Love and Hate

The Natural History of Behavior Patterns

Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351508148
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

The author argues that there are specific turning points in evolution. Structures and behavioral patterns that evolved in the service of discrete functions sometimes allow for unforeseen new developments as a side effect. In retrospect, they have proven to be pre-adaptations, and serve as raw material for natural selection to work upon. Love and Hate was intended to complement Konrad Lorenz's book, On Aggression, by pointing out our motivations to provide nurturing, and thus to counteract and correct the widespread but one-sided opinion that biologists always present nature as bloody in tooth and claw and intra-specific aggression as the prime mover of evolution. This simplistic image is, nonetheless, still with us, all the more regrettably because it hampers discussion across scholarly disciplines. Eibl-Eibesfeldt argues that leaders in individualized groups are chosen for their pro-social abilities. Those who comfort group members in distress, who are able to intervene in quarrels and to protect group members who are attacked, those who share, those who, in brief, show abilities to nurture, are chosen by the others as leaders, rather than those who use their abilities in competitive ways. Of course, group leaders may need, beyond their pro-social competence, to be gifted as orators, war leaders, or healers. Issues of love and hate are social in origin and hence social in consequence. Life has emerged on this planet in a succession of new forms, from the simplest algae to man-man the one being who reflects upon this creation, who seeks to fashion it himself and who, in the process, may end by destroying it. It would indeed be grotesque if the question of the meaning of life were to be solved in this way. In language that is clear and accessible throughout, arguing forcefully for the innate and "preprogrammed" dispositions of behavior in higher vertebrates, including humans, Eibl-Eibesfeldt steers a middle course in discussing the development of cultural and ethical norms while insisting on their matrix of biological origins.

1
The “Human Beast”— a Modern Caricature of Man

In the history of mankind one bloody chapter follows another almost without interruption; and the picture has remained unchanged right up to the present day. The only difference is that now we possess atomic weapons, and in the event of war we run the risk of destroying ourselves. We have subdued the forces of nature, we have conquered epidemics and wiped out the beasts of prey that once threatened us. Now we are our own greatest enemy, unless we succeed in taming our aggressive urges.

Is there the slightest prospect of our doing this? Are we not ruled by an innate aggressive drive, by a lust for killing which at best can be repressed but never eliminated? In recent times this has been repeatedly asserted.

"Cain rules the world. If anyone doubts it, let him read the history of the world," wrote Leopold Szondi in 1969 (201).* In his view a murderous inclination is inherent in all men and he speaks of a "Cain-tendency," a drive factor with which we are born. Robert Ardrey has sketched a similar portrait of mankind (8).

The same thesis has been put forward in the weekly and daily press. Thus, Time magazine (204) says that man is "one of the world's most aggressive beasts who fundamentally enjoys torturing and killing other animals, including his fellow man. . . . His hormones urge him to copulate with his sisters and daughters just as well as other animals do generally. But his cortex tells him to barter his females to strangers for political advantage. . . . He would like to murder his father, but his natural impulse is cunningly suppressed: one day he will be the old man."

So the argument runs thus: man is by nature inclined to kill, but understanding and reason enable him to curb these impulses. One could speak of a concept of the tamed beast. The good* in man is, in this view, a cultural achievement, while the evil is a consequence of dark impulses, over which he has no control.

This thesis of man's antisocial, "killer" nature is not new. It had already been advanced by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), when he recognized in man only the drive for self-preservation and the lust for power. According to Hobbes, the struggle of all against all, which is the logical outcome of this drive, can be prevented only by an absolute sovereign forcing men against their will to unite.

But equally old is the contrary thesis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778) that man in his original state is peaceful and friendly and is corrupted and made aggressive only by civilization. The argument about the "true" nature of man continues to the present day and there has been no shortage of advocates for the two extreme viewpoints.

The Hobbesian thesis has reappeared in various guises in the course of time. In this sense Thomas Huxley (1888) (101) interpreted Darwin's "struggle for existence" as a ruthless contest in which only "the strongest, the swiftest and the most cunning" remain alive. He compares the animal world with a gladiators' show: the participants are well treated and the next day they are sent out to fight. The only difference is that the spectator has no need to give the "thumbs down," for no quarter is given. Peter Kropotkin (1903) (122), on the contrary, holds that mutual aid is as much a natural law as mutual struggle. He points out that this view can also be found in Darwin but that people have paid more attention to Darwin's catch phrases than to his principal ideas.

