Social Success, Part 2: Religion
Sacrifice, harmony, social domestication, and Religious Telephone
In Part 1 of the Social Success series, we discussed the social evolution of pre-agricultural societies, who had populations on the order a few dozen to a few hundred people. In a hunter-gatherer setting groups were small, so humans had the capacity to put a name to the face of most in their group. Suppressing selfish instincts came a little easier; people knew personally those who their selfish actions would harm, and they were more likely to get caught.
The agricultural evolution brought with it a newfound energy source that could fuel ever-increasing populations. Rather suddenly, relative to human evolutionary timescales, it was now possible for someone to encounter hundreds of people to whom they weren't personally familiar with. And due to the rapid onset of these population booms, genetic evolution didn't have much of a chance to correspondingly adapt human behavior to the novel environment—individual humans were stuck with their Stone Age genotypes.
Thus, the social component of our species' evolution, cultural evolution, picked up the slack, which was in large part motivated by competition between and within human groups. To thrive in an increasingly competitive group market, groups needed to find ways to effectively suppress selfish motives and instead encourage groupish motives. How did civilizations resist collapse in the wake of selfish free-for-alls? How did they manage to unite constituents that were, for the most part, unfamiliar with one another?
In Part 2, we’re going back to early civilization and investigating the role religion played in human social development. Expect to learn why selflessness is valuable for biological systems, the role of religion in human domestication, why super-natural beliefs were so common, the role of fiction in group dynamics, and how religions evolve.
Biological Sacrifice
As civilizations evolve, a selection pressure encourages groups to piece together sets of rules that improve group cohesion. Let's first remind ourselves of what is meant when we say “selection pressure”.
Any biological organism is motivated by a fundamental biological law: to survive as a means to genetically proliferate. Organisms aren't necessarily conscious of this biological force, they simply inherit an accumulation of strategies that led to their eventual emergence, and that inheritance generally encourages them to do what their forebearers did: survive and procreate. Organisms aren't strictly bound to this force. There have existed innumerable organisms that never reproduced. But, failing to reproduce limits their ability to transfer strategies to forthcoming generations. Therefore, every living being alive today is shaped by a set of strategies that, as evidenced by them being alive in the first place, pressures them towards behaviors that led to genetic reproduction in prior generations.
Okay, back to civilization. Civilizations are biological organisms too, believe it or not, because they are composed of many biological organisms: humans! This is why I like the term superorganism to describe collaborating groups of humans. It brings us back to reality, forcing us to acknowledge that societies are bound to biological forces just like we are. However, there are some important differences between the biological constitution of a civilization (a superorganism) and a human (an organism). Let's investigate these differences.
A biological organism is composed of a system of cells with near-identical genetics1. Perfect genetic relatedness harmonizes the objectives (survival and reproduction) of these cells and enables them to submit completely to the success of the biological system as a whole. A body has an authoritative grip on cell function, and only occasionally loosens this grip to allow cells to self-organize, e.g., performing self-maintenance.
An organism’s cells perform whatever role is required of them—even if it leads to their premature death. For instance, there are white blood cells in our immune system that home in on pathogens and burst to release lethal concoctions of nucleic acid and bactericidal enzymes, which kills both themselves and the pathogens. Interestingly, this cellular suicide bombing also deals some friendly fire, leaving biochemical “craters” in its wake. Prolonged pathogenic exposure not only allows for more parasitic exploitation, but it also causes the body to catch more strays (i.e., causes inflammation) and is a major contributor to senescence, that is, system deterioration with age.
In any case, sacrifice, or selflessness, is essential to producing an effective biological system. Too little selflessness can cause problems. For example, a cell in a body doesn't necessarily know that it's surrounded by a network of genetic copies; from the perspective of the cell, simply reproducing itself could be as viable a reproductive strategy as conceding to help the entire system. However, runaway cellular reproduction (e.g., cancer) consumes resources at the expense of other cells in the body and disrupts their functions. If left unregulated, it leads to the death of the entire system, and death prior to sexual reproduction means an early genetic fate for the cell itself and the whole. As a result, natural selection has selected for genes that instruct cells not to self-reproduce at whim. Even still, genes mutate, and we have ten trillion cells in our body, and some mutations produce maladaptive cells; so, despite the best efforts of the immune system, cancer can still slip through the cracks.
