At first it was hard for me not to be gleeful reading Colin
Talbot’s The Paradoxical Primate: here
was Talbot, an ex-Trotskyist (I grew up the daughter of Trotskyists) with an
evolutionary psychological view of human nature (a perspective he and I share)
writing in a light and personal style (my favorite); telling me I was about to
read a "creative synthesis" of many disciplines: management and
organizational theory and research (his current field), public administration,
economics, evolutionary psychology, chaos and complexity theory; about a topic
that fascinates me–our paradoxical nature.

Talbot, a professor of Public Policy at the University of
Nottingham and director of the Nottingham Policy Centre calls his ‘synthesis’
"human paradox theory;" which basically propounds the notion that we
have evolved paradoxical instincts (or traits) which generate paradoxical
systems (or organizations). Talbot sees our paradoxical human nature as
universal, "ineradicable," and adaptive (not only for our ancestors,
but for us today–though he admits it does pose risks and can be maladaptive),
and he believes that seeing humans through this particular paradoxical lens
will be better for public-policy makers and probably for us all. These
paradoxical instincts come in pairs; the major ones for him being: aggression
versus peace-making; competition versus cooperation; altruism versus selfishness;
conformity versus autonomy. One of our problems as social animals and indeed as
agents of social change, etc. (as I think he– rightly–sees it), is that,
paradoxically! we tend to think in rather black-and-white terms, in ‘either/or’
ways. Talbot writes: "Humans, we usually assume, are either one thing or
another. Creative or pedestrian, aggressive or pacific, competitive or
cooperative, rational or emotional, and so on endlessly. ….Most social science
has traditionally been constructed around the notion that if you are more of
one, you must be less of the other. If you are more competitive, you must be
less cooperative. (6)" The aim of human paradox theory is to go beyond
such false dichotomies. One of his arguments is that in some sense this either/or
mentality parallels the political left and right, as well as the war between
blank slatists and innatists. (Talbot does a pretty good job of defending why
one can be on the left and also subscribe to an innatist view.) 

Though Talbot and I arrive at the same conclusion and draw
on some of the same literature and theories, and though he does make clear that
his is not a grand theory of everything but rather an opening to the possible
beginning of cross-disciplinary synthetic research in paradoxical studies, my
glee did turn to a bit of disappointment, as ultimately, I wasn’t convinced
about his argument and how he arrived at the conclusion, and I wonder if,
indeed, The Paradoxical Primate is a synthesis. Human paradox theory
feels more like random ideas and examples and gedanken experiments (quite a few
of those) than a cohesive theory or synthesis about our paradoxical nature. The
fields Talbot uses for his theory are fine and most are good, but I would
rather see more emphasis on behavioral genetics, neuroethology, evolutionary
psychology, plain old reductive genetics and neuroscience, and a smattering of
Jung and Freud and maybe even fuzzy logic–less so on management and
organizational theory and research, less talk about Boston Boxes–but this is
clearly my bias and there must be
plenty of readers for whom the application of management and organizational
theory to our paradoxical nature would be useful and a good starting ground.

Here’s an example of how more ethology would have been
useful. Talbot writes:

"What evolves is what
might be called a sort of ‘behavioural jukebox’ [I got the idea of a behavioral
jukebox from the excellent book by Bateson and Martin…] a set of behavioral
patterns–often contradictory–from which the jukebox operator can select in
response to their environment and preferences…"

 But does he need a
neologism for this? Doesn’t ethology already have a vocabulary for such a
thing? What about ‘innate releasing mechanism’ or the newer ‘releasing
mechanism’ which admits the continuum of an open to closed developmental
system? Or a discussion of epigenetic rules?

Talbot is often paradoxical his own self and sometimes seems to confuse or at least muddy his terms
here and there. And though Talbot writes an awful lot about the group versus
the individual, he doesn’t use that dichotomy to make his paradoxical model
more clear. Talbot’s sense of our paradoxicalness appears to have two
components: in one sense we are individually paradoxical–we are deceptive,
covetous, hypocritical, wear masks, are well-mannered, civilized; our actions
and behaviors and not always in line with our beliefs and values and thoughts.
(He never mentions cognitive dissonance but some discussion of it as a social
psychological principle might have been warranted. Likewise no mention of Freud
and the still very cogent theory that the conflict between the Superego and the
Id results in neurosis, stress, etc.)

The other way we are paradoxical is as a group, a species.
Our very nature is paradoxical in that it seems to have a limited but plastic
and ever-adaptive and flexible program which tends to be what he refers to as
‘bipolar.’ Talbot, I think, is right in supposing that one of our problems
comes from not recognizing our paradoxical nature and setting up dichotomies. But
I yearned for a deeper understanding of these paradoxes. Can such things be
located in parts of the triune brain (reptilian, limbic, neocortex) or
bifurcated brain (left/right hemispheres)? Are there perhaps differences in the
very brains and genes of people who tend to see our nature as either
‘either/or’ or as paradoxical?

