IX - BEGINNINGS

If myth, alpha, fear of abandonment and other aspects of Biomythology are the basis of human life, one might reasonably ask how this came to be. I will propose an answer to this question, an explanation which seems plausible to me, but which is by no means definitive.

By far most of the time of human existence has seen us living in fairly small tribal groups. Urban life is a recent invention. A reasonable assumption is that most human evolution has occurred in a tribal context, not an urban one. Today we are evolved as tribal creatures mostly living in urban surroundings.

We are a generalist species of mammal. The specialist species adapt very closely to one habitat and one way of life. They are the experts at that way of life and that alone. We are the opposite. We live in all lands except the most extremely cold or dry. We even make artificial bits of land to enable us to live at sea or in the air or in space. Somewhere, at some time, someone has eaten just about everything that is not seriously toxic and survived. We create nesting structures (buildings) for many more functions than reproduction, and we create them in a bewildering variety of shapes, sizes, and materials. We have entered into symbiotic relationships (agriculture) with more species than any other. We are curious, resourceful, and adventurous. Admittedly, we can also be quite conservative. But still, odds are we are the most generalist species that ever lived.

We are a social species. Some animals do not interact with their own kind except to reproduce. We are not like that. Some of us are more social than others, but for one human being to live for an extended period one hundred percent isolated from other people and the effects of their actions is both extremely rare and extremely difficult, although possible in optimum habitat.

Hunting Stories
We form groups. The earliest groups were probably genetically related, extended family, small tribes. The survival of the group was based on hunting and gathering food. Both hunting and gathering can be done by a lone individual, but there are advantages to working as a group. A team can cover more territory in search for food and materials, can come to the aid of a member in trouble, and can carry game too big for one person to haul. Cooperative hunting and gathering strategies become possible. You folks over there beat the bushes and scare animals our way. We’ll knock them silly when they come running by. Or, let’s all climb up in this tree together and shake it like crazy and we’ll get more fruit. And so on. Group cooperation was so important for survival that the ability to create and communicate more effective strategies would have been very evolutionarily favorable, thus the development of language. It probably also had a lot to do with the development of story. A hunt takes the form of a story. There is a question—can we get some meat? There are obstacles, such as where did all the animals go, anyhow? And how can we get this one to come out of the brushpile? There are questions of dominance—will we kill it or will it escape, or, worse, kill us? There is a climax—the kill. And moral qualities are demonstrated. A successful hunting party works together, works hard, works smart, is careful and persistent, and those that are not, do not eat well. The structure of information in story form probably predates language. Stories may be enacted instead of told. Stories allow us to understand moral qualities as causally connected to the external world, and allow us to communicate that connection to others. A successful hunt would be remembered as an example for the future. The method of remembering knowledge by casting it in story form would be used with all types of human effort.

The whole subject of hunting brings up another point, the natural defenselessness of humans. Take a man, naked, alone, without weapon of any kind. Put him out in a big grassy field along with some adult wild land mammal of equal weight as the man, your pick as to species of animal. The two go at it in a fight to the death. Who wins? My money is on the animal. Obviously a mountain lion wins. But even a deer, even an antlerless doe, would be a serious opponent. Sharp hooves can be lethal.

We can punch, we can kick, we can grab, but we are short in both claws and teeth. Other big primates have serious canine teeth and powerful jaws, but not us. So how did we ever survive? First, we are social. Without the group we are in trouble, but with others we can prevail. Second, we have language and can create and tell complex stories and learn from them. And third, we are smart. By using stories we can devise effective strategies and make weapons and other tools that multiply our powers. I would like to know how the evolution of language, storytelling, and tool use correlates with our gradually increasing brain size and diminishing teeth and jaw muscles.

Given our poor natural fighting skills, the central role of stories in our survival as a species becomes clear. Without stories we would either be very different physically or we would have become extinct long ago.

Animal Stories
A question arises: If stories may predate language, do other species of animal have stories? Note that for one to have a story, it is not necessary to understand that it is a story or that the story be told or reenacted to another, just that the mind use that form to organize information. One would assume that the more intelligent non-human mammals, perhaps chimpanzees, would be the most likely to use stories, and it would help that they are social mammals. Another possibility is dogs—they have a very long and close relationship with humans, indicative of some mental compatibility, and they are also pack hunters. My answer to the question is I do not know, but I think it is likely. A series of clever experiments would be welcome.

The Randomness Problem
Back to the question of human evolution. In a hunt, there is a strong element of chance. The game may be there or not, the weather can be bad, any number of things can go right or wrong, with no clear relation to one’s actions. This presents a problem to turning experience into story. If random events can determine the outcome of human action, then the validity of the moral demonstration becomes unclear. The human mind does not like for events with meaningful consequences to be random and outside of our influence; we get anxious when we sense this is so, due to the breakdown of moral demonstration.

Without the moral demonstration there is no clear causality. If events just happen for no apparent reason at all, people are powerless to control them and all their previous knowledge is useless. In such circumstances, survival is based on luck, a precarious position people have always been eager to improve on. One way is to get smarter, to figure out the causality even when it is not obvious, to learn how the system works. That helps, but some apparent randomness will always remain.

