Warlike and Peaceful Societies
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Warlike and Peaceful Societies The Interaction of Genes and Culture AGNER FOG To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/657 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Warlike and Peaceful Societies The Interaction of Genes and Culture Agner Fog https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2017 Agner Fog This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Agner Fog, Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0128 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/product/657#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www. openbookpublishers.com/product/657#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-403-9 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-404-6 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-405-3 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-406-0 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-407-7 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0128 Cover image: War memorial, Whitehall, London. Photo by Aimee Rivers (2011). Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/sermoa/5361099123, CC BY-SA 2.0 Cover design: Anna Gatti All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council(r)(FSC(r) certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) Contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1. A different kind of social science 2 1.2. Overview of the book 5 2. The Theory of Regal and Kungic Cultures 7 2.1. In a nutshell: ‘regal’ and ‘kungic’ explained 7 2.2. Evolutionary basis for regality theory 9 2.3. An evolutionarily stable strategy 13 2.4. The behavior of the leader 15 2.5. Why are most warriors and chiefs men? 17 2.6. Cultural effects of regal and kungic tendencies 21 3. Contributions from Other Theories 27 3.1. Influence of the environment: Contributions from 27 ecological theory 3.2. Nature or nurture: Evolution of sociality 32 3.3. Fertility: Contributions from life history theory 34 3.4. Contributions from political demography 35 3.5. World view and personality: Authoritarianism 39 theory 3.6. Contributions from other social psychological 42 theories 3.7. Contributions from social values theories 45 3.8. The theory of tight and loose cultures and other 48 culture theories 3.9. Contributions from human empowerment theory 56 3.10. Moral panics: Contributions from the sociology of 59 deviance 4. Different Kinds of War in Human History 65 4.1. The rise of empires: Contributions from cultural 65 selection theory 4.2. The fall of empires: Contributions from historical 69 dynamics theory 4.3. General theories of war and peace 72 4.4. Changing patterns of war 76 4.5. Theories of revolution 88 5. Economic Determinants of Conflict and Fear 93 5.1. Fear is profitable: The economy of the mass media 93 5.2. Economic booms and busts 100 5.3. Greed or grievance: Economic theories of civil war 107 5.4. The resource curse 111 5.5. Example: Proxy war in Afghanistan 116 6. Strategic Uses of Fear 125 6.1. Terrorism conflicts 125 6.2. The strategy of tension in Italy and elsewhere 135 6.3. Fabrication of threats and conflicts 144 6.4. Example: Why World War II started 157 7. Regality Theory Applied to Ancient Cultures 163 7.1. Andamanese 166 7.2. Arrernte 170 7.3. Babylonians 173 7.4. Chiricahua Apache 176 7.5. Copper Inuit (Eskimo) 179 7.6. E De (Rhadé) 181 7.7. Ganda 183 7.8. Gilyak 188 7.9. Hausa 191 7.10. Inca 195 7.11. !Kung 198 7.12. Maasai 203 7.13. Mbuti 207 7.14. Somali 211 7.15. Warao 213 7.16. Yahgan 216 7.17. Yanomamo 218 7.18. Yi (Lolo, Nuosu) 222 8. Statistical Testing of Regality Theory 227 8.1. Problems of cross-cultural statistics 227 8.2. Ancient cultures, large sample 230 8.3. Subsample, 18 cultures 244 8.4. Contemporary cultures, large sample 252 8.5. Evidence from existing studies 267 8.6. Conclusion of the statistical tests 269 9. Discussion and Conclusion 271 9.1. Summary of findings 271 9.2. Three epochs in human history 273 9.3. The regal/kungic dynamics and human social 277 development 9.4. New explanations of well-known phenomena 279 9.5. Integration with other theories 281 9.6. Policy lessons 283 9.7. Supporting evidence 288 9.8. What regality theory can be used for 290 9.9. Further discussion 291 10. Bibliography 293 11. Illustrations 345 Index 349 1. Introduction All through recorded history we have seen extreme differences between different human societies. Some societies in some periods have been warlike and cruel beyond comprehension, while other societies in other times and places have been remarkably peaceful and tolerant. Societies that are warlike, hierarchical, and intolerant with strict discipline are called regal. Societies that are peaceful, egalitarian, and tolerant are called kungic. Many societies are something in between these two extremes. The present book offers a new, groundbreaking theory that explains this extreme variability in social organization and culture based on evolutionary theory. It has often been discussed whether such dramatic differences in human behavior are due to genetic differences or cultural norms. One aspect that is often missing in the genes-versus-culture debate is that genes may code for flexibility. Our genes enable us to behave differently under different conditions. This is called phenotypic plasticity.1 The theory presented here demonstrates that humans have a plasticity that enables us to adapt to different conditions of war or peace. Warlike or regal behavior has been adaptive under conditions of collective danger that were sometimes present in our evolutionary past, while conditions of collective security that were present at other times and places made peaceful or kungic behavior optimal from an evolutionary point of view. In other words, the potentials for both warlike and peaceful behavior are present in our genetic makeup. 1 Bateson and Gluckman (2011, p. 31) © 2017 Agner Fog, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0128.01 2 Warlike and Peaceful Societies Nobody is born a devil or a saint. Depending on our living conditions, we may become authoritarian and belligerent or peace-loving and tolerant. The theory presented here explains a likely evolutionary mechanism behind this flexible psychology and analyzes the conditions that make us either strident or docile. This theory, which will be called regality theory, can answer many burning questions about both individual and collective behavior: Why have so many tyrants fought cruel and unnecessary wars? Why do many people support their tyrants? Why do some people hate foreigners while other people readily embrace them? Why have people used their apparently peaceful religion to justify some of the worst atrocities in history? And why have other people dedicated their lives to the most unselfish charitable causes based on the very same religions? Why do some militants commit acts of terrorism against innocent people? And why can a few acts of terrorism that cause a limited amount of harm lead to dramatic changes in the political climate, while other events that cause much more harm have no noticeable political effect? The remarkable differences between warlike and peaceful societies are reflected in many characteristics of culture, including aspects that have no obvious relationship with war and peace, such as art preferences and sexual morals. This book explores such side effects as well and presents statistical evidence in support of the theory. 1.1. A different kind of social science ‘Scientific genius is extinct’, wrote Dean Simonton in Nature a few years ago. In his view, the only kind of scientific progress we see today is marginal improvements within old paradigms that have already been thoroughly explored. Revolutionary new ideas either do not occur or fail to be acknowledged.2 Scientists who are trained in one particular paradigm are unlikely to understand and accept a new, radically different paradigm.3 While everybody hails interdisciplinary research, the reality today is that many scientists guard their own scientific 2 Simonton (2013) 3 Kuhn (1962, chapter 12) 1. Introduction 3 territory. Scientists today have little freedom to choose their own subjects of research. The highly competitive funding system is more likely to support old research areas than radically new ones because it is controlled by established scientists through the peer review system.4 Most scientists start by specializing in one particular scientific paradigm and then search for problems that this paradigm can be applied to.