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In other words, humans have not only the varied behavioral repertoire
common among many animals, but also the kind of flexibility that comes
with being cultural animals. So it remains the case that the
vital question is what kinds of forces will shape the culture that
shapes the socialization that shapes the human being?
There is one other possible implication of making a revision of how
much bellicosity there is in human nature. It has to do with the
question of inevitability.
Toward the end of the first chapter, I wrote:
<blockquote> The irresistible social evolutionary forces that
have swept us along since the breakthrough to civilization have
depended very little on human nature for their origin and their
direction. All that was required was that we be creative enough to
develop culture to a certain point of freedom from natural limits, and
that we be capable of (not necessarily inclined toward) aggressive
behavior. Almost any animal can be aggressive under the right
conditions. A cultural animal is by definition both social and
flexible, and so presumably could learn to meet the demands of very
different social environments. If a society needs for its members to be
primed for collective aggressiveness, that inherent capacity for
aggressiveness will be brought out, encouraged to hyper-develop. We
have no need of Ardreyesque images of bloodthirsty primate hunters to
explain the bloodiness of civilized history. Thus, any creature who met
those two requirements would have been condemned to a similar fate. Its
nascent civilized culture would, like ours, have become caught up in
the parable of the tribes, its social evolution compelled toward power
maximization with all its destructiveness. Similarly,
<em>wherever else in this immense universe life may have evolved,
and evolved to the point where a cultural creature has broken free of
biological constraints, we may suppose that the same problem of power
has arisen.</em></blockquote>
I still believe all that. I still believe, as I used to say in
some of my oral presentations of the idea, that "if we humans blow it,
and disappear from the earth, and if in twenty million years some other
species --maybe the descendants of raccoons-- has evolved to the point
of being cultural animals and then crosses over that same threshold as
we did, out of the niche in which it evolved biologically, THEN THAT
SPECIES WILL INEVITABLY, AND BEYOND ITS CAPACITY TO CONTROL, BE PLUNGED
INTO THE SAME SOCIAL EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS, GOVERNED BY THE SELECTION
FOR POWER, AS WE HAVE."
The logic of that idea remains compelling. But a question does
arise in my mind: to the extent that human beings are naturally
bellicose, to that extent the way our species plunged into the struggle
for power (after crossing that crucial threshold) does not fully test
the hypothesis.
Is it possible, I wonder, that if a profoundly mellow and peaceful
species found itself beset by the same set of challenges ("Imagine a
group of tribes...") that it might be able to overcome the anarchy and
navigate its way into creating peaceful overarching orders so readily
that the selection for power would never get going?
Is it possible that some other species might be so inclined toward
harmony --that it might have so high a threshold regarding entering into
conflict-- that those creatures, facing that same challenge, could
exercise control over their destiny rather than plunge over that
precipice of ever-escalating control? (Like a car on a steep
slope but with the emergency brake on and the gear-shift in park.)
The question intrigues me. The answer seems to me unknowable.
With humankind, in any event, I still feel as compelled as ever by the
logic of the argument of the parable of the tribes: once humankind
started to "invent" its own way of life, outside its original niche, we
unleashed forces that would drive our social evolution in directions
(largely) beyond our control, and not dictated by our inherent nature.
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