Why Do We Use Euphemisms to Describe Behavior?

Source: Henri Matisse/MOMA/Wikipedia

People are always social. But not all animals are. Most animals live alone, most of the time. In roughly just 2% of insect species, 9% of birds, and 3% of mammals, animals live in groups. The rest fight and forage, build nests and breed on their own.

When people and other animals live in smaller societies, a few tend to become parents; and the rest help. “Helpers” put up shelters and fend off predators, find food and feed others’ young. Most helpers are reproductively suppressed: they put off raising their own progeny, or have fewer of them. But many end up with families of their own. Think acorn woodpeckers. Think meerkats.

When people and other animals live in larger societies, just 1 or 2 queens or kings tend to become parents; and the rest work. “Workers,” like helpers, build and defend nests, forage and provide for others' young. Despite their best efforts, few ever reproduce directly themselves. Think snapping shrimp. Think leafcutter ants.

In short: For most members of most animal societies, social life comes with a cost. Stronger animals take more than their share; weaker animals take less. Winners relax, are well fed, and breed. Losers work harder, eat less, and don’t get as much sex. Sometimes the differences are small. Other times, they’re not.

Across social organisms, human and nonhuman, egalitarianism is unknown. Injustice is the name of the game. Some animals are always more equal than others. Which probably explains why societies are so rare.

In spite of all of which, we like to use euphemisms to describe them.

As early as 1935, the ornithologist Alexander Skutch used the term “cooperative breeding” to describe societies where parents get help feeding and caring for their offspring. But as Steve Emlen and others found out, helpers who rest too much, eat too much, or make efforts to reproduce directly are punished. The OED defines cooperation as “working together toward a shared aim.” Tell that to the Yucatec Mayan daughter slogging through the jungle with a baby brother on her hip. Tell that to the thousands of younger sons and daughters donated to monasteries and nunneries at the age of weaning and sworn to celibacy across the European Middle Ages.

Back in a 1966 paper, the entomologist Suzanne Batra first used the term “eusocial” about groups of insects with a division of labor. To Ed Wilson and others, that included a reproductive division of labor: most workers are parts of a sterile caste. The Greek prefix εὖ means well, good, right, and true. Tell that to the tens of thousands of castrated civil servants who ran the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Tell that to the hundred thousand men without testicles who administered the provinces and the palace in Ming Dynasty China.

It may be time to remove the scales from our collective eyes. The euphemisms should go.

Perhaps “more” or “less” skewed would do.