I think Talbot is right that we might need a new model of
human nature. I’m going to assume that anyone interested in reading his book
doesn’t need an exploration of the problems with the blank-slate model. But the
evolutionary model (and EP in particular) is worth looking at. The
Cosmides/Tooby evolutionary model states that there is one universal human
nature but that within that nature there is an epigenetic process with much variability–things
can be turned up/on, down/off, or modified depending on the environment,
etc. 

One of the drawbacks to the universal human nature argument
seems semantic: If we see such a huge range of behaviors and individual
differences, what does it mean to say we have a universal human nature that is
say, hierarchical, yet have the capacity to be nonhierarchical? It seems
nonsensical (and yes, paradoxical). This is often the argument against
evolutionary psychologists, in fact. [See my essay "An Evolutionary
Mind" www.metanexus.net).]
MacClean’s triune brain model (or Jim Henry’s four-brain system) might provide clues to this puzzle, though, and although
Talbot does make mention of Gerald A. Cory’s CSN (conflict systems
neurobehavioral) model (a brilliant model–see Human Nature and Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach, eds.
Somit and Peterson) which is based on
MacClean’s triune brain model, he doesn’t exactly incorporate it into his
theory.

Talbot talks about paradoxical behavior and paradoxical
instincts, but what of the mind?; the conscious executive function–the ego? He
does say: "We humans are essentially conflicted between our individual and
social selves and a great deal of our behaviour derives from this basic
paradox." (71) But he doesn’t develop or expand on the discussion of the
executive program that decides on which dimension to lean toward (he uses
Cory’s terms: ego versus empathy), and it’s an exploration of this that seems
worth pursuing. The mind (or Ego) in Freudian terms, is that which is
constantly trying to balance the instincts (Id) and the Superego (culture’s
rules, morals, norms, etc.) Through this lens (mechanistic as it is), we are
paradoxical because we are constantly being torn and pulled every which way by
one side (Id’s lusty, demanding, individualistic, sexual and aggressive needs
(the midbrain)), or the other–Superego’s fair-minded, other- and
outward-directed, prosocial needs (the cerebral cortex). It is the executive
function (Ego) that tries to balance these. Because Talbot doesn’t really deal
with the mind (or the executive function much), when he writes about hypocrisy,
there is only a fuzzy sense about it. However, seen through the Freudian (or EP
or MacLean) triadic model, hypocrisy becomes clearer: A person’s need for a job
is critical for survival. A person may have an Id-y, reptilian impulse to
strike out at a boss or colleague but instead might repress such feelings
because of a need to remain in the group, because the group affords survival. A
person may even act hypocritically; using the defense mechanism of reaction
formation, to brown nose a boss and ‘act’ in affiliative ways toward
colleagues, while behind their back saying all sorts of nasty things about
them. If one didn’t need to go in to work–if one could be a recluse, a hermit,
a self-employed artist–one wouldn’t have to deal with the issue of hypocrisy
or being two-faced very much. It is one’s ability to live with these
contradictions and masks, which to me, distinguishes different types. Are there
those who are more sensitive to living with such contradictions? Are there
different thresholds? I would argue yes–that there are those who are wired to
have a large capacity to distance their thoughts and feelings from their
behavior and words–to be more compartmental–thus not experiencing as much
cognitive dissonance; these are the cool, "cut-off," types, what I
call "Apollinian." While there are others who have a harder time with
the mismatch (the dissonance) in the form of guilt–who have a naturally lower
threshold to carry the inconsistency of mind and behavior. We often refer to
these people as "sensitive" artists–what I call
"Dionysian." And I think there are
fundamental differences between these types–at the level of alleles even. For
example, there is much speculation that men’s brains are wired more
compartmentally and that parts of
their corpus callosums–the nerve fibers that bridge the two hemispheres
together–are smaller than in women’s brains, which could account for some
typically male ‘compartmental’ traits. And though Talbot briefly mentions other
cultures such as Japan, he doesn’t go near such a genetic or neurological
argument, which I think is the more interesting. An exploration of the possible
genetic differences regarding collectivist cultures/peoples and individualist
cultures/peoples would have been fascinating.

Despite my minor disappointment and misgivings, Talbot’s
project in The Paradoxical Primate is
admirable and worthy of attention; there is definitely much food for thought
here as he does bring in a lot of
material (good references) and that alone
is valuable. Certainly a paradoxical view of human nature helps to explain
the seeming contradictions regarding our dual nature: How do we answer the question: are we peace-loving or violent? And is
it a valid question in the first place? It is in the working out of these
questions that evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics will probably
have to duel and at some point make peace with, in the form of some paradoxical
synthesis.

 

 

© 2005 Alice Andrews

 

Alice Andrews, M.A., Department of Psychology,
State University of New York at New Paltz

Categories: Psychology, Genetics