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Ethology is the application of comparative methods, obligatory since the discoveries of Darwin, to the study of behavior, treating it as a system which owes its structure to phyletic history. By doing so, ethology has demonstrated that, like any other organic system, human behavior can develop, in ontogeny, only along those lines and within those possibilities which are laid down in a genetic program evolved in phyletic history. This has brought ethology into conflict with the doctrine that human behavior is exclusively determined and unlimitedly changeable by environmental conditioning. Cognizance of the fact that human behavior, like any other organic system, owes its structure to adaptation entails a question unknown to physics and chemistry, the question “What for?”, or in other words: “What is the function whose survival value exerted the selection pressure causing it to evolve in this particular form?”. A convincing answer to this question can be found in most cases.
To understand the methods obligatory in approaching living systems it is necessary to know the way in which they originate in phylogeny. When two systems are integrated into one, new systemic properties arise, even in the case of inorganic systems: two electric circuits, one running over a coil and one obstructed by a condenser produce, on integration, the property of oscillation which had not existed in either of them in their independent states. The term evolution is misleading by its etymology implying that something preformed is merely unfolded, while, in phylogeny, unprecedented properties spring into existence by historically unique and unpredictable events. By virtue of this process of creative integration, the new system attains new properties while still retaining most of those characteristic of the subsystems
* Copyright 1970 by The Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden. Reprinted with permission.
integrated into it. Life processes are still physical and chemical processes, though it would be entirely false to say that they are “nothing else but” these.
Some functions which are prerequisites and precursors, or both, of conceptual thinking, such as constancy functions of perception, special insight, exploratory behavior and even beginnings of self-exploration exist as an independent system of cognitive functions in some higher animals. So does the function of handing-down, from one generation to the next, knowledge acquired by individuals. The new systemic properties which spring into existence with the fusion of these two subsystems are those of human culture. Conceptual thought, in connection with continuous tradition, rendered possible the growth of symbolic and syntactic language which in turn had the unprecedented effect of causing traditional knowledge to accumulate. It is in the service and under the selection pressure of these new functions that the human brain, with its great hemispheres and its center of speech, has come into existence. Our cognizance of the fact that all organisms are built up on the principle of stratified layers of integration has far-reaching consequences, on one side for our philosophy of values, and on the other for our strategy in investigating organismic systems.
A normal person cannot help judging the values of living systems according to the relative levels of integration they attain. Anyone who finds a fly, a fish, a guinea pig, and a baby chimpanzee equally easy to kill, is far from normal. This entirely unreasoning axiomatic judgement concerns a value independent of that of survival. “Higher” animals are by no means better adapted and surer to survive than are “lower” ones. The parameter of relative values from high to low (or from good to bad) is by no means identical with that extended between health and illness.
The first step in approaching an integrated system analytically must be to attain some provisional survey knowledge of its most comprehensive subsystems, of those which are most immediately subordinate to the organic whole. The chances of attaining relevant insights into the makeup of a system by atomistic and operationalistic methods, decreases with the level of its integration and its complexity. Gestalt perception, fed by unbiased, patient and detailed observation, together with profound knowledge of the problems to be approached, may lead a gifted scientist to inspired guesses, but it would hardly lead to a state of knowledge which renders quantitative verification possible. A really
complicated and integrated system, like that of human social behavior, would resist all analysis were it not for the help which the biologist receives from a rather unexpected side.
There are regularly occurring sequences of behavior, particularly in captive animals and civilized humans, in which we fail to find any answer to Darwin's question “What for?”. Modern war, superstitious adherence to doctrines, drug addiction, and similarly destructive behavior patterns are definitely not “selected for” by any survival function. Yet we need not lose confidence in the biological approach. We need only ask in addition to the biologist's question, “Which is the normal survival value of the system investigated?” the question of the physician, “What is the nature of the disturbance preventing it from fulfilling that function?”. Ronald Hargreaves, who proposed to ask these two questions simultaneously in approaching any kind of mental disorder, adds that in particular it is worthwhile to ask whether the disturbance is due to an excess or a deficiency of the function under discussion.
The pathological disturbance is not, as one might assume, an obstacle but on the contrary the key to the analysis of a highly integrated system. As the history of physiology shows, the existence of unsuspected functional systems has very often been drawn to the attention of scientists by illness caused by their disturbance which, at the same time, offered a means to their analysis. E. T. Kocher discovered the normal function of the thyroid gland in trying to cure its excess function by the too far-reaching measure of eliminating it altogether.
The rationale of this procedure is directly applicable to most disturbances observable in social behavior of modern man. Many of them consist in excess or deficiency of functions which cause desequilibration of a superimposed system. To ask whether aggression, love, loyalty, militant enthusiasm, or any other similar function is “good” or “bad,” is just as inane as to apply this question to the thyroid gland: every single one of these functions is indispensable to the harmony of the whole and every one of them can, by deficiency or excess, lead to destructive desequilibration.
The applicability of Ronald Hargreaves's double question is illustrated by the analysis of the disturbance of two important systems of human social behavior—first of the mechanism of pleasure-displeasure economy, and second of that which transmits tradition from one generation to the next while, at the same time, eliminating obsolete and acquiring new information.
The ruthless demand for instant gratification, the inability to bear with any kind of displeasure, the unwillingness to muscularly exert oneself
in pursuit of purposes, and a general weakness of emotion—particularly of compassion—play a dangerous role among the phenomena of so-called dehumanization.
