Ursula Le Guin - The Wave in the Mind

No anthropologist or person with an anthropological conscience, knowing how differently work is gendered in different societies, could accept these implications. I don’t know what implications, if any, Wilson intended. But as this kind of unstated extension of reductionist statements does real intellectual and social damage, reinforcing prejudices and bolstering bigotries, it behooves a responsible scientist to define his terms more carefully.

As some gendered division of labor exists in every society, I would fully agree with Wilson if he had used a more careful phrasing, such as “some form of gender construction, including gender-specific activities.”

Bonding between parents and children; heightened altruism toward closest kin; suspicion of strangers:

All these behaviors are related, and can be defined as forms of “selfish gene” behavior; I think they have been shown to be as nearly universal among human beings as among other social animals. But in human beings such behavior is uniquely, and universally, expressed in so immense a range of behaviors and social structures, of such immense variety and complexity, that one must ask if this range and complexity, not present in any animal behavior, is not as genetically determined as the tendencies themselves.

If my question is legitimate, then Wilson’s statement is unacceptably reductive. To focus on a type of human behavior shared with other animals, but to omit from the field of vision the unique and universal character of such behavior among humans, is to beg the question of how far genetic determination of behavior may extend. Yet that is a question that no sociobiologist can beg.

Tribalism:

I understand tribalism to mean an extension of the behavior just mentioned: social groups are extended beyond immediate blood kin by identifying nonkin as “socially kin” and strangers as nonstrangers, establishing shared membership in constructs such as clan, moiety, language group, race, nation, religion, and so on.

I can’t imagine what the mechanism would be that made this kind of behavior genetically advantageous, but I think it is as universal among human groups as the behaviors based on actual kinship. If universality of a human behavior pattern means that it is genetically determined, then this type of behavior must have a genetic justification. I think it would be a rather hard one to establish, but I’d like to see a sociobiologist try.

Incest avoidance:

Here I’m uncertain about the evolutionary mechanism that enables the selfish gene to recognise a selfish gene that is too closely akin, and so determines a behavior norm. If there are social mechanisms preventing incest among the other primates, I don’t know them. (Driving young males out of the alpha male’s group is male-dominant behavior serving only incidentally and ineffectively as incest prevention; the alpha male does mate with his sisters and daughters, though the young males have to go find somebody else’s.)

I’d like to know whether Wilson knows what the general incidence of incest among mammals is, and whether he believes that incest is “avoided” among humans any more than it is among apes, cats, wild horses, and so on. Do all human societies ban incest? I don’t know; it was an open question, last I heard. That most human societies have cultural strictures against certain types of incest is true; that many human societies fail as often as not to implement them is also true. I think in this case Wilson has confused a common cultural dictum or desideratum with actual behavior; or else he is saying that our genes program us to say we must not do something, but do not prevent us from doing it. Now those are some fancy genes.

Dominance orders within groups:

Here I suspect Wilson’s anthropology is influenced by behaviorists’ experiments with chickens and primatologists’ observations of apes more than by anthropologists’ observation of human behavior in groups. Dominance order is very common in human societies, but so are other forms of group relationship, such as maintaining order through consensus; there are whole societies in which dominance is not the primary order, and groups in most societies in which dominance does not function at all, difficult as this may be to believe at Harvard. Wilson’s statement is suspect in emphasising one aspect of behavior while omitting others. Once again, it is reductive. It would be more useful if phrased more neutrally and more accurately: perhaps, “tendency to establish structured or fluid social relationships outside immediate kinship.”

Male dominance overall:

This is indeed the human social norm. I take it that the genetic benefit is that which is supposed to accrue in all species in which the male displays to the female to attract her choice and/or drives away weaker males from his mate or harem, thus ensuring that his genes will dominate in the offspring (the male selfish gene). Species in which this kind of behavior does not occur (including so close a genetic relative as the bonobo) are apparently not considered useful comparisons or paradigms for human behavior.

That male aggressivity and display behavior extend from sexuality to all forms of human social and cultural activity is indubitable. Whether this extension has been an advantage or a liability to our genetic survival is certainly arguable, probably unprovable. It certainly cannot simply be assumed to be of genetic advantage in the long run to the human, or even the male human, gene. The “interaction of heredity with environment” in this case has just begun to be tested, since only in the last hundred years has there been a possibility of unlimited dominance by any subset of humanity, along with unlimited , uncontrollable aggressivity.

Territorial aggression over limiting [sic] resources:

This is evidently a subset of “male dominance overall.” As I understand it, women’s role in territorial aggression has been subsidiary, not institutionalised, and seldom even recognised socially or culturally. So far as I know, all organised and socially or culturally sanctioned aggression over resources or at territorial boundaries is entirely controlled and almost wholly conducted by men.

It is flagrantly false to ascribe such aggression to scarcity of resources. Most wars in the historical period have been fought over quite imaginary, arbitrary boundaries. It is my impression of warlike cultures such as the Sioux or the Yanomamo that male aggression has no economic rationale at all. The phrase should be cut to “territorial aggression,” and attached to the “male dominance” item.

Other forms of ethical behavior:

This one’s the big weasel. What forms of ethical behavior? Ethical according to whose ethics?

Without invoking the dreaded bogey of cultural relativism, I think we have a right to ask anybody who asserts that there are universal human moralities to list and define them. If he asserts that they are genetically determined, he should be able to specify the genetic mechanism and the evolutionary advantage they involve.

Wilson appends these “other forms” to “incest avoidance,” which is thus syntactically defined as ethical behavior. Incest avoidance certainly involves some genetic advantage. If there are other behaviors that involve genetic advantage and are universally recognised as ethical, I want to know what they are.

Not beating up old ladies might be one. Grandmothers have been proved to play a crucial part in the survival of grandchildren in circumstances of famine and stress. Their genetic interest of course is clear. I doubt, however, that Wilson had grandmothers in mind.

Mother-child bonding might be one of his “other forms of ethical behavior.” It is tendentious, if not hypocritical, to call it “bonding between parents and children” as Wilson does, since it is by no means a universal cultural expectation that the male human parent will, or should, bond with his child. The biological father is replaced in many cultures by the mother’s brother, or serves only as authority figure, or (as in our culture) is excused from responsibility for children he sired with women other than his current wife. A further danger in this context is that the mother-child bond is so often defined as “natural” as to be interpreted as subethical. A mother who does not bond with her child is defined less as immoral than as inhuman. This is an example of why I think the whole matter of ethics, in this context, is a can of actively indefinable worms far better left unopened.