The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

by Desmond Morris

  The greatest sexual complication to arise has been the clash between the primarily reproductive categories (Procreation, Pair-formation and Pair-maintenance Sex), on the one hand, and the primarily non-reproductive categories, on the other. In the pre-pill days, when contraception was forbidden, rare, or inefficient, Procreation Sex provided a major hazard for Exploratory Sex, Self-rewarding Sex and the rest. Even in the so-called ‘post-pill paradise’, which some have seen as heralding an epoch of wild promiscuity, the problem is far from solved, because of the persistence of the fundamental pair-bonding properties of human sexual encounters. Widespread, trouble-free promiscuity is a myth and always will be. It is a myth born of the wishful thinking of Status Sex, but it will for ever remain a wishful thought. Man’s strong pair-forming urge stemming, in evolutionary terms, from his greatly increased parental duties, will persist no matter what technical advances are achieved with perfected contraception in the years to come. This does not mean that such advances will have no impact on our sexual activities. On the contrary, they will profoundly alter our behaviour. The triple pressure of improved contraception, dwindling venereal disease and ever swelling human population will together work towards a dramatic increase in non-reproductive forms of copulatory indulgence. There can be no doubt of this. Equally there can be no doubt that this will intensify the clash between these forms of sex and the demands of the pair-bond. Unhappily, as a result, the children will suffer along with their sexually confused parents.

  It would be much easier if, like our monkey relatives, we had a lighter parental burden and were more truly biologically promiscuous. Then we could extend and intensify our sexual activities with the same facility that we magnify our body-cleaning behaviour. Just as we harmlessly spend hours in the bathroom, visit masseurs, beauty parlours, hairdressers, Turkish baths, swimming pools, sauna baths, or Oriental bath-houses, so we could indulge in lengthy erotic escapades with anyone, at any time, without the slightest repercussions. As it is, it seems as if our basic animal nature will always stand in the way of this development, or will at least discourage it until such time as we have undergone some radical genetical change.

  The only hope is that, as the clashing demands of supersex grow more intense, we shall learn to play the game more deftly. It is, after all, possible to indulge oneself gastronomically without growing either fat or sick. With sex the trick is more difficult to accomplish, and society is littered with the bitter jealousies, forlorn heartbreaks, miserable, shattered families, and unwanted offspring to prove it.

  No wonder super-sex has become such a problem for the Urban Super-ape. No wonder it has so often been abused. It is capable of providing man with his most intense physical and emotional rewards. When it goes wrong, it is also capable of causing him his greatest miseries. As he has expanded it, elaborated it and manipulated it, he has magnified its potentials both as a reward and a punishment. But sadly there is nothing unusual in this. In many departments of human behaviour we find the same development. Even in medical care, for example, where the rewards are so obvious, the punishments are still there: it can so easily contribute to overcrowding which, in turn, leads to the proliferation of new stress diseases. It can also lead to hypersensitivity to pain. A New Guinea tribesman can have a spear removed from his thigh with more aplomb than a super-tribesman having a small splinter removed from his finger. But this is no reason for wanting to turn back. If our increased sensitivities can work both ways, we must make sure that they work the right way. The big change is that matters are now in our hands, or rather our brains. The tight-rope of survival which has been set up, and on which our species performs its daring tricks, has been raised higher and higher. The dangers have become greater, but then so have the thrills. The only snag is that when the tribes became super-tribes, someone took away our biological safety -net. It is up to us now to make sure that we do not crash to our deaths. We have taken over evolution and have no one to blame but ourselves. The strength of our animal properties is still carried securely within us, but so are our animal weaknesses. The better we understand them and the enormous challenges they are facing in the unnatural world of the human zoo, the better our chances of success.

  CHAPTER FOUR: In-groups and Out-groups

  Question: What is the difference between black natives slicing up a white missionary, and a white mob lynching a helpless Negro? Answer: very little — and, for the victims, none at all. Whatever the reasons, whatever the excuses, whatever the motives, the basic behaviour mechanism is the same. They are both cases of members of the in-group attacking members of the out-group.

  In plunging into this subject we are entering an area where it is difficult for us to maintain our objectivity. The reason is obvious enough: we are, each one of us, a member of some particular in-group and it is difficult for us to view the problems of inter-group conflict without, however unconsciously, taking sides. Somehow, until I have finished writing and you have finished reading this chapter, we must try to step outside our groups and gaze down on the battlefields of the human animal with the unbiased eyes of a hovering Martian. It is not going to be easy, and I must make it clear at the outset that nothing I say should be construed as implying that I am favouring one group as against another, or suggesting that one group is inevitably superior to another.

  Using a harsh evolutionary argument, it might be suggested that if two human groups clash and one exterminates the other, the winner is biologically more successful than the loser. But if we view the species as a whole this argument no longer applies. It is a small view. The bigger view is that if they had contrived to live competitively but peacefully alongside one another, the species as a whole would be that much more successful.

