Against the Standard Evolutionary Model of Human Violence

Please read my Art of Violence page before proceeding: https://ericjacobus.com/the-art-of-violence. These pages will eventually be combined.

Recently I watched a very well-produced YouTube video called “Do We Still Have Ape Brains”. In it the creators give the standard evolutionary model that our violence (probably) descends from chimps. It prompted me to write a statement against the standard model.

Here is my statement on the shortcomings of the standard evolutionary model of human violence. The argument goes something like:

Human cognition evolved through external pressures
Human violence has its roots in animal aggression
Human language is a cognitive evolution
Language therefore evolves on a different track than human violence

Before I take this line of reasoning apart, some terms need to be defined:

“Aggression” is the presentation of threat.
“Combat” is the antagonistic action between members of the same species.
“Predation” is antagonism between members of different species, or antagonism against defenseless members of one’s own species (adults killing cubs, etc.)
“Object” is anything that is found in the environment, and in this context it’s used to describe anything that might aid in victory. It can also include cliffs, which chimps appear totally ignorant of when it comes to combat. See this video, where it’s clear there’s no attempt to push the victim off the cliff that is literally right behind him: https://youtu.be/TRjqNZPRoQc?feature=shared
“Tool” is a object modified for a new end.
“Human” is any individual capable of object-based combat or anyone having descended from such a member. (This will be explained.)
“Animal” does not include “human”.
“Sign” or “Signal” is a single-use lexical item for conveying information. It might be gestural, vocal, object-based, etc.
“Language” is a communication system which contains a grammar, as we see in all human languages. This includes sign language.
“Animal Communication System” (or ACS) is a system of signs used by animals that does not include a grammar. (Note: by my definition, the chimp Washoe did not learn “sign language” since she did not learn any grammar, therefore she only learned gestural “signs.”)
“Intimidation” – the use of objects to appear more threatening. This is not object-based combat. For example, chimps shake branches to intimidate but these are almost never broken off and swung in combat. In a rare case of a chimp swinging a stick at an adversary, he eventually drops it and doesn’t think of picking it up again, nor do any others (see this video: https://youtu.be/6lQcKiFy_DM?feature=shared). Success in landing a blow using an objects for intimidation does not send a feedback signal to reenforce the use of these objects in combat. Use of objects in combat is not repeated by the individuals themselves nor is it mimicked by any members of the crowd. As will be demonstrated below, object-based combat does not occur in animals.

The Myth of the Gombe Civil War (wiki)

The Gombe Civil War was a “war” between two sets of chimps, the northern Kasakela and the southern Kahama, in Tanzania in 1974. It’s cited as evidence that our propensity for violence stems from “ape” aggression.

But this is a false equivocation. The Gombe incident never threatened the entire chimp population in Tanzania. The total kill count was 11, 10 on the losing side, 1 on winning side. There were no objects used for aggression. Comparing Gombe with a human war is categorically misleading. Here are my notes from Goodall’s book Through a Window (1990 edition) ¹:

pp. 103-107 1974 was beginning of 4-year Gombe “four-year-war”. Toward end of chimp Mike’s reign, a group with Sniff, Goliath, and brothers Hugh and Charlie went south and became hostile with north, there are tensions, the southern Kahama group, though smaller, often makes raids into northern Kasakela group. First major attack was from Kasakela members Figan, Humphrey, and Jomeo who attacked Kahama member Godi. They pummeled him and he likely died from his injuries later (not immediately). Later Sherry, Evered and Jomeo and Gigi attacked Kahama Dé, who likely died of his wounds (again, not immediately). Then Figan, Faben, Jomeo, Satan, and Humphrey attack the old Goliath who dies. Only 3 Kahama males remain including Sniff, Charlie, and Willy Wally. Then they kill Charlie, then a female Madam Bee, which surprised the author since she assumed the Kasakela would try and recruit females who had defected to the south, but Madam Bee died 4 days after the attack (once again, not immediately). Sniff is finally killed, and the remaining femalesare killed. 1977 marked the end of the Kahama group. During this time Passion and Pom had eaten babies and the human terrorists had taken hostages (mentioned earlier).

p. 108 Goodall says the hostage situation itself didn’t change her views on human nature, but the Gombe chimp war changed her views on chimps. She still has vivid visions of Satan drinking the blood from Sniff’s face, another chimp throwing a rock at a prostrate head (note that this is a rare instance of a chimp throwing a rock, and there’s a video online somewhere of this happening, but such object-based aggression never triggers a mimetic “stoning” act by other members, rather stone-hurling or stick-swinging is for intimidation and always occurs as a one-off instance, and if the hit lands the chimp never doubles down on the same strategy), and the cannibalism. Chimps can inflict terrible violence, but only humans inflict “deliberate” cruelty.

p. 109-111 The Kasakela then have to deal with aggressive Kalende males, since the Kahama had been a barrier between them, and was now gone. Kasakela continue to be battered from the north by Mitumbe group. Sherry and Humphrey die. But new Kasakela males are born and status quo returns.

