Why Evolutionary Science is Vitally Important - a personal view

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/why-evolutionary-science-is-vitally.html

My father was a WWII British (R.A.F.) fighter pilot, an atheist and a Nazi hunter. We, as a family, were posted to many places within Britain and abroad. They say travel broadens the mind. Well, some minds. As a child, I still encountered examples of racism, bigotry and feelings of supremacy from the service people I grew up among. But I also grew up among people with different customs and languages, different cuisines and attire, and of different nationalities and religions, and, although I didn't have the concepts to express it at the time, I felt that the attitude of many service people to others was cruel, puzzling and utterly wrong.

I have opposed racism and pointless war all my adult life. I have observed how easy it is for people to be whipped up into a frenzy of hatred for other nationalities, "races" or religions. These are the precursors of war and genocide. War inevitably leads to rape, murder and devastation. Nobody "wins" any war.

Puzzled by this strange aspect of human nature, my studies led me to the field of evolutionary psychology. Why was it so easy to whip up racism and xenophobia by populist leaders? Were there any clues to this in our evolutionary past? Is racism an inevitable trait in humans?

Two of the things I came across in my studies are exemplified by the works I describe below.

1. "Racism" is not a natural trait, and, given the right circumstances it can be eliminated.
2. Xenophobia may be an aspect of human nature, but again, given the right circumstances, it can be held in check.

The distinction between the two is that "racism" is based on perceived "racial" differences, while xenophobia is an equal-opportunity form of bigotry. People can be xenophobic about others even though they appear to be of the same "race".

Regarding racism, here is a study showing how easy it is to change behaviours based on perception of "racial" differences. Two of the key points are that we evolved in a different environment, rarely or never coming across people very different, genetically, from ourselves, so we could not have evolved a "racist" tendency. The second is that we must have evolved abilities to detect and track "coalitional alliances" - who are the people who will be on "our" side, and who are the others? Engineering situations in which people of different "races" benefit from cooperating results in "race" having no significance in their behaviour towards one another. Here is the paper. 
Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization, 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC65039/ - Robert Kurzban, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides

By the way, it was in an evolutionary psychology group that I discovered, rather late in life, that there were a significant number of people, especially in America, who refused to accept evolutionary science. I was astonished at this. I thought opposition had petered out in the 19th century!

Regarding xenophobia, I came across two books by David Livingstone Smith, 
"The Most Dangerous Animal", 
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312537449, 
and "Less Than Human", 
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250003836

Here is David Livingstone Smith in conversation with John Richards and Tersia of Free Thought Productions on the subject of dehumanisation. 

Smith cites studies of common chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives, as evidence of their extreme xenophobia. There are observations of chimps viciously murdering (it's the only word) members of neighbouring troupes that have been unfortunate enough to stray into their territory. Smith looks into the parallels and differences between chimp behaviour and ours, and identifies dehumanisation as one of the chief triggers for hatred and hostility. He notes that humans normally have an inhibition against harming or killing others, and have to have that inhibition trained out of them in military training, and that the inhibition can be overcome by characterising others as being less than human: brutes, cockroaches, lice, vermin - creatures we have no inhibitions about exterminating.

What is there to take away from this? It's simple. We can reduce or eliminate these unfortunate tendencies in ourselves by policies that encourage cooperation for mutual benefit, and encourage the creation of inclusive structures and identities. It seems that the world has made some backward steps recently, what with the rise of populist politicians who press our wrong buttons, but the key to fixing a problem starts with understanding it. If you have read this far, thank you, and please pass this piece along. You know how to do that.

See also, "About me" "https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/arent-you-just-plagiarist-why-dont-you.html, and an interesting take on this issue, https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2023/07/04/four_reasons_not_teaching_evolution_in_schools_is_immoral_963854.html

Barry Desborough, 12 Jan 2020 & 30 Jul 2024