Читать книгу The End of War - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 9

Before I could answer these questions and discover whether human beings are naturally peaceful or violent, I had to ask and answer a more fundamental question: why does compassion encourage these acts of heroism? As I explored the reality of human nature, I realized that compassion’s influence on the battlefield is not a contradiction, but one of the reasons why our ancestors were able to survive in the harshest conditions. And why we, their descendents, are capable of ending war.

Our earliest human ancestors lived on the plains of Africa, but when I was a teenager, I often wondered how they could have possibly survived. After all, human beings are not very fast. We are much slower than lions, leopards, and other predators, and we lack natural weapons such as fangs, claws, tusks, and horns. We are physically weaker than chimpanzees and gorillas, and we lack the climbing agility that allows them to quickly escape to the safety of trees. With such significant drawbacks, how did human beings survive and prosper in the harsh conditions of Africa?

We survived because of our large brains and our endless capacity to cooperate. In fact, our large brains make us even more dependent upon cooperation, because our intelligence cannot develop unless a community protects us and gives us the gifts of language and knowledge while we are young. Because our large brains take many years to fully mature, a human child remains helpless for a longer period of time than the offspring of any organism and requires a community to further its growth and development.

All mammals cooperate to some degree, while many mammals rely on cooperation for their survival. Lions live in prides, for example, while elephants live in herds, wolves in packs, dolphins in pods, and chimpanzees in troops. But due to our physical limitations, along with the conditions our large brains require to fully develop, we rely on cooperation far more than any other mammal.

Many people do not understand that cooperation is the key to our survival, because they incorrectly assume that the purpose of every organism is merely to survive, reproduce, or provide for its self-interest, but this is not true. In a hive of honeybees, only the queen bee is capable of reproduction. The female worker bee labors for the well-being of her community, and in an act of ultimate self-sacrifice, every worker bee must give her life when she defends her hive, by leaving behind her vital organs when she delivers her defensive sting.

Where mammals are concerned, a gorilla will die to protect its family members and a wolf will die to defend its pack. Gorillas, wolves, and other mammals serve their community because the purpose of every organism is not merely to survive, reproduce, or provide for its self-interest, but to continue the survival of its species. Because bees, ants, gorillas, and wolves rely upon their communities for survival, they are instinctually willing to protect their communities at the risk of losing their lives.