Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind

by Mark Pagel

  David Hume, again in The Natural History of Religion, put it this way:

  The first ideas of religion arose, not from a contemplation of the work of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life… . Accordingly we find that all idolaters, having separated the provinces of their deities, have recourse to that invisible agent to whose authority they are immediately subjected, and whose province it is to superintend that course of actions in which they are at any time engaged. Juno is invoked at marriages; Lucina at births. Neptune receives the prayers of seamen; and Mars of warriors. The husbandman cultivates his field under the protection of Ceres; and the merchant acknowledges the authority of Mercury. Each natural event is supposed to be governed by some intelligent agent; and nothing prosperous or adverse can happen in life, which may not be the subject of peculiar prayers or thanksgivings.

  Religion in prehistoric times would not even have had to be very good at providing solutions. We have seen, for instance, how little it takes for us to acquire false beliefs. Even today, the natural environment can brutally remind us of the impotence of our best medical treatments, engineering solutions, or resources for staying alive and prospering in the world. No matter how good one’s scientific knowledge, there is little we can do in the face of epidemics, tsunamis and earthquakes, floods, many cancers and inherited disorders, or even tomorrow’s weather. Nature taunts us to appeal to something stronger than our rational human best, and for animals with our brains this has often meant looking to supernatural powers.

  The economist Rodney Stark maintains that when we are driven to such desperate circumstances, we often enter into straightforward exchanges with the gods, seeking to purchase the commodities only they can offer—such as better weather, more plentiful game, and immortality—in return for prayer, ritual, offerings, ceremonies, and sacrifices. There is often little or nothing to lose in exchanges with the gods and much potentially to be gained. This was of course Pascal’s famous wager for belief in God: “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” Because regression effects will often cause extreme situations to improve anyway, the wager will frequently appear to have worked. If you pray long enough for rain, it will eventually come, and if your god predicts an earthquake is coming, it eventually will. And the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey reminds us that “in a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.”

  Now, imagine further that confronted with this harsh world, merely holding the view that things can be made better by belief, effort, or hard work—whether or not they can—improves your hope, motivation, or confidence, and eventually your performance or well-being. Thus, whether or not some god can actually control an outcome that matters to you, a belief that it can affects your motivation to make something happen. Robert Trivers has called this tendency to look out for reasons to be optimistic perceptual defense and perceptual vigilance. In his Social Evolution, Trivers points to the tendency for humans to “consciously see what they want to see. They literally have difficulty seeing things with negative connotations while seeing with increasing ease items that are positive.”

  The destructive Haitian earthquake of 2010 flattened the town of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, killing thousands and making more homeless. I watched on television as a journalist interviewed a man whose wife and children had been killed in the earthquake and his home destroyed. Not only had he survived that earthquake, he had also survived the ferocious hurricanes that swept the island in 2008 and 2009. From this he concluded that God had chosen to spare him: a delusion perhaps, but a useful one. He was full of hope and confidence for the future even while he stood among the ruins of his life. His belief was, as Julian Barnes might have put it, a “convincing representation and a plausible explanation of the world for understandably confused minds.”

  This gives us an answer to a question that bedevils the subject of religion. People often say that religions somehow satisfy our longings to understand the universe, or how we got here. But this merely raises the question of why we have minds that want to know the answers to such questions. Our minds, as the above example shows, might want answers because they give us hope or direction, and illusory or not, that hope is in itself useful. Once we have come up with a belief like that of the Haitian man, we can set it running like a piece of computer software in our subconscious minds, where it can intercept and disarm our worries and anxieties. This does not say why it is religious rather than some other form of belief that we acquire and make use of; but we have seen how our minds might be partial to constructing gods, and those gods might provide as useful an explanation for what happens in the world as anything else.

  It is easy to adopt a supercilious tone about the Haitian man’s views, but people like him in our past will probably have produced more children than those of us who disconsolately withdrew from life, and genes that granted a sunny disposition would have spread. The alternative of facing the stark truth head-on can, for many people, be debilitating. Psychologists have discovered that people susceptible to depression often have more accurate perceptions of the world than non-depressives. When they say they have no friends, nobody likes them, they are hopeless at their job, or have no future, they are often more right than not. No wonder they are depressed!

  RELIGION AND GROUP CONFLICT

  THE EVOLUTIONARY psychologist David Sloan Wilson gives a vivid example of false beliefs conferring benefits when people act together in groups. He uses the language of genes but it is just as readily thought of as a cultural example in which an idea rather than a gene spreads through a population by people copying one another for what they perceive to be some advantages. In his article on “Species of Thought,” Sloan Wilson imagines a tribal world in which

  A mutant gene arises that causes its bearer sincerely to believe certain distorted versions of reality. For example, the mutant might believe that his enemies are by nature despicable people when in fact they are by nature just like him [and thus think of him as despicable] and are enemies merely because they compete for limiting resources. Nevertheless, fear and hatred of despicable people is more motivating than accurate perception that one’s enemies are the same as oneself. The mutant is a more successful competitor than his truthful rivals and the mutant gene spreads through the population.