  It is this large view that we must try to take. If it seems an obvious one, then we have some rather difficult explaining to do. We are not a mass-spawning species like certain kinds of fish that produce thousands of young in one go, most of which are doomed to be wasted and only a few survive. We are not quantity breeders, we are quality breeders, producing few offspring, lavishing more care and attention on them and looking after them for a longer period than any other animal. After devoting nearly two decades of parental energy to them it is, apart from anything else, grotesquely inefficient to send them off to be knifed, shot, burned and bombed by the offspring of other men. Yet, in little more than a single century (from 1820 to 1945), no less than 59 million human animals were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another. This is the difficult explaining we have to do, if it is so obvious to the human intellect that it would be better to live peacefully. We describe these killings as men behaving ‘like animals’, but if we could find a wild animal that showed signs of acting in this way, it would be more precise to describe it as behaving like men. The fact is that we cannot find such a creature. We are dealing with another of the dubious properties that make modern man a unique species.

  Biologically speaking, man has the inborn task of defending three things: himself, his family and his tribe. As a pair-forming, territorial, group-living primate he is driven to this, and driven hard. If he or his family or his tribe are threatened with violence, it will be all too natural for him to respond with counter-violence. As long as there is a chance of repelling the attack, it is his biological duty to attempt to do so by any means at his disposal. For many other animals the situation is the same, but under natural conditions the amount of actual physical violence that occurs is limited. It is usually little more than a threat of violence answered by a counter-threat of counter-violence. The more truly violent species all appear to have exterminated themselves— a lesson we should not overlook.

  This sounds straightforward enough, but the last few thousand years of human history have over-burdened our evolutionary inheritance. A man is still a man and a family is still a family, but a tribe is no longer a tribe. It is a supertribe. If we are ever to understand the unique savageries of our national, idealistic and racial conflicts, we must once again examine the nat
ure of this super-tribal condition. We have seen some of the tensions it has set up inside itself— the aggressions of the status battle; now we must look at the way it has created and magnified tensions outside itself, between one group and another.

  It is a story of piling on the agony. The first important step was taken when we settled down in permanent dwellings. This gave us a definite object to defend. Our closest relatives, the monkeys and apes, live typically in nomadic bands. Each band keeps to a general home range but constantly moves about inside it. If two groups meet and threaten one another, there is little serious development of the incident. They simply move off and go about their business. Once early man became more strictly territorial, the defence system had to be tightened up. But in the early days there was so much land and so few men that there was plenty of room for all. Even when the tribes grew bigger, the weapons were still crude and primitive. The leaders were themselves much more personally involved in the conflicts. (If only today’s leaders were forced to serve in the front lines, how much more cautious and ‘humane’ they would be when making their initial decisions. It is perhaps not too cynical to suggest that this is why they are still prepared to wage ‘minor ’wars, but are frightened of major nuclear wars. The range of nuclear weapons has accidentally put them back in the front lines again. Perhaps, instead of nuclear disarmament, what we should be demanding is the destruction of the deep concrete bunkers they have already constructed for their own protection.)

  As soon as farming man became urban man, another vital step was taken towards more savage conflict. The division of labour and the specialization that developed meant that one category of the population could be spared for fulltime killing — the military was born. With the growth of the urban super-tribes, things began to move more swiftly. Social growth became so rapid that its development in one area easily got out of phase with its progress in another. The more stable balance-of-tribal-power was replaced by the serious instability of super-tribal inequalities. As civilizations flourished and could afford to expand, they frequently found themselves faced, not with equal rivals who would make them think twice and indulge in the ritualized threat of bargaining and trade, but with weaker, more backward groups that could be invaded and assaulted with ease. Flicking through the pages of an historical atlas one can see at a glance the whole sorry story of waste and inefficiency, of construction followed by destruction, only to be followed again by more construction and more destruction. There were incidental advantages, of course, interminglings that brought the pooling of knowledge, the spread of new ideas. Ploughshares may have been turned into swords, but the impetus for reiearch into better weapons did lead eventually to better implements as well. The cost, however, was heavy.

  As the super-tribes became bigger and bigger, the task of ruling the sprawling, teeming populations became greater, the tensions of overcrowding grew, and the frustrations of the Super-status race became more intense. There was more and more pent-up aggression, looking for an outlet. Inter-group conflict provided it on a grand scale.

  For the modern leader, then, going to war has many advantages that the Stone-Age leader did not enjoy. To start with, he does not have to risk getting his face bloody. Also, the men he sends to their deaths are not personal acquaintances of his: they are specialists, and the rest of society can go about its daily life. Trouble-makers who are spoiling for a fight, because of the super-tribal pressures they have been subjected to, can have their fight without directing it at the super-tribe itself. And having an outside enemy, a villain, can make a leader into a hero, unite his people and make them forget the squabbles that were giving him so many headaches.

