Often have we put forth the premise that human beings are biologically predisposed to live in community – that we are social beings, first and foremost, the most group-oriented of all living creatures. This premise is supported by overwhelming anthropological, archaeological, psychological and neurophysiological evidence, which I have put forth for consideration a number of times now.
Moreover, this evidence affirms that there is, within the human genome, a varietal range of cognitive inclinations – that there are many different styles of thought and emotional response within any human group, and that this is feature of human cognition is genetically linked, and survival-tested over the millennia. Put another way, nature has built diversity of thought into the human being, as diversity of thought confers a survival advantage; if the members of any given tribe don’t all think the same way, their collective problem-solving range and response options to threats are much greater.
There, too, much evidence has been gathered and previously presented. The task now is to place these features of humanity in a modern context, and see where they lead.
In the paleolithic past, human tribes tapered off in number at less than 200 people to a tribe. That’s the limit of relationships a human brain can sustain (see: Dunbar’s Number), an optimum community size that provides sufficient brain power, muscle power and genetic diversity for long-term survival. Any given tribe will have a mix of cognitive types: people who are risk-takers, others who are risk-averse; people who have a nose for the new-and-different, those who stick to what’s familiar; those who want the assurance of an authority to depend on, those who seek consensus. This cognitive/emotional stew yields the strongest responses and adaptations in an uncertain world.
With the advent of agriculture and its bequest of surplus calories, human civilization took off – and groups of much more than 200 people became possible. Large, fixed communities, then cities, then city-states emerged. We were no longer relatively small groups with healthy mixtures of worldviews and response patterns; it became possible for all the aggressive people to gather into mobs; all the risk-averse to huddle in corners; all the explorers to form clubs. Such groups can be called cognitive clusters: very large groups of people who say they share the same “beliefs”, or ideology, but in fact are sharing the same cognitive/emotional tendencies – largely due to their personal neurophysiological traits, bestowed on them by their genes.
Religions are cognitive clusters. Political parties are cognitive clusters. Any group of individuals that we could label as “like-minded” is a candidate for the designation. In modern society and culture, sustenance is so abundant and the survival threats so few that we need not think twice about surrounding ourselves with others unlike ourselves.
But there are fewer wiser courses we could choose; and our long-term future as a species might depend upon our recognizing the value of what we’ve left behind.
Let’s examine, by way of evidence, what happens in modern society and culture in contexts where we do see cognitive diversity. Where, in the world around us, are people assembled randomly – not by choice, not self-selecting for how similar we are to others around us, but rather assigned to groups without any say of our own?
The very purest (and most superficial) example might be people stuck in an elevator. If a random group of individuals find themselves temporarily trapped in such a situation, they would not tend to collectively lean into any one set of behavioral biases; some might be afraid, some annoyed, some proactive, some waiting for rescue.
More conventionally, school classrooms would be another; when we’re put into a class in school, no one is selecting for cognitive biases, or even political or religious tendencies. Those are not factors. Some students will be inquisitive, some resistant; some will be proactive, some in need of support. Some will accept a teacher’s word arbitrarily; some will insist on reasoned arguments to support the class content.
And then there’s a case that deserves our special attention: military units.
Soldiers are assigned to military units with no more discrimination than the effort to ensure a strong balance of skills. All will be capable of marching and shooting; a few will be adept at scouting; one or two will have training as medics, or radio communications. One or two might have particular skills in sharpshooting or demolition. That’s what matters when building a strong team of soldiers.
But those assignments will not take into account a soldier’s political leaning, or religion, or race, or even gender, in some cases today; there is no selectivity when it comes to risk-taking or risk-aversion (both have value in a military context); no accounting for curiosity versus conformity. And while we will see a tendency to do as instructed among soldiers – an adherence to authority structures – that tendency is imposed. There will still be, in any random group of soldiers, individuals who prefer to act by consensus.
Now consider the difference between these groups and other groups.
When soldiers have served together, fought together, and almost died together, they tend to remain bonded for life. They will continue to reunite, year after year, decade after decade. We call this phenomenon the “Band of Brothers”, and it is common enough to be well-understood even by those who never served.
Consider further that within these deep bonds, political leanings and religious affiliations – and race, and socioeconomic status, and all the other demographic discriminators that are so obscenely important in society overall – don't matter at all. All that matters in a band of brothers is that each member of the tribe faced death, over and over, alongside the others. And they emerged alive and bonded precisely because they were a diverse collection of people, each bringing something of themselves that was unique to their collective struggle for survival.
Now, finally, consider which modern group, of all those we’ve mentioned (and all of those we haven’t) most strongly resembles a paleolithic community?
The band of brothers.
Paleolithic tribes were no different, in kind, than teams of soldiers. They were cognitively diverse, having been randomly mixed with respect to their behavioral and emotional tendencies; they would not all have been this way, or all have been that way, but a strong cross-section of many different types – just like soldiers.
No other social group we might think of, in the modern era – apart from remaining indigenous aboriginals – more strongly resembles our paleolithic ancestors and their communities than the band of brothers, the military unit that survives in the field.
They present the mutual reliance, cohesiveness, willingness to sacrifice for the group, breadth of skills and problem-solving capacity, that would have been commonplace tens of thousands of years ago. All they lack, really, is raising families together; their tenure in their tribe comes to an end when war fades.
The point here is not that we all need to join the military, or go back to school, or get stuck on an elevator; it’s simply to consider that there is something to be learned from examining the example of the band of brothers, to hopefully gain an appreciation of what’s important and what isn’t, ultimately, in human tribes – and to understand which of the differences between us have real meaning, and which are meaningless.
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