Evolutionary psychology can help us move beyond violence

It's alarming that anti-Muslim sentiment is growing. On an NPR report on Friday, you could hear people in the background shouting ugly things like "we don't want you people here." I think it's important that we see this for what (I think) it is: ingroup vs. outgroup, and competition for resources. (And, obviously, stress among those who are unemployed, losing their home, etc., and wanting a scapegoat for that.) Evolutionary psychology tells us that we are only connected to our ingroup through our hatred of the outgroup: girls in middle school move up the social ladder by shedding friendships with less popular girls. It is by keeping others out that we form a cohesive group. We have to move past this, but I think people need to come to terms with our basic drives first.

I don't think it's about the religion, at its base. (I doubt many of the people shouting attend church. They just come from a Christian cultural heritage.) It's about ethnic rivalry. And "ethnic" refers more to our cultural group than to a biological group--because science shows that we can't be grouped by race--for example, see Race: The Power of an Illusion. (Although for one rebuttal click here.) I have read that the human species is less diverse than a population of chimps living on one mountainside! Humans had a recent bottleneck, a time when most of us died out, so that the remaining gene pool was very small. This was around 75,000 years ago. So all humans are closely related to one another, compared with other species.

Another obvious point is that most (all?) religions have engaged in horrific violence. Again, I don't think (as Dawkins, Hitchens, others do) that it's the religion itself causing the violence. The religion just defines the ethnic group that hates the other groups because they are competing for resources and because the cohesiveness of our ingroup is defined by our disdain of the outgroups. I think the groups would hate each other, religion or no religion. Obviously, most of our religions have used violence in trying to convert others or in competing for resources (such as land) with others. It is maddening when people suggest that Islam is a religion with violence at its core, because there is so much violence in the history of every Abrahamic religion. Every religion grew out of the point-of-view of an ancient people--people who wanted to preserve themselves at the expense of outsiders. In the Old Testament, Yahweh often told the Hebrews to slaughter other tribes. Steven Pinker points out (sorry, I constantly refer this same TED video) that hunter-gatherer groups would preemptively attack other groups, because they would assume the other group was planning to preemptively attack them. That's the culture we came from, and maybe that was still the norm in the time of the Old Testament. In fact, I think that's one thing Jesus was trying to get us to move beyond. (Then Christianity, like all human institutions, became more about preserving the institution than about loving one's neighbor.) Muhammad was trying to get the Arab tribes who were warring among themselves to unite, at least that's what I gleaned from Karen Armstrong.

I do hope that the mainstream churches are actively discouraging this violence toward Muslims.

For more on how quickly skin color can change in the human species click here.

Signature Strengths

If you are interested, here is the link to the Authentic Happiness website. You have to create a name and password to use it. The character strengths survey that Jon Haidt writes about and other surveys are found on this website.

If you already know yourself pretty well, you may find this survey redundant.

The Happiness Hypothesis

Evolution doesn't "care" if we're happy, successful, or living a meaningful life. The only goal from the point-of-view of evolution is to leave as many offspring as possible.

We can still learn to be happy and live a meaningful life in spite of the fact that our brains didn't evolve for the purpose of making us happy.

We just have to "retrain the elephant, " as Haidt says.

The elephant is the old part of the brain that's been shaped by evolution for a long time. The "rider" is the newer part that tries to control the elephant. He also refers to the rider as the "lawyer" who comes up with logical-sounding arguments to support whatever gut reaction the elephant has already had to an issue.

The elephant was shaped by natural selection to win at the game of life, and part of its strategy is to impress others, gain their admiration, and rise in relative rank. The elephant cares about prestige, not happiness, and it looks eternally to others to figure out what is prestigious. The elephant will pursue its evolutionary goals even when greater happiness can be found elsewhere... (p. 101).

See also: blog entry "The Good Life," which talks about the concept of flow as well as this book.

It's intriguing that Haidt (while writing this book, he says) began to question whether the Buddhist ideal of nonattachment is the best solution to the human conundrum. I have found the concept of nonattachment very inspiring, and it seems to me to be the solution to the problem of being human, since humans have the capacity to dwell on our own mortality and the transience of everything. My attachment to nonattachment may have been partly because my dad often quoted Mary Baker Eddy (the founder of Christian Science, the religion of my grandparents, although it turns out that Eddy was quoting Shakespeare): "There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so." Haidt also points out that whether nonattachment is the best approach may depend on the era in which you live--the Buddha lived during turbulent times, whereas "people living in a wealthy democracy can set long-term goals and expect to meet them." (Aside: Steven Pinker notes that, in spite of how it appears, the world has become less violent over time.) Haidt also writes that maybe Buddha should have gotten out of his chariot and actually asked people if they were miserable. Research shows that whether people are happy or miserable is only slightly based upon their circumstances, but mostly based on their "happiness set-point" or whether they "won the cortical lottery" as Haidt puts it. Another psychologist, Dan Gilbert, whose amusing video you can watch on TED, says if the event happened over three months ago, it has little impact on one's happiness. Unbelievable. And more reason to work on changing our brains.

One of Haidt's main points in this book is that we humans think that we are unbiased, but research shows that we are all biased. (This gets back to the rider as lawyer, coming up with statements to support our biases.) Some of the classic experiments on this were done on people who had undergone surgery (for seizures) to sever the corpus callosum, which connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. These experiments showed that the left hemisphere can come up with explanations for things the right hemisphere has seen but has not entered into normal consciousness. (Haidt, pp. 8-10) Even when told that humans are biased, we can see how others are biased but still maintain our own neutrality. He touches on the fact that depressed people may think differently, because they are convinced they are worse than average (most people apparently are convinced they are better than average. I have also read elsewhere that depressed people are more in touch with reality!)

I think I am more aware of bias than your average person, but Haidt would say I am just as deluded as everyone else, I suppose. I think I've been influenced to be more able to see points of view by my husband, who is a very diplomatic (sometimes to a fault!) person. He's very effective at mediation because he can see that each side has a point and wants their grievances heard. I especially noticed this when he was working in Central America.

In the past several years I have come to realize that everyone has a point-Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Atheists, whatever. For example, I think Creationists are afraid that if they accept all the implications of evolution and cosmology they will have to confront the fact that we live in a meaningless universe that doesn't care about us. (And then one has to move beyond this realization to look for meaning, as forward-thinking theologians would probably agree.) I just wish people could be honest with themselves about why they believe what they do.

I think a lot of political and religious extremism can be attributed to the fact that each person forms opinions because of gut reactions, and then comes up with logical explanations for his or her opinions. Maybe this is an obvious conclusion, but I think it's important that the public understand this tendency we have to logically explain away our opinions. Then maybe we could question the fervor with which we hold opinions these days.