favored. So our heritage is that of a species primed for war.5 Since genetic change proceeds slowly, even accelerated by culture in the gene-culture coevolution theory recently advanced,13 we tend to behave in ways appropriate to our hunter-gatherer past rather than present circumstance. When we develop phobias, our genetic heritage is wired so that we fear ancient dangersclosed spaces, heights, thunderstorms, running water, snakes, spiders. We do not have phobias about nuclear weapons, guns, autos, explosives and electric sockets. Humans also equate events that have little likelihood of occurrence and little consequence with rare events that can have catastrophic outcomes like warfare. Like nuclear warfare. We equate unlikelihood with inconsequence with unthinkable.'3 This represents a kind of belief system that, like many, incorporates denial mechanisms. Perhaps we have a genetic bias to use such denial systems, making them easy to learn and hard to overcome because they conferred genetic advantage on our kind in ancient times. They certainly do not help now. As Einstein noted early in the nuclear age, we have to change the way we think. This sounds hopelessly utopian. How can we change the way we think? But consider the following: Belief systems, we know from our experience with the health belief model, can be changed. And belief systems are ways of thinking. So there are practical possibilities in Einstein's prescription.
The Roots of Belief Systems
Our ways of thinking-with our belief and denial systems-arise within our self-consciousness, that enigmatic human attribute so close to our very essence. Self-consciousness cannot be imagined as anything less than a sine qua non for human evolution. Yet inextricably bound to it is a counterevolutionary force, for self-consciousness holds within it, pari passu, awareness of death. Knowledge of ultimate extinction holds humankind hostage and afraid, so afraid that we can look at it only through belief systems-religious, scientific or political-and through denial, the universal system as portrayed with penetrating multidisciplinary insight by Becker.'4", Health belief systems exemplify the process. Illness and disability are forerunners and reminders of mortality, and health belief systems attempt 'to circumvent and delay this fate-or deny that it matters. Freud unfortunately dulled our appreciation of denial. Any question of the validity of a Freudian theorem could be dismissed as denial and the question turned on the questioner-a catch 22. Freud came close to the full development of his insight but did not quite appreciate the central problem of the dread of death, which in the nuclear age threatens the very life of the planet. We now face the ultimate catch 22 since the denial of death may be so counterevolutionary as to be lethal.
Answers to all your Biology Questions
