Natural Selection Versus Life Experience and Human Behavior

Discourse on defining human nature: the case of the Tasaday

(The following is an edited version of an essay written for a class focusing on the subject of evolution and human behavior, taught by Dr. Roger Sullivan at the California State University, Sacramento, in the spring semester of 2006.)

Portrayals of the Tasaday and the Yanomamo come to contrasting conclusions about human life in the “state of nature.” They reflect historical debates about human nature and ethics centered on the works of Hobbes, Kant, and Rousseau. The understanding of this reflection is incomplete if historical ideas about human nature are reduced to axiomatic phraseology such as a priori knowledge, “nasty, brutish, and short,” and “the Noble Savage.” An oversimplified approach to the study of humanity led to the acceptance of fallacious, incomplete and fraudulent interpretations of ethnographic data and anthropological theory. In truth, opposing theories about human nature have shared something in common throughout history: they imply how the world ought to be from an account reality. Theorists’ accounts of facts, however, are inseparable from their opinions.

To demonstrate the validity of this claim, I will first illustrate various perceptions of the Tasaday and relate them to modern social movements. Inspired by these movements, contradictory reports of the Tasaday contain elements of both truth and political intrigue. They also have a similar aim: measuring what ought to be against reality. Due to these similar aims, the Tasaday controversy does not entirely disprove or invalidate the naturalistic, romantic values of Jean-Jacque Rousseau. Next, I will describe alternative explanations for Yanomamo behavior offered by Harris (1974) and Chagnon (1988). I will argue that their work not only emulates Hobbes’s political philosophy, but also Kant’s moral philosophy. I illustrate that the agendas of all scholars cannot be extricated from their studies, nor should they be. I conclude that scientific literature concerning human nature is no less subjective than the non-scientific literature. Measuring objectivity is an irrelevant and nearly insurmountable task. Therefore, the emphasis of any study of human nature should only be measured in terms of its factual accuracy, logical strengths and weaknesses, and sociopolitical ramifications.

The case of the Tasaday is an incredibly sensitive one. Robert Hemley (2003) argues that early reports of the Tasaday represented romantic ideas about humanity in the state of nature. The discovery of this supposedly isolated band in the 1970s resulted in a virtual media frenzy, which was exacerbated by the perception that the Tasaday were: “. . . as close to our human ancestors as any group imaginable, the Stone Age come to life. . .” (Hemley 2003: 6). The Tasaday were perceived as gentle, nonviolent, mainly vegetarian foragers (Sponsel 1992). This conception appeared to be in simpatico with the Counter-Culture movement prevalent during the 60s and 70s, which was a backlash against the Vietnam War, the perceived failure of the modern state, and the negative effects of human “progress” (Hemley 2003). Counter-Culture ideologues, like Theodore Roszak, suggested “people heaping,” “touch and tenderness,” and the expression of “inner feelings” as solutions to the problems of modern life. Qualities like these were assumed of the Tasaday (Nance 1975). These notions were supported by the popularity of Marshall Sahlins’s theory of the “original affluent society” (Hemley 2003: 27). Scholars have also likened representations of the Tasaday to Rousseau’s idea of the Noble Savage (Sponsel 1992; Cartwright 2000). This analogy is a misinterpretation based on misunderstandings about the purpose behind Rousseau’s ideas.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality was written in part as a polemic to expose the decadence of 18th century French culture (Cartwright 2000). Rousseau’s purpose was primarily to expose the injustices of inequality, not paint an accurate picture of human prehistory. This is apparent from the following passage: “. . . [F]rom the moment it appeared advantageous to. . . have enough provisions for two, equality disappeared. . . [and] slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate. . .” (Rousseau [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Discourse_on_the_Origin_of_Inequality_Among_Men]). Nevertheless, people have co-opted Rousseau’s portrait of humanity in various ways (Cartwright 2000). Some, like the architects of the Tasaday image, used the archetype of the Noble Savage to critique contemporary society, as Rousseau had done originally. The difference was that Rousseau’s Discourse was no longer just a polemic. It had inspired a debate over whether or not the Noble Savage indeed existed (Hemley 2003).

Others use the image to reduce claims about Tasaday nonviolence and gentleness to the absurd. This is compounded by the political controversy surrounding the Marcos regime and Manuel Elizalde (Sponsel 1992; Hemley 2003). Yet critics of the Stone Age Tasaday are not free from the effects of their own political and social atmosphere. During the 1980s, another media frenzy arose over the revelation that much about the Tasaday was a hoax. Hemley (2003: 8) argued that, in the wake of Watergate and other political scandals, seeing the Tasaday as a Marcos conspiracy “seemed more than a little plausible.”

Yet Marcos and Elizalde were not the only powerful people who were willing to manipulate information, natives, and anthropologists to obtain a share of Mindanao’s resources. “Nearly every. . . motive ascribed to Manda [Elizalde],” wrote Hemley (2003: 299), “. . . fits many of those who called the Tasaday a hoax.” So, while it is imperative to be cautious when faced with the polemical images of “primitive” peoples, it is equally imperative to be cautious of those on the opposite side of the issue. Both are presenting an account of the facts to support their respective agendas, whether honest, naive or maliciously fabricated.

This logic can be applied to the Yanomamo controversy, too. Critics of Yanomamo ethnography have decried the image presented by the works of Marvin Harris and, mostly, Napoleon Chagnon. Harris and Chagnon focus on the “fierceness” and “brutality” of the Yanomamo. Yet their explanations for Yanomamo behavior differ significantly. Even considering their theoretical differences, Harris and Chagnon are united by a common ethical subtext. This subtext, however unconscious or disguised, is the most significant aspect of their theories.