Having looked at systems of cells, let’s move on to systems of humans. One key difference between a superorganism (e.g., a system of humans) and a conventional organism, is that the constituents of the superorganism aren't all genetic copies. In an organism, the biological objectives of all constituent cells harmonize, as dictated by their shared genetics, whereas in a superorganism like a civilization, there exists a smorgasbord of constituents with competing genetic interests. Expecting the same degrees of sacrifice that we find in our cells from genetically unrelated humans is unreasonable and runs counter to our biology. In other words, demanding too much sacrifice from constituents is a surefire way to breed collective contempt amongst genetically greedy individuals. Yet, large civilizations composed of relatively selfless humans emerged nonetheless. Why?
If a conglomeration of collaborating organisms is more effective than individual organisms at obtaining and converting resources from its surrounding environment into genetic offspring, well, expect those conglomerations to exist. This is probably why multi-cellular organisms eventually emerged from single-cellular organisms long ago, and it is probably why civilizations of collaborating humans emerged as well. Regardless of the genetic relatedness between constituents, if the group itself provides security, and that security allows its constituents to safely reproduce, it is in the best genetic interest of constituents to behave in such a way that maintains group harmony.
To summarize, members within a civilization have competing genetic interests at the individual level, but as a collective their interests end up aligning because of the reproductive security that the collaboration provides. This relationship encapsulates the Yin and Yang of life as a human being. We're constantly tempted by selfish urges; but since we live in groups, groups needed to find ways to tame these urges. So, Darwinian evolution did its thing, and from it emerged a strategy that proved to be quite the impressive social domesticator.
Enter Religion.
Religion
Large civilizations owe much of their success to religion, that is, a collective belief in and worship of some supernatural force(s). Religion and law were antidotes to the ever-increasing unfamiliarity that accompanied vast population expansions. In early civilizations (and still to this day in many societies), religion and law were enmeshed, so for the purpose of this discussion I'll make the simplifying consideration that laws fell under the religious umbrella.
Anyway, groups require a binding agent to remain united, otherwise they risk dissolving into smaller subgroups, losing members to more attractive groups, or falling to more cohesive groups. One effective strategy for a group to adopt throughout early civilization was to become as large as possible while maintaining unity. Size provided more opportunity to obtain the resources required for its sustenance and reduced the probability of being exploited by an even larger and more united group.
Increased group size can pose problems for non-related organisms. Typically, biological organisms tend to value things corresponding to their genetic usefulness to oneself. Generally, what's genetically useful to an organism tends to correlate with genetic relatedness. Humans are no different. The highest degrees of value tend to lie in oneself (i.e., self-preservation), and reverberate towards immediate family (offspring, mates, parents, siblings), extended family, friends, community, city, state, nation, species, organic life, and inorganic material. Note, the order of this list is not necessarily set in stone, but I think it does a good job at capturing the general trend. I also don't think that there should be a particular order, but alas, we weren't consulted upon our design.
Religion was a product of group selection that attempted to shift the focus of individuals away from themselves and towards the greater group. These two competing interests, self and group, constitute the pillars upon which religions are built upon. For example, as I eluded to in this post, the Christian tenet of the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth, are all behaviors that benefit an individual at the expense of the group. Conversely, the Seven Capital Virtues of chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility, all generally demand some degree of sacrifice and selflessness from constituents for the greater good.
Eastern religions, while still certainly having no shortage of differences with the Abrahamic religions, tend to follow a similar formula. For instance, Theravada Buddhism lays out a list of ten fetters that lead to suffering, some of which include māna (pride), paṭigha (anger), macchariya (greed), and kāma-rāga (sensual lust). Compare that with the pāramitā (perfections), the noble qualities generally associated with the enlightened: dāna (generosity and charity); sīla (proper conduct); nekkhamma (freedom from lust, craving, and desires); paññā (wisdom, understanding); viriya (energy, effort, enthusiasm); khanti (patience, forgiveness), sacca (honesty); adhiṭṭhāna (determination); mettā (good-will, loving kindness); and upekkhā (equanimity). One of the central themes of Buddhism, non-self, boils down to the notion that attachment to the self (i.e., selfishness) leads to suffering, and indiscriminate attachment (non-self) leads to nirvana.
