Are we just selfish brutes who need to be civilised into social, moral behaviour? If not, where do our decency and altruism come from? Can we resist the tides of fear and control rolling over us and cultivate more compassionate and peaceable societies?

Elon Musk reckons “the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy” according to Anna Funder in the July issue of The Monthly. Though it is not usually stated so baldly, this seems to be a widely held view, judging by the policies and presumptions of the past few decades. Not to mention wars fought and atrocities committed.

Funder knew she disagreed, but it took her a while to find an understanding of her feeling that satisfied her. Such confusion seems to be a common experience. A low view of human behaviour is widespread, but at the same time many of us feel that people are really better than that.

The neoliberal ideology is a recent expression of the low view. It is based on the presumption that we are, and should be, selfish competitors, but a negative view of ourselves goes back much further. Thomas Hobbes assured us in 1651 that without civilisation our lives would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, and one religious attitude is that even a newborn is a sinner whose primitive destructive urges must be suppressed by fear of hellfire.

Funder has written books about people who defied tyranny, in communist East Germany, in Hitler’s Germany, and from the patriarchy, and who risked or lost their lives as a result. By their own testimony they felt they had no option but to resist. This puzzled Funder, to whom it seemed “so anti-Darwinian”, so against the idea of survival of the fittest. Indeed, many philosophers have struggled to explain altruism. Funder offers some resolution, but there is even more to say.

Funder was struck by a story of a “Crow” Native American who risked his life to stake out temporary hunting grounds so his group could obtain enough food. You can frame such selfless behaviour as arising from conscience and morality, but underneath is a simple, practical truth: unless the individual is prepared sometimes to put the group interest first, the group might perish, and the individual with it.

It turns out co-operative groups are pervasive in the living world, evidently because being part of a co-operative group enhances your chances of survival. This is a more sophisticated strategy than individuals being “red in tooth and claw”, but it is still quite consistent with Darwin’s thinking

Human beings were never solitary. We evolved living in small groups. Survival is better assured if the group is cohesive, co-operative and functioning well. Psychological research, described by Joshua Greene in _Moral Tribes__,_ has shown that we are innately co-operative among people we regard as part of our community. People will even punish selfish behaviour at some short-term cost to themselves. Such altruism makes sense in a longer view, if it promotes a more cohesive group. Yet people’s motivation for such altruism was not a calculation of longer-term benefit but simple indignation. We react emotionally to selfish behaviour without thinking, which indicates the response is hard-wired into our behaviour and has been part of us for a very long time.

Greene cites a surprisingly long list of common social behaviours that work to promote cohesion within small groups: groups small enough that people can make eye contact. We can recognise this suite of behaviours as our innate morality, and empathy is its foundation.

Rutger Bregman, in _Humankind_, argues from diverse evidence that we are innately kind. He debunks many of the popular stories that supposedly demonstrate our selfishness. For example, unlike the savagery depicted in William Golding’s fictional Lord of the Flies, in a real case of boys stranded for a year on an island they co-operated and survived quite well, until eventually noticed and rescued.

So why is the world so riven with conflict and violence? Robin Grille, in Parenting for a Peaceful World, argues at length that people who have been traumatised can be triggered to react violently. Violence causes more trauma which begets more violence, so violence is propagated through society, between societies and down generations. Grille argues that a child raised in love and without trauma will be incapable of harming another human being.

There is an important qualification: although we are innate co-operators with people we regard as part of our group, we are indifferent to people we regard as strangers. With strangers, we might be induced to be friendly if we approach non-threateningly, or we might be fearful, defensive and thus potentially violent.

Within larger societies, we cannot make eye contact with everyone. Rulers lose social contact with the people. Indifference, defensiveness, fear and conflict may then proliferate. Conflict with neighbouring cities or nations may develop, unless trusting relationships are carefully cultivated. Our sick societies are the opposite: the cultivation of fear is a profitable business model and a path political to power.

Funder cites anthropologist Frans de Waal, who claims we tend innately to conform to hierarchies because our ancestors lived that way, but this needs qualification. Our ape relatives are hierarchical yet, for example, Australia’s First People and the !Kung of Africa punish people who think they are better than their fellows. Bregman recounts evidence that human males have been “tamed”, and are less inclined to physically dominate than our more distant ancestors. Evidently this tendency to dominate has not been entirely expunged, as it has re-emerged in our traumatised societies, but it is not inevitable.

Human beings are highly social. If we were not, we would not need language, and language in turn is one of the most powerful social binders. 

Language can tell us more: the large diversity of languages among First Australians implies they did not invade each other’s country, otherwise the diversity would not have persisted. First Australians had elaborate protocols for managing relationships with neighbouring groups, to ensure hostile feelings were contained. Our indifference to strangers can be overcome. Peace is possible.

We commonly react with empathy and compassion when others are suffering, even complete strangers, yet we can also be indifferent to suffering, or even hostile. Our innate empathy fails in large, citified, civilised societies, for want of direct eye contact. After 6000 years of living in large societies, we have yet to organise ourselves so that our innate social responses can exert their influence at that scale. Sociocracy is a promising option.

The neoliberal claim that we should be selfish and competitive goes against core qualities of human beings: we are highly social, empathetic and compassionate. As Funder observes, it is the current oligarchs who are aberrant. They are emotional cripples.

If we want to save humanity, we need to save our humanity.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.