Since I wrote Egalitarianism a few days ago, I have carried on thinking about the subjects raised - and particularly about my strongly negative visceral reaction to gossiping, judging and condemning certain actors who do not conform to tribal norms.
One of Boehm's contentions is that through many hundreds, indeed thousands, of generations, these practices effectively moderated the human gene pool, making Homo sapiens less aggressive and authoritarian through social selection, rather than natural selection. I believe this to be plausible, though it certainly does not or has not eradicated all such tendencies. For which I am, to some extent, grateful. The evidence lies not just in the behaviour of those no longer living in egalitarian hunter-gather bands, but that such bands still have cause to punish and kill bad actors. What appears to have been more effective, as far as social evolution is concerned, is increasing the ability of aggressive or dominant individuals to control or mask these traits, or perhaps to exhibit them in a way that can be socially acceptable - through charisma, persuasion or manipulation. An ability to deceive and to assert influence in different ways has thus been developed alongside greater behavioural inhibitions.
Inhibition, it seems to me, is a crucial and beneficial outcome. Indeed, the part of the brain most regarded as modern and unique to our species, in terms of development, seems to be related to precisely this. I'm no neuroscientist, so this may be wildly inaccurate, but I was listening to a neuroscientist on Closer To Truth who seemed to be stating it this way: the frontal lobes are largely concerned with inhibition, most generally, the inhibition of basic drives (sex, hunger, aggression), while the right side (he must have named some specific brain region) goes further, inhibiting some higher order actions - like language (thus stopping us just saying what we think all the time).
The need for self-protection among our ancestors - and particularly those with 'alpha (fe)male' inclinations led to an increased selection preference for self-assessment and self-control. Richard Wrangham, a British anthropologist and primatologist, describes this as 'auto-domestication' - and in line with the lowered expression of aggression, skeletal evidence shows less aggressive traits.
So far so good.
However, the developed conscience internalises not an objectively 'right' morality, but the social norms: the standards and expectations of a given society - thus, it is morally neutral. And it should not be assumed that the original mores that led to its adaptivity were of necessity values that should for eternity be normative.
The 'soft-power' asserted by the community, against the 'hard-power' of aggression and domination is itself not necessarily normative - though without doubt preferable to outright aggression and totalitarianism. By which I mean that gossip, condemnation and judgmentalism also have negative consequences. They can be used to inhibit difference, novelty, innovation and invention - indeed anything that does not fit a strict doctrine of tradition and conventionalism. This severely limits the scope for the community's own evolution in technology and creativity, as well as politically and culturally, while also hugely limiting individual freedom.
There is also the problem that the process of social sanctioning can create an arms race between the ability to mine out malpractice and the wrongdoer's ability to be deceptive and put on a good social face. It may explain our far greater aptitude at deception compared to the other Great Apes and also our prying curiosity about the doings of others - even those whose actions have no impact on our own security or flourishing - and our eagerness to shame and condemn them. It is a recipe for self-righteousness.
In all, this is a blunt tool in terms of moral development, a hammer. And not every social situation is a nail. The greater complexity of large scale communities and technologies, the change of priorities from 'mere' survival' to flourishing, and the cultural learning since the Axial Age mean we have finer tools at hand - and we should use them.
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