The modern champions of the "human beast" theory refer both to the findings of behavioral research (or ethology) and to those of psychoanalysis. Both schools of thought have established that man has an innate aggressive drive, but these champions interpret this fact in a one-sided way. Some use it to justify and excuse aggressive behavior; others, while rejecting this extreme, conservative attitude, do not (curiously enough) protest against the misuse of behavioral research but reserve their fury for the science of ethology itself, as if it were responsible. Thus Arno Plack (163) accuses the ethologist of adhering to the doctrine that "all is struggle," of claiming that the aggressive drive is the basic drive in all living things, and of using this doctrine of the antisocial nature of man to justify a culture based on violence. Many of the criticisms mustered in Ashley Montagu's book Man and Aggression (154), are aimed in the same direction. One must therefore assume that these two men seriously believe ethology teaches that human nature is unchangeable and sees an innate aggressive drive as the dominant motive in human conduct.* It is the concern of this book to refute such views.

My basic premise here is that if a certain behavior pattern or disposition is inherited, this by no means implies that it is not amenable to conditioning, nor must it be regarded as natural in the sense that it is still adaptive (i.e., conducive to survival). A behavior pattern developed in the course of the history of the species can lose its original function. Thus, a strong aggressive drive may once have stimulated man's intellectual development and brought about the distribution of man over the whole earth, through the severe competition among different human groups. But an excess of aggressiveness today can lead us to total self-annihilation. One should not therefore accept aggression without reservation simply because it is innate, but strive to control it. After all, man is by his very nature a cultural being. Cultural control patterns do regulate his inborn impulses, as explained in more detail on page 31. This allows for a greater adaptability in our species, since cultural control patterns can change rapidly when circumstances demand it. Indeed we are now searching for new ways, since the traditional ones seem to a certain degree outdated. And it is here that ethological research can help us find the adequate measures by providing insight into man's nature. Ethology, as a biological science, seeks to investigate the functioning of those physiological mechanisms that influence a behavior pattern so that, by understanding the function structures we may be able to eliminate disturbances. In this process of investigation it may well become clear that some of the phylogenetic adaptations (those acquired in the course of the history of the species) are now retained like so much historical ballast, which is as useless—or even dangerous—to the organism as the caecum or "appendix." Behavior, too, has its "appendixes."

The basis for Plack's reproach that ethologists have recently been tracing everything back to the aggressive drive is not very clear, for Konrad Lorenz (141), whom Plack cites specifically in this connection, speaks insistently of a "parliament of instincts," making it quite plain that an animal is motivated by different systems of drives which often conflict. The aggressive drive is only one drive among many. But as the reproaches have nevertheless been made, it must be admitted that in previous discussions of aggression too little emphasis has hitherto been given to the social potential of men and animals.* It is in these tendencies toward sociability that the key to overcoming the problem of aggression will be found. I therefore propose to speak in some detail about the mechanisms for establishing bonds, those natural opponents of aggression, on which we can base our hope for a less bellicose future. Among the higher vertebrates, social repulsion (aggression) and social attraction form a functional entity, and I propose to present them as such here.

My thesis in this book is that both aggressive and altruistic behavior are preprogrammed by phylogenetic adaptations and that there are therefore preordained norms for our ethical behavior. In my opinion, man's aggressive impulses are counterbalanced by his equally deep-rooted social tendencies.* It is not only conditioning that programs us to be good—we are good by inclination. If we can demonstrate this, then my opening thesis—that goodness is merely a secondary cultural superstructure—is disproved. We will argue that the disposition to cooperation and mutual aid is innate, as are many specific behavior patterns of friendly contact. Why all these tendencies have not so far sufficed to restrain our aggressive feelings in all situations will also be discussed.

My starting point is the fact that as human beings, despite all our aggressiveness, we live in groups. I pose the question of just how we manage this. By what means do we maintain and form bonds with our fellow-men, in spite of the "aggression barrier"? Are there innate bonding drives that hold the aggressive drive in check? What part is played in this by the sexual drive? How do sociability and love develop both phylogenetically (in the course of evolution) and ontogenetically (during the lifetime of the individual)? And how does hate evolve?

