Why humans are not naturally nasty and more likely to be kind than cruel

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Apr 25, 2002
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#1
Why humans are not naturally nasty and more likely to be kind than cruel

By Julian Gavaghan


Study 'debunks myth' that morality is modern idea

It was long assumed prehistoric man was brutish and – away from this state of nature - his modern equivalent had only a veneer of morality.

Yet new research show that we are actually more likely to be kind than cruel - and claims to debunk the myth that we have evolved into aggressively competitive beings.

‘Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies,’ said Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

He claims that research shows that there is a biological basis for cooperative behaviour because otherwise it would be much harder to reproduce and pass on our genes.

Dr de Waal said his research disproved the view espoused by 19th century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley that morality is absent in nature and something created by humans.

He also said common assumptions that this view was promoted by Charles Darwin were also wrong, he said.
The father of social evolution theory wrote that animals that developed ‘well-marked social instincts would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience’.

At a meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, Dr de Waal showed the audience a series of videos of how animals in nature can have empathy.

One revealed a rat giving up chocolate in order to help another rat escape from a trap.

Such research shows that animals are prone to ‘reciprocity, fairness, empathy and consolation,’ Dr de Waal told Discovery.com.

‘Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.’

However, he admitted that our softer sides are unlikely to come out in a big world full of competition.

‘Morality’ developed in humans in small communities, added the author of The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society.

‘It's a challenge... it's experimental for the human species to apply a system intended for (in-groups) to the whole world.’


http://www.dailymail.co.uk//science...humans-naturally-nasty-likely-kind-cruel.html
 

Defy

Cannabis Connoisseur
Jan 23, 2006
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Rich City
#3
I don't think there are many natural born killers (besides Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis), but I do think they become killers due to their interactions with society
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#4
It is what it is. Some people are born nice, and some are born natural born killers
Not really. Genetic and environmental factors do shape people's behavior. However, the core principles remain - subconsciously people try to maximize their inclusive fitness and this is the main driver of their behavior, with everything else revolving around that. In certain situation being nice is perceived as improving one's inclusive fitness so people are being nice. In other that's not the case and people do nasty things. A lot of Nazi criminals were peaceful people who before the war you would have never imagined doing the kind of things that they did during the war; yet they did them. Same with the Japanese in mainland Asia around the same time.

That kind of sensationalists press-release titles does not help people understand human nature at all.
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#7
SO ARE HUMANS GETTING BETTER OR WORSE WITH TIME?
The terms "good" and "bad" are meaningless. That they have absolute meaning presupposes the existence of absolute morality, and there is no such thing in the real world - the one rule of evolution is that there are no rules, everyone tries to get ahead using whatever means available. Which is the reason people do bad things.

If you define being "good" as always behaving altruistically, then humans will have to evolve something approaching true eusociality like ants, bees, termites and the likes. But that's a very slow process, no animals of that size seems to have ever evolved eusociality and there is only one known mammal that has - the naked mole rat. And there is no evidence to think sufficiently strong selective pressure towards that exists. Yes, violence has dereased significantly with industrialization but this is entirely the consequence of societal complexity. In hunter-gatherer tribes, it was not uncommon for up to half of people to die a violent death due to intertribal warfare or even intratribal conflicts between individuals. I don't have the reference but I also recall someone collecting church records from England from the Middle Ages and showing that the murder rate was several times what it is now in Salvador - apparently resolving conflicts by killing your opponents was a common practice. Violence has gone down a lot since then and on the surface it may seem it is ibecause people have gotten "better" but that's not the case at all - violence has gone down because the societal complexity has increased greatly and the cost of being violent now outweighs the potential benefits; jail and death penalty do hurt one's inclusive fitness. On the other side, what improves one's perceived fitness has become much less tightly linked to phyiscal competition for resources - you can do a lot of harm to others sitting behind the computer but no direct physical harm. In the same time when put in situations in which there is no perceived fitness costs of doing nasty things, or violence is encouraged (i.e. the above-mentioned examples of Nazi Germany and WWII Japan), or there is no other way to improve your inclusive fitness (i.e. what the situation typically is in areas with a lot of gang activity), inhibition is relieved and people will do horrible things.
 
