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Nobelist
on Aggression in Man
By
Merri Rosenberg
Originally
published nearly 40 years ago, this compelling work by Nobelist
Konrad Lorenz strikes an eerily prescient tone in the immediate
aftermath of the September 11th horrific events. A
study of the biological and evolutionary underpinnings of aggressive
instincts in other species and in man, this volume echoes with
peculiarly prophetic cautionary notes.
Although Lorenz, writing in the 1960s, was responding to other
issues, his insights apply to the newly uncertain world that came
into being on September 11. His scientific and academic concerns,
which resonate with added meaning today, focus on why members
of a species direct aggression against each other.
Take, for example, this insight, which could be part of any current
Op-Ed piece: “Without the tolerance born of this realization,
it is all too easy for one man to see the personification of all
evil in the god of his neighbor, and the very inviolability of
rites and social norms which constitutes their most important
property can lead to the most terrible of all wars, to religious
war–which is exactly what is threatening us today .”
Consider this one chilling passage: “None of them can ever have
such devastating effects as unbridled militant enthusiasm when
it infects great masses and overrides all other considerations
by its single-mindedness and its specious nobility.” Then think
about this one: what “contributes enormously to the releasing
of intense militant enthusiasm is the presence of a hated enemy
from whom the threat to the ‘above’ values emanates.”
Such an accumulation of cogent analysis could make the current
world situation even more frightening than it already is, especially
if political and military behaviors would appear to be predetermined
by biological and evolutionary compulsions.
Like Merlin instructing the future King Arthur in the ways of
the world by example and metaphor drawn from the animal kingdom,
so too does Lorenz use these analogies . Whether it’s the attacking
behavior of brightly colored fish on a Florida coral reef, the
hostilities rats exhibit towards other rats who come from outside
the particular group, or the pecking that ducks display towards
one another, Lorenz explains that there is a reasonable scientific
explanation for such actions. As he sees it, there are distinctive
benefits to aggressive behaviors towards members of one’s own
kind. “Darwin’s “struggle for existence” really refers to the
conflict between near relations,” Lorenz writes.
For humans, reluctant though they may be to identify with the
rest of the animal kingdom, there is an equally deep-rooted force
causing aggression towards other people. According to Lorenz,
“what we must guard against with all the power of rational responsibility,
is our natural inclination to regard the social rites and norms
of other cultures as inferior...[that] makes us consider the members
of pseudo-species other than our own as not human.”
There is something poignant about his repeated assertion that
man’s inability to perceive the stranger, that fearsome ‘other’,
as something like himself, is what ultimately leads to harmful
aggression. As Lorenz says, “No one is able to hate, whole-heartedly,
a nation among whose numbers he has several friends.”
Although Lorenz ultimately concludes, with a touching mix of naivete,
optimism, and faith, that art, music, science and education will
be able to transcend man’s aggressive impulses towards one another,
it is perhaps less easy for us who read this today to share his
outlook.
Merri
Rosenberg is a freelance writer who specializes in educational
issues and topics.
Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel:
(212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2001.
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