In his 2012 book The End of War, science writer John Horgan tells of Wesleyan University’s David Adams, a psychologist who polled his students in the 1980s, asking them what they thought about war. The results were discouraging. Almost one-third answered “Yes” when asked whether “wars are inevitable because human beings are naturally aggressive” - and an even more discouraging 40 percent said “Yes” to the statement “War is intrinsic to human nature.”
Horgan reported that Adams had written, “These results support the need for a worldwide educational campaign to dispel the myth that war is instinctive, intrinsic to human nature, or unavoidable because of an alleged biological bias.
Horgan reported further that Adams and 19 colleagues met in Spain in 1986, in a conference sponsored by the United Nations, to present the following five propositions:
It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors;
It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature;
It is scientifically incorrect to say that in the course of human evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behavior more than for other kinds of behavior;
It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans have a “violent brain”;
It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by “instinct” or any single motivation.
The Seville Statement, as it was called, wrapped up by stating “that biology does not condemn humanity to war, and that humanity can be freed from the bondage of biological pessimism... the same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace. The responsibility lies within each of us.
After building the case that war is a choice, that resource scarcity is no excuse, and that the correct view of war is as a cultural contagion, Horgan presents his vision for the end of war, offering a handful of universal rules:
Indiscriminate killing, of the sort that happens when mines, bombs and drones are used, must be ruled out;
The highest priority in conflict between nations must be the minimization of civilian casualties (Horgan suggests the de-escalation policies commonly adopted by police be used as a model);
Any armed aggression between nation should be architected in such a way as to occur its own obsolescence (long-term consequences should be the highest consideration).
And finally, Horgan underscores his thesis with a recap of the “Prehistory of Violence,” much of which we’ve already reviewed. His recaps include the following:
20,000 years ago: oldest skeleton bearing uncontested indications (an arrowhead in the body, among other things) of homicide, discovered in the Nile Valley;
13,000 years ago: the oldest mass grace, Cemetery 117;
10,000 years ago: “irrefutable evidence” of organized warfare discovered in northern Mesopotamia, including spears and arrow points, fortifications, and bones with signs of violence.
The point: the appearance of organized warfare in human prehistory was both abrupt and recent. There are no mass graves dating back into the Paleolithic, no patterns of bone damage, no stockpiles of weapons. There is plenty of evidence of human cooperation – and none of systemic aggression.
War is a recent innovation. And John Horgan, Douglas Fry, and Raymond Kelly, among others, believe it can be banished forever.
But what about peace? What is its true history in the human adventure, and how do we bring it forth permanently?
Douglas Fry, in his book The Human Potential for Peace, quotes Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man:
“No tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, treachery, etc., were common; consequently such crimes within the limits of the same tribe ‘are branded with everlasting infamy;’”
He also quotes anthropologist Brian Ferguson:
“The image of humanity, warped by bloodlust, inevitably marching off to kill, is a powerful myth and an important prop of militarism in our society. Despite its lack of scientific credibility, there will remain those ‘Hard-headed realists’ who continue to believe in it, congratulating themselves for their ‘courage to face the truth,’ resolutely oblivious to the myth behind their ‘reality’.”
And back to Darwin:
“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the other members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.”
Fry invests considerable effort in articulating case studies of peaceful behaviors among aboriginal groups, detailing their conflict management practices, and demonstrating the utility and portability of those practices. He also examines a broad range of social organization paradigms, weighing the quality of each in maintaining peace.
Frans de Waal provides a biological foundation for a key component of peaceful coexistence – reconciliation behaviors – in Thomas Gregor’s A Natural History of Peace.
He begins by providing three evolutionary mechanisms by which aggression is controlled in primate groups: Risk of Injury/Energy Expenditure; Memory of Prior Defeats/Injuries; and Value of Cooperation/Threat to Group Membership.
He then frames his argument by evaluating two competing hypotheses regarding the effects of aggression on social relations. The first is a dispersal hypothesis, which predicts that losers would socially avoid winners, the second is a reconciliation hypothesis, which predicts that individuals will attempt to repair relationships to restore social value. He and his team then tested the two hypotheses through observation of a range of different primates, capturing patterns of reconciliation.
His finding was that both patterns are frequently displayed: dispersal is commonplace following aggressive confrontation, but reconciliation will follow after a brief period of time.
Anthropologist Leslie Sponsel, also writing in A Natural History of Peace, makes the case that social mechanisms for implementing peace as a global default already exist, summarizing:
“Humans have evolved both biological and cultural behavioral mechanisms to promote nonviolence and peace as well as to avoid, reduce, and resolve conflict and violence. Indeed ethnography does provide heuristic precedents and models of sociocultural systems that are relatively nonviolent and peaceful.”
Economist Kenneth Boulding, in the same volume, builds a case for global peace as an inevitable emergent feature of adaptive learning, as the nations of the world face an increasing stream of unique challenges. He also offers the optimistic reminder that peace is now a formal research topic:
“...we are looking for a dialectics of learning rather than a dialectics of struggle. One of the hopeful signs emerging from this search has been the development of the peace-research movement of the last 30 or 40 years, which essentially defines peace as creative conflict and a learning process as over against the old dialectic that cannot live without an enemy.”
This was, in fact, the theme Trek writer/director Nicholas Meyer was attempting to explore in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, in which Captain Kirk is forced to confront his own prejudices against the Klingons and his desire to achieve retribution for the murder of his son David.
“‘I need my enemy to define me,’” Meyer summarized, then explaining that the point of Kirk’s confrontation with the Klingons is ultimately to rise above that need. Though this plotline didn’t go down very well with those fans who believed that, per Roddenberry’s vision, Kirk should already have been there, the movie had the virtue of presenting a Klingon chancellor as the source of wisdom and inspiration in the pursuit of ultimate peace between the Federation and Klingon Empire. That in itself was a step forward long overdue.
And that’s a part of the Trek future that can become real.
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