Nature vs. Nurture: Who decides?

Scientist, psychologist and sociologist alike would agree--we are all a product of nurture vs. nature.  In a course I am currently taking, Violence and Human Nature, this concept has been heavily reinforced.  Scientists can predict with 99% accuracy, the 8-year olds that will be displaying violent behaviors by age 18.  Cynical?  Perhaps.  But with odds such as these, the profile is difficult to ignore.  The terms for such identification are based on race, family structure (nurture) and specific genetic profiles (nature), composed of variations on about 27 genes.  The age-long debate surrounding such profiling revolves around the fear attached with such arbitrary profiling.  The argument is that humans are not robots.  Although influenced by, we are neither controlled by fate nor circumstance, even if science seems to prove otherwise.  The hope is that humans are still the deciders of their own fate.  And the fear is that perhaps we are not.  

Yet, in the midst of both lofty and depressing presentations of the human, I cling to hope.  For, the gorilla may not be able to change his fate.   His environment coupled with his genome will determine the kind of life he will live.  And his influences are as inextricable as ours.  Yet, the human brain has undergone such extreme evolution that has developed our frontal lobe to be able to think about abstract concepts, analyze sensory input, and assess value decisions.  This ability sets us apart from the gorilla in a way that our DNA composition may never reflect.  Suggestively, this development has offered humans an out.  

Consider the 2002 movie, Minority Report.  A new technology has been developed that is able to offer evidence of a murder before it happens.  Precogs, humans exposed to certain chemicals at birth, have violent "previsions" of murder.  These images are extracted and saved under case files.  In decoding the evidence of the murder, the Pre-Crime unit investigates the case, hoping to be able to identify the location and identity of the murder.  Before he murder.  Using this technology, the Pre-Crime unit convicts citizens before they are able to commit their crime.  For a year, the city survives without a single murder.  However, a turn of the events predicts that the lead investigator, John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise), will commit murder.  Notably, the Precogs do not "predict" murder, they actually see events yet to occur.  Yet a circularity develops as Anderton discovers his pending crime.  He steals one of the Precogs, to eliminate evidence and assist his investigation to track his victim with the hopes of proving his innocence.  As the plot leads Anderton on a renegade search, Anderton finds himself at the apartment of his victim.  No one appears to be there, so he breaks in to find it empty, except for a bed and a briefcase with hundreds of pictures of children.  The eerie mood, mixed with Anderton's frantic rummaging through the photos leads the audience to realize that the murderer of Anderton's son and wife several years prior must live here.   And then, Cruise sees a picture of his son.  He mourns over the picture, as he bares the emptiness that his son's death has left him.  But his cries quickly turn to hate.  A wild and powerful rage.  At this point, murder is within him.  And the very quest which leads Anderton to prove his innocence, fabricates perhaps the only circumstance under which Anderton would commit murder.  He waits for the owner of the apartment.  And as the keys jingle at the door, Anderton is imminently a victim of his predetermined fate.  The man enters, shocked to see Anderton.  And as Anderton begins to pull the trigger, the Precog offers him hope.  She tells Anderton that he is not bound by fate, for he has the knowledge that others did not have.  He can choose another outcome.

In light of the earlier discussion, this sentence rings such hope in my heart.  The very capabilities humans have developed or been given that allow us to decide, offer the power to overcome our influences.  For we may never separate from our genes and environment, but I do believe that there is hope to overcome them.  Perhaps, by giving the predetermined "assailants" knowledge of their tendencies and offering them hope and a path to another future, we will not be face with same fate of the Pre-Crime Unit.  Those accused never had the opportunity to change their fortune or misfortune.  True, some would still commit murder and violent acts, but could we really condemn an entire class of people based on statistics without offering the opportunity to supersede?  I certainly could not.  

And hope offered with knowledge does not end with violence.  We are all crippled by our genetic make-up, our upbringing, or the opportunity life has brought us, but just as Anderton was able to choose his fate, we too can overcome ours.  Admittedly, the road to victory may be more difficult for some, there is a road and there is a way.  We are not victims.  Yet so many are unaware of their choice.  They have been deceived and believe themselves to be outcomes of their environment or heredity.  For them, this is probably true.  But in the moment they realize the power of the decision before them, victory is within their reach.  By God, we have been offered free will and at every single moment, life is ours to be chosen.  We can choose Good or we can choose the lesser.  But whichever we decide, we must realize that we have written our own fate.  We create ourselves.  

Of Ape and Man: How much can our primitive ancestors inform the origins of human behavior?

While reading Demonic Males by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, I was convinced by the lead author and researcher’s anecdotal approach to the scientific study of natural aggression in male apes.  Wrangham’s connection between chimpanzee and primitive human behavior construct a riveting plot journeying through time, culture, and species.  In a quest to discover the origins of human violence, a turn towards our kin-species seems to abstract the nature of violence from many of the complications surrounding current human aggression and elucidate the base motivations for such behavior.  Additionally, the accessibility of the scientific and genetic evidence make Wrangham’s suggestions appear completely plausible.  With his experience among the demonic male chimpanzees and his observations of the peaceful bonobos, Wrangham offers his solution to human violence--a universal, psychological renaissance that would establish a  monarchial, homogeneous (yet, peaceful) one-world order.  Yet, not until the conclusion of my reading, in considering this grave outlook, did certain problematic assumptions that led to this suggestion cause me to question their validity.  