  Sloan Wilson is, of course, describing the familiar beliefs that power xenophobia, racism, bigotry, and parochialism, and the violence that often attends those views. In his example, the beliefs take hold because they promote survival, not because they are true. Odious as we might find them, once again we have to imagine a world in which this kind of belief becomes part of the environment that others have to adapt to. Up against a group in battle who consider you despicable, it might be useful for you to acquire your own brand of motivational bigotry.

  Many people think that religions promote group conflict by means similar to those that Sloan Wilson imagines here. Indeed they might, and it is important to see that in Sloan Wilson’s example, any tendency to adopt religious or other precepts that make you and your group more formidable foes can bring real Darwinian advantages to those who hold them. Recall that even dispositions that put your life at risk can nevertheless bring you benefits if enough people around you share that disposition. It is then easy for a fledgling tradition of false beliefs to grow as it acquires a collection of different beliefs that get woven together, and all of which motivate people to action. Tribe A on this side of the valley says that Tribe B treats their women badly, and that their greed is a threat to Tribe A’s territories. The first belief acts as a justification to steal their women in battle (indeed, it would be to do them a favor). The second is a justification to eradicate the others owing to the threat of their greed.

  Once such a story catches on, it can become self-promoting, and people will follow it without even knowing why. There is an anecdote about group beliefs in mo
nkeys that is probably apocryphal, but so instructive it bears repeating. A group of monkeys is in a room with a banana tethered from the ceiling. They can reach the banana by hopping up on a box. But whenever one of them does this, they are all sprayed with water. Monkeys don’t like water because in their natural environment, ponds, lakes, and rivers often hide crocodiles and other predators. So, after a while, they all avoid hopping up on the box and even restrain each other from doing so. Then a monkey is removed and replaced by a new monkey. It is naive so it climbs up on the box to get the banana. The others quickly pull it down and eventually it too stops trying to get the banana. One by one the monkeys get replaced this way, and one by one the naive ones are trained by the others not to jump up on the box, until none of the original monkeys remains. At this point not one of the monkeys knows why, but they all avoid climbing the box to get the banana. As far as they know, they have always behaved that way.

  The success of religion at promoting coordinated action might be one of the chief reasons why we welcome it into our ranks rather than try to chase it away. The uncomfortable truth of natural selection and cultural evolution is that dispositions—including religious ones—that serve individuals will be favored. On the other hand, this does not mean that all religious beliefs serve us. A religiously motivated suicide bomber might indeed be a case of religion taking over someone’s mind for the purpose of meme-meme warfare. The suicide bomber’s religious belief is only too happy to commit suicide—along with the suicide bomber’s genes—if it can kill copies of competing ideas in other people. Suicide can advance memes as well as genes. But examples like this shouldn’t make us think that all of religion is a mind virus. The life-dinner principle proposes we will evolve to evade memes that bring us harm, but it is not perfect: some of us will get infected despite our desperate attempts to evade these brain parasites.

  In this light there is a suggestion that many suicide bombers come from the ranks of disaffected young men with little future, and this might make them more malleable or vulnerable. But on the other hand, as the life-dinner princple would expect, suicide bombers are rare, given the numbers we might expect if we had a psychology like that of a colony of ants or bees in a hive. They happily and enthusiastically stream out in their thousands in suicidal charges to save their queen. We should also not rule out the possibility that by their actions suicide bombers bring great honor to their families, and so in an obscene sense their actions can be seen through the lens of kin selection, or nepotism. Saddam Hussein is reported to have paid widows and mothers of successful Palestinian suicide bombers up to $25,000 each. The CBS Evening News quoted Mahmoud Safi, leader of a pro-Iraqi Palestinian group, the Arab Liberation Front, as acknowledging that the support payments for relatives make it easier for some potential bombers to make up their minds: self-sacrifice can pay in more ways than one, especially if it promotes copies of your genes in your relatives.

  Here is a passage from the Gospel according to Matthew (Matthew 12:47–50) that draws on the psychology of kin selection. Someone in a crowd gathered around Jesus says to him:

  “Behold your mother and your brethren stand without, seeking you.” Jesus replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Then he pointed to his disciples and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

  Imagine if you were a believer the excitement these words would cause in you—you could become Jesus’ mother, brother, or sister simply by acting out God’s will. In Chapter 2, we saw how an altruistic disposition toward other members of your group can arise as a special and limited form of nepotism, in which we recognize we are related to someone at the altruism locus, if not on our other genes. Well, here Jesus is telling you that your relatedness is about to get much higher. If you believe his words, you might experience the same emotions toward Jesus and his religion as you do toward a member of your own family. It is a ploy that religions use widely, often referring to God, and even his priestly representatives on Earth, as “Father.” We in turn are often referred to as his children, making us all brothers and sisters.