Mar 8, 2006
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www.thephylumonline.com
#9
Good and bad are subjective. All societies (despite the behavior of violent minorities within them) do adhere to certain universal principles such as murder, theft, violence, rape, forced coercion, fraud, etc. being "bad". Honesty, productivity, empathy, humility, respect, etc. being "good". All countries, laws, religious ideologies, business charters, (most) private organizations, etc. have these ethics written into their foundations. There is a universal moral code or set of moral principles that are the same in every society.
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#10
Not at all - for most tribes and societies all those bad things you listed were perfectly OK as long as they were perpetrated against other groups of people, not only that but those who did them were often hailed as heroes.

It is only very recently and only after we acquired some really effective means to kill large masses of people in a very short amount of time that we have decided that this is wrong, and still the idea hasn't taken firm hold on people's thinking as illustrated once again by the asymmetry between how much people in the US care about the few thousands soldiers that died in Iraq and Afghanistan versus the two to three orders of magnitudes more civilians in those countries who also died for violents deaths.
 
Mar 8, 2006
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www.thephylumonline.com
#11
Not at all - for most tribes and societies all those bad things you listed were perfectly OK as long as they were perpetrated against other groups of people, not only that but those who did them were often hailed as heroes.

It is only very recently and only after we acquired some really effective means to kill large masses of people in a very short amount of time that we have decided that this is wrong, and still the idea hasn't taken firm hold on people's thinking as illustrated once again by the asymmetry between how much people in the US care about the few thousands soldiers that died in Iraq and Afghanistan versus the two to three orders of magnitudes more civilians in those countries who also died for violents deaths.
I was talking about the present.

You can't cast everyone under the same blanket...I mean, it's not like you're even able to quantify how much people care, either way. You really have no idea how people feel.

You also cannot blame people for the acts committed by their governments, as long as those governments maintain a monopoly on violations of those universal moral principles.
 
Sep 25, 2005
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#13
Violence in our society is institutionalized. If our authorities approve then it is ok with the majority of the public. Look at wars prison system and cop violence that goes largely unchecked. It is personal violence that is disapproved of. Other cultures that we consider savages commit very personal acts of violence and it is approved of by the culture; ie cannibalism. See Neil whiteheads kanaima and the poetics of violent death. Admittedly I haven't read it yet but it touches on this topic.
 
Apr 4, 2006
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www.myspace.com
#14
Humans are naturally barbaric and authoritarian/totalitarian...

History has proved this.

Gangus Khan, Pol Pot, Hitler, Cortes, Saddam, most Romans, Mao etc... I mean the list of names could go on for 30 pages...

I never understood the brutality and attempt at domination.

Of course there are a few that just want to be left alone and do what they do in peace..
 
Apr 4, 2006
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#15
Dude, nothing has changed throughout history.... We had all those problems 3000 years ago.

I think as a culture in our modern era we're just more aware of it - given phones, internet, papers, TV etc...

The fact is that certain groups/cultures/religions as a collective just want to dominate and create their own "utopia."

Conflict is human nature...

Those who disagree with me will only be proving my point...
 
May 9, 2002
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#16
Humans are naturally barbaric and authoritarian/totalitarian...

History has proved this.
It has?

Gangus Khan, Pol Pot, Hitler, Cortes, Saddam, most Romans, Mao etc... I mean the list of names could go on for 30 pages...
So "30 pages" = the entire human race? 30 pages is about .00000000001% of the population since man existed. Ever thought that those "30 pages" were anomalies and not the norm? I mean, there is NO WAY that those folks could have, oh i dont know, mental disorders that caused them to be who they are?

I never understood the brutality and attempt at domination.
Thats obviously not the only thing you dont understand...