Firstly, the genetic evidence that man and ape are distant evolutionary relatives is not a point of contention for most, yet much of Wrangham’s attention focuses on this intent.  By offering superfluous and redundant scientific evidence of this connection, the reader makes that same as sumptuous jump as the author has made.  Although genetics, anatomy, social characterization and mating habits all link apes to man, no substantial scientific documentation records at what point in history certain evolutionary differentiation took place.  For example, specific chimpanzees communities have recently been discovered to exhibit intra-communal and inter-relational aggression.  Based on common ancestry, Wrangham projects that this phenomenon, also found in human behavior, links humans more closely to the chimpanzee species.  However, evidence of species differentiation producing common evolutionary occurrences would debunk this theory.  Not only does the author fail to mention the possibility that violence in apes and males originated as a distinct responses, but Wrangham enthusiastically concludes that the peaceful variations within the bonobo species result from a preferable evolutionary cycle--a cycle he separates from man’s evolution.  Basically, I cannot make the hypothetical leap from a modern species of apes to our primitive evolutionary primates and back to contemporary behavioral aggression without the connections that show homo sapiens’ specific divergence from either the violent chimpanzee, or the peaceful hominid.  

Another point that is only briefly addressed in Wrangham’s theodicy, remains that human intervention or interruption that may, or may not, have contributed to primate violence.  Bananas were used in some cases to form a bond that would allow for observation of primate behavior, yet the affects of this can really never be known.  For only up until recently, the reality of our primate relatives was believed to be a peaceful, utopian, primitive existence.  Perhaps more credit should be payed to the law of unintended consequences.  Although human interference may not have influenced the behavioral patterns of chimpanzees in any way, there is absolutely no way to be sure.  Therefore, if this behavior was, in fact, an isolated reaction to human intrusion, the observations of violent behaviors would prove much less reliable.  For, an observation noted in both primate and primitive human communities, confirms that clan or tribe size is most closely tied to food abundance.  Where there is more food, there are larger clans.  As the clans grow larger, food becomes more scarce.  The clan must divide in order to provide for all its members.  For a while, a peaceful existence ensues.  Yet eventually, territorial, progenitive, and/or food supply competition erases all memory of the past camaraderie and rivalry establishes a new rift between the clans.  Thus, in supplying the observed apes with a surplus, or spike in bananas, researchers may have artificially instigated this cycle of violence.

Perhaps the most alarming point overlooked by Wrangham is the abundant evidence of a genetic profile with the propensity towards violence.  In humans, this profile has been vaguely identified, but Wrangham provides no evidence of such research among his observed apes.  Such comparisons could reinforce or explain many of the observations detailed in Demonic Males.  Yet, with the plethora of evidence giving rise to genetic dominance, one must consider that some humans posses this profile, while others do not.  If so, does the human link to chimpanzees hold quite as true, or is the peaceful profile in humans somehow a mutation, as presumed with the bonobos.  Interestingly, the demonic male profile would seem to be preferable among chimpanzees, yet the author would suggest that humanity may prefer the profile more akin to the bonobos.  However, insufficient data in the way of genetics leaves the human roots of violence only loosely tied to chimpanzee aggression.

And finally, the disparity between primate and human violence cannot be ignored.  The violence displayed by the chimpanzee species certainly matches certain aspects of human aggression--gang violence, war and raids, female aggression and dominance, etc.--yet, the cognitive processes of humans make our violence an entirely more complex and confused phenomenon.  The very ability to consider the concept of violence separates us inconceivably from our primitive kin.  Although Wrangham addresses some level of cognition (possibly tied to the consumption of roots) that crosses the threshold of primitive aggression, too little emphasis is placed on the significance of such disparity.  Violence in the animal kingdom has always been a result of primitive survival instincts.  Presumably, humans were the only species that chose aggression for what seemed to be an accessory, rather than necessity, to survival.  Yet, arguably, with the introduction of cognitive recognition among humans, perhaps the rules of survival changed.  Perhaps physical survival in humans remained a base motivation for violence, but the emotional survival develops need for aggression as elusive and complex as human emotion.  

To conclude, Demonic Males certainly offers an intriguing perspective on the origins of aggression, but in a series of haphazard assertions, many of Wrangham’s suggestions prove sterile.  However, I would not advocate the absolute dismissal of any avenue of study that could lead to the eradication of human violence.  Thus, I certainly see the benefits of such consideration.  Wrangham points out that removing violence from society will call for a universal overhaul of thought and structure.  I, too, come to a similar conclusion; however, my reasoning does not point directly to the pro-generative success of the “bad boy” gene.  With much to consider, from demonic male chimpanzees to the Utopia experienced by the bonobos, human cognition opens a world of possibility that we may discover, which is unavailable to all other species.  With this gentic “upper-hand,” perhaps such observations offered by Wrangham and his team will point humanity to a more peaceful future.