Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed by Marc Bekoff

Author:Marc Bekoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608682201
Publisher: New World Library

Give Peace a Chance: We Do Not Have to Go to War

I’VE WRITTEN A NUMBER OF ESSAYS about the importance of cooperation, fairness, compassion, and empathy in the evolution of social behavior in human and nonhuman animals. Now, a new book edited by Douglas Fry titled War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views and an interdisciplinary meeting called “Obstacles and Catalysts of Peaceful Behavior,” held in March 2013 at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, The Netherlands, show clearly that a science of peace is possible and that war is neither a human universal nor an ancient or an evolved adaptation.

This Leiden gathering was strongly international, and I was there to speak about social reciprocity, conflict resolution, and peacemaking in nonprimates and the importance of social play. This followed up on the book I wrote with Jessica Pierce called Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Many animals work hard to cooperate to play fairly. And the basic rules for fair play in animals also apply to humans, namely, ask first, be honest, follow the rules, and admit you’re wrong. When the rules of play are violated, and when fairness breaks down, so does play and peace.

Professor Fry’s wide-ranging and encyclopedic book is truly a landmark compendium and a myth-buster. It’s a must-read that deserves very close attention. Written by leading biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and geologists, the book is divided into six parts that provide a comprehensive look at the topic. It presents ecology-and evolution-based models of peace, and it looks closely at ancient nomadic, hunter-gatherer human societies as well as at primatological research to seek out the roots of cooperation and the modern forms of violence and conflict. The book ends with a proposal for creating a “Global Peace System.” The amount of information and the documentation and references are staggering.

In the foreword, renowned primatologist Frans de Waal writes that “the evidence that we have always waged war is rather thin.” Professor de Waal goes on to discuss the importance of research on topics such as reconciliation, conflict resolution, empathy, and friendships in nonhuman animals. He notes that while we do need to be concerned with human aggression, this concern “needs to be balanced with that other potential that we have, which is to make peace, get along, and develop societies based on cooperation. The idea that this is not part of human nature, that it is merely a thin moral veneer over an otherwise nasty biology, is massively contradicted by the contributions assembled here.” Professor de Waal also has a new book, called The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, which covers the biological origins of human fairness.

While it should be noted that other animals do indeed fight with one another, and on occasion seriously harm and kill one another, their behavior is predominantly prosocial (defined as “voluntary behavior intended to benefit another”). For more on this, see my essays “Human-Like Violence Is Extremely Rare in Other Animals,” page 201, and “Wild Justice and Moral Intelligence in Animals,” page 195.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.