Big Think Interview With Richard Wrangham | Big Think

Big Think Interview With Richard Wrangham
New videos DAILY: bigth.ink/youtube
Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: bigth.ink/Edge
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A conversation with the Harvard primatologist.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Wrangham:
Richard Wrangham is a professor of biology and anthropology at Harvard University who studies chimpanzees, and their behavior, in Uganda. His main interest is in the question of human evolution from a behavioral perspective. He is the author, with Dale Peterson, of "Demonic Males: Apes, and the Origins Of Human Violence," and "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:
Question: What are the two most fascinating things about human evolution yet to be explored?
Richard Wrangham: How it is that a pre-human ape became a human. And it's a question that Darwin had no idea about really, and that we've had only some rather simple ideas about until recently, and I think we still have a long way to go. And until we have a sense of the continuity in an evolutionary sense and the biological factor responsible for something like a Chimpanzee standing upright, becoming what we are today, then we will always have this sense of anthropocentrism. We will always feel just a little bit divorced from the rest of the universe. And that's one big question.
I think another huge question is about the evolution of human nature with respect to the biggest use of cooperation, processiality, altruism, and on the other hand, violence, aggression, a willingness to kill. We are an unusual species because we have such an extraordinary mix of these two aspects. We show them both to extremes. We're amazingly more cooperative than almost any other species and we're extraordinarily destructive compared to most species. And grappling with the extent to which that is a product of culture and biology and to the extent of why we should have biological position to go in both of those directions remains one of the huge questions. Which again, is something, of course, that is hard to reconcile with the rest of nature in many ways and for that reason, people resort to religion and they resort to all sorts of naturalistic point of views, strange belief systems to grapple with the question of good and evil.
Question: Are humans predisposed to behave violently?
Richard Wrangham: Well, to talk about inherent aggression in us sets off alarm bells for some people because it sounds biologically determinist, it sounds pessimistic. So, I wouldn't want to quite put it in that term. But, I do think that there's all sorts of evidence that humans have got a predisposition to behave with violence in certain contexts, that yes. And it's a great thing to be aware of it and the more we're aware of it, then the more we can do about it.
You know, it has nothing to do with whether or not one is optimistic, or pessimistic about the future. And I'm a firm believer in the fact that war is not a necessary feature of human life and that there has been a rather impressive decline in the amount of killing that humans as a species do over the last centuries and millennia, and that the future can be expected to be increasingly rosy. But none of that is to deny that within the human heart there is a dangerous side.
Question: How can we overcome this?
Richard Wrangham: We can carry on doing the kinds of things we are doing, which is to think deeply and carefully about anticipating violence. About setting up institutional systems that enable us to anticipate when there is a threat of genocide in the country, when there are threats of war between states and for other states to be prepared to intervene. I mean the great thing nowadays is that, whereas in recent decades and centuries, when two countries declared war on each other, the others just stood by and watched. Nowadays, everyone is very scared and alarmed about it. And doesn't want this to happen and there is intervention just flowing all over the place. You know, we try to get involved in Darfur, we try to get involved in the Congo, we try to get involved in Bosnia. And as a result, things change.
Question: Where are we headed now in terms of aggression and war?
Richard Wrangham: The size of the groups that are political units has just been growing, not exactly steadily with leaps and drops, but have been growing over the millennia. And surely the way in which the human species is ultimately heading is towards a single group.
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/videos/big-think...

[@johns.7297]

A scientist who asks important questions and conducts research to find truthful answers to them.

[@KevinArdala01]

Looking at what's happened since he gave this talk with the Yazidis and more recently the Uyghurs (and yet business goes on as usual) doesn't fill me with confidence that our current 'systems', or the path we're on, is the right one after all. Not to mention the rise of Islamic movements the world over, particularly in the west, not sure how good the system is at spotting threats as he mentioned. There are many things that need reconsideration... (Love his work though!)

[@maskivelli1697]

Great Video. Thanks.

[@spacelion6318]

Cooking is the equivalent of a human having 2 stomachs..it would be interesting to see if cooking n eating chimp diet would work better

[@tobiasbrown1882]

He said our epoch has less violence than centuries ago. What past periods had more killing than during WWII in Europe? Is he wrong here? See about 3:30 min.

[@hainish2381]

Tobias, if this is a subject that you find interesting, Steven Pinker has written a book about it: "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined", in 2011. He explains how violence has been declining systematically in human history. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature Every past period was more dangerous to live in, and the probability to die from a violent death (murder, war) was tremendously big 10.000 years ago. And from then until now, violence has been decreasing. This is something that Jared Diamond also talks about in his books. We can still see how much higher the chances of dying from a violent death are if you live as a hunter-gatherer, for instance, in New Ginea, than living in Europe or North America. The chances of being killed at war, in a riot, or murdered were huge during the Middle Ages in Europe, and, prior to that, in most civilizations in the classic period, murder and war were as much part of the reason for a low life expectancy as disease.

[@millenialmusings8451]

He's also wrong when he said humans are the most cooperative species. Ants and honey bees are much more cooperative than us. Just check massive ant colonies and behives

[@lifelearner3067]

That's right, ants and bees are very cooperative. Also mindlessly conformist and almost robotic. The kind of society somewhat desired by utopians who want to "design a safe world."

[@KevinArdala01]

Looking at what's happened since he gave this talk with the Yazidis and more recently the Uyghurs (and yet business goes on as usual) doesn't fill me with confidence that our current 'systems', or the path we're on, is the right one after all. Not to mention the rise of Islamic movements the world over, particularly in the west, not sure how good the system is at spotting threats as he mentioned. There are many things that need reconsideration... (Love his work though!)