When we see the genocide perpetrated by Putin, we assume that he is different from us–a psychopath who will destroy anyone who gets between him and his ambitions. Could it be that we all have the capacity to destroy others given the appropriate circumstances? Please read on before you smash your computer.
A growing body of evidence suggests that the “laws” governing our moral decisions are actually those implicit rules set down by the tribe to maximize its survival. From the Code of Ur-Nammu c. 2100–2050 BC, defining illegal behaviors in the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia, and throughout the history of our species, human tribes (in-groups) have developed codes of behavior designed to stabilize the group. Acts of violence against fellow members are typically restricted. In religious groups, these forbidden behaviors are usually classified as “evil” and empathetic behaviors as “good.” Such codes, spiritualized as moral laws, have varied depending on changing environmental conditions and prevailing ideas about individual responsibility.
For example, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Old Testament, containing elements of the Torah (c. 650 BC), accepted killing among members of the in-group in specific circumstances as decreed by “an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth.” However, the New Testament changed this rule with the “turn-the-other-cheek” philosophy, expressed by Jesus of Nazareth in his Sermon on the Mount.
Until recently, some tribes in New Guinea practiced cannibalism and some Eskimo tribes, practiced infanticide, because these were deemed necessary for survival. As English philosopher Thomas Hobbes observed over 3 centuries ago:
Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.
Throughout history, these moral laws were the rules for living within a particular in-group. To ensure compliance, members violating the rules were punished through ostracism, incarceration, or other sanctions. In religious cults, there were also threats of eternal punishment in an afterlife. By contrast, those who were compliant with the rules and perceived to advance the interests of the group were lionized and sometimes canonized. In cases where a member of an in-group flagrantly violated the rules, the member was expelled from the group and excluded from the protection of its rules. Empathy for such renegades was withdrawn and they became subject to any mayhem that the in-group felt was appropriate.
We ignore the tribal laws at our peril. Nietzsche, himself a loner, urged us to seek our moral code and reject the tyranny of the group, lest we lose our sense of self:
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
The Out-group
The downside of an in-group is that it creates, ipso facto, an out-group, The degree of empathy shared by fellow members of the in-group is not usually extended to those who do not belong. Reporting on his fMRI-aided research on empathy toward those within and outside an individual’s group, neuroscientist David Eagleman stated in his book, The Brain–The Story of You:
We found a good deal of individual variability, but on average, people’s brains showed a larger empathic response when they saw someone in their ingroup in pain, and less of a response when it was a member of one of their outgroups.
How did this involuntary discrimination evolve? The exercise of empathy toward fellow members of an in-group comes at a personal cost. The pain you feel when a member of your family suffers an illness or dies, depletes some of your energy reserve, moving you toward what neurologists call empathy exhaustion. Imagine the depletion of your energy reserves if you suffered that level of grief for every person in the world who died. To minimize this drain on our reserves, our brain has developed the ability to “dehumanize” people outside our in-group, by perceiving them as inanimate and outside the scope of our moral responsibility. This cognitive bias, called dehumanizing perception enables us to distance ourselves emotionally from the suffering of those in our out-groups, thereby conserving our supply of altruistic energy.
Using fMRI technology, social psychologist Lasana Harris examined the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that becomes active when it recognizes an object as human. He recorded the brain responses of participants who were shown 48 photographs of various social groups as well as inanimate objects to determine which social groups might be objects of dehumanization. In that study, he reported:
Analyses revealed mPFC activation to all social groups except extreme (low-low) out-groups, [e.g. the homeless] who especially activated insula and amygdala, a pattern consistent with disgust… No objects, though rated with the same emotions, activated the mPFC. This neural evidence supports the prediction that extreme out-groups may be perceived as less than human, or dehumanized.
The Roots of Genocide
It is this brain mechanism that facilitates genocide, by enabling us to see those in the out-groups as inhuman, and therefore not entitled to our empathy. An incident in Sarajevo that captures the horror of the genocide during the Yugoslav war (1992-5) was described by David Eagleman who reported.
To exemplify the ways in which normal social interaction broke down, he [my friend Hasan] told me how Serbs arrested a Bosniak dentist. They hung him by his arms from a lightpole, and they beat him with a metal bar until they broke his spine. Hasan told me how the dentist hung there for three days while the Serbian children walked past his body on their way to school. As he put it, “There are universal values and these values are very basic: don’t kill. In April 1992, this ‘don’t kill’ suddenly disappeared–and it became ‘go and kill.’ ”
Human history has taught us how easy it is for us to dehumanize those whom we perceive to be outside our “tribe.” Understanding that this potential is innate within us all may help us resist the inclination to dehumanize those outside our in-group, but how do we avoid becoming a victim of those who dehumanize us? The answer is written in large print in the annals of human history. We must always remain strong personally and militarily. Whether it will be possible, at some time in the future, for our species to resolve issues without violence is unknown, but we do know that it will not be sometime soon.
[This post is an excerpt from Intelligence, IQ & Perception, published 2022]
