Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

by Jane Goodall

One of the most significant facts established about human behavior, as it relates to warfare and other acts of violence against conspecifics, is the following: cultural evolution permits the development of pseudospeciation. Pseudospeciation, simply defined, means the transmission of individually acquired behavior from one generation to the next within a particular group. Over time this leads to the collective culture (the customs and traditions) of that group. Pseudospeciation (or cultural speciation as I prefer) in humans means, among other things, that the members of one group (the in-group) may not only see themselves as different from members of another group (the out-group), but also behave in different ways to group and nongroup individuals. In its extreme form, cultural speciation leads to the dehumanizing of out-group members, so that they may come to be regarded almost as members of a different species. This frees group members from the inhibitions and social sanctions that operate within the group, and enables them to direct acts toward “those others” which would not be tolerated within the group. Slavery and torture at one end of the scale, ridicule and ostracism at the other.