Peaceful ape theory.
Pacifism and slavery.
I was recently the victim of an ad campaign by Jeremy Griffith in which he claims to “solve the human condition.” His contention is that human beings are not “genetically violent,” but violence arises as a consequence of the friction between instinct and conscious understanding.
Jeremy Griffith is not the first to propose such an “answer” to all of life’s suffering. Stanislav Grof also proposed that human violence is the result of psychic trauma. Instead of blaming this trauma on the conflict between reason and instinct, Grof blames the painfulness of the birth process as the root of all suffering, which then manifests itself repeated throughout life in a COEX system.
Both Griffith and Grof claim that our Bonobo ancestors are peaceful and live in harmony in nature, nonviolently. This claim is scientifically false. Bonobos are indeed more peaceful than chimps, who are absolute psychopaths and cannibalize one another. Bonobos do however eat meat. They hunt bats, squirrels, and have been observed to hunt antelopes.
Grof’s explanation for human violence is a physical version of Griffith’s psychological claim. Grof claims that as human heads expanded in size, they caused major physical problems during the birthing process, making the experience of being born traumatic. This trauma then becomes a repressed memory which reappears throughout a person’s life: fear of tight spaces, fear of the dark, hope for a “light at the end of the tunnel” (vagina). Griffith’s claim has nothing to do with the evolutionary expansion of the skull, but blames everything on the frustration that humans experience when their conscious mind contradicts their instinctual mind.
Both of these claims may help, to a degree, explain some of humanity’s violent behaviors. It is possible that as birth became more painful, it did result in repressed infantile or perinatal memories, which then reappear in adulthood. One way to test this is to look at adults who were born via c-section. If these adults are dramatically different from the control group, then it seems plausible that the birth process can create trauma in the nervous system or lasting brain trauma which affects adult behavior.
A 2021 study found that "adults born by C-section display increased vulnerability to acute stress."1
A study published in 2009 in the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine claims that “difficulties in being interrupted, a strong motivation to achieve as a compensation for not successfully initiating or being an active participant in their births, and a pattern of offering help even when it is not requested.”2
A study published in 2022 found that “adults reporting birth by C-section, versus those born vaginally, had a 58% increased risk of having prediabetes or diabetes.”3
These three studies demonstrate a correlation between birth trauma and negative life outcomes. However, it could be the case that women who choose C-section are more likely to also have other issues. For example, it is possible that women who select C-sections are generally less healthy, and have generally less healthy children, who have an increased risk of all sorts of maladies.
In the case of Griffith, the idea that humans have no genetic basis for violence is contradicted by the evidence. First of all, human beings differ in their genetic propensity for violence, with the most obvious case being the genetic difference between men and women, especially as it relates to testosterone. Second of all, Griffith’s idea that, since apes 5 million years ago were not very violent, that humans could not have any genetic basis for violent behavior, is a denial of the possibility of evolution.
Dogs, for example, are, on average, much less violent than wolves. However, dogs can clearly be bred to become more violent. While Chihuahuas are small, they tend to be more aggressive than other dogs. Pitbulls and Rottweilers tend to be more aggressive than Golden Retrievers. Just as it is not accurate to say that all dogs are genetically non-violent, it is also improper to say that all humans are genetically non-violent.
Furthermore, variations in human violence are not self-evidently caused by the conflict between consciousness and instinct. Someone who represses their homosexuality in order to follow a religion would be expected to be violent under Griffith’s explanation, but this is not necessarily the case. On the other hand, even humans with very low levels of cognitive functioning (consciousness) can be induced to violent acts. In other words, kids can be violent.
The number one determination of whether or not a person will be violent to others if whether or not they have been the victim of violence. People who are physically abused tend to be more violent. This is also the case for dogs, and probably all life on earth. Violent conditions breed violence.
Technically, even herbivores and prey species, such as deer, can become violent when they fear their young are under attack. However, a distinction can be made between defensive behavior and predatory behavior.
Despite the fantasies of Grof and Griffith, humans are indeed predator animals. Predator behavior is so genetically ingrained into humans that one of the theories behind our brain development is that it was spurred on by the massive amounts of fat we consumed from hunting.
Brain size and intelligence is not always confined to carnivores. Elephants are extremely intelligent, but are herbivores. Still, some of the most intelligent animals in the world, including dolphins, whales, and cats are carnivores. Pigs are technically omnivores, but are extremely aggressive in their undomesticated form as hogs. Hippos and horses are both herbivores, but in the wild also display extremely aggressive and competitive behavior.
