Ending the Violence, Part 2

Kin selection is an evolutionary mechanism that inclines us to trust, help, and cooperate with those we perceive as genetic relatives or members of our group. It inclines us to distrust and attack those we perceive as genetically unrelated to us, since they compete with us and our kin for food, living space, and mates. It operates below the level of conscious thought and biases our thinking about people. Most animals, including humans, exhibit kin selection behavior.

Territoriality makes animals regard certain areas as their own, and inclines them to attack perceived genetic competitors that stray into their territories. Animals from insects to human beings exhibit territorial behavior.

Kin selection and territoriality make us tend to hate, fear, or attack perceived genetic competitors we encounter. Our fear isn't entirely irrational, because for the same reasons, they are inclined to attack us.

Even if we feel like attacking each other, empathy can stop us from doing it. Empathy requires that:

* We can perceive what other people feel. By their behavior and facial expressions, we know if they are happy or suffering.

* We can feel what other people feel. When we perceive someone happy or suffering, we "mirror" a little of the same feeling in ourselves.

* We care what other people feel. We want them to feel good and we don't want them to suffer.

However, like most human traits, empathy varies in populations. Some people (16 percent) naturally have a lot of empathy, some (16 percent) have very little, and most (68 percent) have a medium amount. People's natural empathy can also be damaged by trauma such as war, violence, or abuse, especially in childhood.[1]

Adding the high-empathy and medium-empathy groups means that 84 percent of people either won't harm others or can be talked out of it by appeals to conscience.

The low-empathy 16 percent don't have enough conscience to be talked out of it. We can reduce their violence in two ways. First, we can minimize the frequency of situations that trigger their violent impulses. Second, we can impose swift, certain, and terrible punishment on those who transgress.

So that's the problem. There is no perfect solution, but there are things we can do to improve the situation.

If we encounter people who seem like our genetic competitors, biology inclines both them and us to attack or run away. Such encounters are an obvious aggression trigger. Human groups that can't stop killing each other should be physically separated from each other. That minimizes both their impulses to harm each other and their opportunities to do so. As noted earlier, it's especially important to reduce violence by the low-empathy 16 percent, who commit most of the violence anyway.

When we encounter people who differ culturally from us, it's harder for us to interpret some of their behavior and facial expressions. It's also harder for them to interpret ours. That makes empathy more difficult because we either can't tell what the other feels or we identify their feelings incorrectly.

Religious belief is involved mainly as a proxy for genetic difference. It affects how people look, how they talk, and how they behave. The primitive parts of our brains interpret such differences as meaning that someone is a genetic competitor of our families and our people. That automatically triggers our fear-aggression response, and separation helps prevent it.

Apart from the low-empathy 16 percent, the rest of the population is either naturally peaceful or can be helped to reduce and control their aggressive impulses.

Last week, I mentioned that when white and black American test subjects were shown images of people of the other race, the fear-aggression centers of their brains activated automatically before they had any time to think. However, when they were told positive things about the opposite-race people in the pictures, the thinking parts of their brains decreased their automatic fear-aggression responses. Education and the news media can prime people to attack each other, or they can promote peace.

Freedom of speech is an important value, but it's not the only important value. When people's lives are at stake, both government and the media should act responsibly to avoid inflaming hatred.

A final step is to create positive experiences of cooperation whenever possible. If adversaries can work together on areas where they agree, they can begin to see each other less as "the dangerous other" and more as fellow human beings with needs, interests, and points of view.

Of course, there are complications that make it hard to reduce violence. If it were easy, humanity would have mastered it by now.

First, external conflict promotes internal harmony. That's not news. In his play "Henry IV, Part 2," Shakespeare had King Henry advise his son to "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels." Likewise, sociologist William Graham Sumner wrote in 1906:

Second, government officials sometimes have incentives to act in their own interests at the expense of the public interest. Because they are not saints, they rationalize their actions. Leaders on both sides of a conflict must set aside their personal interests to do what is best for everyone. It's possible, but it's difficult. Public choice theory studies the problem.

The Talmud tells us that "not to know suffering is not to be a human." Suffering, violence, and tragedy are inescapable features of our world, but we can minimize them if we face facts and act bravely. We should.

Baron-Cohen, S. (2011), The Science of Evil. Basic Books, New York.

Putnam, R. (2000), Bowling Alone. Simon & Schuster, New York. Kindle Edition.

1. Baron-Cohen, S. (2011), p. 22ff.

2. Quoted in Putnam, R. (2000), loc. 4795.