Peace making and peace keeping
Over the weekend, I read a fascinating book - Frans De Waal’s, Our Inner Ape. De Waal, one of the few primatologists to really study bonobo’s in depth, argues in the book that humans, chimps and bonobos are extremely closely related and that studying the behavior of all three species leads to a wide array of insights about humanity, about possibilities and our limitations. One of his points is that we can be the violent, rigidly hierarchical chimps or we could be the collaborative, relaxed openly, casually sexual bonobos, hence his image of the two faced ape.
There was a lot in the book that is worth commenting on, but I want to focus on one section: the section about conflict, reconciliation and peace. De Waal points out that human, chimp and bonobo patterns of conflict are suprisingly similar in terms of gender. He cites studies that have shown that girls will interpret what may be unthinking slights as invitations to conflict which tear at the complex net of relationships and so often work hard to avoid them but also at times deliberately engage in them - in complex long term conflicts involving subtle gradations of emotional violence but little overt violence; in addition, in terms of the length of time of conflicts, research among school children shows that boys will talk about conflict in terms of hours while girls will talk about it in terms of days. Similar patterns appear among chimps and bonobos where male conflict is open, violent, short lived and often resolved with speed, but female conflict might lasts for days and weeks. De Waal concludes by offering an insight about conflict: Male conflict is verbalized, open, direct, and frequent but also resolved - requiring males to develop peace making skills (social grooming among chimps) but that female conflict is covert, indirect, long term, and less frequently resolved, but also avoided so females develop peace keeping skills. The cost of female conflict among most primates is higher in terms of relationships which can be irrevocably shattered while the cost of male conflict - which is often more overtly violent - carries a higher cost in terms of physical injuries which must be soothed, the conflict reconciled and a state of relationship restored.
De Waal suggests that such patterns appear among humans as well as our nearest relatives. Research and anecdotes both support the cliche of two guys getting in a fight, then sharing a beer with the fight apparently forgotten while two women will engage in a weeks long feud which is never fully resolved.
De Waal points out that humans have the capacity for both chimpanzee like violence and hierarchy and bonobo like collaboration and egalitarianism - one society is violent and fraught with conflict the other is peaceful and filled with constant peaceful sexual connections. Rather than engage in conflict over food, bonobos will engage in sex before eating - creating strong bonds prior to dividing the scarce resource of food - a bond which encourages the more equitable sharing of food among all community members but which also serves as a means of negotiating the distribution.
A successful society requires both peace making and peace keeping skills, it requires healthy conflict and healthy peace making afterwards, but it also requires peace keeping, knowing which conflicts to avoid and how to avoid them. For far too long, perhaps we’ve believed we are only chimps - violent, loud, and brutally hierarchical - when we are in fact equally likely to be bonobos - easy going, sexual, collaborative - and maybe just maybe its time we learn from our bonobo cousins how to be better people.
February 4th, 2008 at 10:10 am
The problem with any “research” into bonobos is that they’re very shy in the wild, and most of what we know about them comes from watching them in zoos. According to a very lengthy article in The New Yorker,
When primate researchers do study bonobos in the wild, they find less sex and more aggression. See, for example, this account from page 10 of the same article:
I’m all for more sex and less violence in humans, but the jury’s still out on whether bonobos’ innate behavior is really all that different from chimps’.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I would add that most of human conflict resolution to date, has been predicated by what I call the “30 second rule”. The idea that in any group of humans a properly motivated male can with physical prowess inflict his will upon anyone he has troubles within 30 seconds. All will obey or get their ass kicked.
In this reality, we evolved the “Peace through Strength” line of reasoning, which reached its ultimate expression in the recent, and sadly, current concept, of Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD. That said no empire ever survived without its disinformation and spy networks.
In this regard, it is also why the development of weapons technology, all ethics or morality aside, often decides who “wins”. It is an ugly affair, one need only ask an Indian in this continent as to the merits of having better arms, though much can be accomplished with diseased blankets.
The inability of females to largely challenge this physical dominance for the better part of our history, has led in my view, to women using and practising guile and manipulation as the primary means for effectively achieving their will. Men use both, but push come to shove, the tendency towards direct violence is where all games end. Women though, could well be better at it. It is what war is all about.
We aren’t monkeys or chimps, so the attempt to learn from their behavior is not nearly as effective as simply studying human history.