The Moral Arc

144. Glowacki, Luke, and Richard W. Wrangham. 2013. “The Role of Rewards in Motivating Participation in Simple Warfare.” Human Nature 24, 444–460. A modern example of the cultural rewards war-risk hypothesis may be found in the research of the anthropologist Scott Atran, who has documented precisely how the process works in al Qaeda cells with new recruits. The families of successful suicide bombers (successful meaning they blew themselves to smithereens) are taken care of financially and their lost son (or, more rarely, a daughter, in the case of the “black widow”) is posterized like a sports star. Religion and ideology may not always be enough motivation for would-be martyrs and holy warriors to overcome their aversion to injury and death (Atran thinks that the highly publicized “seventy-two virgins” belief is greatly exaggerated), so the “band of brothers” mentality is reinforced through social groups, soccer clubs, and other social activities that reinforce core cultural values. Atran, Scott. 2011. Talking to the Enemy: Religion, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists. New York: Ecco.

148. The Harvard Hawks have also been accused of data-mining examples of violence—while allegedly ignoring the cases of peaceful hunter-gatherers—so I queried the archaeologist Lawrence Keeley on this charge, to which he responded, “I included every case I could find. That’s why there are several cases that counted no war deaths over two hundred years. Regarding accuracy, Paul Roscoe, an ethnographer of New Guinea, has checked the war death figures I found for that region, going to the original reports, and found my figures low/conservative,” adding that “LeBlanc and I are archaeologists; we’ve excavated unequivocal war victims and fortifications—lots of them. Prehistoric warfare is a whole intertwined set of physical facts.” Keeley’s recommendation to the peace-and-harmony mafia is to “Admit that war was common over the past 10,000s of years but not constant; try to explain why this is so; ask how different cultures conducted war or maintained peace.” Personal correspondence, February 5, 2014.

3: WHY SCIENCE AND REASON ARE THE DRIVERS OF MORAL PROGRESS