  RELIGION AS A WAY TO ADVERTISE COMMITMENT

  THE IMPORTANCE of the cultural survival vehicle in our history means that groups will want to know whom they can and cannot trust within their ranks, and it turns out that religious beliefs might be one of the best ways to advertise your commitment to your group. To understand why, we need to take a detour into a different arena: the arena of animal sexual displays. The connection might not be immediately apparent, but it will emerge once we have understood this puzzling topic. Darwin was troubled by the bizarre and seemingly useless but costly displays and behaviors of many animals in their attempts to acquire mates. Peacocks, for instance, produce spectacularly ornate and beautiful tails, but such tails are so big they almost prevent the peacocks from flying, they make them more vulnerable to being attacked by a predator, and they provide useful homes for disease-carrying flies and ticks. What bothered Darwin was that his theory of natural selection was an explanation for the survival of the fittest. How could his theory be true if such a thing as a peacock’s tail can evolve?

  Darwin’s theory of sexual selection was an attempt to answer this question. Like the arts and religion, traits such as a peacock’s tail seem to lack any function other than to please our senses or occupy our minds. And indeed, it was by pleasing our senses that Darwin thought these costly traits could evolve. Darwin’s insight was that females would find males with long tails, bright colors, or melodic songs more attractive even if these traits made them less fit. In this way, the costly or sexually selected trait would more than pay its way because males with the best displays would get the most matings. You might die younger because your bright colors give you away to some predator, but you will still leave more offspring than someone who lacks your extravagant display, and it is leaving offspring that counts in the sweepstakes of natural selection.

  Darwin was right; these gaudy ornaments, songs, and other displays do attract females. But there was a problem. Why should a peahen have these particular aesthetic tastes? Why should she prefer a peacock with a trait that slows him down and can even harm him? Why not just go for the more ordinary fellow? He might be dull, but at least he will survive, and probably stay at home and help you look after the children. A convincing answer to that question wouldn’t be proposed until the 1970s, when the evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi brilliantly conceived of a peacock’s elaborate tail and other ornaments or displays as a form of showing off, or what Zahavi called handicaps. Zahavi said that the peacock uses his large tail to advertise to the peahens that his genes are of such quality he can afford to drag his long, ungainly, and costly tail around behind him and still survive. Like a runner carrying extra weight in a foot race and yet still winning, handicapping yourself is the key to the message of your genetic worth. Less genetically fit peacocks could perhaps make a large tail, but could not withstand such a drain on their energy and resources. Natural selection favors males that can make ever more extreme ornaments because this is a way of showing the females who is wheat and who is mere chaff.

  The females’ aesthetic preferences now evolve for a good reason: the “medium is the message” in Marshall McLuhan’s memorable phrase. Here the medium is a wasteful display whose message is, “you can believe me.” It is a symbol of something greater lurking underneath, and this is why the peahens prefer it. The sociologist Thorstein Veblen anticipated this idea seventy-five years before in his Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen made the bold claim that rich people throughout history have advertised their wealth through acts of what he called conspicuous consumption—ostentatious and extravagant displays that genuinely reveal how much they have by showing how much they can afford to throw away on otherwise useless objects. As with the peacock’s tail, the waste allows us a way of glimpsing what must lie behind the flamboyance. One of Veblen’s favorite examples was the bizarre behavior of
the so-called potlatch Native American tribes of the American Pacific Northwest. These tribes would invite a neighboring tribe—potential adversaries—to a lavish feast. When their guests had finished and were preparing to return to their village, the hosts would erect a bonfire and throw blankets, food, and even canoes on to it. Was this superstition, an offering to a god, or perhaps disgust at the thought their guests carried lice or some infectious disease that needed to be eradicated? No. To Veblen it was their way of showing, or perhaps warning, their neighbors just how much they had in reserve by showing how much they could afford to lose.

  Veblen’s and Zahavi’s ideas tell us something startling: some traits and behaviors evolve precisely because they are reckless and wasteful, and the more reckless and wasteful they are, the more they tell us something believable about the owner. This is why a $25,000 wristwatch is better than a $10 one, despite both keeping equally good time, or a Ferrari better than a Ford even if you only need to get to the nearest shop. It is why larger diamonds make better engagement rings, why silver is better than silverplating, why turning your back on your adversary is so compelling, and why fifty pairs of shoes are better than the one pair you need to protect your feet. Famously, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, it is the size of Mr. Darcy’s house and not his looks or personality that finally takes Elizabeth’s breath away, helping to convince her to marry him. No one needs a home with hundreds of rooms, but that is not the point. It is precisely because Mr. Darcy does not need the rooms that his house advertises he has wealth to burn.

  We are now in a position to see why religious belief can be a powerful indicator of someone’s commitment. Your religion is not just a marker of group membership, such as your language might be. Faith is about believing things that by all known rules cannot possibly be true or verified, and could even get you killed. It is about acting without evidence, participating in its rituals, fasting (a form of starvation), memorizing scripture, scarification, crucifixion, and paying of tithes. Veblen and Zahavi’s insights tell us that it is the utter recklessness and costliness of adhering to religious beliefs that makes them a believable way of advertising your commitment to a group, and thereby of attracting altruism from others (you could try to demonstrate your commitment to your group by, for example, helping to build a boat, but its usefulness means your effort might be seen as partly for your own gain). Now, if you are the sort of person who can hold false beliefs, or have an ability to act on blind faith, you are probably also the sort of person who could be persuaded of the moral superiority of your group over the one next door. When group conflict is never very far away, religious believers become the kind of people others like to have around.