Can We Change Human Instincts?
Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast
Episode 075
Can We Change Human Instincts?
My niece, who by the way is wickedly intelligent and artistic, recently pointed something out to me that I’d never thought of before. Her observation of humanity is that we are nothing more than a huge evolutionary experiment. Not only that, but this experiment is running amuck and that is what is getting us in trouble.
The challenge for humanity is that we retain many instincts from our early years on this planet when we were still living in caves. These early instincts served us well and in many ways guaranteed our very survival. But our present challenge is that these very instincts could now be our downfall.
If you want to know the whole story, then listen to this episode which is call Can We Change Human Instincts?
Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E75 which is called Can We Change Human Instincts?
But before we get started here, I just wanted to remind you that if you have questions or comments about the content I produce, or if you have suggestions on topics that you would like for me to cover, you can contact me through the email associated with this podcast. That email is
Again that is [email protected]
So, let’s get right to today’s topic which is whether or not we can change human instincts. In this episode I want to examine 5 aspects of human behavior that likely ensured our survival in our early history but now is actually a detriment. The behavioral traits I want to consider are greed, revenge, tribal loyalty, denial, and procreation.
Now as I said before my niece pointed out something to me I’d never thought of before. Her observation of humanity is that we are nothing more that an evolutionary experiment. We walk up right. We have these huge brains that are capable of rational, intelligent thought, long term memory, planning and development, and even changing our environment as needed to enhance our survival. Despite this, we still retain many instincts and behaviors that served us well in our cave man days but in many ways now work to our detriment.
Like all animals, humans have certain instincts. An instinct is simply a genetically hard-wired behavior that helps us to cope with many things in our environment and ensures our survival. While a lot of people talk about instincts, most people might not know exactly what that means.
This term instinct is essentially something that was borrowed from biology. It also reminds us that humans are simply mammals that evolved well beyond the rest of the animal kingdom. But this evolution took some time of course. Each generation was a little better than the previous one. Each invention lead to a better world.
But we cannot leave out the fact that humans, as well as our behaviors, are much more complex than simple instincts. We have certain peculiarities that make us different from animals. For example, despite the fact that most people believe that humans have a survival instinct, suicide is a daily occurrence in our world. And surely you have heard of sexual instincts. Yet there are many sexual dysfunctions that exist in society. So you see, this topic of human instincts just doesn’t end with a biological discussion. There is a whole range of other things that affect what we do.
So, this is not a simple discussion. There are those that believe humans do not even have instincts. We have certain drives. The most notable person to propose this idea was Sigmund Freud. He claimed that humans simply have species-specific forces that he called drives which are composed of psychological impulses.
There are also other theories on human instincts that attempt to establish a middle ground between biology and theory.
According to this approach, human instincts are divided into 4 categories:
Life instincts: This includes sexual and fight or flight instincts. This is more or less linked to our survival.
Pleasure instincts: This is a refinement of our survival instinct. Our objective here is to provide the highest level of well-being.
Social instincts: This encompasses the need for companionship, being a part of a community, power, prestige, and property.
Cultural instincts: This is the impulse to know, discover, express yourself.
So, at the end of the day, the discussion of human instincts is a very deep rabbit hole. But let’s start by first taking a look at where we actually came from.
There is a period of time that is referred to as the Neolithic Revolution. This is also called the Agricultural Revolution. Estimates vary according to the source but this started about 12,000 BCE. This period of time marked the transition of humans from small nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers to larger agricultural settlements and civilizations.
Most authorities on the subject agree that here is no single factor that led to this revolution. Some scientists believe it was climate change, such as warming of the Earth after the last Ice Age. Other scientist suggest it was intellectual advancements in the human brain that caused people to development settlements.
But one this is for certain, religious artifacts and artistic imagery have been discovered in some of the earliest Neolithic settlements. These types of things that are the progenitors of human civilization. Understandably, it may have taken hundreds and even thousands of years for humans to transition fully from a nomadic life to one of farming.
That being said, let’s take an objective look at some engrained human behavior in light of our present world. Now I will argue that many of these things likely served us well in our caveman days but are truly at his point in time producing detrimental affects on our planet and are likely threatening our very survival.