A common way we have resolved the randomness problem, a very old strategy, is to create more characters for our story, to give random processes a moral framework. We imagine the animals, the trees, the sun, the sea, and the mountains to think the way we do. In addition, we postulate unseen beings, gods and spirits, controlling the natural world. These supernatural beings are typically given a very human mentality and moral package, so they might fit into our myth. As such, they are understood to be influenced by prayer, sacrifice, and other human actions, giving us some influence over random events, strengthening moral demonstration, making better stories and making us feel more powerful and secure. This happening in prehistoric time would be the beginning of religion.

Solidarity
Anyone who left the tribe probably did not live very long. Without access to reproductive partners he would be genetically dead, and for evolutionary purposes that is about as good as biologically dead. There would be a very strong evolution toward people with a genetic tendency to stay together in a viable group, a group that had some level of agreement about its structure and how to live, a common myth. Such social urge would be reasonably supported by a genetic fear of abandonment.

Our tribe was here and the other tribe was over there. If we kept our distance, we were not rivals for the same food sources. We probably did not like them. That would help keep us apart. If we found a solo member of their tribe, we probably avoided him or perhaps killed (and ate?) him and they did it to us, reinforcing fear of abandonment.

Avoidance of other tribes would have other advantages. Intertribal disease transmission would be minimized. Tribes would spread out and fill all the available habitat. The mistakes of one tribe would be less apt to cause the downfall of another. They would each be in charge of their own myth. Conflict between tribes would be local. Tribal evolution would be mostly independent, so no matter what might happen, most likely at least some of the population would survive. There would have been some contact, even some trade, but people would have always had a strong sense of Us and Them.

Prehistoric tribal members probably leveled the same charges at outsiders that Ethnic Group A says about Ethnic Group B today. Those guys are lazy louts, liars, thieves, and riffraff--trash who are nonetheless stuck up and snotty. They talk funny, look funny, smell funny, and they have weird diseases. The purpose of such remarks is to say that those people are not of our group, so we want you to understand that they are completely unalpha and therefore wholly unsuitable as mythic sources, because as outsiders they do not support and express the myth of our group, and we do not want to lose any members to outside myth, including you. Yet there still would have always been some degree of inter-tribal mingling resulting in cross-pollination, both genetic and mythic.

Alpha
In the tribe there would have been certain individuals more alpha than others. They would have that position due to age, heredity, skill, brains, strength, courage, or some other quality supported in the tribal myth. Such people would be listened to, followed, and their opinions generally respected. They would be seen as crucial to the survival and development of the tribal myth, and consequently to the continued existence of the tribe. Therefore, they would be nurtured and protected by the rest of the tribe. Inequalities in resources and privileges could follow, and a recognized status such as chief or shaman could be legitimized in the myth, which would then further tie the alphas to the tribe and the myth and increase tribal cohesion and its chances for survival.

Happiness
All of this may or may not have led the average tribal member to have a happy existence. What matters evolutionarily, genetically, is that the tribe survive and reproduce. That they have a good time doing so is irrelevant. Evolution is a process in which what is good for the genes matters; what is good for the individual is secondary.

As a highly generalist species, our survival depended on looking out for opportunities, being aware of whatever advantages the moment might bring. The motive for this would be some level of dissatisfaction with the existing situation and curiosity about the unknown. Happiness, a sense of contentment, of fulfillment, that all was right in one’s world, would serve survival best if it were an occasional and fairly short-term emotional reward for successful mythic moral demonstration. Continuous long-term happiness would reduce motivation and initiative. Yet if happiness were not possible, hopelessness, apathy, and despondence might reduce productive action. The most favorable survival mix was probably some moments of happiness with most time spent trying to get there. Long term happiness would have made for a good individual life, but would not have been the most evolutionarily favorable condition for species survival, so we would not be genetically predisposed to be happy all the time, although it can be done.

Modern Life
In a prehistoric tribal world, the actions of strangers did not affect your life on a daily basis. In today’s world, they do. We have taken to living in cities with millions of other people. Yet we still behave tribally, forming small groups with group myths, for that is our genetic heritage. We are not unlike animals living in a zoo. We can survive there. We can reproduce there, we can even be happy there. The situation has both advantages and disadvantages for us. But it is not the biological situation for which we are genetically prepared, and that affects every move we make. The gut-reflex reaction to almost any situation will be tribal but may or may not be in our best interest. We do not have to be ruled by our past, but evolution and its aftereffects are always there.

Tribalism Today
Mention “tribe” to the average person and he will think of some underclad group of primitives from a recent television special or the pages of National Geographic. Those people are tribal, but so are we.

All groups are tribal, some more than others. In those that are most strongly tribal, the members place importance on their membership, recognizing who is and is not a member, and on the beliefs and actions of the members that differentiate them from outsiders. Tribes are built around the concept of Us and Them. Tribal behavior reinforces to the members that we are Us and to outsiders that you are Them, and the difference between the two matters.

