The mainstream theory of violence, and most of human biology, stems from modern synthesis, which combines Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics, with a dose of Malthusian population theory. One of the main thrusts of modern synthesis was put forward by Ronald A. Fisher in 1930 in a book called The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. I spent 3 months grinding through it.
The first half of the book is a series of equations for determining the odds of gene mutations becoming dominant, heterozygous traits appearing, chances of populations depleting, etc. It’s extremely dry and I might have absorbed ten percent of this part, so I just took it as some rite of passage.
There is one simple takeaway from modern synthesis, which is basically the same science of Dawkins, Tyson, and anyone else who hopes to have an academic career: genes mutate randomly, and the ones which lend to greater survival in an organism, so long as the organism can reproduce, these fitter genes will tend to propagate more widely in the population. Fisher goes beyond the truism of this thinking: he presents equations to determine the chances of a population dying out given its size, odds of mutation of a gene, etc. Again, super dry stuff. All of this was to get to the meat of Fisher’s argument: the need for population controls in humans, or eugenics.
If you were a Darwinian in the 19th or early 20th century, you were probably a eugenicist. This won’t shock anybody, though. It wouldn’t shock anyone if I suggested that most people had, you know, prewar ideas about race, sex, and intelligence in general. So, it also won’t shock anyone to learn that the founder of modern synthesis, the very kernel of modern biological science, spends more than a few chapters discussing the risk of civilizational collapse if the upper, “more productive” caste doesn’t start having more kids.
Of course, Fisher hangs his hat on the same argument that’s been made since Darwin’s day; humans are just like animals, therefore our genes mutate under the same selective pressures. Therefore, advantageous genes should lend to higher fertility, and all things equal, he’d expect that the upper class would be having more children than the lower class. But this is Fisher’s Achilles heel; he simply can’t wrap his head around why fertility continues falling at such a rapid rate in the upper classes. He also notes a decline in lower class fertility, but it’s a slower decline. This threatens to, naturally, crowd out the more “productive” members of society with less “productive” members:
[T]he paradox that the biologically successful members of our society are to be found principally among its social failures, and equally that classes of persons who are prosperous and socially successful are, on the whole, the biological failures… are doomed… to be eradicated from the human stock. (p. 241)
Again, none of this is very shocking. Fisher actually stays more on the sensible side than, say, Galton, who was content to create a eugenics program that targeted people with certain facial shapes since they were more likely to be criminals, “idiots”, “invalids”, etc. Fisher doesn’t use this language: he’s only concerned with worker productivity, and he advocates social advancement, particularly an economic incentive for more productive people to have more children. Perhaps he’s at his worst when discussing how higher standards of living in Europe are leading to “racial deterioration”:
Social classes thus become genetically differentiated, like local varieties of a species… determined… by the agencies controlling social promotion or demotion. … If… a similar inversion has prevailed in the Asiatic centres of civilization, the mortality suffered by the poorest class must have tended to arrest the progress of racial deterioration, and had perhaps produced an equilibrium befor ehte impact of European ideas. (p. 245-6)
In other words, “racial deterioration” is prevented in Asia by higher death rates in the lower classes, but Great Britain risks facing “racial deterioration” if the lower classes outbreed the higher ones.
The problems keep cropping up for Fisher. He cites Galton’s study of 31 upper class British families with “peerages” (noble titles); 12 had gone extinct, and Galton claimed that 8 peerages were extinct through influence of an heiress, and there remained only line “‘where the race destroying influence of heiress blood was not felt.'” (p. 248) In other wirds, infertile heiresses who can marry easily are to blame for “mingl[ing] their tendencies to sterility with the natural abiliites of exceptionally able men.” (p. 251)
There’s actually very little in Genetical having to do with violence, which was disappointing. He contrasts the virility of the barbarian conquerers during the fall of the Roman empire with the infertility of modern nobility, and he laments that their virility selected for a higher level of heroism and sentiments of vendetta. This, he feels, is no longer conducive to civil society.