Consider for example human greed.
Greed has a strong biological basis but an even stronger social basis. Greed is basically an extreme or excessive desire for resources, especially for money, real estate, and other symbols of wealth. But in our caveman days being greedy may have been an adaptive behavior in times of scarcity. Perhaps the greedy cave man survived the winter better than his neighbors, and enjoyed an increased fitness level, because he refused to share his food.
But then the greedy caveman reproduces and passes along this mindset of greed because it is good for survival. So the best and most greedy cave people family gets bigger and bigger. They horde food and supplies, consuming more and more. They devour everything they can find greedily grasping for resources that ensured personal and genetic survival.
Once the family is big enough they then band with others to form mutual admiration societies. They get together for protection, and to share the work needed for survival. But as our early development continued, the importance of various resources changed. Now it was not only about food but it involved other things such as land to grow food, pottery to store food, money, and then trading and military conquests to get food. Eventually the food was not enough. Furthermore, humans are not just individuals. We are social and cultural animals as well.
So later we invented money and institutionalized runaway greed instead of settling on only what we needed. Then as our population began to increase, the possible wealth became limited. After all there is only so much land, money, food, and other resources to go around. This of course created conflict.
And as you can see in our modern world, that is exactly what we continue to deal with and that is exactly where we are at this point in time. We are literally seeing more and more conflict over limited vital resources. There is no land left to conquer. So when one country now becomes hungry for more territory, it has the potential to cause a global crisis. When one area is depleted of water or other vital resources, we start on this mission of grand design to solve that problem.
In the end, we end up destroying two or even three ecosystems when all we had to do was live within our means. But in today’s world, greed will indeed be our undoing because we will end up destroying the entire planet because we want more, and more, and more.
And you know you don’t see a fox running around killing all the squirrels just so the other foxes can’t have them. You never see a fox with the attitude of “If I can’t have them neither can you.”
Now let’s consider revenge.
Once again let’s look first to our caveman days. If another cave man harasses your tribe, you bash him over the head and he is unlikely to do it again. In this case revenge deterred would-be aggressors from committing further acts of aggression. Furthermore, our ancestors were group-living creatures that ate and worked together. Any act of aggression quickly became public knowledge. An act of revenge meant you were viewed as being strong. To not do so would indicate you were weak and possibly an easy mark.
In today’s world, though we might wish it were otherwise, the desire for revenge is a perfectly normal human trait. Evolutionary biologist Martin Daly and Margo Wilson reviewed data from 60 different societies around the world for evidence of blood feuds, capital punishment, and blood revenge. What they found is that 95% of cultures around the world had references to blood feuds and had capital punishment as an institutionalized practice. So what this suggests is that the inclination for revenge is experienced by people in all cultures. When this behavior is universal it suggests that this is not the product of a particular culture or specific social factors. It suggest that this is merely a human trait.
But again, revenge may have served critical social functions. If someone has taken advantage of you, your revenge makes it less profitable for them to do it again. This is even seen in the animal kingdom. Revenge can also serve as a punishment. “Free riders” in early societies who would not pitch in for the common good were often severely punished.
At the end of the day as long as humans have lived in groups and competed with other groups, deterring threats from adversaries has always been of central importance. People have always had to deal with challenges to their physical security as well as that of family and friends. In fact “retaliatory aggression” is one of the most common, well recognized, and well studied behavioral responses in animals as well as humans.
But revenge makes no sense when it comes to setting off a nuclear weapon to destroy your enemies as well as yourself. In this case widespread death and destruction is a much more likely outcome than victory. Kidnapping people and beheading them due to some perceived wrong doing from centuries ago makes no sense. Revenge driven by rage is what fueled the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Revenge on Westerners has long been the justification for various terrorist attacks. And absolutely none of this actually makes any sense. Yet humanity is still going down that path.
By comparison you don’t see a pack of wolves going into the neighboring valley to completely decimate the next pack because they took an elk that was perceived to be theirs. They simply defend their own territory to the extent needed for their survival.
