In a conversation with friends recently we were discussing the topic of community among humans. One of them said something about how the capacity for reason and our need for community are what make us human. 

Now, this person was not necessarily trying to make an argument for or even suggest a supernatural origin for our tendency to keep company with each other. However. the comment did come from a Christian friend of mine, and I know exactly what I would have been thinking, back when I was a believer, if I had just said something like that. 

The person saying this was my friend Peter. Here is the quote, "Reason, or rather the capability to use reason, is one of the things that makes us human. Another is our need for community". Now, like with others on this site, this quote is out of context. However, I think that where I go in response is not actually out of the general context of what Peter was meaning to say. 

In my comments on this page, I'm not trying to pick an argument with my friend Peter about the nitty gritty details of how something is said. Rather, I am confronting head-on something that has surfaced in other conversations with religious people, and in my own thoughts and in my worldview when I was a believer. 

Whether it was intended or not, the comment about our need for community being part of that which makes us human did bring this debate to my mind. What I wrote in response became a bit too long for an e-mail response (not for me, but for most other folks....I totally understand). So, I decided to name it "the Communal Instinct" and put it in my section about Humanity at Every Fork in the Road. This way I can share it with others beyond that particular conversation. 

Now, reason.... 
I agree. As far as I know, it seems clear that we may very well be the only living organisms with the degree to which we have a capacity for using reason. That part may indeed set us apart from other animals. 

Community though? 
However, on the issue of our need for community, are we really so much different than the rest? 

Actually, our need for community (or rather... our tendency to prefer being together with others of our kind with whom we can relate) is not something that's unique to humans. It is a trait that is found in many other animals as well and can be traced quite far back in the evolutionary tree of life on Earth. It is wide spread among Earth's species today and had it's evolutionary beginnings millions of years ago in very primitive organisms. 

does the drive for Community in us have a Supernatural Origin? 
Of course I used to think that our preference for community came from having been created by a Community (the Community eluded to in the Bible, traditionally referred to as the Trinity by the religion Christianity). Even though I'm no longer a believer and it makes me sick to hear people making claims of certainty about such things, I still like the idea of that Community (the way I interpreted the Story when I was still a believer that is), and I acknowledge it is possible that It (or something like it) really exists and could have been the cause of the desire for community in humans. Of course, any of the proposed religious and philosophical opinions could account for it. The problem though is the fact that none of these claims comes from a scientific approach of the actual, knowable evidence at hand. 

Regardless of whether or not such a Community exists though, it is clear now that we already have another, natural, scientific, more logical and reasonable explanation for where this particular tendency comes from. 

Like What? 
Its existence in so many other animals and its observed survival benefits clearly shows us that it is most likely the result of natural selection; either an instinct that has stuck because it was helpful for the organism's survival or simply because it was preferred by the organism that was most successful at reproducing somewhere along the way. 

Did community help them survive? 
In the case of it having been helpful, some organism chose to be together with others of its kind at some point in the history of life on Earth. Being together with others benefited them and helped them survive (though this is not necessarily always the case for all organisms in all situations... available resources and other issues must be considered when calculating whether or not being together with many others would be a helpful survival mechanism). The organism whose predisposition toward being with others then passed on this trait to their offspring, and so on. 

or was it survival-neutral Baggage? 
However, sometimes genetically based traits get passed on via gene transmission from one generation to another regardless of whether or not the trait was ever helpful for anyone's survival. For instance... Perhaps the ones that preferred community just so happened to be more powerful (because of some other issues altogether in their make up or in their environment) and kicked out or otherwise disposed of less cooperative ones that didn't want to participate in community. Thus, the ones that got to pass on their genes to another generation were the ones that preferred community only because they also happened to be the big bullies of the bunch and threw their weight around to force others out that didn't agree with their desires or their way of doing things. 

a Functional Passage? 
It may have also been that even organisms which we'd consider less successful in other ways were some of the ones that were hanging around where there would have been more opportunities for mating (in a community) simply because there would be more potential mates gathered in a relatively smaller area. A community of communally oriented organisms breeds communally oriented offspring. 

