Imagine all the People: Human Nature, War, Peace & Humanism

Douglas Fry is a docent in the Development Psychology Program at Abo Akademi University in Finland and a research scientist in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He is the author of The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Violence (Oxford, 2006). Judith Hand, with a doctorate in biology, is a research associate and lecturer at University of California at Los Angeles, and has written widely on both anthropology and biology. She is the author of Women, Power and the Biology of Peace (Questpath, 2003). Harold Barclay was a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta in Canada until he retired in 1988. He is the author of People without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy (Kahn &Averill, 1990).

Fry's work has involved studying the still existing hunter-gatherer societies of which he has noted no less than 80, all of which exhibit very low levels of aggression and no warfare. Fry (and Hand) point to the prejudices of western researchers and scientists by noting not only that they have insisted that humans and chimps, rather than humans and bonobos, share more in common, but also by omitting certain things from their research - such as studying human males regarding violence almost exclusively - when trying to ascertain human behavior among our own species.

Hand points to several reasons bonobos are more like humans. One is that female bonobos can restrict male aggression because bonobos eat foods that allow them to travel in larger groups than chimps, giving females a better chance to form alliances and partnerships. Other biological reasons include the bonobo and human traits of hidden ovulation, engagement in frontal sexual intercourse, and continuous female receptivity, none of which are shared with chimps.

Fry also addresses the Margaret Mead "controversy" explaining that those who critiqued her alleged writings of peaceful Samoans, did a hatched job on a mere strawman. Two critics, Demonic Males author's Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson - whom themselves borrowed heavily from Derek Freeman's devastating critique of Mead's work in 1983 - ignored the bulk of the data which would contrast their attempt to make peaceful societies disappear. This included ignoring the work of anthropologists and sociologists Bonta, Montagu, Howell, Willis, Sponsel and Gregor. In their chapter, "Paradise Imagined," Wrangham and Peterson argued that Mead saw Samoans as unagressive, but that she was absolutely wrong. However, Fry's rereading of Mead's book in question, "Coming of Age in Samoa," found no statements about the Samoans being peaceful or unagressive, but he found instead that Mead acknowledged that they made war in the past, but not 'nowadays.' Freeman, Wrangham and Peterson left out the 'nowadays' and argued that Mead said the Samoans were always peaceful.

Here are the key elements of Fry and Hand's work.

• Aggression, Fry and Hand admit, is a part of human nature ... perhaps even genetically or neurologically so ... but how aggression is played out is based more on culture than on "nature." Nomadic hunter- gatherers (in the past or today), are egalitarian societies which are not completely absent of all aggression or limited violence, but its members do not engage in wide scale or extreme violence, or in warfare. Instead, they have many methods of conflict management and reconciliation techniques which keep aggression/violence to a minimal. Therefore, what should be noted is that there are more examples in human nature of peace and cooperation in the bulk of human history (99% of which humans lived as nomadic hunter- gatherers), than of violence and war.


• Other "primitive" societies which are often pointed out as violent or warlike -- certain native American or African tribes -- may range from static hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies, but are not included in the over 80 nomadic societies Fry has researched.


• Females in societies (past and present), which share partnership roles with males, tend to leave such societies more balanced in terms of aggression. Females, while willing to defend their family or society with equal aggression as males, do not begin conflicts. They are not the aggressors. Hand believes that the natural, aggressive male bonding technique when unchecked - particularly among young males - is what leads to greater violence. Hand argues therefore for true "political" equality of males and females in society as that seems to keep humans naturally cooperative and egalitarian. The females are often the ones who keep the young males in check.


• Hand also discusses the ancient Keftian society, one that was not nomadic and indeed more hierarchal than such, and points out that the balance between men and women kept their culture peaceful... until a neighboring male-lead, highly hierarchal society made war on them.


• Hand argues that there are six necessary conditions toward a cooperative and peaceful society. They include the need for protection from aggressors, resources that enable self-sufficiency, a legitimate central authority, an ethos of non-violence, a strong female influence, and a watch on population density so that it doesn't exceed resource availability.

In the end Fry and Hand agree, as do many others, that human nature is not as Hobbes, E.O. Wilson, Pinker and others would argue. A world view built on such a definition that Fry and Hand suggest would be vital to our planetary culture. For instance, political philosophers explain that by large, neo-liberals, capitalists and Right- Libertarians all seem to hold to the Hobbesian definition of human nature... selfish, violent, uber-competitive, lazy and greedy. This notion is false.

In contrast, Socialists and Social-Democrats seem to hold to the Marxist idea that humans are infinitely malleable and good, but this notion clearly does not work either. Nature does play a role in human behavior after all. Pinker is correct in the idea that we do not come into the world as 'blank slates.' Also, the words 'good' and 'bad' are too vague and superficial to do us any real service.