By David Mehegan
Regardless of the research basis of the book, although colorfully enriched with personal and historical anecdotes, as a history of civilization Estate is an easy effort.
Heredity: The evolutionary origins of the modern world by Harvey Whitehouse. Harvard University Press/Belknap. Hardcover. Illustrated. $35. 356 pages.
Anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse, head of the Social Cohesion course at Oxford University, is founder of Seshat: Global History Databank and author of nine books. His field of interest is group behaviour: tribes, ethnic groups, organised religions, nations, political parties, football fan clubs. In this sense, he is part of sociology.
The book offers a broad and long overview of sociological history from antiquity to modern times in a fairly relaxed and accessible style. Despite its research basis, it is an easy undertaking as a history of civilization, albeit colorfully embellished with personal and historical anecdotes.
Whitehouse has the ability to take a seemingly banal fact, prove it with experimental protocols (usually designed by himself) and proclaim in many words: “Devil! I have made a remarkable discovery!”
In explaining how “the modern world” came into being, he is quick to note that the development was guided by three “biases”: imitation, which he calls conformism, religiosity, and tribalism. With remarkable astuteness, he proclaims that throughout history, humans have imitated one another, “and this compulsion to imitate, as I shall show (a phrase he often uses), enabled humanity to store the discoveries of previous generations, thereby accumulating cultural traditions and knowledge over time. I refer to this aspect of human nature as Conformism.”
What? Humans throughout history have acquired knowledge from their predecessors and ancestors, preserved that knowledge and built upon it to grow and develop? Who would have thought?
Imitation and tradition are not the same as conformism. And even if they were the same, how can conformism be a more fundamental human “bias” than the impulse to dissent – to refuse to adapt? Mutation, the resistance to conformity, drives biological and social evolution. Those who break with the crowd are the ones who bring about change.
“Based on psychological research,” Whitehouse writes of the “bias” of tribalism, “we will see how tribalism has been used and expanded throughout history. Some of our findings on this topic have been disturbing. For example, it turns out that one of the most powerful factors driving the rise and spread of civilization in world history has been warfare.”
“It turns out?” Nobody knew about the Hellenistic influence of Alexander the Great or the Latin spread of the Roman Empire, not to mention the ancient Chinese empires or the Assyrian and Persian hosts that laid waste to the Hebrew Bible? Who would be “unsettled” to learn that the Norman Conquest had a profound impact on British history and civilization?
Have you ever thought about the courage to fight and die for friends, family or country? Did you attribute it to solidarity or patriotism, a sense of common cause or even something called love? Whitehouse calls this behavior “fusion.” But that word is surely too simple: allies, comrades in arms, members of a political party, tribe, family or religious group are not fused – they do not become one, any more than lovers. Similarity and commonality do not make fusion.
Whitehouse’s approach to religion is extremely trivial. Do you think Jews, Christians and Muslims have a complex faith based on philosophical considerations that are thousands of years old? I’m sorry, but there is a misunderstanding. Whitehouse announces that you are burdened with a “religious bias.” This bias, he writes, “shapes not only the things we consider to be ‘beliefs,’ ‘superstitions,’ and ‘fairy tales,’ but also advertising and consumer behavior.”
Note the carefree mixing of belief, superstition, fairy tales and advertising. Religion, Whitehouse patiently explains, was “not given to us by God, as many adherents of organized religion claim. Rather… it is an inevitable byproduct of the evolution of our brains.”
In his discussion of tribalism, Whitehouse writes of what he repeatedly calls a “ritual posture”: “Some rituals have no specifiable outcome… Consider, for example, the Catholic custom of crossing oneself. Believers do this when they enter church, but in most cases they cannot say why. They just do it because, well, everyone does. It’s what you do… The opacity of the self-crossing… is intractable.” How does Whitehouse know that this gesture is a thoughtless, meaningless ritual? The fact that he does not know the actual name—or the meaning behind it—does not demonstrate its “opacity,” but rather that he does not know what he is talking about.
Whitehouse modestly informs us about the relationship between religion and morality: “Today, some of the best answers to this question come not from Greek philosophy but from scientific research. Studies that my colleagues and I have conducted (of course) have shown that much of human morality is rooted in a single concern: cooperation.” So much for moral philosophy from Buddha to Socrates to Jesus to Heschel. Whitehouse et al. found it out experimentally.
Whitehouse’s use of the word “bias” is indicative of his own. In this book he shows no interest in the humanities – religion, philosophy, art, literature – perhaps because these values are usually held and promoted by exceptional individuals. He is concerned not with individuals but with the masses.
Although the title sounds like a disinterested history book, Estate concludes with a kind of liberal manifesto: how can we use our knowledge of human “biases” and nature to bring about the positive political and social change we desire and to tackle “environmental degradation, societal breakdown and violent conflict”? Whitehouse’s solution is to “cultivate forms of leadership that are able to move the herd in new directions and appeal to the instincts of the population in ways that benefit society as a whole and not just manipulative elites.”
Are we a herd with “popular instincts” that can be “converted” by imaginative political schemes? There is no suggestion here that democracy and the rule of law as we know them might be a solution; they are not, after all, new “forms of governance.” Whitehouse helpfully recommends the forms of collaborative grassroots governance he saw during his years of studying rural villages in Papua New Guinea. Well, that’s what one should suggest to criminals like Putin or Assad, or the warlords ravaging Haiti and Sudan. The book does not mention the current proliferation of such monsters, but evil people are not groups.
David Mehegan is the former book editor of Boston GlobeHe can be reached at [email protected].
