ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
which, through the process of natural selection, would have led to a “’debilitation of
aggressive responses’” and a “’strengthening of inhibitory controls’” (167-168,
quoting himself from Hierarchy in the Forest). What Boehm is describing here is the
evolution of the conscience, which is like a “social mirror” highlighting our
behavioral accounts, good and bad, for us to view in full (172). Without addressing
brain science or consciousness fully, this is where individual differences come into
play – how one can use this very social mirror in a calculating manner to subtly
deceive while appearing good. Even Adam Smith in the eighteenth century (his notion
of the impartial spectator) recognized individual differences in the competition
between caring and personal gain (though as a product of his time Smith chalks up
such differences to class). At any rate, Boehm admits that since the tendency to
altruism is slight, the hunter-gatherer groups he examines prove that “cultural
support” is necessary and apparent if the group is going to survive cooperatively and
without serious conflicts (273). For instance, in discussing tit-for-tat, Boehm says that
the exchange of goods is less important than the “spirit of generosity” such exchange
produces (302). Granted, but one knows that if he boosts the generous spirit of the
group he stands a better chance of gain, for without any likelihood of (eventual) profit
a player is sure to defect.
For those interested in evolutionary studies (especially humanists interested in ethics),
Boehm’s work is crucial in that it takes complex questions of morality out of a
theoretical cloud and places them squarely in the human arena (of altruism and
shame). Boehm’s scholarly research of prehistory and anthropological work in
contemporary people give credence to our innate sense of fairness and capacity for
reciprocity. We evolved away from the hierarchical model to the egalitarian. More
precisely, Boehm is able to delineate how and why human conscience arose: more
than the function of the individual in a group and more to the function of the group on
the individual. While using the imperfect geologic record we have (of human remains,
evidence of human culture, climate shifts affecting our prehistory) to complete the
puzzle about the origins of morality, Boehm’s book makes a significant contribution
to this important discussion.
- Gregory F. Tague
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Mark Pagel. Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind. NY: W.W.
Norton, 2012. 432 pgs. $29.95US Hardcover. ISBN: 978-0393065879
Mark Pagel’s Wired for Culture is an eloquent and erudite examination of (to borrow
from Richard G. Klein) the human career. While Pagel focuses on the universal
aspects of culture (“knowledge, beliefs, and practices” [2]), much of the discussion
hovers around the individual related to cooperation and moral behavior, the human
tendency to form and adhere to small groups. Pagel places the blossoming of culture
at around 80,000 years ago, by which time we not only learned from imitation but
moreover began to innovate and re-engineer what we had learned. We then passed
that understanding on to succeeding generations so that (via an intellectually
ratcheting-up effect) symbolic artifacts (such as jewelry, paintings, and carvings)
began to appear. In this way the bits of culture, from an idea to a technological
feature, would “act like” a gene in terms of transmission and reproduction among
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