Predatory Urges

The Multidimensional Human Being

Predatory urges +are+ part of humanity's makeup; but so too are cooperation, empathy and love. Psychologist Steven Pinker, who emphasises the importance of our DNA in 'explaining' human nature, notes that there is "an evolutionary basis for altruism." He observes, too, that "sociobiology shows that a sense of justice has a deep foundation in people's minds." (Pinker, 'The Blank Slate', Penguin, 2002, p. 111)

Pinker goes on:

"evolution endowed us with a moral sense, and we have expanded its circle of application over the course of history through reason (grasping the logical interchangeability of our interests and others'), knowledge (learning of the advantages of cooperation over the long term), and having sympathy (having experiences that allow us to feel other people's pain)." (Ibid., p. 188)

In a similar vein, evolutionary expert Elliott Sober points out that:

"biologists now universally acknowledge that altruism can evolve and actually has done so. The picture of nature as thoroughly red in tooth and claw is one-sided. It is no more adequate than the rosy picture that everything is sweetness and light. Kindness and cruelty both have their place in nature, and evolutionary biology helps explain why." (Sober, in Davidson and Harrington, op. cit., p. 54)

Sober points out the evolutionary success of cooperation:

"Groups of altruists do better than groups of selfish individuals, so altruism can evolve, even though selfish individuals do better than altruists in the same group." (Ibid., p. 53)

This may have been the evolutionary seed for the development of compassion, even if altruistic behaviour was at first directed towards one's offspring only. But how was compassion later extended to much wider circles in human society, even encompassing complete strangers? Sober puts the question thus: "it is not puzzling why some compassion should evolve and replace the trait of having no compassion at all; what is puzzling is how extended compassion could evolve and replace limited compassion." (Ibid, p. 62)

He offers the possible explanation that the capacity to feel extended compassion is correlated with the capacity to feel compassion toward one's offspring. There was an adaptive advantage in parents being moved by the cries of their children. A side effect of this "evolutionary event" is that the cries of any baby can move us.

To emphasise what Sober is saying: the development of extended compassion, which may confer no adaptive benefit of its own, is, nonetheless, consistent with the theory of evolution. If this still seems puzzling, consider an enlightening argument that Charles Darwin had with Alfred Russel Wallace, the scientist who independently proposed the mechanism of natural selection.

As Sober explains, Wallace's view was that "natural selection cannot explain mental abilities that provide no help in surviving and reproducing." For example, keen eyesight is useful in hunting, but why should natural selection favour the ability to devise new scientific theories, write symphonies or paint masterpieces? Wallace argued that natural selection could explain practical skills, not "higher" abilities. But Darwin countered that the separation of "practical" and "higher" abilities is an illusion; the same mental abilities that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce now allow us to pursue intellectual activities that may have no practical benefit. (Sober, ibid., p. 64)

Extended compassion likely developed as such a "higher" ability. There is, however, a growing body of evidence that developing and practicing compassion also has practical benefits, both for others and for oneself. See, e.g, David Edwards, 'Happiness is Dissent - The Truth About "Looking After Number 1" '; www.medialens.org/articles/the_articles/articles_2001/de_numb​er_one.html.


[link to www.medialens.org]