Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Still, depending on what else they are allied with, greater reasoning skills need not—necessarily and in all circumstances—be adaptive and improve survival. “Reason more than anything else is man,”²⁹ said Aristotle. Mark Twain countered:I think it is open to dispute … [The] strongest count against [man’s] intelligence is the fact that with that [historical] record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal.

³⁰

If we imagine that we are purely, or even mainly, rational beings, we will never know ourselves.

We are too weak to destroy or seriously damage the planet, or to extinguish all life on Earth. That is far beyond our powers. But what we can do is to destroy our global civilization and, just possibly, sufficiently alter the environment as to render our own species, along with vast numbers of others, extinct.³¹ Even at levels far short of those that can cause our extinction, our technology has given us awesome powers—our ancestors would have thought them god-like. This is merely a statement of fact. It is not a remonstrance and is not intended to define us. But it leads us back again to the question of whether we have any choice in the matter, or whether there is some deeply buried part of our nature that, despite the comparative intelligence and promise of our species, will sooner or later arrange matters for the worst.

“We are conscious of an animal in us,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, “which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers.”³² The idea is, in a way, obvious; it emerges from even shallow introspection. It goes back at least to Plato,³³ who described how in dreams, “when the gentler part of the soul slumbers and the control of Reason is withdrawn … the Wild Beast in us … becomes rampant.” That Wild Beast, Plato goes on, “will cast off all shame and prudence at such moments and stop at nothing”—including incest, murder, and “forbidden food.” The idea of the beast within is also familiar to us from Sigmund Freud, who called it the “id,” Latin for “it,” and from neurophysiology, starting with the work of J. Hughlings Jackson.³⁴

A more recent incarnation can be found in the perspective of the neurophysiologist Paul MacLean,³⁵ who identifies many of the control centers for sex, aggression, dominance, and territoriality in a deep-lying, ancient part of the brain called the R-complex—“R” for reptile, because we share it with the reptiles, who lack much of a cerebral cortex, the seat of consciousness.

We go to great lengths to deny our animal heritage, and not just in scientific and philosophical discourse. You can glimpse the denial in the shaving of men’s faces; in clothing and other adornments; in the great lengths gone to in the preparation of meat to disguise the fact that an animal is being killed, flayed, and eaten. The common primate practice of pseudosexual mounting of males by males to express dominance is not widespread in humans, and some have taken comfort from this fact. But the most potent form of verbal abuse in English and many other languages is “Fuck you,” with the pronoun “I” implicit at the beginning. The speaker is vividly asserting his claim to higher status, and his contempt for those he considers subordinate. Characteristically, humans have converted a postural image into a linguistic one with barely a change in nuance. The phrase is uttered millions of times each day, all over the planet, with hardly anyone stopping to think what it means. Often, it escapes our lips unbidden. It is satisfying to say. It serves its purpose. It is a badge of the primate order, revealing something of our nature despite all our denials and pretensions.

The danger seems so obvious. Surely there is something in us deeply seated, self-propelled, and on occasion able to evade our conscious control—something that can do harm despite what we understand to be our best intentions: “The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.”³⁶

Sometimes, we use our “higher nature,” our Reason, to awaken the Wild Beast. It’s that stirring animal that terrifies us. If we acknowledge its presence, some fear, we will be sliding toward a perilous fatalism: “That’s what I’m like,” the criminal might plead. “I’ve tried to behave myself, abide by the law, be a good citizen, but there’s only so much you can ask of me. I’ve got an animal inside. It’s human nature, after all. I’m not responsible for my actions. Testosterone made me do it.”³⁷ Such views, if widely held, could unravel the social fabric, it is feared; therefore, it is better to suppress knowledge of our “animal” natures and pretend that those who perceive and discuss such natures are undermining human self-confidence and playing with fire.