Social Darwinism is all about what Gordon Gekko called “the evolutionary spirit.” It depicts life as a struggle in which those who make it shouldn’t let themselves be dragged down by those who don’t. This ideology was unleashed by British political philosopher Herbert Spencer, who in the nineteenth century translated the laws of nature into business language, coining the phrase “survival of the fittest” (often incorrectly attributed to Darwin). Spencer decried attempts to equalize society’s playing field. It would be counterproductive, he felt, for the “fit” to feel any obligation toward the “unfit.” In dense tomes that sold hundreds of thousands of copies, he said of the poor that “the whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better.”
The United States listened attentively. The business world ate it up. Calling competition a law of biology, Andrew Carnegie felt it improved the human race. John D. Rockefeller even married it with religion, concluding that the growth of a large business “is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.” This religious angle—still visible in the so-called Christian Right—forms the second great paradox. Whereas the book found in most American homes and every hotel room urges us on almost every page to show compassion, Social Darwinists scoff at such feelings, which only keep nature from running its course. Poverty is dismissed as proof of laziness, and social justice as a weakness. Why not simply let the poor perish? I find it hard to see how Christians can embrace such a harsh ideology without a massive case of cognitive dissonance, but many seem to do so.
The third and final paradox is that the emphasis on economic freedom triggers both the best and worst in people. The worst is the aforementioned deficit in compassion, at least at the governmental level, but there is also a good, even excellent, side to the American character—otherwise I might have packed my bags long ago—which is a merit-based society. Silver spoons, fancy titles, family legacies, all of them are known and respected, but not nearly as much as personal initiative, creativity, and plain hard work. Americans admire success stories, and will never hold honest success against anyone. This is truly liberating for those who are up to the challenge.
Europeans are far more divided by rank and class and tend to prefer security over opportunity. Success is viewed with suspicion. It’s not for nothing that the French language offers only negative labels for people who have made it by themselves, such as nouveau riche and parvenu. The result, in some nations, has been economic gridlock. When I see twenty-year-olds march in the streets of Paris to claim job protection or older people to preserve retirement at fifty-five, I feel myself all of a sudden siding with American conservatives, who detest entitlement. The state is not a teat from which one can squeeze milk any time of the day, yet that’s how many Europeans seem to look at it.
And so my political philosophy sits somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic—not too comfortable a place. I appreciate the economic and creative vitality on this side but remain perplexed by the widespread hatred of taxes and government. Biology is very much part of this mix, as it is for every ideology that seeks justification. Social Darwinism sought to supply a scientific endorsement craved by a nation of immigrants who had quite naturally developed a strong sense of self-reliance and individualism.
The problem is that one can’t derive the goals of society from the goals of nature. Trying to do so is known as the naturalistic fallacy, which is the impossibility of moving from how things are to how things ought to be. Thus, if animals were to kill one another on a large scale, this wouldn’t mean we have to do so, too, any more than we would have an obligation to live in perfect harmony if animals were to do so. All that nature can offer is information and inspiration, not prescription.
Information is critical, though. If a zoo plans a new enclosure, it takes into account whether the species to be kept is social or solitary, a climber or a digger, nocturnal or diurnal, and so on. Why should we, in designing human society, act as if we’re oblivious to the characteristics of our species? A view of human nature as “red in tooth and claw” obviously sets different boundaries to society than a view that includes cooperation and solidarity as part of our background. Darwin himself felt uncomfortable about the “right of the strongest” lessons that others, such as Spencer, tried to extract from his theory. This is why I’m tired, as a biologist, to hear evolutionary theory being trotted out as a prescription for society by those who aren’t truly interested in the theory itself and all that it has to offer.
Enlightened Self-Interest
The idea of competition within the same species over the same resources appealed to Darwin and helped him formulate the concept of natural selection. He had read Thomas Malthus’s influential 1798 essay on population growth, according to which populations that outgrow their food supply will automatically be cut back by hunger, disease, and mortality. Unfortunately, Spencer read the same essay and drew different conclusions. If strong varieties progress at the expense of inferior ones, this was not only how it was, Spencer felt, but how it ought to be. Competition was good, it was natural, and society as a whole benefited. He applied the naturalistic fallacy to a T.
Why did Spencer’s ideas fall on such receptive ears? It seems to me that he was offering a way out of a moral dilemma that people were only just getting used to. In earlier times, the rich didn’t need any justification to ignore the poor. With their blue blood, the nobility considered itself a different breed. They showed their contempt for manual labor by being wasp-waisted in the West or growing elongated fingernails in the East. Not that they felt absolutely no obligation toward those underneath them—hence the expression noblesse oblige—but they had no qualms living in opulence, feasting on meat, slurping fine wine, and driving around in gilded carriages, while the masses were close to starving.