The chimp attacks in Gombe were nothing like human attacks. Nor are chimp attacks ever like human attacks. In Gombe, they were mass batterings of many-vs-one, and it’s assumed that many victims died later of wounds, failed organs, estrangement, thirst, etc. There is no indication in Goodall’s work of chimps using objects for combat, only the occasional stone is thrown for intimidation. All combat is the standard type, performed using hands, teeth, and other natural weapons, which is the same as all other animal combat.

The mobbing of many-vs-one strikes us as “human,” but we should be careful about anthropomorphizing this phenomenon. Konrad Lorenz mentions many instances of animals mobbing victims of their own, such as this horrifying story about brown rats:

Serious fights between members of the same big family occur in one situation only, which in many respects is significant and interesting: such fights take place when a strange rat is present and has aroused intra-specific, inter-family aggression. What rats do when a member of a strange rat clan enters their territory or is put in there by.a human experimenter is one of the most horrible and repulsive things which can be observed in animals. The strange rat may run around for minutes on end without having any idea of the terrible fate awaiting it; and the resident rats may continue for an equally long time with their ordinary affairs till finally the stranger comes close enough to one of them for it to get wind of the intruder. The information is transmitted like an electric shock through the resident rat, and at once the whole colony is alarmed by a process of mood transmission which is communicated in the Brown Rat by expression movements but in the House Rat by a sharp, shrill, satanic cry which is taken up by all members of the tribe within earshot.

With their eyes bulging from their sockets, their hair standing on end, the rats set out on the rat hunt. They are so angry that if two of them meet they bite each other. “So they fight for three to five seconds,” reports Steiniger, “then with necks outstretched they sniff each other thoroughly and afterwards part peacefully. On the day of persecution of the strange rat all the members of the clan are irritable and suspicious.” Evidently the members of a rat clan do not know each other personally, as jackdaws, geese, and monkeys do, but they recognize each other by the clan smell, like bees and other insects. A member of the clan can be
branded as a hated stranger, or vice versa, if its smell has been influenced one way or the other. Eibl removed a rat from a colony and put it in another terrarium specially prepared for the purpose. On its return to the clan enclosure a few days later, it was treated as a stranger, but if the rat was put, together with some
soil, nest, etc., from this clan enclosure into a clean, empty battery jar so that it took with it a dowry of objects impregnated with a clan smell, it would be recognized afterwards, even after an absence of weeks.

Heart-breaking was the fate of a house rat which Eibl had treated in the first way, and which in my presence he put back into the clan enclosure. This animal had obviously not forgotten the smell of the clan, but it did not know that its own smell was changed. So it felt perfectly safe and at home, and the cruel bites of its former friends came as a complete surprise to it. Even after several nasty wounds, it did not react with fear and desperate flight attempts, as really strange rats do at the first meeting with an aggressive member of the resident clan. To softhearted readers I give the assurance, to biologists I admit hesitatingly, that in this case we did not await the bitter end but put the experimental animal into a protective cage which we then placed in the clan enclosure for repatriation.

Though a human forced these brown rats into confinement which triggered the scapegoating of the outsider, scapegoating is generally not unique to humans or chimps. Animals can and will kill their own.

By the same logic, we should not look to the comparitively peaceful nature of the bonobo as being at the “root” of any of our peaceful behaviors. The connection is too tenuous.

Regarding using objects for intimidation, Goodall mentions a clever chimp who used cans for intimidation:

When Mike deposed Goliath and rose to the top-ranking position of the community Figan was eleven years old and, clearly, fascinated by the imaginative strategy of the new alpha. For Mike, by incorporating empty four-gallon tin cans into his charging displays, hitting and kicking them ahead of him as he ran towards his rivals, succeeded in intimidating them all — including individuals much larger than himself. All the chimps were impressed by these unique, noisy and often terrifying performances. But Figan was the only one whom we saw, on two different occasions, ‘practising’ with cans that had been abandoned by Mike. Characteristically — for he was a past master at keeping out of trouble — he did this only when out of sight of the older males who would have been intolerant of such behaviour in a mere adolescent. He would undoubtedly have become as adroit as Mike had we not removed all cans from circulation.
(Goodall, Through a Window, 1990, p. 44)

The other chimps failed to mimick this chimp’s interesting object-based intimidation tactics.

