As regards re-motivation in a sexual direction, this occurs wherever a subordinate (male or female) adopts a generalized attitude of ‘femininity’ towards a dominant individual (male or female) in an aggressive rather than a truly sexual context. This is widespread, but the more specific case of the adoption of the female sexual rump-presentation posture as an appeasement gesture has virtually vanished, along with the disappearance of the original sexual posture itself. It is largely confined now to a form of schoolboy punishment, with rhythmic whipping replacing the rhythmic pelvic thrusts of the dominant male. It is doubtful whether schoolmasters would persist in this practice if they fully appreciated the fact that, in reality, they were performing an ancient primate form of ritual copulation with their pupils. They could just as well inflict pain on their victims without forcing them to adopt the bent-over submissive female posture. (It is significant that schoolgirls are rarely, if ever, beaten in this way – the sexual origins of the act would then become too obvious.) It has been imaginatively suggested by one authority that the reason for sometimes forcing schoolboys to lower their trousers for the administration of the punishment is not related to increasing the pain, but rather to enabling the dominant male to witness the reddening of the buttocks as the beating proceeds, which so vividly recalls the flushing of the primate female hindquarters when in full sexual condition. Whether this is so or not, one thing is certain about this extraordinary ritual, namely that as a re-motivating appeasement device it is a dismal failure. The more the unfortunate schoolboy stimulates the dominant male crypto-sexually, the more likely he is to perpetuate the ritual and, because the rhythmic pelvic thrusts have become symbolically modified into rhythmic blows of the cane, the victim is right back where he started. He has managed to switch a direct attack into a sexual one, but has then been double-crossed by the symbolic conversion of this sexual one back into another aggressive pattern.
The third re-motivating device, that of grooming, plays a minor but useful role in our species. We frequently employ stroking and patting movements to soothe an agitated individual, and many of the more dominant members of society spend long hours having themselves groomed and fussed over by subordinates. But we shall return to this subject in another chapter.
Displacement activities also play a part in our aggressive encounters, appearing in almost any situation of stress or tension. We differ from other animals, however, in that we do not restrict ourselves to a few species-typical displacement patterns. We make use of virtually any trivial actions as outlets for our pent-up feelings. In an agitated state of conflict we may rearrange ornaments, light a cigarette, clean our spectacles, glance at a wrist-watch, pour a drink, or nibble a piece of food. Any of these actions may, of course, be performed for normal functional reasons, but in their displacement activity roles they no longer serve these functions. The ornaments that are rearranged were already adequately displayed. They were not in a muddle and may, indeed, be in a worse state after their agitated rearrangement. The cigarette that is lit in a tense moment may be started when a perfectly good and unfinished one has just been nervously stubbed out. Also, the rate of smoking during tension bears no relation to the physiological addictive nicotine demands of the system. The spectacles that are so laboriously polished are already clean. The watch that is wound up so vigorously does not need winding, and when we glance at it our eyes do not even register what time it tells. When we sip a displacement drink it is not because we are thirsty. When we nibble displacement food it is not because we are hungry. All these actions are performed, not for the normal rewards they bring, but simply for the sake of doing something in an attempt to relieve the tension. They occur with particularly high frequency during the initial stages of social encounters, where hidden fears and aggressions are lurking just below the surface. At a dinner party, or any small social gathering, as soon as the mutual appeasement ceremonies of handshaking and smiling are over, displacement cigarettes, displacement drinks and displacement food-snacks are immediately offered. Even at large-scale entertainments such as the theatre and cinema the flow of events is deliberately broken up by short intervals when the audience can indulge in brief bouts of their favourite displacement activities.
When we are in more intense moments of aggressive tension, we tend to revert to displacement activities of a kind that we share with other primate species, and our outlets become more primitive. A chimpanzee in such a situation can be seen to perform repeated and agitated scratching movements, which are of a rather special kind and different from the normal response to an itch. It is confined largely to the head region, or sometimes the arms. The movements themselves are rather stylized. We behave in much the same way, performing stilted displacement grooming actions. We scratch our heads, bite our nails, ‘wash’ our faces with our hands, tug at our beards or moustaches if we have them, or adjust our coiffure, rub, pick, sniff or blow our noses, stroke our ear-lobes, clean our ear-passages, rub our chins, lick our lips, or rub our hands together in a rinsing action. If moments of great conflict are studied carefully, it can be observed that these activities are all carried out in a ritual fashion without the careful localized adjustments of the true cleaning actions. The displacement head-scratch of one individual may differ markedly from its equivalent in another, but each scratcher develops his own rather fixed and characteristic way of doing it. As real cleaning is not involved, it is of little importance that one region gets all the attention while others are ignored. In any social interaction between a small group of individuals the subordinate members of the group can easily be identified by the higher frequency of their displacement self-grooming activities. The truly dominant individual can be recognized by the almost complete absence of such actions. If the ostensibly dominant member of the group does, in fact, perform a larger number of small displacement activities, then this means that his official dominance is being threatened in some way by the other individuals present.
