Kindness and Civilization
In an earlier post I highlighted the theory that religion gave rise to civilization. Now comes another theory that might even further explain the beginnings of civilization: kindness.
The research by Brian Hare of Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences suggests that kindness provided the origins of the socialization among hominids. Gareth Cook summarizes the idea in the Boston Globe:
Human intelligence is often described as a steady accumulation of new kinds of smarts, as the brain expanded. But Hare has come to believe this would not have been possible unless our species first made an emotional breakthrough — the ability to tolerate each other, to be kind enough, and patient enough, that we could cooperate more deeply. This led to language, tools, and civilization.
This is a compelling thesis. But I’m not sure it’s right to call it an “emotional breakthrough”–Aristotle certainly wouldn’t have–because tolerating each other has more to do with behaviors than feelings. (I can absolute despise my colleague’s habits but still act gentlemanly towards him.)
What strikes me as helpful about this thesis is that it does suggest an evolutionary path: more kindness, more likely to avoid being killed by others in pack, more likely to survive and reproduce. But it also suggests further how the role of religion in civilization-building could take shape: shared wonder among people who were kind to one another yielded shared ideas, shared stories, shared food, shared labor, and so on. Groups built temples and told myths which pointed them toward the transcendent (and I think a Catholic here could even say that these myths and beliefs pointed them toward God, though in still murky ways).
Stretching the brain a little further, one could consider that the link between religion and violence is like this. While kindness gives rise to civilization, still original sin perverts kindness. Kindness reaches out to form communities– proto-civilizations rooted in shared work and shared wonder, primitive religion. But primitive religion is still partial, and one group’s primitive religion conflicts with another’s when there are other goods at stake: say, land or hunting rights. Removal of the barrier to the object of desire (following Girard’s notion of scapegoat here) amounts to a perverted act of kindness (protecting one’s friends by killing one’s enemies). And the cycle continues until someone in human history is able to set straight the right vector of love, the fruition of kindness.
Thoughts?
Tim Muldoon is a Catholic theologian and author of five books, and teaches at Boston College.
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I love the idea of this research, because it highlights what I like about religion, and the very mode of analysis de-emphasizes what I despise about it. It may sound glib, but “accentuate the positive” is a good way to live, as far as I am concerned. When people complain about things I always want to ask: “Compared to what?”. In the real world a person who learns genuine kindness, which is always “tough kindness” in my book, is the true good man or woman.
But while kindness as an original impetus is a great place to start for religion, it seems that phenomenologically it is really imprecise for anything beyond that. Not for evolutionary reasons about survival — which I don’t buy anyways — but for a simpler reason that surfaces in any real complex analysis, I think. For the kindness of the religious impulse always gets mixed with a doctrinal assertion. Apparently this is an inexorable pattern for human beings if we take history as a guide. And since doctrine is ineluctably “we-them” it always is the end of kindness. And I don’t suggest by this that there is an elite group that can think its way out of this. Yet some balance with it can me sought, which is a lot already. But it is not as right-wingers like to say on Fox News that those who are skeptical of received opinions or doctrines are wont to develop new religious sureties based on their putative anti-religion. This dubious idea has been accepted utterly uncritically, and it has frozen real understanding about the earthy antinomies present. The real divide is between those who see meaning in life — real life — and those who don’t. But surprisingly this divide does not fall on reious lines or even anti-religious ones. In tragic irony, the modern era has produced virtual somersaults of basic themes, such that now we have reversals unknown before. So, some of those who seem to find no real meaning in life are the most ardent adherents of various faiths. They are committed to some cooked up amalgam of traditional faith with the manic-omnivorousness facilitated by technological advances, and the result is a sort of world-negation unknown in human history, and a smarmy, sickening sweet and self-satisfied nastiness. I am sorry to say a lot of these types are now found in the right wing of the Catholic Church, and EWTN might be the egregious exemplar of it. A form of nihilism is rising in religions themselves around the world, precisely because meaning itself is lost, by the separation of kindness from religion. You cannot find meaning in life without having kindness in your heart. But that is only workable if you have some way to distinguish between kindness and the coin of our realm, the true spirit -deadening mammon of our world today: being nice.
The online dictionary I consulted calls kindness “having a good or benevolent nature or disposition.” The above discussion conflates two different concepts: Benevolent or kind behavior is not the same thing as the emotion of kindness toward another, empathy or softness at heart. The former may well be an outward manifestation of the latter, but especially in the case of non-humans it’s difficult to be sure that parallel behavior proves the presence of parallel emotion. I appreciate Peter Paul’s comment about genuine kindness and the in-authenticity of “niceness”: It is disheartening when someone exhibits “nice” behavior in the absence of real emotion, especially when that other seems to wants nothing beyond mere collusion in his charade.
The capacity for empathy toward another seems like an obvious starting point for the human spiritual experience. But doesn’t evolution — especially spiritual evolution — beyond empathy and its expression in kindness demand something more? I find it astonishing that the same biologically human animal which for millennia couldn’t see past tribal us/them identity can not only learn to read, write and solve partial differential equations in curved spacetime, but can see past the constructed-ness of our experience and dogmas we “need” to interpret them, into the creative ground beyond words and language.
It’s true that many among us will continue to slurp up inanities from Fox News and internet porn, fret about the utter unfairness of life, or just give up and pretend to be as “nice” as Sarah Palin and as certain as Fr. Corapi. Yet we need not despair.