The methodological approach I have used in this investigation is that of comparative biology, which proceeds from the understanding of our evolutionary history. As there are some misconceptions in lay circles about the value of comparisons between animals and man—and there are even some specialists in the humanities who speak in this connection of "inadmissible arguments by analogy" (171)—I intend before beginning the discussion to consider the basic concepts of ethology and the methodology of comparison, and to show how one can interpret similarities between species. To the reader untrained in biology it is not immediately apparent that we can learn things from the behavior of some bird or mammal that are significant for the understanding of our own species. At this point there is a discussion of the mechanisms of phylogenetic development and of such frequently used concepts as "adaptation," "ritualization," and "selection." I will then discuss aggression and bondforming behavior patterns in both animals and man. I will show that the capacity to establish a personal bond has evolved phylogenetically, along with care for the young, and that to a certain extent this is repeated in the ontogenetic development of the individual. The human child first acquires the capacity to love another through love for its mother. The child would find it difficult, if not impossible, to identify with a group without first passing through this phase.

Man was originally created for a life in individualized groups. The transition to life in the anonymous community produces problems of identification. On the one hand the urge clearly exists to form a bond with strangers as well. On the other hand we can observe the inclination to cut oneself off in groups from others. We are inclined to cast members of an alien group in the role of enemies, giving rise to the question of whether we are adopting certain attitudes of mind involuntarily. For those engaged in peace research the illumination of these processes is of great importance. Man usually has less fellow feeling for strangers, and by the same token his aggressiveness toward them is less inhibited. This is one of the reasons why conflicts between different groups tend to be aggravated. The awakening of a new sense of social unity is therefore of vital concern. I shall discuss the prospects for this at the very end of my work.

In this book I make quite frequent use of the term "love." By this I mean not only sexual love but more generally the emotional, personal bond between one man and another, or the bond arising from identification with a particular group. The counterpart of love is hate, both hate as an individualized emotional rejection and the group hatred that arises from it. Strictly speaking we can only use the terms "love" and "hate" in this sense in the case of man. In animals all we can do is to note purely descriptively either the individualized striving for contact and a bond or their aggression. Statements about the emotions that go with such behavior are fundamentally impossible for epistemological reasons. By analogy we can only conjecture that, at least in higher vertebrates, the relevant behavior patterns are also accompanied by corresponding emotions. Certainly the describable behavior patterns of making contact and rejection are often similar in animals and man. Such similarities often justify us in tracing them to the same roots. If, therefore, I speak on occasion of love, without expressly differentiating between animals and man, I am using this as a shorthand description for the sake of clarity, just as the physiologist will speak of "hunger" and "thirst" in animals.

Most of the drawings in this book are drawings based on film stills and still photographs. The details of the sources will be found in the captions. So that the reader can form an impression of the quality of the reproductions, some of the photographic originals are reproduced on pages 230–231. Other photographs that served as originals may be found by the interested reader in my own Ethology: the Biology of Behavior.

* The italic figures in parentheses in the text refer to the list of sources at the end of the book.

* We generally refer to aggression as "evil," and to love and friendship and everything that brings individuals together as "good." This is correct insofar as aggression, despite its contribution to the preservation of the species (and therefore in this sense a "good"), does carry with it a tendency toward pathological degeneration and thereby endangers our existence. We are often too aggressive, rarely too friendly.

* Wolfgang Hädecke (79) has pointed out the danger of an ideological misuse of ethology: "The nature of ethological research, which is undogmatic and anti-ideological on principle, does not exclude the possibility of its being misused in a specific direction and furnishing arguments for such misuse. If ethologists do not guard against it, their findings may be placed at the service of one of the oldest doctrines in the world: that of the immutability of human society, and in particular the age-old principle of dominance and submission which is all too readily invoked. A science which investigates principally (though by no means exclusively) the inherited, and presumably unchanging, elements in our behavior lends itself to inappropriate use in this sense: indeed one must call it misuse. . . ."

* In my own Ethology: the Biology of Behavior (Grundriss der vergleichenden Verhaltensforschung) I have described in great detail the mechanisms that lead to the formation and cohesion of social groups. Hans Hass (83) also gives some striking observations about bonds, regarded from a general functional viewpoint, in his valuable book Energon, in which organic and economic structures are analyzed and compared.

* These friendly dispositions can themselves be misused of course: one has only to think of the dangers of excessive loyalty to a leader.