Over the course of human evolution, our brains, our knowledge, technology, healthcare and longevity have advanced hugely. Why has human nature not evolved at the same rate? It seems to me that every country has criminals and every age in history had warfare. We seem to be as morally primitive as our distant ancestors. Why are we not better people? John Gorrill, Cumberland
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Readers reply
Capitalism. Dorkalicious
I am, and so is my wife. Goldgreen
We are, it’s just that the outliers get all the attention. Sagarmatha1953
Moral expectations are less primitive than those of our ancestors, but this “progress” is compromised for several reasons.
1. Public morality is totally undermined by our rewards system. We point our children towards compassion, honesty and cooperation, yet those who consider moral conduct most malleable rise to the top. Many quickly conclude that “goodness” is naive or performative.
2. Hurt gets into the bones. Neglect, poverty, abuse, humiliation, injustice leave many people thinking it’s a rigged game. Why bother playing fair.
Society can mitigate or exacerbate the basic human toolkit (fear, desire, tribalism); perhaps at the moment we’re shifting towards the latter. pawkietalkie
Most people are good. Unfortunately, we remember the bad ones more. Somebody letting you on the bus first when they’re really before you is nice but not memorable. Someone pushing in front of you out of turn sticks in your mind. PeteTheBeat
In 1961 Bertrand Russell also asked that question in his book Has Man a Future? He proposed that the instincts that helped people survive early in human evolution have not had time to evolve in accord with modern times, those modern times including our ability to destroy ourselves. He asked whether present-day humans could be wise enough to overcome more primitive behaviour. And many, many years earlier, in his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle looked around and asked: “What is a good life?”. After considering wealth, power, adulation, he concluded that the moral life was truly the best life. But then he limited who could actually attain that life. Slaves could not, people with disabilities, the destitute. He didn’t question whether this was fair, or should be remedied; he just said they couldn’t have it. Joanne Frantska, Washington state, US
Because we think “We” are better than “Them”, so we aren’t. minermackem
John Gorrill asked: “Why are we not better people?” His question was rooted in the idea that evolution should result in improvements to our nature. His question begs another question: “How has he determined that we are not better people?” John specifically references our propensity for war as an example of non-improvement. However, study of apes during the last century has shown that apes have the same propensity for warfare and genocide as humans – cf Jane Goodall’s observation of the Gombe wars between chimpanzees.
So if warfare and butchery is natural to apes (and humans), how did John determine that it is bad? The answer has to be that, either deliberately or subconsciously, he is invoking a standard of moral behaviour which sits outside natural behaviour – a “non-natural” or “supernatural” moral standard. John might benefit from reflecting on why this non-natural standard resonates so much with him.
Mathematical models of evolutionary theory show that where a group has individuals displaying altruistic behaviour, the survival rate of the group is enhanced, but not the survival rate of the altruistic individuals. In other words, evolution is constantly promoting the survival of intensely selfish individuals living in a society with a high degree of altruism – which is more or less what modern society looks like.
So evolutionary (genetic) pressure has gotten us as far as it can towards a society of “good” (altruistic) people as it can. For society to become “better”, it is necessary for a large number of people to deliberately (philosophically) embrace non-natural (supernatural) behavioural standards.
The nature of that supernatural moral standard, and the reasons for adopting it personally, have been studied by philosophers and theologians for millennia, and cannot be neatly summarised in a short space. So all I will say on that is to quote the promise of Jesus to his followers: “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find.” Philip Lees, by email
There is an important piece of evolutionary theory known as the Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS). It was introduced by John Maynard Smith [and George R Price] about 50 years ago. A living thing (or a group of them) exhibit(s) an ESS when any different strategy leads to worse individual outcomes. It is equivalent to the Nash equilibrium in game theory.
An example due to Maynard Smith himself is called hawks and doves. Suppose some people are hawks and are always pugnacious, aggressive and belligerent; and suppose some are doves and never hurt others, always cooperate, and always run away from a fight. It’s fairly obvious that in a society of doves a hawk will have an enormous advantage. Less obvious, but true, is that in a society of hawks a dove will have an enormous advantage – the dove doesn’t get injured nearly as often. This means that there must be a proportion of hawks to doves somewhere in between that is an ESS – away from the ESS if there are more hawks then doves will have an advantage; if there are more doves then hawks will have an advantage.
The ESS proportion depends on the actual rewards for each behaviour. Those rewards have changed throughout history, altering the stable ESS proportion. But even in hunter-gatherer societies (which were and are notoriously violent) the ESS made doves much more numerous. They are even more numerous today (just think of the statistical sample represented by proportion of people that you personally know who go round murdering other people …)
It is perfectly possible to shift an ESS by deliberately changing the rewards for behaviours. A society with laws and prisons (which reduces the rewards for being a hawk) will be less violent than one without. A society without social support (which increases the penalties for being an injured dove) will be more violent that one with. MaynardSmithFan
I’m going to go with capitalism and patriarchy as being responsible for humans not evolving into better people. No let’s just leave it as patriarchy, because capitalism is probably just another offshoot (like so many crap things in the world) of patriarchy. kiramango
Too risky, because we know that those among us who are better people are by definition always obsessively taking a punt. ThereisnoOwl
I’d be interested to hear what others have heard. In my case it was being fed a lot of flannel from Mr Forbes, who turned around from the board to face the class, in his chalk-dust-flecked tweed jacket, waved a hand around and announced airily: “And the most intelligent of the higher primates is the human being.” Which was diligently copied into the exercise book, and accepted without question.
