Paradigm shift #1 Prosocial versus Antisocial.
back to our roots
A small change to current ways of being.
Prosocial:
Caring for others, helping, sharing, kindness, empathy etc. These were the basis of our societies for over tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of years. When, at the end of the paleolithic and the beginning of the neolithic we invented private property, inheritance and sedentary lifestyles we also started the destruction of the old paradigm.
The self-domestication theory.
This involves a load of technical stuff like a gene called BAZ1B and neural crest cells. The idea is actually relatively simple. We have actively domesticated a variety of different animals, starting with dogs and most recently pigeons. The process of domestication causes physiological changes, some visible some not. Visible changes are things like size, domesticates tend to be smaller than their wild cousins, they often have spots or are piebald. They have smaller jaws with recessed teeth, your upper teeth are further forward than your lower teeth. They tend to be much more docile. Changes we can’t see are a smaller amygdala and adrenal glands. This means that a domesticated animal is les agressive and less fearful than the wild cousins.
The idea is that we domesticated ourselves.
In some situations, for some animals, aggression and competition are good survival strategies. For other animals in other contexts they are not. Bonobos are highly cooperative, they don’t kill other Bonobos, agression in males is controlled by social means by the females. This is strikingly different to Chimpanzees, another cousin that evolved in a different context and who exhibit more agression and competition than Bonobos.
Onto humans, we are similar to Bonobos, or at least we were until we became sedentary. We exhibit a range of the ‘juvenile’ characteristics seen in other domesticated species. Paleo-anthropological research strongly indicates that our Paleolithic societies were predominantly cooperative and non-agressive.
Testosterone and oxytocin.
The former is generally seen as a sort of ‘wildman’ hormone and the latter as the ‘love’ hormone. But these simplistic ideas don’t take into consideration the social context. If in a social context high levels of competivity and aggression increase the social status of an individual, testosterone will stimulate this form of behaviour. In a Bonobo type of society the opposite is the case because the social status of the individual increases thanks to his or her capacity to cooperate and share.
Oxytocin does encourage compassion, social bonding and cooperation, but only within the group. It tends to provoke a hostile reaction to individuals from other groups.
The importance of females, women for us, in the evolution of a species is underestimated. Their role is too often seen as being passive and it is extremely unlikely that this is/was the case for a number of species including our own. A woman will chose to mate with a male who shows the characteristics that are adapted to the social context in which they both find themselves. A cooperative, sharing male will be a popular mate where those characteristics are the survival strategies of the group. Aggressive, competitive males will have trouble finding mates.
Humans, and again it was probably the women, have long known the dangers of inbreeding and thus the importance of finding mates from another , genetically distant group. This will have compensated for the hostility towards strangers that can be stimulated by the oxytocin.
So to sum it up, It is likely that the evolution towards cooperative sharing human societies was selected for, most likely by women, and at least partly, at a conscious level. we have actively selected for cooperative traits which formed the basis of cooperative societies. These lasted for millennia until we changed our societies when the current inter-glacial started a bit more than 10,000 years ago. The climatic changes that followed, sea level rises, tsunamis, changes in vegetation plus the Gothenburg magnetic excursion dated at 12,400−12,350 years BP pushed us to change how we lived.
Over the last few thousand years we have changed our diets, we became sedentary and we became farmers instead of hunter gatherers. Just a note, this didn’t happen all at once and wasn’t homogenous across the human world. There are still hunter gatherer societies today but they are now a tiny minority.
Power and control passed more and more to men and dominance, competivity and aggressivity have been selected for. This was made possible by the subjugation of women who could then be forced to mate with aggressive males.
Antisocial:
Competition, exclusion, monopolisation and accumulation. These are recent ways of thinking and not innate to human beings, we adopted them, we have developed them and now we need to reject them.
Paradigm shift and Prosocialism
Rich
I have a good social status because I have knowledge, expertise, experience and I SHARE them. I am cooperative and compassionate, I help others without being asked.
Poor
The miserable people with low social status are those who continue to accumulate money, power or bling. They are non-cooperative, aggressive and don’t share, they have little compassion. It's interesting to note that "rich" (using today's definition) people when confronted by an injured or suffering person have a reduced activation of their Anterior cingulate cortex and their Insular cortex. These two parts of our brains are associated with, amongst other things, empathy. So the wealthier someone is the less they are capable of being empathic. Most of our elected "leaders" fit into this class, there are very few who are not financially well off. Which explains a lot.
A simple and at the same time complex adjustment. It may be that you already feel and act this way, but the newspapers, social media, films, etc continue to promote the defunct status quo, as do our political and economic systems. Faced with all these crises why do we spend so much time protesting, pleading with governments to act? We don't need to wait, we can get on and do it ourselves in our local areas. We can help each other build resilient, prosocial, interconected communities.
Its time to change and here is what we can do :
Respect, value and promote prosocial, cooperative and compassionate behavior.
Continue, each of us, to acquire knowledge, experience and wisdom and offer them to help others.
Organise and work with local teams of people to improve the lot of everyone in our local community.
Offer our help to neighbouring communities.
All of the above with a smile :-)
Our competitive societies have brought us to where we are today, in a serious mess, we will only survive and thrive if we work together and build compassionate, sharing, prosocial societies.