Rob Kall: Your Brain is built for Politics; yes. That is based on the idea that the brain
evolved to deal with politics. Now, how
did that work when people were living in bands and tribes and sitting around a
fire? There were no National Parties.
What do you mean by that?
Darren
Schreiber: What I mean by politics
specifically is what I call "Coalitional Cognition," and that means "Thinking
about us or them." So humans, one of the interesting things about us is that we
can change our group membership all the time, and we do. When we're in the office, we're in one group,
but we're maybe part of "I'm a male" in the office, but I'm also "Part of the
faculty, instead of being a student." We
have lots and lots of different coalitions that we're members of
simultaneously, and it seems that you need a really huge brain if you're going
to manage being a member of a lot of different coalitions and navigating all of
the different memberships simultaneously, which is what we have to do as humans.
r Now I wanted to kind of stay
with that indigenous, tribal picture there, though. What are the coalitions there? Have you looked at it from an anthropological
point of view?
Darren
Schreiber: I haven't as much in my own
research, but I've read a lot of the people who have, and what they find is
across species; so not only early humans, but in dolphins. In fact, there's a story in the news today in
my former home, San Diego: there was a giant superpod of dolphins spotted in
the ocean today, and this superpod is a collection of lots and lots of smaller
pods of dolphins. Dolphins, like humans,
have coalitions that are changing in dynamic and at multiple levels. So A couple of dolphins will go hunting
together today, but another pair might go hunting tomorrow; and they not only
hunt in pairs or in small groups, but even in larger groups, and even in these
superpods they can get together for bigger forms of sociality. What we share in common with dolphins is changing
coalitions.
So if we were humans, we would maybe go hunting with a friend for some
rabbits tomorrow, ad if we're going to go in a really big group, we need to get
a lot of people together to go hunting an elephant. And if we're going to live in a village to
protect ourselves from other villages or other tribes that might be out there
against us, we ally in villages and in tribes and in ever larger organizations;
and then we're members of all of those simultaneously and in different ways,
and even in different times, we change alliances within groups. And that's true for humans, for chimpanzees,
for dolphins, for hyenas; all of these animals that I call "Political
Animals." So it's not just humans, but
many other political animals.
In contrast: ants? If you're an
Argentinian ant in San Diego, you are going to remember that Argentinian ant
coalition for the rest of your life, and that never changes. And all the other ants can tell by the sounds
that you give off.
Rob Kall: So what you're saying then is that, because
you're looking at brain function, you're suggesting that parts of the brain
that tie us to political behaviors existed long before humans, and that they
are existent in mammals and maybe birds and things like that?
Darren
Schreiber: That's exactly right. We see this in common again, if you look at -
one of the most fascinating features of this is to look at what is called the
"Dunbar Numbers.' So, this researcher
named Robin Dunbar did a series of studies, and what he discovered was: the
larger your social network was, the number of other members of you're species
that you're interacting with on a really regular basis, the larger that number
of members in that social group is, the bigger the brain is relative to your
body size.
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