In short, comparing the Gombe “war” to human violence is categorically misleading. Comparing any animal aggression to human violence is misleading. When the antagonists are humans, there is a combination of the threat of object-based combat and the sharing of advanced, grammarized signals. This puts human warfare on a fundamentally different footing than animal aggression.

On the “Sustenance” Hypothesis of Speciation

There’s no condition set forth yet that adequately explains the shift from simian (ape) to hominid (human), however long ago that transition took place.

The standard model posits that hunting, foraging, shelter, and other external pressures pushed the evolutionary update which hominized us. These pressures can be broken into the standard five crises:

plague
famine/drought
infertility
animal predation
natural disasters

All animals are subject to the standard five crises. The assumption is that human-level intelligence is birthed gradually from one or more of them. But no human level intelligence has ever been birthed through any crises, except through the simian line, going from chimp to human.

There is one crisis that these biologists miss:

apocalyptic, intra-specific violence

Humans are uniquely capable of both wiping out the entire human species and successfully not wiping it out. No animal is capable of wiping out its own species, unless it succeeds as the Irish elk did. The implications of this are threefold: 1) human object-based combat can wipe out the species, 2) somehow, it doesn’t, and 3) such a crisis causes is acute and will necessarily push an evolutionary update far faster than the standard 5 crises.

The Hand and the Brain

How did we come to utilize object-based combat? The answer is probably somewhere back during the improvement of the rotational wrist, shoulder socket, opposable thumb, and a hip structure which allows for, or forces, bipedalism. I’ve scanned some images from Frank R. Wilson’s The Hand which illustrate this ²:

Thanks to having nearly-human hands, apes use tools for intimidation, predation, and sustenance, but not combat. For some reason the “combat” function has no access to the “object usage” function. In humans, these two are connected, but how or when this happened is to be determined. We just know that they did in humans and in nothing else.

In Why Only Us? ³ Noam Chomsky demonstrates that the “closed loop” structure of the human brain is the source of our ability to use language, particularly the Merge function as he calls it:

For macaques and other apes, this loop remains open:

If my hypothesis is correct, that human object-based combat instantiates an infinitely deep Merge field which gives rise to grammatical language (or else the combatants kill each other), then this loop might serve to connect “object use” with “combat.” The loop doesn’t resemble the songbird’s, which does not feature object-based combat or grammatical language, though it allows for some level of vocal learning:

Combat Is Optimized to Set the Hierarchy

Animal combat and human combat are similar in that they function to establish the hierarchy between antagonists, but the are functionally different. Animal combat is optimized, while human combat is unoptimized.

Animal Combat Optimized: Animal weaponry is limited to natural appendages such as claws, teeth, hooves, horns, etc. Defenses are the same, including thick hides, fur, horns, etc., but also allow for defenses using cover, darkness, camoflauge, etc. Within the combat scenario, the weapons and defenses are immediately known to both parties. A short exchange of basic signs during a shared moment of anticipation (which I call the Merge state, stolen from Chomsky but now applied to animals) will often determine which animal is more threatening. Either one animal backs down, or there’s a clash. In either case, the hierarchy is set quickly, usually without the death of either antagonist. Death is not intended, otherwise animals would gore downed opponents regularly. The reason they don’t do this is because the “retreat” sign has developed a shared meaning from millions of years of the same Merge state repeating itself with the same weapon and defense variables. Slight modifications might be seen/heard in the signals of animals like birds or chimps who develop a few novel signs based on new predators, or the adoption of simple objects for predation or sustenance, but their combat scenarios remain basically unchanged. Hence this closed loop of optimized combat gives way no innovation in combat signs.

Merge Defined: The Merge state is a shared moment of anticipation between antagonists. It’s antagonists pass signals into Merge, and if Merge validates the shared meaning of a signal, the signal is adopted into the lexicon. When weapons and defenses are held constant, as they are in animals, the Merge field is rigid and allows for no new signals. Animal signals are therefore limited. (Introducing animals to new predators might create a modified Merge state giving rise to a new call signal, as we see with apes in Adam Bickerton’s work ⁴.)

(It’s to be determined whether domesticated animals, or wild animals in regular contact with humans, experience slightly modified Merge fields which might give rise to a new (but limited) set of lexical items. Additional research on the domesticating effects of neural-crest cells could shed light on this.)

