I remember hearing this more than 10 years ago.

Hi Iruka,

You are touching on an area I find absolutely fascinating, it goes to the heart of many discourses currently viewed as 'hot' buttons within the scientific community, partly traceable to E O Wilson's 1970s book 'sociobiology'. The reason is simple: we are talking about human nature itself; it's inescapable to *not* have a view on this by definition - regardless of whether it is based on infantilising myths (religions) reason (science) or ideology (politics, economics etc...)

Bonobos differ from humans in at least a couple of ways sexually . 1) They have sex more openly 2) They have sex (including grooming) more frequently. The links between sex and aggression go at least as far back as Lysistrata by Aristophanes written in 411 BC. In this play women hold back on sex in order to attempt to prevent their male partners from war, and thus end the Peloponnesian war. Human sexual culture, due to our capacity for consiousness, runs a wider gamut than any other species from the celebate (interesting work has been done here to link celebacy to psycho-sexual dysfunction and even sado-masochism, just think of the monks who flagellate themselves) to the orgy and many forms of fetishism. The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker points out that the most violent age of human animals is around 2, and that tribal groups have much much higher rates of violent death, per capita, than 'civilised' societies  (even though humans have murdered well over 200 million of their own species in the 20th century (human males obviously).

These facts lead to an interesting secular version of the myth that just wont go away, namely the judeo-christian myth of 'original sin'. It ties into our political views in intersting ways: If humans are innately violent then the best we can hope for is a political system that 'muzzles' are innate aggression (in my opinion Capitalism does precisley the opposite, but thats a whole separate story, albeit a very important one). this can be called the "tragic / dystopic vision" of humans. the alternative is often caricatured as the "utopian vision" (various forms of libertarian socialist thought including anarchism). The idea being that humans are 'blank slates' and a more just system of institutions (removing private tyrannies like Coporations, ending wage-slavery and giving humans much greater autonomy / self-management) would lead to less violent cultures. I don't think we are blank slates, nor do I think we are 'angels', I think the situationist slogan “Man is neither Rousseau’s noble savage nor the Church’s depraved sinner. He is violent when oppressed, gentle when free.” has some merit.

 What's ckear is that private sexual expression lowers male aggression levels (penetrative sex - not masturbation - releases a whole host of chemicals that lower levels of aggression, for example) and the male desire for females enhances aggression (the Alpha male). Human females conceal ovulation very effectively, males don't want to invest in a child that is not theirs (20% of children born in the US / UK were concieved by someone other than the purportive parent) and the level of investment in offspring is higher than in any other species. This inevitably leads to conflict as well as some fantastic art, lol.

Personally I was fed the Catholic meme as a child (in Ireland). I threw it out the window by the age of 12 / 13. I do think it had some longer term effects: I lost my viriginty later than most people (20), but then went on to 'liberate' myself by going towards the other extreme: threesomes, a few years of heavy promiscuity etc...

 Just a few thoughts,

Tim. 

Fascinating observations Iruka. I'm interested to know what your non-humanist beliefs are. I can empathise with your feelings of solidarity towards non-human creatures, as even the worst crimes of non-human animals (fratricide etc..) pale into insignificance when paralleled to the crimes of humanity.

Capitalism fasincates me in that it simply doesn't exist. Pure capitalism would collapse in seconds were it instituted. The US and UK do not operate under laissez faire free market liberalism. There was a brief period in the late 19th century which approximated this form of liberalism, but the experiment was quickly called off. The reality is much more complex: we have instituted a form of state capitalism were risk (capital hates risk) is socialized and only when a 'product' has developed past a certain point (in, say a publicly or pentagon funded R+D program, in the US) is it handed over to the profiteers (Commercial planes are modified bombers, for example). The most embarrassingly silly form of this kind of rhetoric comes from the 'objectivists' (Ayn Rand). [It amuses me to hear Objectivists quote Rand, and therefore behave as the very type she despised: Second-handers]

I recommend John Gray's False Dawn for an excellent account of the ways in which state capitalism depends on state power for its control, but paradoxically erodes the very (thin) forms of formal democracy that exist within Western Democracies.

Personally I am critical of all forms of authoritarianism and view the corporation as a collectivist private tyranny that shares many of its features with Stalinist Communism. As long as these forms of institution exist with little or no real accountability and beyond any form of meaningful democratic control the future of humanity will be rendered less certain. Indeed, as you correctly point out Mussolini thought that Fascism should be, more correctly, called "Corporatism". The extent to which hierarchy will always be part of human society is an open question. Socialism (in the anarchist sense of enabling the greatest amounts of individual liberty within a system of voluntarism is something I value deeply, but, like you, I am also prone to the tragic vision and have little hope for us in this respect).

Ernst Mayr, the great biologist, pointed out only a few years before his death that intelligence may not be of advantage from an evolutionary perspective. We are a new arrival on this planet, and over 99% of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct. Perhaps he is write. The dystopic futures of capitalism were well summed up by the ex-pink floyd bassist Roger Waters on his seminal album Amused to Death. Here's an exceprt:

We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We ooohhed and aaaahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then, the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry, no feelings left
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death (repeating)

It's a dark vision, but I'm with Gramsci when he said: "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will"

Tim.