Ask a Scientist: Sex and War
This week, we had the opportunity to attend the monthly Ask a Scientist lecture in San Francisco, which was entitled ‘Sex and War‘, given by the authors of the book of the same title, Malcolm Potts, and Thomas Hayden. The talk was very interesting, in that it addressed many of the evolutionary influences on our continued need to conduct both sex and war. Although, it can not be denied that environmental factors play a significant role in these instruments of aggression, it was fascinating to hear just how much our biology has contributed in establishing our current behavior. One of the most enlightening aspects of the talk was the notion that our civilization would not likely be where it is today without all the war and rape that occurred, and continues to occur; in that it was likely our need to war against other tribes that brought humans together in clans and subsequently into the civilization that we know today. The lecture and Q&A was taped by Fora.tv and was promised to be posted shortly; I will update the post once that happens.
Ending the lecture was the following quote, which I have already indicted my resonance with in a previous post:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Updated 02Apr09:
Why is it that humans, nearly unique in this regard, have a natural inclination to band together and kill off members of our own species? The fact that chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary relatives, are the only other animals known to exhibit such organized warlike behavior is a big clue.
Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden, authors of the new book Sex and War, assert that the answers lie in our biological history — that aggression against our own species is rooted in deep evolutionary impulses and predispositions. In other words, intra-species battling among our protohuman ancestors gave a reproductive advantage to the most violent males — and here we are, their pugnacious descendants, still at it.