Complex, Communal Society out of Nowhere? 
Ok, but how did it come about that the first "communal" organism (one of the "firsts" mentioned above) preferred to be together with others of its kind? The answer to that is the same as the answer to the question "Why do zebras have stripes?" and "How is it that I have this many freckles while the other person over there has that many?" The only answer that best explains these developments (and billions of others like them) in natural terms is random genetic mutations. 

It's not that the first so-called "communal" organism chose to be together with others and then that choice somehow changed their genetic structure which later got passed on to others in their family line. No, the genetic mutation that lead that organism to be predisposed to prefer community (at an extraordinarily and astronomically minute amount at first of course) came first. 

tracking the maze 
Neither does this necessarily mean that one random genetic mutation happened and then, POOF!! all of a sudden we have community. We may some day trace all such traits in us down to particular gene sequences and be able to say for certain which ones do this and that (well, we're already capable of doing this with quite a number of other traits). For now though, I'm just acknowledging the basic way things like this happen to come about. It may even be that there is a multitude of mutations that, when all in the same organism, lead to the first tendency for the Communal Instinct. 

Whether or not that one random genetic mutation ever turned out to be helpful or whether or not it would ever get passed on to other generations depended on the life of that one individual; the kind of genetic package they inherited from their ancestors, the kind of environment they had to try to survive in, how their genetic package predisposed them to behave in certain situations, what they chose to do in that environment, how their choices effected their chances of survival and how well genetically prepared they were for whatever kinds of changes were to come about in their environment as time went on. 

this is not predestination  
It's certainly not true that every single thing we ever think or say or do is absolutely predetermined by our genes. Clearly we have a large amount of freedom to think and say and do whatever we want. Just remember though that even some of what we "want" is something that we're actually predisposed to want. [For another example of this fact of nature, see my page called "the eyes genes of the beholder: Finally, the truth about beauty, physical attraction and the nature of sexual selection in the evolution of homo sapiens"] 

I have not actually studied this topic as deeply as I will as I go along in my journey into understanding our species history, but this (or something like it) sure seems to me like the most logical and reasonable natural explanation of how our tendency to "commune" with each other came about. 

Likable -vs- Legitimate Explanations
As much as I still like the Story of "the God that is a Community of Persons" Whom created humans as communal beings ("...It is not good that man should be alone...") based on Their Communal life together ("...let Us make man in Our image..."), in light of the natural evidence and scientific research into the matter, it seems most healthy not to inject such claims or even suggestions about unknowable things into the mix (Again, I'm not saying that I think this is even what my friend Peter was trying to do in the comment I quoted from him above. It just sparked these thoughts. That's all.) . 

It's not even about liking one explanation over the other (Like I already said above, I still actually like that Story). It's just that we have no idea whether or not a Creator or god of any kind exists in the first place, let alone whether or not our tendency to want to be together with each other is a byproduct of that creator's desires or actions. When making claims about things that can actually be studied in the natural realm (like the "Communal Instinct"), I suggest we stick to the things we can actually know for sure from actually studying nature scientifically. 

Back to the discussion 
Most likely it is due to our use of reason that we think our sense of community is so far superior to that of the other animals. I suppose whatever we endeavor to do will seem (and may well be) far superior to us relative to the endeavors of other animals. 

As we all agreed, we all long for community with others. It's just that there are so many things that people hold to be more important than communing with each other that we seldom actually end up doing it. Since community is so natural for us as living organisms, perhaps we could find community with each other on the basis of something natural, something that we could all relate with instead of having it always based on some kind of political, spiritual or philosophical system of absolute truth or whatever. 

For instance, we could talk about how it may have helped our ancestors survive through millions of years of a struggling existence on this planet before ever inventing these ideas about religion and philosophy which so often tend to separate us from each other instead of bring us together. Does our form of community set us apart from other, non-human animals only or from each other? What do you think? 
 [This entry added 20031119_0705]  

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