Tribal loyalty
Now let’s take a look at loyalty, or perhaps it is better stated as tribal loyalty. It served us well early in the early years of human evolution because cooperation between individuals was beneficial for survival. But as humanity has developed, tribalism has turned into one of history’s great destroyers. We have gotten to the point that racial, religious, or ethnic ties supersede all other considerations of merit or loyalty to the larger of the community, or nation. And in our modern times, the entire planet.
But as humans, we still have this strong tendency to form tribes. Our identity and the very sense of who we are at any point in time is heavily influenced by the tribe we belong too. We form racial, ethnic, political, religious, organizational tribes to which we are bound to by a strong sense of loyalty. We then condemn anyone else we perceive as being disloyal to the tribe or its leaders. This often results in competition, division, conflict, damaging, and even evil things in order to protect the tribe.
Humans are often driven to be honest and ethical when it involves dealing with members of the tribe. But then lying and deception are perfectly acceptable when such behavior hurts the other tribe. The only thing this accomplishes is an Us or Them mentality. As long as we are dealing with Us we are loyal, moral, ethical, honest, understanding and even caring. But when dealing with Them it is perfectly acceptable to ignore any such behavior.
In many cultures that are highly tribal, such as Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, and the Congo, people vote for the political party of their tribe. But we are now seeing much of the same behavior in our own country. We are now at the point where instead of using ethical standards and moral behavior as a gauge of who we vote for, we vote for the tribe.
Because of our tribal loyalty we tell lies, deliberately deceive others, and use untrue statements to enrage our own tribe in order to defeat the other tribe. What else could explain such a strong following for a former US head of state who has tried to isolate our country from the global community, take on an America first attitude, withdraw from the Paris agreement, has been investigated for fraud on numerous occasions, and has consistently insulted other world leaders instead of being a productive member of the global community
Such behavior not only damages and hurts other people and nations but it also results in a basic loss of honesty, trust, and the ability to build productive relationships with other groups which are extremely important in our ever growing global community.
State of Denial
Now let’s consider our sense of denial
Denial does actually have a useful function. In some cases it serves as a means of dealing with stress or painful emotions. If we refuse to admit that something is wrong, then we prevent dealing with stress, anxiety, conflict, threats, and fears. Being in denial also gives our mind the opportunity to slowly absorb distressing or even shocking information at a slower pace. In a very real sense, it is a natural psychological coping mechanism.
But denial can also be a very harmful thing. For example, if you refuse to seek medical attention despite obvious symptoms, if you refuse to accept you have a substance abuse problem, if you refuse to deal with relationship problems. Continued denial can lead to things spiraling out of control and lead to long-term devastating problems.
The same is true when it comes to climate change. The first seminal paper about climate change was published in 1896. Since that time, most of the planet has been in complete denial about this possibility. But in recent years, continued drought, record breaking temperatures, polar temperatures 50 to 70 degrees above normal, year after year of 500 year storms, devastating wildfires in multiple countries, increased frequency and severity of hurricanes is finally getting people’s attention.
We can no longer live in denial. It is now truly an emergency situation. Many climate scientists now believe we have as little as 10 years left before we reach a tipping point and we pass the point of no return.
But, what if we completely forgot about tribal loyalty. What if each and every citizen in this country donated $2 per month to help fight climate change. That would result in almost $8 billion per year to help fund the development of renewable energy sources. And what if each state matched the funds donated by the population in their state? What if the federal government matched the private and state level donations. That would result in $24 billion per year going toward renewable energy development.
Procreation
The last thing I want to consider is our desire to procreate. Admittedly our desire to reproduce is deeply seated in our genetics and early in human history it certainly ensured our survival. But from a Darwinian perspective, the very basis of natural selection is simply differential reproductive success. But unfortunately, natural selection does not take into account the long-term future. Natural selection means that whoever leaves the most genes in the gene pool for the next generation is the one that wins.
But humans often combine procreation, natural selection and greed to have insanely large families and then end up with their own TV show. In a very real sense we celebrate them and even give them government support so they can continue to have an even larger family.