Harris (1974) reasons that the violent behavior of the Yanomamo is a logistical problem. In Harris’s view, warfare among groups like the Yanomamo is an ecological adaptation with mitigating effects on population pressure. It is connected to a cycle of female infanticide and the amplification of the male supremacy and brutality. Harris quickly deviates from a purely objective explanation of Yanomamo behavior. He writes that there are a variety of ecological adaptations that could solve the problem of population aside from warfare and implies that human groups tend to neglect these alternatives. Replace the cultural adaptation with a “nicer” alternative, Harris argues, and the logistical problem is solved.

While Harris’s theory entails natural selection at the level of the group, Chagnon’s entails selection at the level of the individual. The function of this selection, Chagnon (1988) believes, is directly related to reproductive success, not indirectly to regulating populations. Chagnon found that prominent Yanomamo men promoted revenge raids for ultimately selfish interests. In this model, prominent males with a higher propensity toward violence have higher reproductive success.

Many writers who have lived among the Yanomamo have challenged this viewpoint. Some find that the Yanomamo image has been distorted by the misinterpretation of violence as central to their way of life (Good 1991). Others note that the image of the Yanomamo is the anthropologist’s construction and is based on his own psychological reality (Pandian 1985). These critiques are valid, but they do not invalidate Chagnon’s psychological construction as important if it is considered polemical. Chagnon’s (1988) paper, “Life histories, blood revenge, and warfare in a tribal population,” can be considered an object of intentional controversy if one focuses on the final paragraph.

In that paragraph, Chagnon (1988) relates his study to Jacoby’s (1983) vision of revenge in modern societies. Jacoby made a case that revenge and retribution play major roles in defining justice in any society. Chagnon caroms off of this statement by arguing that the rule of law has a diminishing effect on the lethal results of retributive justice. Then, he tells the story of a young Yanomamo man who was exposed to Western thought and discovered police and laws. The young man communicated that he wished for his own people to adopt laws and that he would not participate in the violent behavior that Chagnon studied. This is where Chagnon agrees with Harris: he believes there are alternatives to violence as a means of defining kinship and leadership. This opinion expresses how the Yanomamo debate reflects historical ideas about human nature.

Whereas the Tasaday are attributed to Rousseau, the Yanomamo image of human nature follows Hobbes (Sponsel 1992). Hobbes argued that humans are essentially selfish. His views aligned with Kant’s. They both believed people were born with inherent mental mechanisms (Cartwright 2000). Hobbes and Kant would disagree about the scope of this problem and its possible solutions. Hobbes believed that human selfishness led to a state of struggle and conflict. In order to govern selfishness, a state should impose order and law to “curb the excesses of human nature” (Cartwright 2000: 338). Kant (1785: 21), on the other hand, sums up the human condition with the following passage: “Man feels in himself a powerful counterpoise against all commands of duty which reason presents to him as so deserving of respect.” This statement is a compromise between Rousseau and Hobbes. Kant’s solution is to resist this powerful counterpoise by instilling a personal sense of duty and respect for law. This is to say that human beings act “. . . only according to that maxim which [they] can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (Kant 1785: 38). In Kant’s mind, we must reach beyond our nature in order to surpass its faults. Chagnon would agree with both Hobbes and Kant that individual respect for law is the foundation of functional, efficient, judicious societies.

Human nature is a complex, troublesome subject. Scholars have recently stressed explaining the human condition using objective scientific means. While this not is a doomed undertaking, it is subject to precisely the same limitations as non-scientific methods. The Tasaday and Yanomamo controversies testify to analysts’ inability to relinquish the hold of their opinions upon their perceptions. These controversies are the heirs of Rousseau’s, Hobbes’s, and Kant’s ideas. They share with their forbears and with each other a concern with what the world ought to be like. In part, people guess at how the world ought to be by constructing an account for how the world actually works. It is up to us to judge how accurate, logical, and ethically viable these accounts are, however subtle their exposition might be. In this way, the interpretation of human nature is much like what Johanne Fichte (1800: 67) said was the “vocation of man”: “. . . not merely to know, but to act according to your knowledge.”

Works Cited

Cartwright. 2000. Evolution and human behavior. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Chagnon N. 1988. Life histories, blood revenge, and warfare in a tribal population. Science 239:985-992.

Fichte J. 1800/1987. The vocation of man. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

Good K. 1991. Into the heart: one man’s pursuit of love and knowledge among the Yanomami. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Incorporated.

Harris M. 1974/1989. Cows, pigs, wars, and witches: the riddles of culture. New York: Random House Incorporated.

Hemley R. 2003. Invented Eden: the elusive, disputed history of the Tasaday. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Kant I. 1785/1997. Foundations of the metaphysics of morals (and) What is enlightenment? 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Incorporated.

Nance J. 1975. The gentle Tasaday: a Stone Age people in the Phillipine rain forest. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Pandian J. 1985. Anthropology and the Western tradition: toward an authentic anthropology. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press Incorporated.

Rousseau J-J. 1755/1994. Discourse on the origin of inequality among men. New York: Oxford University Press. Extract “Part II.” [http://en.wikisource.org./wiki/Discourse_on_the_Origin_of_Inequality_Among_Men].

Sponsel LE. 1992. Our fascination with the Tasaday: anthropological images and images of anthropology. In: The Tasaday controversy: assessing the evidence. Headland TN (ed). AAA Scholarly Series, Special Publication No. 29. Washington: American Anthropological Association.
______________. 1998. Yanomami: an arena of conflict and aggression in the Amazon. In: Aggressive Behavior 24(2):97-122.