1st Edition

Evolution and the Human-Animal Drive to Conflict A Psychobiological Perspective

254 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations

by Routledge

254 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations

by Routledge

254 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations

by Routledge

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Description

Evolution and the Human-Animal Drive to Conflict examines how fundamental, universal animal drives, such as dominance/prevalence, survival, kinship, and "profit" (greed, advantage, whether of material or social nature), provide the basis for the evolutionary trap that promotes the unstable, conflictive, dominant-prone individual and group human behaviours. Examining this behavioural... Read more

Evolution and the Human-Animal Drive to Conflict examines how fundamental, universal animal drives, such as dominance/prevalence, survival, kinship, and "profit" (greed, advantage, whether of material or social nature), provide the basis for the evolutionary trap that promotes the unstable, conflictive, dominant-prone individual and group human behaviours.

Examining this behavioural tension, this book argues that while these innate features set up behaviours that lean towards aggression influenced by social inequalities, the means implemented to defuse them resort to emotional and intellectual strategies that sponsor fanaticism and often reproduce the very same behaviours they intend to defuse. In addressing these concerns, the book argues that we should enhance our resources to promote solidarity, accept cultural differences, deter expansionist and uncontrolled profit drives, and achieve collective access towards knowledge and progress in living conditions. This entails promoting the redistribution of resources and creative labour access and avoiding policies that generate a fragmented world with collective and individual development disparities that invite and encourage dominance behaviours. This resource redistribution asserts that it is necessary to reformulate the global set of human priorities towards increased access to better living conditions, cognitive enhancement, a more amiable interaction with the ecosystem and non-aggressive cultural differences, promote universal access to knowledge, and enhance creativity and cultural convivence. These behavioural changes entail partial derangement of our ancestral animal drives camouflaged under different cultural profiles until the species succeeds in replacing the dominance of basic animal drives with prosocial, collective ones. Though it entails a formidable task of confronting financial, military, and religious powers and cultural inertias – human history is also a challenging, continuous experience in these domains – for the sake of our own self-identity and self-evaluation, we should reject any suggestion of not continuing embracing slowly constructing collective utopias channelled towards improving individual and collective freedom and creativeness.

This book will interest academics and students in social, cognitive, and evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, palaeoanthropology, philosophy, and anthropology.

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FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1. Species and Cultural Evolution

CHAPTER 2. Evolution, Biological Inertias, Violence, and the Evolutionary Trap

CHAPTER 3. Gene-Culture Interactions

CHAPTER 4. Organism-Environment as an Integrated Dynamic System

CHAPTER 5. Social Dominance and Inequalities

CHAPTER 6. Neurobiological and Cultural Tectonic Plate Friction

CHAPTER 7. Socio-cultural Behavioural Conditioners. The Evolutionary Trap

CHAPTER 8. The State of the World

CHAPTER 9. Dominance and the Human Development of the Evolutionary Trap

CHAPTER 10. Waste Management and Quality of Life

CHAPTER 11. Wealth Inequalities and Social Dominance

CHAPTER 12. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Embedded in our Human History

CHAPTER 13. Homo sapiens: a Janus-faced Species or Two Coexisting Varieties?

Author(s)

Biography

Jorge A. Colombo, MD, PhD, is a Former Member of the National Research Council (CONICET) (Argentina), Director Emeritus of the Unit for Applied Neurobiology (CEMIC-CONICET), and Former Fellow of Ford Foundation (USA), Foundation´s Fund for Research in Psychiatry (USA), NIH (USA), A. von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), DAAD (Germany), British Royal Society (England), and IBERDROLA (Spain).

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Evolution and the Human-Animal Drive to Conflict A Psychobiological Perspective

Description

Table of Contents

Author(s)

Biography

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