The normal function which, by miscarrying, produces these symptoms is the economic equilibration between the gains achieved in appetitive behavior and the costs and risks incurred in their achievement. The necessity of this equilibrating explains why the mechanism achieving conditioning is, in fact, built on the dual principle of reward and punishment. Like other physiological mechanisms it is subject to habituation, and also to time-lag, causing oscillations and rebound phenomena. In consequence of both properties, the mechanism, under the condition of civilized life, is apt to miscarry. Technology and pharmacology permit modern man both to evade painful and displeasurable stimuli and to attain pleasurable ones with an ease not provided for in the phylogenetic program. Habituation weakens the effect of pleasurable; disadaptation enhances those of displeasurable stimulus situations. The consequent exaggerated shunning of all displeasure upsets the mechanism of rebound and contract and thus further weakens the enjoyment of pleasure. Infinite boredom, in fact emotional stasis, is the result. Older people who had to lead when young a harder life than their offspring, tend to sermonize on the disadvantages of pampering.
This, however, is not the main cause of the attitude the younger generation takes towards the older. Also, there are other phenomena to describe. Adolescent hostility takes forms which, in many respects, are closely akin to those that can be observed between rivaling ethnic groups intent to cut themselves off from each other. While thinking they are independent of traditional culture and ostensibly aiming at building up a new world, rebelling youth really represents a meticulously copied picture of traditional culture, only with a negative sign. The infantilism (delayed maturation) of many behavioral functions renders rebelling youth parasitic in a way analogous to that of immature tissue in tumors. Part of this infantilism may be genetic; most of it is probably the result of a lack of identification with any traditional group.
What has gone wrong? The code of traditional norms of social behavior which determines the nature of a culture (just like the genetic code determines that of a species) must combine rigidity with flexibility, so that it can be adjusted to cope with changes in the environment. Around puberty, young people begin to loosen their allegiance to parental traditions and to cast about for new ideals. Normally, this process does not lead to the children completely abandoning their parents' traditions, and they revert to what Mitscherlich has called “late obedience.”
This finely adapted mechanism—handing down and yet modifying tradition—has suddenly ceased to function in great parts of our culture. Why? The task of adapting traditions to the environment has been getting harder and harder for successive generations, because the environment itself has been changing faster and faster. A critical adolescent, attempting to sift what is valuable in the parental tradition, cannot help finding more and more than is obsolete and maladaptive.
For a tradition to be handed down successfully, the young must be able to identify with their elders. But identification depends on social contact, and social contact between generations is decreasing. Mothers simply don't have enough time to play with their babies, and the latter's capability of forming social contacts is thereby impaired. Fathers are cut off from their children; the children don't see their father when he is at work. Formerly, when families were customarily larger, the child respected the physical prowess of the teenager, who in turn admired the 25-year-old brother, who in turn was well able to appreciate the old man's wisdom. The modern father lacks such a graduated community of admirers. As an additional factor, the behavioristic belief that frustration alone creates aggressivity (and must, therefore, be avoided at all costs) contributes further to producing a generation which despises its parents.
However, it is crucial to the normal function of handing down tradition that the receiver not only respects the hander-down as his superior, it is also essential that he loves him. No one accepts the culture of despised slaves which modern parents are well on the way to becoming. The young are thus unable to identify with their parents, yet at the same time adolescents have an overpowering urge to belong to a group. Having shed their first shell, they are particularly vulnerable. Failing to find a traditional object to adhere to, they resort to substitute objects—hence the hippie groups and the juvenile gangs of different denomination. Even membership to the most pitiable of human communities, a group of dope addicts, can seem preferable to isolation. The strength of the craving to belong to a group, if possible to a militantly enthusiastic one, lays adolescents open to the lure of demagogues—hence the Munich and Italian students' chanting for Mao.
The situation of our culture is paradoxical to the point of lunacy. On the one hand, established culture is busily destroying humanity by encouraging it to persist in several satanic vicious circles—like population increase, commercial competition, destruction of biosphere, etc. The powers that be flatly ignore these dangers, not because they are too stupid to see them, but because of their indoctrination which keeps them strictly on the wrong path.
On the other hand, there are the rebelling youthful. Some of them are guided by a mere feeling that all is not right with our world,
some of them have a very sound idea of what is wrong with “establishment” and some are even sufficiently enthusiastic to justify the highest hopes.
Yet, what are the youthful, the stupid and the intelligent likewise, actually doing? They are indulging in the archaic instinctual pleasure of tribal war, waged against the parent generation. The hate which they bear us—the older generation—is in the nature of national hatred of the most stultifying of all emotions. It precludes all communication, which makes it “blind” and dangerously prone to escalate.
Our culture is in immediate danger of extinction by a complete break in its tradition caused by a tribal war between two generations. This war, in turn, is caused by phenomena clearly recognizable to the psychiatrist as those of a mass neurosis. This matter-of-fact diagnosis is less pessimistic than it seems, because neurosis, in principle, has a chance of being cured by making its subconscious roots accessible to conscious understanding.
It should be perfectly possible to make the intelligent and un-indoctrinated among the rebelling youthful understand the causes of the disturbance which, after all, I was just able to make tolerably intelligible in an hour's presentation. Hope thus rests with education, but not with the kind dictated by the doctrinaires who are in power politically. To influence these is possible only by the overwhelming power of public opinion. I am optimistic about being able to convince the public of the few biological and pathological facts which must be understood in order to appreciate the dangerous position in which not only our culture, but all mankind finds itself at present.