Are humans different from nature? Pt. 3
This will be the final installment of this blog post. In this section I will discuss the problematic behavior and my hypothesis.
The problematic behavior, the one that drove philosophers to look somewhere "pure" and "real" to try to cure it, is materialistic greed. Humans have a problem with being selfish and hoarding materials. The definition for greed is simply someone excessively collecting one or more items. To say that nature can cure this is wrong. Nature is the one who nurtured this behavior through natural selection. To survive in nature, you need to have the food, water, and shelter. Typically, it would not be just for you, but for your tribe. So, instead of an individual keeping any of these resources for themselves, it was a tribe that hoarded it from other tribes (Breugelmans et al., 2015; Seuntjens, 2016). In fact, it was probably do to societal changes that people are more selfish than ever. Either way, a love for nature is not going to help someone become more open to other people. Actually, it is quite the opposite. People use nature to escape from others, some of which will threaten another just for coming near their property. Others who own vast amounts of wood will even refuse to let people hunt on their property. A great example of people not wanting to share is Savage River State Forest in Garrett County, MD. This used to be public hunting grounds for local families, but someone tried to privatize the land and make it illegal for people to hunt. Although they did not privatize it all, they were able to restrict access to some of the area.
My solution is that we should not be turning to outside forces to find a cure for nature, instead we should look towards our own behaviors, specifically empathy. Humans have a great capacity to empathize and help people, even if they are not kin. Sadly, this, too, is not unique to humans. Vampire bats are known to feed other members of their group if they did not have a successful hunt. Normally in the wild, it is uncommon for an individual to help another member of its kind, but it does happen. The only thing is that they only help others that are genetically related to it. A study from Carter et al. (2013) found that allow there is a moderate skew towards feeding kin in vampire bats, it is not restricted to them. This is unusual and there has not been a solid explanation as to why this happens. Bonobos also treat strangers kindly. They are not aggressive towards their species. Interestingly, there has been only one documented case a one bonobo killing another. To test just how kind they are, they put the bonobo through an experiment. They placed a bonobo in a room with two doors. Behind one door was the bonobos favorite food, and behind the other was another bonobo (either its group member or a stranger). The bonobo was allowed to only pick one door of its choosing and then it would be giving its meal. Every single time the bonobo chose the other bonobo, and then it would share its meal.
Bonobos are not are closest relatives but we share a lot of common traits. So bonobos have been studied to find explanations for human evolution. The theory is that humans and bonobos self-domesticated themselves, which has lead to a loss in aggression and better communicative and cooperation skills. Some similar characteristics between are two species are the feminization of the skull, release of stress hormones instead of aggressive hormones, and an ability to understand nonverbal body language. Of these the biological change in hormones is the most prominent feature. If a bonobo gets into a stressful situation it will not respond aggressively. Instead it will become anxious and use play or sex to try to calm the situation. If a bonobo becomes aggressive, it risks getting kicked out of the group. This threat of abandonment is probably what spurred the change in hormones, and could be what caused humans to become less aggressive towards each other. Studies on human hormone releases show similar patterns as the bonobos. The only difference is that we evolved into two ends of the spectrum. As we became nicer to our friends and family, we became more aggressive towards strangers. Thanks to evolution, we are biologically disposed to hate people not part of our inner circle. This can be seen in children that bully those who are not like them. An experiment was done to examine brain activity in a patient as they were shown images of their family vs strangers. When their family came up, regions of the brain responsible for the feel-good hormones became active. When a stranger appeared, regions that were responsible for bad feelings, like disgust, anger, and/or fear, became active (Hare; 2017).
My hypothesis turned out to be incorrect. Biologically, we are not different from nature as many other animals can be demonstrated to possess the things we thought made us unique. If we wanted to separate humans from nature, we would have to go from a spiritual or psychological viewpoint. But, I still stand by the idea that empathy is a valuable trait. Empathy alone though, does not combat the fact that we are predisposed to hate strangers. It should be combined with self-control. Controlling emotional responses gives us the power to control and train our hormones. Techniques such as controlling your breathe are commonly practiced in therapy sessions as they force your body calm down and, if performed enough, can actually change your hormonal responses. Even if we do not want to admit that we are not unique as a species, we can still say that we have perfected these traits, allowing us to climb to the top of the food chain, and giving us the power to do help not just us but other species as well.
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