After some years I’m surprised that the other higher primates haven’t sued Mr Forbes for making false comparisons. Some of them must feel quite insulted, coming out with defensive statements such as: “Well now, at least we’re not daft enough to go around wrecking the place.”
No, I’m reasonably sure that the human being has much more in common with the jackdaw of legend. More sly than most foxes, but not particularly bright. Distracted by, and attracted to, glittery, sparkly things. When confronted with large amounts of them, uttering a loud “Cor!” Also has the habit of flying about all over the place in search of more, without much thought. When hindered in its quest for accumulating even more glittery, sparkly things has the tendency to turn rather nasty. bricklayersoption
Our brains, our knowledge, technology, healthcare and longevity haven’t really universally increased. The human brain is about the same now as it was over 10,000 years ago, and, contrary to popular belief, is not a finely honed machine refined over millennia, equally allotted to every human … but a mass of biological goop arranged to disperse electrons, according to various random environmental pressures that made your direct ancestors slightly less likely to die before they procreated. It is not a uniform thing, it is a series of phenomena, easily mouldable through teaching, inference, persuasion, trauma, chemical intervention, random projections and hallucinations of its own devising … all kinds of stuff! Why would you assume that our brains would make us inherently “good”?
Our knowledge cannot help us decide what is “good”, either – No human being has perfect knowledge, and most people don’t have access to knowledge, or are deliberately given false “knowledge” in the form of misconceptions, dogma, magical thinking, falsehoods, etc … nothing is inherently morally correct, only subject to ever greater shades of nuance. No two human beings hold the exact same things to be true and virtuous. People can hate the same thing for different reasons, and have completely incompatible ideas of how it should be solved as a problem.
The same goes for technology and healthcare – the global majority still does not have equal access to these benefits, which are not universal, and frequently include drawbacks. Imperfect knowledge means that we still cannot be sure that most technology is doing more good than harm.
Inequality is also driving a very different game when it comes to statistical longevity – even in the UK, for those in the most deprived regions, poverty is driving the average life expectancy down. I also know a lot of people who have spent decades on this earth only further entrenching their God-awful personality flaws and inflicting them on others, so a long life needn’t be inherently a good one.
I think it just goes to prove that none of these factors affect whether or not someone is a good person. Indeed, most of them are equally as capable of being weaponised as they are of being used to good purpose.
That is ultimately our Original Sin as human beings – cursed to know that we are capable of making the wrong moral choices and doing harm, and having to tread the path of right action through conscientious, deliberate choice (assuming that we can be convinced that it really is ultimately the right thing to do).
Maybe just concentrate on what you’re going to do for your own soul, and let God sort out the rest. AngstMuffin
We are not better people because we are biologically apex predator primates, with all of the well-documented instincts and behaviours that that implies. We can watch some of the groundbreaking studies of chimpanzees in the wild, made by Jane Goodall, and all of these instinctive behaviours are there.
As we struggle to evolve as a species into a late stage Kardashev I planetary civilisation, it is our innate apex predator primate instincts that are the ball and chain slowing us down and threatening us with self-extinction. Some are ready to evolve and progress, while others are motivated to devolve and regress. This is the root of the socioeconomic/political tension we see played out in the news every day.
The outcome is probably not preordained, so it is likely a collective choice that could go either way or even both ways at the same time. Some might call this the Dividing of the Way”. It is perhaps a planetary scale Darwin filter, and one reason we have not encountered signs of intelligent life from anywhere in our galaxy. I hope we take the wise path … Alan McRae, US, by email
Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there are evolutionary advantages to being nasty. EddieChorepost
it’s not that people fail to “become better.” It’s that the underlying forces we respond to haven’t disappeared. Technological progress doesn’t get rid of scarcity. Economic systems still pit people against one another. Social structures still encourage in-groups and out-groups. When those pressures remain, you get predictable patterns of harm – even in a world with medicine, smartphones, and space telescopes.
The interesting part is that our ethics have evolved. We have larger moral circles, broader sympathy, and better tools for cooperation than any previous era. But ethics will always be shaped by the conditions we’re living in. JR Arianthi, by email
If there were nothing to fear – poverty, illness, starvation, injury, betrayal – people would find kindness easier. There would be nothing to fear if everyone’s needs were met at any given moment. Scarcity, or the perception of it, is why we are not a better society. Jennifer Volchan Cruz, by email
