Evolved As One People

Source: Peggy_Marco / Pixabay

I usually stay away from topical, headline kinds of issues. Like so many of us, I have quite enough to deal with in my own day-to-day life. My mind can easily be consumed with something that needs to be done at work, the fact that the house needs to be vacuumed, my kids’ recent homework assignments, who’s going to walk the dogs, “Oh man, I can’t believe it’s 7 p.m., and no one has emptied the dishwasher yet,” etc. I’ve got enough to worry about just making it through the day!

But as a quick look at any news source — or your own Facebook feed — will tell you, the world is an absolute mess. Terrorist acts have increased in prevalence, location, and severity. Race relations in the U.S. have suddenly taken a terrible turn for the worse. Police are killing innocent others. Police are being killed while in the line of duty. In the blink of an eye, it’s now terrifying to be an African American, a member of any police force, a homosexual, a member of any Islamic-related religious or ethnic group, someone who is traveling in Europe, someone who is traveling in Africa, or someone who is traveling in North America. And I’m guessing that it’s scary to be anywhere in the Middle East right now.

It seems that we currently stand at one of the points in history where the events of the day are eclipsing the hassles of everyday life. And, as stated above, at least for me, it takes a lot for that to happen.

Hate and Group Processes

Under uncertain conditions, our standard social psychology is to bond with artificially created groups, often called “in-groups” (Billig & Tajfel, 1973). While the formation of in-groups is a very common and natural human process, it can come with great costs. While an in-group might be as benign as a sports team affiliation (“I’m a Mets fan too!”), there is a very dark side to this basic feature of our social psychology. People often form in-groups based on religious, nationalist, political, or ethnic identities. The Nazis were an in-group of sorts. The KKK is an in-group of sorts. Being a “true American” has kind of turned into an in-group of sorts these days.

And along with bonding with members of one’s in-group often comes the converse — contempt and distrust of one or more “out-groups.” Someone who strongly identifies as “American” may come to distrust and hate anything or anyone that is “un-American.” Someone who strongly identifies with one religious group may come to distrust members of different religious groups. And in an highly unstable social world, contempt for out-group members may well lead to aggression.

With the large-scale unrest that is currently happening at national and international levels, it seems that we are seeing nearly unparalleled levels of out-group hostility, mistrust, and aggression.

As a case in point, consider a recent scenario involving a young Turkish man who is an alumnus of my university. According to a recent Facebook post, he was approached by multiple police officers in LA one night after being out at a bar. Apparently, he was jaywalking. Well, wouldn’t you know that they forced him to put his hands down on the hood of the police car and started screaming at him. They demanded that he explain himself. Then they asked him to get his wallet — while clearly watching him carefully in case he was reaching for a weapon. In reaching for his wallet, he envisioned being shot dead on the spot. This was a graduate student who was walking home from a night out. He happened to be of Turkish background. This is a sign of the times. And this story is, of course, fully benign compared with the many more tragic stories that are making headlines on a daily basis.

An Evolutionary Perspective on Our Shared Humanity

As someone who lives and breathes the evolutionist perspective on being human, all of the social unrest in the modern world is particularly disturbing to me. From an evolutionary perspective, humans are truly the same the world over — coming from the same ancestors — and ultimately sharing the same evolutionary history that goes back millennia.

While there is so often a focus on diversity among people, evolutionists often underscore our commonalities. Across the globe, humans form social groups. Religions exist across the world. People focus their energies on intimate relationships, communities, and parenting. Across the world, all kinds of altruistic acts among humans have evolved (see Wilson, 2007). Our emotion system is the same in each corner of the world where humans have been studied (see Ekman & Friesen, 1986). From an evolutionary perspective, then, humans truly are humans wherever you go.

And as I have written before, when you take an evolutionary perspective, you see that we humans are not only strongly connected to other humans around the globe, but also that we share significant biological connections with all living things, large and small. From the great Redwoods of California to the mighty moose of northern New England to the wildflowers of the Great Plains — and beyond. Life is seriously precious — and we are all part of it on a truly grand scale.

Bottom Line

Under conditions of uncertainty, humans tend to cling to artificially created in-groups — a process that often goes hand-in-hand with the derogation of members of out-groups (see Billig & Tajfel, 1973). These are scary times, and in-group/out-group reasoning is part of the social world in a big way right now. As we weather the storms that are making headlines across the social world, I think people would be wise to see in-group/out-group behavior for what it is — and to never forget that, from an evolutionary perspective, people truly are people wherever you go.