Girard’s force of mimetic desire can work in the direction of evolving broader collective perspective at the same time as it drives darker forces. Think of how different an experience it is to sit in wonder at sunset with others, compared with sitting there alone — The spark of common spirituality is still with us, no matter how well we learn the CCC. We can be grateful for those lucky few here and there who are cursed to see themselves and the meaning (or not) of their lives. Let their true selves be seen, and seen to have real meaning in life. Eventually, more and more people will want that.
Frank,
I enjoyed reading your comment, but I am not sure I agree. I guess I don’t see being involved with meaning, or not, as you imply, as a matter for the “lucky few here and there”. The implication of that is that the rest need (unmeaningful?) dogma. I think the whole point of culture should be to stimulate and facilitate this search for meaning, and the bolstering of it. Culture does not have to tell us what the meaning is, just that we should try to have it. In a pluralistic democracy you can’t ask more than that. Because, inter alia, that is what makes better citizens anyways, who are less likely to be a problem for society. Thus the matter of the search for meaning has a bottom-line importance the state even.
Religions, if they are to be good actors in society, must encourage meaning for ALL people in society. Let me say again, I am NOT for coercion of religions in any way. But I do not think it coercion to encourage religions in a good direction, and frown -upon them societally when they do not fill that role. Right now the tendency of religions to anathematize many sectors of society for their own insular and dogmatic reasons is a very potent toxin for society. It is inexcusable in my book. I do not think calling them out for such destructive behavior is being anti- anything. But many religious intellectuals are such lazy f—s who have been coddled, and sinecured just for rigidly holding and riffing on rigid views, that they are a great roadblock. Let me say this. Holding rigid views, and riffing on them is no kind of talent or accomplishment. As far as I am concerned Robert George is in negative territory as to accomplishment in life. He has degraded reasonable debate, and the same goes for most of the people on sites where he holds forth, like the Mirror of Justice. If these people had any real sense of the history of ideas they would understand their odd place in it, as curious crypto-nihilists of the first order and with only “attitude” in their quiver.
Peter Paul:
Thank you for your comments; I hope I’m parsing them correctly…
By “dogma” my intended meaning was any unassailable assumption. I should have given some thought that on VN the technical meaning would be assumed. And, I didn’t mean that we “unlucky ones” genuinely need unmeaningful dogma. Just that until we gather up courage to question the unassailable, the “meaning of life” and the “meaning of who I am” seem vulnerable, and that isn’t even obvious to the one holding rigidly to a favorite worldview. I imagine that’s why people tend to treat everything important to them as if it were the highest dogma, and become aggressive if a favorite idea is under challenge.
I also don’t intend to suggest that courage is the exclusive domain of the privileged few. The extent to which I’m willing to risk the patience it takes to appreciate a sunset or the courage it takes to let go of cherished (and often self-defeating) aspects of self-image comes from seeing someone else I admire go first, and in doing so lead a fuller life. I wind up wanting what that other has, or to “be” as the other is, and willing to undertake risk to accomplish that. Only in this case (following Girard) the only one killed off is a little piece of my ego. Now that seems a positive aspect of mimetic force.
As for religion encouraging society in a “good” direction, I think the best way forward outght to be emphasis on contemplation and self-reflection, whatever the specific tradition. It’s sad that for many Catholics, a brutal “examination of conscience” and suppression of the naughty bits is the only self-reflection permissible. Worse yet is examination of somebody else’s conscience — definietly not a formula for serenity.
It is hard to know what an “unassailable assumption” could be in a democratic society. I know that there is a cadre of Catholics who want to believe that they can both be FOR religious liberty, and FOR “unassailable assumptions”, but it is an absurdity. I am not here to say one can’t hold to such things, just that one can’t expect to be taken remotely seriously and/ or label those “assailing” as anti-anything.
We are basically wired for, among other responses, fear, rage, signalling separation distress, nurturing, lust, enjoyment and drive within the limbic system of the brain. The strength of these influences is dependent upon the particular genetic history and predisposition of each person and the environment in which one is placed. Our basic personality structure ranges from introvert to extrovert. In human and non-human relationships there is first a competition for dominance and the winner of that competition forms the basic framework of the social relationships within that system. Cooperation within that system enhances the survival of that group. Is cooperation kindness? The young produced within that system need to be nurtured in order for that system to survive so there is a neuropathway that will signal distress and there is also a neuropathway that responds to distress with nurturing behavior. Within the brains of human and non-human animals there is also an intricate system of specialized brain cells called mirror neurons which functions as the social learning system of the brain. The particular areas involved are the premotor cortex and inferior parietal areas which are related to learning behaviors within that particular system; also involved is the parietal love, the superior temporal sulcus and the insula all of which play significant roles in comprehending feelings, intent and language. Basic empathy seems to be the hypothesis we formulate about another person based on the early influence of our social interactions
For some reason I wasn’t able to finish my sentence above. Empathy is first an instinctive response to another’s perceived disposition in relationship to basic physiological signals from the other and one’s internal reactions. This is where there is potential for development of a compassionate/loving kindness observational style. If that doesn’t occur then the system remains closed to further development towards a truly comprehensive and inclusive social system. It remains exclusive and rigid based on primitive responses of fear and threat with self-protective dogmas to guard against that threat.