All of this changed with the Industrial Revolution, which created a new upper crust, one that couldn’t overlook the plight of others so easily. Many of them had belonged to the lower class only a few generations before: They evidently were of the same blood. So, shouldn’t they share their wealth? They were reluctant to do so, though, and were thrilled to hear that there was nothing wrong with ignoring those who worked for them, that it was perfectly honorable to climb the ladder of success without looking back. This is how nature works, Spencer assured them, thus removing any pangs of conscience the rich might feel.
Add to this a peculiarity of American society, its debt to migration. To migrate across the globe takes a strong will and independence. I can relate to this, as I myself am an immigrant. It is a giant step to leave your friends and family behind, as well as your language, cuisine, music, climate, and so on. Migration is a gamble, and I did it on an impulse, as I’m sure many others did before.
Nowadays, it isn’t such a big deal. With jet travel, telephone, and e-mail, it’s easy to stay in touch. In the old days, however, people left on rickety ships, known as “coffin ships.” Those who survived the storms and diseases arrived in an unknown land. They could be pretty sure they would never see their native country again or the people they’d been close to. Imagine saying goodbye to your parents while knowing that they will die without you, and that you might not even hear about it. Disproportionate numbers of novelty seekers and risk takers arrived in Canada, Australia, and America, making for a partially self-selected population. Self-selection works a bit like natural selection: The next generations inherit the same personality type—both genetically and culturally. Since the goal of every immigrant is to build a better life, the inevitable outcome is a culture revolving around individual achievement.
This was already clear to French political thinker and statesman Alexis de Tocqueville:
In Europe we habitually regard a restless spirit, a moderate desire for wealth, and an extreme love of independence as great social dangers, but precisely these things assure a long and peaceful future in the American republics.
No wonder Spencer’s message about success as its own justification wa
s well received. More recently, a Russian American immigrant delivered the same message in a different package. Ayn Rand scoffed at the idea that success comes with moral obligations. She reached millions of enthusiastic readers with her message that egoism is no vice, but rather a virtue. She turned the whole issue upside down, devoting thousand-page novels to the notion that if we have any obligation at all, it is to ourselves. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan considers Rand a major influence on his life and work.
Insofar as such arguments are based on what is supposedly natural, however, they are fundamentally flawed. In Spencer’s days, this was exposed by the unlikely character of a Russian prince, Petr Kropotkin. Though a bearded anarchist, Kropotkin was also a naturalist of great distinction. In his 1902 book, Mutual Aid, he argued that the struggle for existence is not so much one of each against all, but of masses of organisms against a hostile environment. Cooperation is common, such as when wild horses or musk oxen form a ring around their young to protect them against attacking wolves.
Kropotkin was inspired by a setting quite unlike the one that had inspired Darwin. Darwin visited tropical regions with abundant wildlife, whereas Kropotkin explored Siberia. The ideas of both men reflect the difference between a rich environment, resulting in the sort of population density and competition envisioned by Malthus, and an environment that is frozen and unfriendly most of the time. Having witnessed climatic calamities in which horses were scattered by the wind and herds of cattle perished under piles of snow, Kropotkin objected to the depiction of life as a “gladiator’s show.” Instead of animals duking it out, and the victors running off with the prize, he saw a communal principle at work. In subzero cold, you either huddle together or die.
A horned wall of adult musk oxen faces predators, such as wolves.
Mutual aid has become a standard ingredient of modern evolutionary theories, albeit not exactly in the way Kropotkin formulated it. Like Darwin, he believed that cooperative groups of animals (or humans) would outperform less cooperative ones. In other words, the ability to function in a group and build a support network is a crucial survival skill. The importance of such skills for primates was confirmed by a recent baboon study on the Kenyan plains: Females with the best social ties were shown to have the most surviving infants. Grooming partners protect each other from outside aggression, send shrill warning calls to each other when they spot a predator, and provide soothing contact. All of this helps baboon mothers raise offspring.
I myself knew two inseparable female macaques named Ropey and Beatle. They were approximately the same age, and at first I thought they were sisters, because they did everything together, groomed each other, and gave friendly lip smacks to each other’s babies. They also helped each other in fights, so much so that Beatle (who ranked below Ropey) would scream and look at her friend every time another monkey dared to threaten her. Everyone in the group knew that they would have to deal with both of them. According to our records, however, Ropey and Beatle were unrelated.
Theirs was just one of those trusting alliances that monkeys develop to get ahead. All primates have this tendency, and some even invest in the community as a whole. Instead of just focusing on their own position, they demonstrate group-oriented behavior. This is most evident in relation to social harmony. For example, Chinese golden monkeys live in harems of one male with several females. The male is much larger than the females and has a beautiful thick coat of orange hair. When his females quarrel, he positions himself between them until they stop, while calming tempers by turning from one to the other with a friendly facial expression or by combing the hair on each female’s back with his fingers.