At this point look into your own life. Consider all the groups you belong to. How many of those boost your self-esteem with the knowledge you are a member? How many of those have inspired you to do something to let outsiders know you are a member, by what you say, how you act, what you wear, how you treat other people? How much do your emotions and behavior differ when you are in the company of other group members from how they are when you are with outsiders? If you are like nearly everyone else, the differences are obvious.

You will treat fellow members more considerately, more fairly, and more honestly. You will try to give them a better deal in any exchange. You will care more about them. You will try to avoid causing them any harm. You will adopt common knowledge with other members. Such ideas and values are not to be questioned by members of the tribe, even though outsiders may not believe in them. You will all conform to group behavior standards with each other. You will alter your appearance to look more like the other members. You will engage in a variety of semi-standardized behaviors designed to make each other feel more alpha. You use conformity with all these behaviors and beliefs as a test to determine whether or not another person is a legitimate member in good standing.

You do all this because you are tribal. Meet a stranger. Get to know him; find and form a tribal connection with him. Watch how your attitude and behavior toward him shift.

When other people try to win you over, they usually first try to create or confirm a tribal connection. They are friendly, they pay attention to you, they make you feel alpha, they let you know they are on your side, a fellow member of your tribe. Salesmen do all this routinely. On a larger scale, so do politicians running for office. Most campaign rhetoric is not about what the candidate will do if elected but rather consists of attempts to convince you that he is one of You and his opponent is one of Them, appeals to tribal connection, since votes are cast overwhelmingly as expressions of tribal unity.

Political platforms are built out of elements of the common knowledge of the tribes the candidate is courting in the electorate. If the man supports what your tribe believes and can pass for one of you, he will get your vote.

The group’s common knowledge is an essential underpinning of the group myth. The alphas pass the beliefs along to the rest of the members and make a special effort to get the newcomers quickly up to speed so everyone can properly play his role.

The common knowledge, received as it is from alphas, is taken on faith as a condition of membership. To question it is to put membership in jeopardy. Both the rebel and the fool do so, the rebel from the inside and the fool from the outside. Both are less committed to membership than the others.

The classic example of knowledge taken on faith is religion. How many people do you know whose religious convictions do not reflect those of key groups in their lives? How many people make up their own minds about their religious beliefs independently from the influence of the people around them? Almost nobody does. Why not? Because we are social mammals and depend on groups for much of the structure of our lives.

When our religious, political, or other beliefs are questioned, we get anxious. The group myths we depend on may be about to be undercut. Knowledge taken on faith is inherently fragile because it has no primary foundations in experience, so it ultimately cannot be rationally defended. Also, anyone who questions our beliefs we regard with suspicion since he is acting like an outsider, perhaps an enemy.

If two people of different group common knowledge beliefs discuss their relative points of view, the conversation will probably turn into an argument. Disagreeing with a member of another tribe on some subject dear to tribal common knowledge and thus tribal identity can be a tricky problem in human relations. The problem is worse if the tribes in question feel threatened by each other’s existence, if the polarization is high. In such situations, civil debate can become almost impossible, for points made are seen as attacks on the common knowledge of the opposing tribe and therefore on the tribe itself. Rational discussion gives way to sloganeering and name-calling and goes downhill from there.

In such situations the remedy is to maintain some sense of tribal unity among the participants through whatever strategy will work. Barring that, put off the encounter until heads have cooled and people no longer feel so threatened.

Many social situations are set up to avoid such confrontations. This is why discussions of politics, religion, certain questions of taste, and other tribally sensitive topics are discouraged in polite society. Polite society is built around the concept of treating people as if they were members of your tribe and rather alpha ones at that. Remarks and actions that bring up tribal differences are discouraged. Listen carefully to polite conversation. Notice how little real, new, factual information is transmitted. That is not the point of what is being said. The flow of words and the way they are said are not primarily to inform, but to serve as a verbal stroking, a reassurance to all involved that each one of them is a significant person in the tribe.

People who treat everyone well take a position of tribal connection with all the people they meet. Those promoting world peace will tell you all men are brothers, their way of saying we are all in the same tribe and should treat each other accordingly.

People who knowingly do each other harm will manage in some way to classify their victims as outside the group myth and thus fair game for exploitation and dominance. Outsiders come to be seen as benighted and deserving of whatever is done to them.

If we are moved to act negatively toward some member of our own tribe, we will either decertify his membership in our own minds or else mentally divide the tribe into two subgroups with ourselves in one and our victim in the other.

Does all harm come with a sense of tribal difference? No. We have all done things we thought would be helpful and supportive that turned out to be anything but. Also, clumsiness can make a mess of the best intentions. Furthermore, the progression of a contradictory myth can create harm by blocking or negating one moral demonstration while accomplishing another.

In all cases, tribalism, like the rest of human nature, is best dealt with through conscious, rational understanding, so one’s myth is subject to conscious awareness and direction and an optimum path through life may be followed.