In discussing all these aggressive and submissive behaviour patterns, it has been assumed that the individuals concerned have been ‘telling the truth’ and have not been consciously and deliberately modifying their actions to achieve special ends. We ‘lie’ more with our words than our other communication signals, but even so the phenomenon cannot be overlooked entirely. It is extremely difficult to ‘utter’ untruths with the kind of behaviour patterns we have been discussing, but not impossible. As I have already mentioned, when parents adopt this procedure towards their young children, it usually fails much more drastically than they realize. Between adults, however, who are much more preoccupied with the verbalized information content of the social interactions, it can be more successful. Unfortunately for the behaviour-liar, he typically lies only with certain selected elements of his total signalling system. Others, which he is not aware of, give the game away. The most successful behaviour-liars are those who, instead of consciously concentrating on modifying specific signals, think themselves into the basic mood they wish to convey and then let the small details take care of themselves. This method is frequently used with great success by professional liars, such as actors and actresses. Their entire working lives are spent performing behavioural lies, a process which can sometimes be extremely damaging to their private lives. Politicians and diplomats are also required to perform an undue amount of behavioural lying, but unlike the actors they are not socially ‘licensed to lie’, and the resultant guilt feelings tend to interfere with their performances. Also, unlike the actors, they do not undergo prolonged training courses.
Even without professional training, it is possible, with a little effort, and a careful study of the facts presented in this book, to achieve the desired effect. I have deliberately tested this out on one or two occasions, with some degree of success, when dealing with the police. I have reasoned that if there is a strong biological tendency to be appeased by submissive gestures, then this predisposition should be open to manipulation if the proper signals are used. Most drivers, when caught by the poli
ce for some minor motoring offence, immediately respond by arguing their innocence, or making excuses of some sort for their behaviour. In doing this they are defending their (mobile) territory and are setting themselves up as territorial rivals. This is the worst possible course of action. It forces the police to counter-attack. If, instead, an attitude of abject submission is adopted, it will become increasingly difficult for the police officer to avoid a sensation of appeasement. A total admission of guilt based on sheer stupidity and inferiority puts the policeman into a position of immediate dominance from which it is difficult for him to attack. Gratitude and admiration must be expressed for the efficiency of his action in stopping you. But words are not enough. The appropriate postures and gestures must be added. Fear and submission in both body posture and facial expression must be clearly demonstrated. Above all, it is essential to get quickly out of the car and move away from it towards the policeman. He must not be allowed to approach you, or you have forced him to go out of his way and thereby threatened him. Furthermore, by staying in the car you are remaining in your own territory. By moving away from it you are automatically weakening your territorial status. In addition to this, the sitting posture inside the car is an inherently dominant one. The power of the seated position is an unusual element in our behaviour. No one may sit if the ‘king’ is standing. When the ‘king’ rises, everyone rises. This is a special exception to the general rule about aggressive verticality, which states that increasing submissiveness goes with decreasing posture-height. By leaving the car you therefore shed both your territorial rights and your dominant seated position, and put yourself into a suitably weakened state for the submissive actions that follow. Having stood up, however, it is important not to brace the body erect, but to crouch, lower the head slightly and generally sag. The tone of voice is as important as the words used. Anxious facial expressions and looking-away movements are also valuable and a few displacement self-grooming activities can be added for good measure.
Unfortunately, as a driver of a car, one is in a basically aggressive mood of territorial defence, and it is extremely difficult to lie about this mood. It requires either considerable practice, or a good working knowledge of non-verbal behaviour signals. If you are a little short on personal dominance in your ordinary life, the experience, even when consciously and deliberately designed, may be too unpleasant, and it will be preferable to pay the fine.
Although this is a chapter about fighting behaviour, we have so far only dealt with methods of avoiding actual combat. When the situation does finally deteriorate into physical contact, the naked ape – unarmed – behaves in a way that contrasts interestingly with that seen in other primates. For them the teeth are the most important weapons, but for us it is the hands. Where they grab and bite, we grab and squeeze, or strike out with clenched fists. Only in infants or very young children does biting play a significant role in unarmed combat. They, of course, have not yet been able to develop their arm and hand muscles sufficiently to make a great impact with them.
We can witness adult unarmed combat today in a number of highly stylized versions, such as wrestling, judo and boxing, but in its original, unmodified form it is now rare. The moment that serious combat begins, artificial weapons of one sort or another are brought into play. In their crudest form, these are thrown or used as extensions of the fist for delivering heavy blows. Under special circumstances chimpanzees have been able to extend their attacks this far. In conditions of semi-captivity they have been observed to pick up a branch and slam it down hard on to the body of a stuffed leopard, or to tear up clods of earth and hurl them across a water ditch at passers-by. But there is little evidence that they use these methods to any extent in the wild state, and none at all that they use them on one another during disputes between rivals. Nevertheless, they give us a glimpse of the way we probably began, with artificial weapons being developed primarily as a means of defence against other species and for the killing of prey. Their use in intra-specific fighting was almost certainly a secondary trend, but once the weapons were there, they became available for dealing with any emergency, regardless of the context.