I would venture to guess that most groups attempt to optimize what I'll call the formula of ingroup harmony, where here I’ll make use of the minmax function used in game theory and artificial intelligence optimization,
The equation above represents an optimization of group quality, Q, where group quality depends on how much sin and virtue is floating around. Here I consider group quality to be the health and fertility of the group, or the group’s ability to sustain its population and support population expansion. In layman’s terms, the formula above states that groups try their best to discourage selfishness (sin) and encourage groupishness (virtue). From the perspective of an individual this formula is inversed; it would be in an individual’s best interest to get away with as much selfish behavior as they could, limit the amount of resources they had to sacrifice, and funnel all those extra resources into producing offspring.2
Back to the formula. The b subscript indicates that this is the amount of sin and virtue allowable by biology. A compromise need be struck between groups and their members. There is a limit to how much a religion can reduce selfishness, because as biological organisms, humans are still inherently genetically selfish, so excessive restrictions could reduce group quality and lead members to find a less restrictive group; similarly there is also a limit to how selfish individuals can be, as excessive selfishness hinders group function, lowers group quality, and may cause the group fall to a more harmonious group.
In the psychological literature this dichotomy is known as the “Big Two”: Communion and Agency. Religions attempt to enhance communion, individuals attempt to maintain their agency.
In any case, religions are naturally evolved mechanisms that allowed groups to become more cohesive, and adhering to the formula of ingroup harmony does a pretty good job at fostering within-group harmony.
Natural and Super-Natural
The claim that religions are natural may seem a little counter-intuitive, especially when religions tend to be predicated on a shared belief of some super-natural phenomena. So, let's establish why most religions may have developed these super-natural beliefs in the first place, and why shared fictional beliefs ended up being so useful for groups.
When we don't understand something, we look for answers. An organism that can better predict what occurs in their environment is an organism that can better position themselves to obtain resources; resources that can later be converted into offspring. Self-preserving systems aim to maximize certainty and minimize uncertainty, because self-preservation becomes easier when things are predictable.
However, sometimes answers just aren't available or require too much effort to obtain—so we make some up. Religious myths evolved as an attempt to answer the "why" questions that we were yet able to understand and packaged these crude answers into easily digestible stories. Whether it be why we dream, why natural disasters occur, or why we're here in the first place, religious myths arose as an attempt to explain the unknown. Regardless of whether those explanations were valid, perceived certainty fosters psychological comfort, so we happily indulged in these myths. Even better, religions blended the formula of ingroup harmony into their myths to encourage pro-social behavior, embedding lessons within stories that emphasized that "bad" things arise due to sinfulness and "good" things arise due to virtuousness, e.g., "Our food yield is lower than usual because some of you misbehaved, and the food Gods don't like that, so don't misbehave!"
Attributing the complex happenings of our world to the divine bypassed the discomfort associated with not understanding why those happenings occurred in the first place. And historically, us humans encountered many things that we had yet to understand. For example, various groups of humans across the globe (Mesoamerica, Shang China) at some point adopted animal or human sacrifice. Sacrificial practice was performed to appease to the Gods in an attempt to avoid or bring an end to times of hardship. A typical example was engaging in sacrificial practices to try to prevent droughts, which led to famines. We now know, after many generations of collective intellectual effort, that the hydrological conditions from which droughts emerge are tied to geophysical fluid dynamics processes, which are processes completely and utterly uninfluenced by sacrificial practices. In retrospect, we can see that this over-simplification, bred by ignorance, resulted in needless harm. Nevertheless, it's important to bear in mind that the humans doing these things were not “bad” or “evil”. They simply lived during a period that lacked in some of the tools that we have today; tools that bestow upon us the fortune of observing the world with increased objectivity.