Human Combat Unoptimized: Human weaponry is a wildcard since any object can be used in human combat, including cliffs, volcanoes, etc. The opponent’s object of combat might not even be visible to the antagonist, leaving both antagonists to wonder what object might be at the adversary’s disposal, or how many people back at base camp might come for revenge in the event of a kill. This means that, unlike the rigid Merge states of animals, every Merge state of combat between humans is different from the previous one. This is why I call human combat “unoptimized”. It’s like an open wound that repeatedly needs new solutions. Not only are Merge states different during each new altercation, but they’re infinitely deep, as both antagonists are forced to anticipate what weapons there might be now, later, in the far future, etc., while also anticipating the opponent’s reading of the situation. The Merge state becomes infinitely deep, which Chomsky calls recursion.

Unoptimization in Animals: Unoptimized combat can be seen in a specific species of animals which, however, did not manage to resolve its problem. The Irish elk antlers grew to be some 12 feet in diameter and the species went extinct. While there’s debate as to exactly how the Irish elk died out, there might be a common theme in evolutionary history that certain unoptimized conditions emerge without good resolutions, causing the species to become extinct.

Parsing: Each Merge state of combat requires new signs to be formulated, reevaluated, etc. Merge might reject old signals, reassess others, and pass new ones which are adopted as new elements of the growing lexicon. I call this Parsing. These successfully Parsed signals are then shared back at base camp, adopted by the rest of the group, and reintroduced in each of their own Merge states of combat. The process repeats, creating a spider-web of signals that are universally shared in the network.

Hierarchy Without Bloodshed: Since the weapon in object-based combat is a wildcard (is it a rock? a sharp stick? does he have cousins who will come for revenge?), antagonists will necessarily experience a longer shared moment of anticipation, a much longer Merge state, than animals do. Signals are passed into Merge for much longer, perhaps for hours, to see what passes the test, all in order to avert disaster. Both antagonists might even retreat from the fight, fearing mutually assured destruction. A hierarchy is nonetheless established requiring no bloodshed. And so the use of Parse within Merge successful defers violence. I call this The Unoptimized Strategy.

Human Merge Never Closes: The Merge state opens up before combat even begins. It could be an argument at base camp over the danger of a neighboring tribe who has been seen using new stone tools, etc. Merge will also remain open after combat: the parties might fear raids from one another, suspect that new weapons are at play in the neighbor’s camp, anticipate cannibals moving nearby, etc. This prolonged, recursive Merge state never closes with humans, and so hierarchies are continually established without a single clash and even without any one antagonist backing down.

Contagiousness of Human Combat: Object-based combat can even bleed into the periphery of the crowd. When one person throws a stone, the crowd might begin throwing stones in a “do or die” scenario. The threat of such all-out war is conveyed with new signs in the Merge state, eventually enforcing a truce among parties and establishing a communal meal. (This is the bread and butter of Eric Gans’ Originary Hypothesis.) It’s easy to see why there’s a primordial knee-jerk reaction to combat in humans that is not necessary in animals.

Violent Origins of Grammar: The signals that come from our infinitely deep, recursive Merge state carry the same depth in the signals’ own hierarchies and can attach themselves to other signs in novel ways, which is the foundation of Chomsky’s notion of Merge. Therefore, our unoptimized, recursive, object-based combat gives rise to a system of hierarchical signals for deferring violence, producing grammatical language as the resolution.

Violence Underwrites Language

Human language does not evolve due to any of the standard five crises of plague, famine, infertility, animal attacks, or natural disasters. The machine of evolution is efficient enough to lead all animals through these crises without developing something as insanely (and infinitely) complicated as language. The 5 crises are inadequate to force such an update. They are not acute enough.

But the presence of unoptimized object-based combat within the human community pushes an instantaneous update: “Merge has changed and needs a new signal immediately or I am going to die.” This is a fundamental crisis that humans experience, that animals do not, and it satisfies the conditions needed to give rise to language.

Further research is needed to determine how continual use of Parsing and the building of a lexicon affects the human phenotype. Wrangham starts pointing the needle in the right direction with the idea that we “self-domesticate” due to behaviors that change the flow of neural-crest cells (NCCs) during embryonic development ⁵. NCCs are impeded within domesticated animals and don’t reach the extremities, producing white paws and floppy ears. If they are impeded within humans due to Parsing, then this might be what produces white palms, white sclera, etc. These traits happen to aid in the act of Parsing. This would be a very interesting feedback mechanism if it turned out that NCCs are directed toward aiding in communication to defer human violence. It would give an entirely new understanding to how unoptimized conditions are mitigated.