The simplest form of artificial weapon is a hard, solid, but unmodified, natural object of wood or stone. By simple improvements in the shapes of these objects, the crude actions of throwing and hitting became augmented with the addition of spearing, slashing, cutting and stabbing movements.
The next great behavioural trend in attacking methods was the extension of the distance between the attacker and his enemy, and it is this step that has nearly been our undoing. Spears can work at a distance, but their range is too limited. Arrows are better, but they lack accuracy. Guns widen the gap dramatically, but bombs dropped from the sky can be delivered at an even greater range, and ground-to-ground rockets can carry the attacker’s ‘blow’ further still. The outcome of this is that the rivals, instead of being defeated, are indiscriminately destroyed. As I explained earlier, the proper business of intra-specific aggression at a biological level is the subduing and not the killing of the enemy. The final stages of destruction of life are avoided because the enemy either flees or submits. In both cases the aggressive encounter is then over: the dispute is settled. But the moment that attacking is done from such a distance that the appeasement signals of the losers cannot be read by the winners, then violent aggression is going to go raging on. It can only be consummated by a direct confrontation with abject submission, or the enemy’s headlong flight. Neither of these can be witnessed in the remoteness of modern aggression, and the result is wholesale slaughter on a scale unheard of in any other species.
Aiding and abetting this mayhem is our specially evolved co-operativeness. When we improved this important trait in connection with hunting prey, it served us well, but it has now recoiled upon us. The strong urge towards mutual assistance to which it gave rise has become susceptible to powerful arousal in intra-specific aggressive contexts. Loyalty on the hunt has become loyalty in fighting, and war is born. Ironically, it is the evolution of a deep-seated urge to help our fellows that has been the main cause of all the major horrors of war. It is this that has driven us on and given us our lethal gangs, mobs, hordes and armies. Without it they would lack cohesion and aggression would once again become ‘personalized’.
It has been suggested that because we evolved as specialized prey-killers, we automatically became rival-killers, and that there is an inborn urge within us to murder our opponents. The evidence, as I have already explained, is against this. Defeat is what an animal wants, not murder; domination is the goal of aggression, not destruction, and basically we do not seem to differ from other species in this respect. There is no good reason why we should. What has happened, however, is that because of the vicious combination of attack remoteness and group co-operativeness, the original goal has become blurred for the individuals involved in the fighting. They attack now more to support their comrades than to dominate their enemies, and their inherent susceptibility to direct appeasement is given little or no chance to express itself. This unfortunate development may yet prove to be our undoing and lead to the rapid extinction of the species.
Not unnaturally, this dilemma has given rise to a great deal of displacement head-scratching. A favourite solution is massive mutual disarmament; but to be effective this would have to be carried to an almost impossible extreme, one that would ensure that all future fighting was carried out as close-contact combat where the automatic, direct appeasement signals could come into operation again. Another solution is to de-patriotize the members of the different social groups; but this would be working against a fundamental biological feature of our species. As fast as alliances could be forged in one direction, they would be broken in another. The natural tendency to form social in-groups could never be eradicated without a major genetical change in our make-up, and one which would automatically cause our complex social structure to disintegrate.
A third solution is to provide and promote harmless, symbolic s
ubstitutes for war; but if these really are harmless they will inevitably only go a very small way towards resolving the real problem. It is worth remembering here that this problem, at a biological level, is one of group territorial defence and, in view of the gross overcrowding of our species, also one of group territorial expansion. No amount of boisterous international football is going to solve this.
A fourth solution is the improvement of intellectual control over aggression. It is argued that, since our intelligence has got us into this mess, it is our intelligence that must get us out. Unhappily, where matters as basic as territorial defence are concerned, our higher brain centres are all too susceptible to the urgings of our lower ones. Intellectual control can help us just so far, but no further. In the last resort it is unreliable, and a single, unreasoned, emotional act can undo all the good it has achieved.
The only sound biological solution to the dilemma is massive depopulation, or a rapid spread of the species on to other planets, combined if possible with assistance from all four of the courses of action already mentioned. We already know that if our populations go on increasing at their present terrifying rate, uncontrollable aggressiveness will become dramatically increased. This has been proved conclusively with laboratory experiments. Gross over-crowding will produce social stresses and tensions that will shatter our community organizations long before it starves us to death. It will work directly against improvements in intellectual control and will savagely heighten the likelihood of emotional explosion. Such a development can be prevented only by a marked drop in the breeding rate. Unfortunately there are two serious snags here. As already explained, the family unit – which is still the basic unit of all our societies – is a rearing device. It has evolved into its present, advanced and complex state as a system for producing, protecting and maturing offspring. If this function is seriously curtailed or temporarily eliminated, the pair-bonding pattern will suffer, and this will bring its own brand of social chaos. If, on the other hand, a selective attempt is made to stem the breeding flood, with certain pairs permitted to breed freely and others prevented from doing so, then this will work against the essential co-operativeness of society.
The Naked Ape Page 17