As a somewhat related and more uplifting aside, a cultural study from 2008 observed and recorded socially learned behaviors across ten different wild chimpanzee groups in Africa3. A behavior that was observed within every group was the presence of a communal rain dance—which was more common than social grooming! Is this evidence of early ritual practice, or are they just elated by the arrival of refreshing rain and the bounty of fresh fruit that follows?
Returning to humans, belief in the super-natural produced seemingly plausible stories that attempted to explain away the uncomfortable unknown. Consequently, different groups of humans came up with their own batches of stories, and these shared beliefs provided an additional benefit of delineating between ingroup and outgroup. Whether it be sporting a religious symbol, going to a particular place of worship, or understanding the intricacies of religious rituals, the fictional aspects of religions allowed members to easily advertise group membership. And the more bizarre the beliefs, the stronger the ingroup loyalty, since more oddities ostracize group members from the rest of society, leading to increased ingroup dependence.
As civilizations were expanding, divine governments needed a way to unite their people, identify between their people and neighboring people, and stop their people from seeping into neighboring groups. Geographical borders between groups generally weren't as well-established as they are today, so this shared fictional belief helped highlight where exactly those borders were. If a community on the outskirts of my civilization bears our religious symbol or engages with our rituals (which indicates they share our fictional beliefs), and further away is a community that bears a different religious symbol and rituals, well, I can presume that the border of my civilization lies somewhere in the middle. Come to think of it, in this light the common horror movie trope of Christians brandishing their crosses to repel demons (i.e., threatening strangers) starts to make a little more sense…
If we shift back to the biological superorganism, we can start seeing how religion plays a part in shaping superorganisms. The fictional aspects of religions help reinforce the cellular membrane that encloses the superorganism, distinguishing between the within and the without. The more bizarre the fictional aspects, the stronger the cellular membrane, making it more difficult for outsiders to enter and for insiders to escape.
The lessons contained in religious stories and traditional ritual practices served to transfer valuable ancestral wisdom and can be considered as extensions of the superorganism's genes. Just like how your genes instruct your cells to produce features that help you to stay alive and reproduce; lessons within religious stories and rituals help instruct followers on the particular behaviors that keep the superorganism healthy and fertile.
And, just like how our genes change in response to a changing environment, so do religions.
Religious Evolution
In this section I'll briefly detail some examples of evolutionary adaptations that Abrahamic religions adopted to remain relevant and effective (source).
The emergence of monotheism in Judaism seems to have been the product of foreign relations. Israel, being steadily nestled between imperial powerhouses (the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans), was often caught in the turbulence generated by surrounding power struggles. This turbulence bred hostility from the side of the Israelites, and the historical record shows evidence of a gradual change, an evolution, in the Old Testament from polytheism (multiple gods), to monolatry (worship of one God, tolerance of others), to monotheism (one God, intolerance of others), as Israel was being ragdolled by surrounding empires. Monotheism, or what could equivalently be called hyper-nationalism, partly evolved as a defense to protect Israeli sovereignty from imperial abuse.
Christianity evolved too. Jesus himself was an Israelite apocalyptic preacher and was thus extremely devout to his fellow Israelites and the Jewish doctrine. It's quite likely the popular quote "Love thy neighbor as yourself" was intended for only his fellow Israelites; at this point the ingroup within the formula of ingroup harmony included only Israelites.
The bible's gospels about Jesus' life—the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were written roughly 35-75 years after his death, with Matthew being the earliest and John being the latest. The later the book from the date of Jesus' death, the less the stories are constrained by historical memory, and the more impressive and fantastical they become, like a game of Religious Telephone. For instance, in the earliest book we see Jesus displaying his ingroup bias in full force, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles [non-Israelites], and enter no tower of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” - Matthew 10:5-7, whereas in the more recent book of Luke we find the more popular Good Samaritan story. Even the Good Samaritan story is predicated on a clearly unfavorable judgment towards an outgroup, that is, despite the Samaritan being part of a “bad” group, the Samaritan still exhibits “good” behavior—so what’s an Israelite’s excuse for misbehaving?
One thing worth noting is that it could be possible that, regardless of his (likely) discriminate devotion, Jesus was still progressive relative to other Israelite apocalyptic preachers. It's hard to say though, since the more time passes, the more stories get reshaped to fit whatever narrative is most conducive to group success at the time.