All other metrics for tracing where apes transitioned, however gradually, into humans are murky at best. The use of complex tools is better explained through Parsing. The development of new lithic and metallic industries is better explained through Parsing. (I would venture to assume then that Oldowan tools began as violence-deferring mechanisms first, and *then* became tools, and lastly became weapons. Oldowan tools would therefore be originary linguistic “signs” that could be universally shared as the first lexicon. I wrote about it here.) The creation of scientific theories functions the same way. The problem, naturally, is that these can all be co-opted by object-based combat. This modifies the Merge state again and again, and new Parsing is continually required. This Parsing will produce new technologies, which will be co-opted again by object-based combat. Perhaps this also alters the phenotype. I wonder if Autism is a response.

Ethical Implications

Language is an infinitely complex resolution to humanity’s otherwise irreparable, unoptimized combat loop. This might be why we can’t pinpoint exactly where human language is in the genome. “Language” doesn’t exist on the genome at all, at least not in the place where biologists keep looking: the “ape brain” place, or the “songbird” place. If it exists anywhere, it exists in the same place as object-based combat, which is not found in animals. If we manage to knock out that gene which makes us uniquely capable of killing each other, we might well knock out language itself.

Other Considerations:

Violence vs. Combat or Aggression: Human object-based combat, without the use of Parsing, is “violence,” as it’s apocalyptic. There is no “violence” in animals. There is only animal combat and predation. Chimps don’t do “violence” to humans. Human combat or “aggression” can only exist within a linguistic structure to create competitive fight leagues, sports, etc. In these, Parse is utilized to build a combat field, where combatants experience a reduced Merge state, but this structure must be promptly closed when Merge detects any illegal signals.

Linguistic Institutions: Institutions are high order Parsing structures that are often so insulated from the object-based combat, which created them in the first place, that they begin to believe they are outside of violence itself. In reality, they are only deeper in the Matrix, so to speak. If they were to acknowledge that they are simply complex products of Parse they might take a more balanced view of the violence that they themselves sometimes study. They might, for once, acknowledge that they are as complicit in violence as anyone. Yet no academic book on violence opens with any apologetics. Rather, they tend to study violence as though studying chimps. This is the blind spot of the standard model and whatever institution adopts it puts itself in serious peril should violence break out. It will have no idea what hit it.

Books on “Real Violence”: Trauma due to violence will not likely produce a good science of violence either. So those who are closest to violence are often not in the best position to theorize about it. The trauma needs to be Parsed properly before it can be made into a theory.

Kinship: Kinship is a fundamental function that emerges from the unoptimized Merge state. It helps enforce Parsing networks by building forges (totemic -> matrilineal systems, stone -> bronze age), networks of fortified cities (matrilineal -> patrilineal systems, bronze -> iron age) and corporations (patrilineal -> bilateral systems, iron age -> gunpowder). Bilateral systems appear to be shifting to some kind of a-lineal systems as we settle into a nuclear age, though it’s interesting to ponder what AI and New Physics will do.

Mass Media Merge State Failure: Mass media appears to be inhibiting Parse due to 1) a failure to allow Parse to expand within a language, or split naturally into separate languages, and 2) a corporate advertising system which incentivizes improper Parsing, which I call radioactivity. Radioactivity results from concepts being barred from categorization. If we’re punished for defining a truck as “a vehicle with a bed” then we cannot use this platform for language. Contrast this with “toxic” content, which overreaches the other way. I wrote on Vaporwave being a commentary on this trend in art here. However, outside of mass media, Parse still works very well. I always advise people to exit mass media as much as possible so that Parse can continue to work naturally.

AI: I assume that AI will never use Parse properly, since it’s built from Parse, inside-out, from inside the Matrix, and requires brute force information. If AI were built from outside-in using an unoptimization simulator, it would probably be able to generate grammar more quickly and test that against grammars currently available and devise novel Parsing schemes. That said, computers can never exactly simulate the human unoptimized combat loop since they are necessarily built from Parse, hence they can never have actual Parse, actual Language.

UO Logic: The logic I’m using which stems from the unoptimized Merge state is what I call unoptimized logic, or “UO logic”.

Intent Load Theory: There is a baser layer to my theory that has a very bland term, Intent Load Theory (ILT), which I will elaborate on later, but Jean Michel Oughourlian’s Puppet of Desire is a good blueprint for where I go with it (for some reason it’s $400-$1000 on Amazon… I will write a summary in the future to spare you the pain).

Challenge

I welcome and encourage readers to contact me to challenge, debate, and discuss. My goal is to test this hypothesis with the best out there, so that we can find the truth. I invite you to challenge my position in private or public so long as you have a strong argument, have done your own research, are cordial, and can be held accountable.

My email: booking@ericjacobus.com