In chimpanzees, both males and females actively broker community relations. In a large zoo colony that I studied, females would occasionally disarm males who were gearing up for a display. Sitting with their hair erect, hooting and swaying from side to side, male chimps may take up to ten minutes before launching a charge. This gives a female time to go over to the angry male and pry open his hands to remove heavy branches and rocks. Remarkably, the males let them do so.
Females also bring males together if they seem incapable of reconciling after a fight. The males sit opposite each other, looking at each other only obliquely, and a female approaches one, then the other, until she has brought them together and then they groom each other. We have seen mediating females literally take a male by the arm to drag him toward his rival.
The males themselves also do a lot of conflict resolution. This is the task of top-ranking males, who will step in when disputes overheat. Most of the time a mere approach with an imposing posture calms things down, but if necessary, the male will literally beat the contestants apart. Males who act as arbitrator usually don’t take sides, and can be remarkably effective at keeping the peace. In all of these cases, primates show community concern: They try to ameliorate the state of affairs in the group as a whole.
A male chimpanzee settles a female dispute over watermelons by standing between both parties with arms spread out until they stop screaming.
A student of mine, Jessica Flack, investigated the effect of such behavior in a different primate: the pigtail macaque. These handsome monkeys, with short curly tails, have a reputation for being highly intelligent. In Southeast Asia, the muscular males are commonly employed as “farm hands,” which may lead to startling encounters in city traffic. A man will drive by on a motorbike with a nonhuman passenger sitting upright like a real person on the backseat, legs dangling on both sides. He is on his way to work at a plantation. The monkeys have been trained to follow shouted commands from the ground while they are high up in a palm tree dislodging ripe coconuts, which their master collects under the tree and sells on the market.
Pigtail macaques normally live in groups in which high-ranking males, like chimp males, act as police: They step in to break up fights and maintain order. We worked with about eighty monkeys in a large open-air corral. For days on end, Jessica would sit in a tower in the heat of a Georgia summer, with water in one hand and a microphone in the other, to narrate thousands of social events. Like studies of so-called knockout mice, in which a gene is disabled to study its effects, ours was a knockout study in which we temporarily inactivated the police to see how the group would fare.
Every two weeks, we’d pick a day on which the top three males were removed in the morning and put back in in the evening. The males were kept in a building next to the corral. If a skirmish broke out in the group, monkeys sometimes ran to the door behind which the males sat to scream through the cracks, but obviously they’d have to work things out on their own that day. The effect of the knockouts was entirely negative: They produced increased fighting, more intense aggression, less reconciliation after fights, and a drop in grooming and play. On all measures, monkey society was falling apart.
A few individuals can make a huge difference: Social life benefits enormously from policing males. Note that the argument here is not that they sacrifice themselves for the group. All group-oriented behavior—mediation, disarmament, policing—serves the individuals who perform it. Females have an interest in reducing tensions among males, for whom it is not unusual to take their problems out on females and young. And males who are effective at keeping the peace often become enormously popular and respected in the group. But even so, group-oriented behavior improves the quality of the social environment not just for the individuals who show it, but for everyone else as well.
We often take collectivity for granted, but all group-living organisms are sensitive to it. They’re all in the same boat. If this applies to other primates, how much more so to our own species with its more intricate societies? Most of us recognize the need to uphold certain services and institutions and are prepared to work toward this goal. Social Darwinists may disagree, but from a truly Darwinian perspective it is entirely logical to expect a “social motive” in group-living animals, one that makes them strive for a well-functioning whole.
By itself, thi
s motive doesn’t suffice. Perhaps bees or ants—that live in communities in which everyone is closely related and serves the same queen—are willing to work their hearts out for the common good, but humans are not. No matter how much brainwashing we engage in and patriotic songs we sing, we will always think of ourselves before we think of society. If any good has come out of the communist “experiment,” it is this clarification of the limits of solidarity.
Purely selfish motives, on the other hand, don’t suffice, either. There’s such a thing as “enlightened” self-interest, which makes us work toward the kind of society that serves our own best interests. Both rich and poor rely on the same sewer system, highways, and law enforcement. All of us need national defense, education, and health care. A society operates like a contract: Those who gain from it are expected to contribute, and conversely, those who contribute feel entitled to get something out of it. We enter this contract automatically while growing up in a society, and react with outrage if it’s violated.
At a 2007 political rally, Steve Skvara, a steelworker from Indiana, almost burst into tears describing his predicament:
After 34 years with LTV Steel, I was forced to retire because of a disability. Two years later, LTV filed bankruptcy. I lost a third of my pension, and my family lost their health care. Every day of my life, I sit at the kitchen table across from the woman who devoted 36 years of her life to my family, and I can’t afford to pay for her health care.
In the same way that Skvara felt an obligation to his wife, society ought to feel an obligation toward him after a lifetime of hard work. This is a moral issue, which is why Skvara received a standing ovation when he challenged the political candidates present, adding “What’s wrong with America and what will you do to change it?”
The Age of Empathy Page 4