So, if Jesus himself was a devout Israelite, why is he touted as the champion of indiscriminate brotherly love? Jesus' death occurred around the time of Roman imperial rule. The Romans built roadways connecting all their conquered cities, which meant that more uprooted people of varying ethnicities were gravitating towards social organizations. And, as we've found, religions are superorganisms that strive for growth, because growth provides constituents with more security. The religion best suited to ride the newfound commercial currents and capitalize on this ripe and diverse population was bound for multiplication; and Christianity, promoted in large part by a fervent Apostle Paul, offered the alluring package of interethnic brotherly love with Jesus as the poster boy. The rest is history.
Fiction and Non-fiction
Historically, religions built upon a foundation of non-fictional "truths" and integrated these truths into fictional stories. The lessons contained within the stories generally adhere to the formula of ingroup harmony, and it is a feature that most religious groups tend to have in common. What these groups don't have in common, and what devout group members will be quick to emphasize, are the fictional aspects (which include the stories, the symbols, the idiosyncrasies of their rituals, and so on) that differentiate their group from other groups. Groups then point to these fictional differences as justification to dismiss the credibility of everything else about the norms of other groups. Remember, groups tend to adhere to the formula of ingroup harmony, not the formula of all-group harmony.
Religions were—and still are—a great tool for social domestication, taming humans of their selfish impulses and sustaining ingroup harmony. Not only are the lessons that encourage community valuable, but religious philosophies also tend to have merit. Many religions converge on similar ideas, because at the end of the day humans are generating those ideas, not religions. Religious philosophy is the product of many smart and devoted people thinking deeply about human nature across many generations, and when their ideas can withstand generations of scrutiny, there must be some truth in it that people gravitate towards. And those collections of ideas are quite valuable; they provide followers with a pre-packaged “values guide” that works quite well on setting them on the right path.
However, the unrealistic aspects of religions leave much to be desired, at least in the context of improving our understanding of the world. Technological advances have been able to gradually shed light on the actual reasons by which phenomena occur. Religious explanations are steadily giving way to empirical explanations, and religions are losing consequently their credibility. The fictional aspects of a religion play a large role in binding constituents together, so when something threatens the fictional façade, and thus security of the group, the natural reaction is defensiveness. It's no surprise that some religions are aversive to the acceptance of empirical findings, such as heliocentrism and evolution, because to admit that the explanations that they felt were true were actually made up threatens the foundations upon which the religion stands upon.
Nevertheless, truth, or at least a pursuit towards truth, tends to prevail over the long run. To better understand how things work is what biological organisms strive for, because it allows them to better predict and control their environment in service of survival and reproduction. Science is a more reliable, inclusive, and legitimate way of improving understanding, so more people are beginning to put their faith in Science rather than God(s).
But science isn't perfect either, that's kind of the whole point. Science evolves too. New discoveries are made, some hold their weight, some fall short and fail to reproduce. Scientific progress continues indefinitely, and scientific consensus is always in flux. This can gives our religiously programmed brains difficulty, because our brains expect simple dogmas that ingroup fictions have long provided. Lucky for our brains, there is still, and always will be, a lot we don't know, so there will always be ample opportunity to cling to fictional faith.
In Part 3, we'll fast-forward to modernity. The global population has passed eight billion people and the world is more interconnected than ever, which leaves no shortage of interesting group dynamics. We'll examine some of the groups that exist today from the lens of evolutionary theory, including nations, corporations, the global superorganism, as well as some examples of modern groups clinging to fiction in times of uncertainty, and more.
For the sake of this example we'll ignore the colonies of bacteria lining our gastrointestinal tracts, which actually outnumber the cells in our body.
Obviously, it’s difficult for us to imagine someone doing this, given our extensive evolutionary history within social groups. Consciousness evolved to simulate ourselves in relation to our surroundings. And of special importance to consciousness is people, so evolution has made sure that we have a hard time imagining unfettered selfishness paying off, because selfishness comes at the expense of our relationships (which are incredibly valuable).
Wilson, E. O. (2012). The social conquest of Earth. W W Norton & Co., p. 222