Not in our genes : biology, ideology and human nature / Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and R.C. Lewontin.

  • Steven Rose
Date:
1990,
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Not in our genes : biology, ideology and human nature / Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and R.C. Lewontin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    when the appropriate environmental cue is given. So Symons writes that there is 'no aggressive drive' or accumulation of aggressive en¬ ergy that must be discharged. ... Natural selection favors willingness to fight only when benefits typically exceed costs in the currency of reproductive success, and in the absence of such circumstances, even a member of a typically aggressive species could live out its life span in peace.*^ Despite its superficial appearance of dependence on envi¬ ronment, this model is completely genetically determined, indepen¬ dent of the environment. The action of the genes is seen as creating a primeval computer program that will provide a fixed and stereotyped response to the appropriate signal. Of course, if the signal is never given, that part of the genetically determined central nervous circuitry is never activated. Sometimes sociobiologists try to give both messages simultaneously: Are human beings innately aggressive? . . . The answer ... is yes. Throughout history, warfare . . . has been endemic to every form of society.But as one reads on, it turns out that human aggressive behavior is a structured, predictable pattern of interaction between genes and environment.'^ But we are on dangerous ground for soci- obiology here. If aggression is manifest only in some environments, then in what important sense is it innate and why do we not simply avoid the wrong environments? It is at this point that notions alien to genetics begin to appear. Human beings are strongly predisposed to respond with unnecessary hatred to external threats. . . . Our brains do appear to be programmed to the following extent; we are inclined to partition other people into friends and aliens. ... We tend to fear deeply the actions of strangers. . . . The learning rules of violent aggression are largely obsolete. . . . But to acknowledge the obsolescence of the rules is not to banish them. We can only work our way around them. To let them rest latent and unsummoned, we must consciously undertake those difficult and rarely travelled pathways in psychological devel¬ opment that lead to mastery over and reduction of the profound human tendency to leam violence. [Emphases added throughout.]'^' What a thicket we must make our way through here! From the straightforward notion of behavior contingent on circumstance, we come to tendencies, predispositions, and inclinations to a be- Sociobiology: The Total Synthesis / 253
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