Fisher believed that modern synthesis was a fine explanation for the differences between the races of the world – both their physical and mental qualities. He had this to say when asked to comment on the UNESCO Statement on Race:
I quite agree with the chief intention of the article as a whole, which, I take it, is to bring out the relative unimportance of such genetic mental differences between races as may exist, in contrast to the importance of the mental differences (between individuals as well as between nations) caused by tradition, training and other aspects of the environment. However, in view of the admitted existence of some physically expressed hereditary differences of a conspicuous nature, between the averages or the medians of the races, it would be strange if there were not also some hereditary differences affecting the mental characteristics which develop in a given environment, between these averages or medians. At the same time, these mental differences might usually be unimportant in comparison with those between individuals of the same race…. To the great majority of geneticists it seems absurd to suppose that psychological characteristics are subject to entirely different laws of heredity or development than other biological characteristics. Even though the former characteristics are far more influenced than the latter by environment, in the form of past experiences, they must have a highly complex genetic basis. (Wiki)
This post is not an attempt to tar and feather Fisher. Rather, I’m critiquing his detractors, and not because they are sensitive to racism, but perhaps they are simply in the wrong congregation. They have to understand their predicament: they adhere to a belief system (modern synthesis) that holds the first humans were primate-human hybrids that came out of Africa; that these protohumans were originally utilitarian, non-religious, and non-verbal, whose evolution was in response to the external environment; that some went north, but others stayed in Africa. When someone like Fisher gets hold of a theory like this, they will draw certain conclusions, based entirely within the scope of the theory, about how these groups evolved differently over time. People like Fisher will continue to be frustrated that their views on race are criticized as being too consistent, while liberals will continue to be frustrated that scientists are dehumanizing, upholding stereotypes, and not reaching for the higher, egalitarian goals of the church.
This is a religious war in the universities, no different from Catholics vs. Protestants, or Shia vs. Sunnis. The tenets between the two sides are exactly the same: humans gradually evolved from animals, and various component features like language, archetypes, brain growth, and religion were ways for us to survive the environment. Only the messianic implications differ: one side takes modern synthesis to the logical extreme and foresees a socioeconomic system which maximizes incentives for economic productivity; the other extends modern synthesis into infinity, reaching for equality as the highest human evolution, anticipating a socioeconomic system that maximizes security regardless of productivity.
I never knew how to abstain from this holy war in modern synthesis. The conservative side is too mathematical and reactive, and the liberal side is too idealistic and also reactive. But then the ROBA Hypothesis fell in my lap. It was so simple: reciprocal, object-based aggression (ROBA) is the prime differentiator between human and animal combat; the wildcard of the weapon in human combat causes incessant escalation to extremes, rendering our combat apocalyptic, and it must be avoided at all costs. This makes the human experience not a trial of us-versus-environment, but us-versus-ourselves. All human behavior begins at this trial, the Big Bang moment – call it the ROBAng – when human experience begins. We don’t need to draw evolutionary lines from our language, religion, and kinship to ape communication, society, and sex; our complexities are solely to defer ROBA, and we simply contrast these with the nearest analogs in the animal kingdom.
The ROBA Hypothesis is a simple escape key to get out of the holy war of modern synthesis: human and animal combat are fundamentally different, and all things human come from deferral of ROBA. I have no obligation to hypothesize where ROBA came from; humans aren’t animals and we never were. I simply point to the fundamental difference. They can hypothesize where it came from. Everything indicates that we’ve always been human, and only human, ever since the ROBAng.
When was the ROBAng? How did it happen? There is no obligation to answer this. It happened, or it is always happening, or it’s always having happened. I don’t know. All I know is that human violence is a crisis, it’s different, and modern synthesis is the ass-backwards way of approaching it. It has failed to notice ROBA and has never written that human combat is mechanically distinct. ROBA is invisible to modern synthesis because modern synthesis is a religious filter that creates a blind spot to human differences. Any attempt to differentiate humans immediately unleashes calls for humility. They think aggression is a component part we share with primates. They’re dead wrong; humans are far deadlier. They think we should study primates; but they’re wrong. We are not animals. We need a more serious approach than what they’re offering.
You can read all about this in my book If These Fists Could Talk: A Stuntman’s Unflinching Take on Violence. Available January 2025 on Amazon in both ebook and paperback format.