But our human desire to reproduce is now having a detrimental affect on the planet and our environment. If we do not stop reproducing we may in fact be doomed. The Earth simply does not have enough resources to support the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed too. While human population continues to grow resources such as food, water, and land are finite and competition for such resources increases. But we are so convinced that we live in the land of plenty and we will never do without anything.
Meanwhile we live in a state of total denial about our population crises. We only focus on the symptoms such as loss of biodiversity, pollution, climate change, and shortages of food, water, and fossil fuels. It is truly time that we started thinking in terms of quality not quantity and make efforts to limit our population growth. But unfortunately it is unlikely that most people will be proactive and will not change until they do not have a choice.
Summary
At this point I think it would be productive to do a quick overview of the major points here. Obviously our hardwired instincts and behaviors help us to survival in a complex world. We readily and easily react too many daily tasks with little or no thought.
But, some of these behaviors that served us well in the early years of human development are now going to be our undoing. As it stands now, our problems have multiple elements that threaten our very existence;
Greed may have been a desirable trait in early human history. But we now have economic and social systems that encourage and promote runaway greed. Big oil and pharmaceutical companies are perfect examples. They control politicians who then pass legislation to allow tax evasion and enormous corporate profits. The banking and insurance industries make insane profits from the fees they charge. Then if anything goes wrong they simply discontinue their services. Rampant greed only furthers the destruction of the natural world that we all depend on for our very survival.
Revenge obviously was to our advantage early in our history and in fact this is a perfectly normal part of human behavior. But revenge makes absolutely no sense whatsoever when you have your finger on a nuclear launch command button which results in the destruction of the entire planet.
Tribal loyalty makes no sense when we find it perfectly acceptable to dismiss our moral values and basic honestly just in order to hurt the other tribe. We are all born into a given skin color, nationality, language, and culture simply by accident of birth . Yet this often has a profound affects on our lives that is almost inescapable. In fact such things often determine which side you'll be on in the next war! Now we live in a world with borders that are carefully guarded with guns and military weaponry.
Denial may help us in the short term as we psychologically adjust to unexpected trauma, disaster, or loss. But it makes no sense whatsoever to deny the changes that are occurring in our world almost everyday. An apathetic approach only ensures our ultimate demise.
And finally our desire to constantly reproduce and expand our population is only going to ensure that there are fewer and fewer resources to go around. At our present rate, widespread human misery is inevitable. We are truly at a point where we must make a choice between quantity and quality.
One thing is for certain, any attempt to control human behavior is going to be met with considerable resistance. We can no longer throw money and technology at our global problems and expect to produce any long lasting results. We have to control and change the underlying behavior and instincts that got us here in the first place. We have to get rid of the institutionalized greed that pushes an economy to constantly grow because that is simply not sustainable.
In 1859 John Stuart Mill stated that he was not charmed with the established ideal of human life being that of constant struggle. He went on to say, and I quote:
“It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved.”
And this begs the question of what it would be like to live in a stationary world. Well, there would be no inflation, no stock market crashes, no housing bubbles that burst and cause people to loose millions of dollars and no survival kits would be necessary.
Indeed it may be impossible to control our destructive human behavior but I think we are at a point to where we have no choice.
I want to end this episode with a quote from Abraham Lincoln. In 1864 he said,” America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and loose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
You know as a general rule when I produce an episode and present a challenge or problem, I then try to offer a potential solution to that problem by the end of the episode. But in this case of whether or not we can change human instincts I have to tell you that I am not sure where the answer lies. Any attempt to control human behavior will be met with tremendous resistance. We certainly witnessed that during our recent pandemic with widespread protests and even violence.
But at the end of the day, I have often said that I cannot change the world but I can change myself. And more than likely, I can convince at least one other person to change as well. And maybe that is where we start. We start living a more sustainable life and we then convince at least one other person to do the same. We start talking to other people about changing how we live. And you know, you should never underestimate the power of a good conversation.
In closing folks I want to remind you that if you enjoy the content that I provide then please take the time to leave me with a review and don’t forget to subscribe to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast as well as my companion blog Off Grid Living News. And if you have questions, comments, or suggestions about the content I produce then feel free to contact me at [email protected].
Well folks that’s it until next week. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.
Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.
Patrick