  It would be naive to think that leaders are so super-human that these factors do not influence them. Nevertheless, the major factor remains the urge to maintain or improve inter-leader status. The out-of-phase progress of the different super-tribes that I mentioned earlier is undoubtedly the greatest problem. If, because of its natural resources or its ingenuity, one super-tribe gets one jump ahead of another, then there is bound to be trouble. The advanced group will impose itself on the backward group in one way or another and the backward group will resent it in one way or another. An advanced group is, by its very nature, expansive, and simply cannot bear to leave things alone and mind its own business. It tries to influence other groups, either by dominating them or by ‘helping’ them. Unless it dominates its rivals to the point where they lose their identities and are absorbed into the advanced super-tribal body (which is often geographically impossible), the situation will be unstable. If the advanced super-tribe helps other groups and makes them stronger, but in its own image, then the day will dawn when they are strong enough to revolt and repel the super-tribe with its own weapons and its own methods.

  While all this is going on, the leaders of other powerful, advanced super-tribes will be watching anxiously to make sure that these expansions are not too successful. If they are, then their inter-group status will begin to slip.

  All this is done under a remarkably transparent but nevertheless persistent cloak of ideology. To read the official documents, one would never guess that it was really the pride and status of the leaders that were at stake. It is always, apparently, a matter of ideals, moral principles, social philosophies or religious beliefs. But to a soldier staring down at his severed legs, or holding his entrails in his hands, it means only one thing: a wasted life. The reason why it was so easy to get him into that position was that he is not only a potentially aggressive animal, but also an intensely co-operative one. All that talk of defending the principles of his supertribe got through to him because it became a question of helping his friends. Under the stress of war, under the direct and visible threat from the out-group, the bonds between him and his battle companions became immensely strengthened. He killed, more not to let them down than for any other reason. The ancient tribal loyalties were so strong that, when the final moment came, he had no choice.

  Given the pressures of the super-tribe, given the global overcrowding of our species, and given the inequalities in progress of the different super-tribes, there is little hope that our children will grow up to wonder what war was all about. The human animal has got too big for its primate boots. Its biological equipment is not strong enough to cope with the unbiological environment it has created. Only an immense effort of intellectual restraint will save the situation now. One sees a sign of this here and there, now and then, but as fast as it grows in one place, it shrivels in another. What is more, we are so resilient as a species that we always seem to be able to absorb the shocks, to make up for the waste, so that we are not even forced to learn from our brutal lessons. The biggest and bloodiest wars we have ever known have done no more, in the long run, than make a tiny, untidy kink in the soaring growth curve of the total world population. There is always a post-war bulge’ in the birth rate, and the gaps are quickly filled. The human giant regenerates itself like a mutilated flatworm, and slides swiftly on.

  What is it that makes a human individual one of ‘them’, to be destroyed like a verminous pest, rather than one of ‘us’, to be defended like a dearly beloved brother? What is it that puts him into an out-group and keeps us in the in-group? How do we recognize ‘them’? It is easiest, of course, if they belong to an entirely separate super-tribe, with strange customs, a strange appearance and a strange language. Everything about them is so different from ‘us’ that it is a simple matter to make the gross over-simplification that they are all evil villains. The cohesive forces that helped to hold their group together as a clearly defined and efficiently organized society also serve to set them apart from us and to make them frightening by virtue of their unfamiliarity. Like the Shakespearean dragon, they are ‘more often feared than seen’.

  Such groups are the most obvious targets for the hostility of our group. But supposing we have attacked them and defeated them, what then? Supposing we dare not attack them? Supposing we are, for whatever reason, at peace with other super-tribes
for the time being: what happens to our in-group aggression now? We may, if we are very lucky, remain at peace and continue to operate efficiently and constructively within our group. The internal cohesive forces, even without the assistance of an out-group threat, may be sufficiently strong to hold us together. But the pressures and stresses of the super-tribe will still be working on us, and if the internal dominance battle is fought too ruthlessly, with extreme subordinates experiencing too much suppression or poverty, then cracks will soon begin to show. If severe inequalities exist between the sub-groups that inevitably develop within the super-tribe, their normally healthy competition will erupt into violence. Pent-up sub-group aggression, if it cannot combine with the pent-up aggression of other sub-groups to attack a common, foreign enemy, will vent itself in the form of riots, persecutions and rebellions.

  Examples of this are scattered throughout history. When the Roman Empire had conquered the world (as it then knew it), its internal peace was shattered by a series of civil wars and disruptions. When Spain ceased to be a conquering power, sending out colonial expeditions, the same thing happened. There is, unhappily an inverse relationship between external wars and internal strife. The implication is clear enough: namely that it is the same kind of frustrated aggressive energy that is finding an outlet in both cases. Only a brilliantly designed super-tribal structure can avoid both at the same time.