Despite the myth that intelligence is correlated with pacifism, nature shows us the opposite: the most docile animals are the least intelligent, while the most intelligent animals are predators, hunters, competitive, and aggressive.
This somewhat overlaps with Griffith’s theory, that aggression is a product of the conflict between reason and instinct. But intelligence is somewhat distinct from consciousness. Are we to suppose that a hippo is aggressive because its consciousness is competing with its instinct? Instead, it seems more reasonable to suggest that intelligence correlates, in the animal kingdom, with aggression, independent of consciousness.
This somewhat contradicts variations in aggression and intelligence found within humans. Most studies show an inverse correlation between aggression and intelligence. The problem with this finding is that most human beings live within modern agricultural states. These states systematically punish violence, and reward pacifism. As a result, given these specific cultural conditions (which have developed as social constructs over time), we find that intelligent people tend to be less aggressive.
But what if we removed the context of agricultural government? What if humans were placed in a paleolithic environment, without states? Is it possible that the correlation between intelligence and peacefulness would invert? By looking back at historical conditions of pastoralist societies, it does appear that several human groups with high intelligence were also extremely violent: principally, the Indo-Europeans, and their descendants, the Greeks, the Vikings, and the Celts.
Within an agricultural settlement, violence is disadvantageous, because there is limited space, and caloric acquisition is centralized and collectivized. This is not the case within pastoralist societies. Pastoralism, by its nature, is nomadic, meaning that there is no settled or “owned” space. Pastoralists are not confined to one particular fertile patch of land, and can migrate at will.
If a farmer begins to kill his fellow farmers, the crops will fail, since they will lack the mass labor required. If a pastoralist beats his fellow pastoralists in battle, he can steal their livestock and enrich himself. Whereas violence is disincentivized in agricultural societies, it is to the benefit of the individual in pastoralist societies. This ethos is reflected in the Viking law code, which stipulated that a man could challenge another man to a duel, and if he won, he also won the right to that man’s property. Essentially, this was a legal form of piracy.
Conclusion
The peaceful ape theory relies heavily on an agricultural view of the world. This is what we are taught in our history books: that civilization began in Sumer and China, and spread outward to the world. Yet there is a glaring contradiction here. No one outside of China speaks Chinese, and Sumerian is a dead language. Instead, the languages of the world are those spoken by pastoralists who resisted agriculture: Indo-Europeans, Turks, and Arabs.
The religions of the world are also largely the ones promulgated by these peoples. It was Europeans who spread Christianity, Arabs who spread Islam, and Aryans who spread Buddhism to the world. Today, not one corner of the world is unaffected by the touch of these nomadic cultures. This seems to contradict the agricultural thesis, that farmers were the smartest, the most peaceful, and the most “human.”
An alternative thesis is that ancient farming arose due to a degeneration of the human spirit, where some humans submitted themselves to slavery rather than be killed. All early agriculture seems to rely on the principle of serfdom or slavery. It was not until thousands of years later that we have any evidence of “yeomen,” or independent farmers who own their own land as “property holders.” During this early period, approximately 12k years ago, farming arose in those areas where slave labor was readily available.
The psychology of these slaves, if we are to be honest, was similar to the psychology of domesticated animals. Slaves and livestock both are pacified and willing to labor on behalf of others. Both slaves and livestock submit to their owners and have little mind or will of their own.
The origin of agriculture was not the brilliant invention of a farmer, who learned how to grow crops, but was a result of the invention of slavery, which was developed alongside the domestication of other species. Dogs were domesticated 15k years ago, but were not used as livestock (forced to labor). The first livestock were domesticated 11k years ago, and included goats, sheep, swine, and cattle. The rapidity of domestication of all these species, which did not occur gradually over millennia, but extremely suddenly and without precedent, also occurred at the same time that humans began to domesticate other humans: in other words, to enslave them.
It is ironic, then, that the love of pacifism which is bred into us by an agricultural mindset only arose because of slavery. Whoever preaches the inherent pacifism of humanity, whether in the Bible, in New Age religions, or in secular form, is a descendant of those first slave masters in the middle east and China.
2021, Altered stress responses in adults born by Caesarean section. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8733342/
https://www.stroeckenverdult.be/site/upload/docs/isppm%20tijdschrift%20caesarean%20birth%20adults.pdf
(2022) Cesarean Delivery and Insulin Sensitivity in the Older Adult: The Microbiome and Insulin Longitudinal Evaluation Study. https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/6/7/bvac072/6580364?login=false