Project Itoh: Genocidal Organ

“But people can make a choice,” I declared calmly. “I carry my sin around with me. You can choose to accept the responsibility for your choices. Saying that murder or rape or theft is just human nature is not the same as saying that any of these things are ever justified.”

“Absolutely. I agree with you.” John Paul smiled.

Well, that was anticlimactic. “What?”

“If the impulse to pillage and rape and murder derives from basic survival instinct, then so too do sympathy, love, and self-sacrifice. Our brains have evolved to contain a multitude of conflicting emotional modules, each one derived from a basic survival instinct. Some of these are redundant, and others have become positively counterproductive. A sweet tooth, to give you a trivial example. Great for when you have to compete for food, as it helps you absorb nutrients quickly. Not so great when you live in a world of superabundance and you’re trying to stave off obesity and diabetes.”

“So you’re saying that there’s nothing wrong with the modules that turn us into murderers and rapists—they’re basically just outdated ?” I asked, incredulous.

“Hm. I’m not sure if that’s a fair way of putting it. ‘Outdated.’ That’s a subjective concept. Orthogonal to the current social mores of the so-called advanced nations, perhaps. Anyhow, like it or not, the grammar of genocide is also one of these modules.”

“What do you mean?”

John Paul looked past me, out through the window, at the night vista of the shores of Lake Victoria, where countless families were suffering in poverty, starving, selling their bodies, doing whatever they needed to do to get by.

“Okay. Imagine there’s a drought. We’re talking pre-agricultural times. Well, people have already learned by this time that by forming a group and cooperating with other people, you stand a better chance of survival in the long run than by betraying the others and just taking what you wanted. Maybe this was due to evolution and genetics, maybe due to memes, but either way, altruism or love, or whatever you want to call it, emerged as adaptive behavior designed to help preserve the self. So what happens when you have an unexpected outside shock such as a drought, and there is no longer enough food and water to go around? Does the entire community perish along with its evolution and altruism?”

I thought I understood what John Paul was trying to say. “So the grammar of genocide was just a way of adapting to food shortages?” I said.

“That’s right.” John Paul nodded. “The grammar of genocide is a vestigial module from a time when humans were not yet able to regulate their food supply. When other animals want to exert influence over their entire group, they use pheromones or scent to pass on their message and influence the group. But the nose was a relatively weak sensory organ, at least in humans. The best way to spread influence over a large group of individuals became language. If a person wanted to communicate with an entire group, rather than one to one, language was the only way to do it.”

Acts of enlightened cruelty.

Mass murder for the sake of survival.

I shuddered. However primitive a group of people was, if they could communicate and show altruistic tendencies within their group, it became impossible to deny that they were in their own way a fully fledged society. The grammar of genocide didn’t result from people becoming increasingly aggressive on an individual basis. I thought back to what John Paul had told me during our previous encounters—that the Jews in Nazi Germany also spoke using the grammar of genocide. No. This definitely wasn’t a module that affected people at an individual level. It was a module that started functioning only on a structural level after it had been transmitted to a given number of people within a group. Their value judgments were bent in a certain direction. There’s a genocide brewing. There’s a massacre on the horizon. The mood was set. And then once that society passed a certain threshold, those people who had a conscience-related module suppressed by the grammar of genocide would start taking matters into their own hands and engage in all sorts of atrocities.

But then I remembered Williams’s story about the lemmings. Individuals didn’t tend to evolve in ways that caused them to act against their own self-interest. The phenomenon of lemming mass suicide was virtually unheard of in real life.

“The grammar of genocide isn’t some sort of self-destructive curse.” John Paul smiled. “Because, after the killings, the population is back down to a manageable number. An adequate food supply is once again ensured. Equilibrium is reached. The group’s will to preemptively forgive the act of genocide and to collectively mask their consciences as they do so is a great advantage in the evolutionary stakes, not a disadvantage. It’s hardly surprising that this characteristic gets passed down to the next generation—it’s the ultimate example of a successful adaptive mechanism toward one’s environment.”

“So what! There’s an ancient adaptive mechanism left in the human mind that can spur humans on to kill each other on a grand scale? Big deal! How the hell does that justify your going from one impoverished country to another killing people? What is it that you even want ? To prove that people are basically evil?”

“No. It’s all because of me.” A woman’s voice. The owner of the voice must have been hiding, but she was now out in the open, and her slender white arm now pointed an old German Luger directly at John Paul’s head.

Lucia Sukrova.

She started walking toward us, guided by the moonlight.

John Paul’s gaze remained fixed on me—or rather the scene behind me. The moon’s iridescence made Lucia’s face look as cold as a corpse’s. As beautiful as a corpse’s.

“When your wife died, when Sarajevo disappeared, you couldn’t forgive yourself for being in bed with me at the time. You couldn’t forgive yourself for betraying your wife and daughter.” Lucia pressed the muzzle of her gun into the back of John Paul’s head. She was crying. Her white cheeks were shiny with tears.

“That’s why you had to convince yourself … that betrayal and violence … that there is an inescapable human instinct to hurt other people. You’ve been proving how black and twisted human nature is just so that you could escape from your own guilt and despair. And you’ve killed so many people in the process—”

“No, Lucia. You’re wrong. I haven’t done all this to try and prove anything.”

“Then why?”

“I discovered an ancient function of the brain. But at the same time I know full well that love is just as powerful an instinct—no, more powerful, really—than brutality. It’s a basic biological function. I may have discovered a genocidal organ, but it hasn’t shaken my basic faith in the fundamental goodness of humanity. Not one bit.”

At this point I realized something really weird. There wasn’t even the smallest cloud of despair hanging over John Paul. His gaze remained true and untroubled. He was as lucid, as calm, and as sane as ever. How could this be?

I took a step toward him, ignoring the gun in his hand. “So let me get this straight. If you’re not killing all these people out of despair, what other possible reason could there be?”

The pause seemed to stretch out to infinity.

And then the Lord of Genocide answered:

“To protect the people I love.”

5

When did patriotism become the primary motive for war?

The kamikaze pilots who smashed their own planes into aircraft carriers in order to protect their mothers and sisters. The French Resistance fighters who died trying to regain their country. The U-boat crew who suffered a briny death in order to shield their fatherland from invasion.