Throwing Stones: An Evolutionary Step Toward Equality?
I put the question mark in the title because the whole idea seems offensive. And yet there may be something to it. I read a comparison between primitive hunter-gatherer societies and chimpanzees. In small hunter-gatherer tribes, everyone knows everyone, sees what they do, and uses peer pressure, ostracism, and finally collective force to compel the outlier bullies to behave themselves. In chimp societies, however, there is a definite hierarchy based on brute strength. What, David Sloan Wilson asks rhetorically in Evolution for Everyone , could have triggered the behaviorial shift when the humans and the chimps split off from our common ancestor? He follows up with a theory, borrowed from biologist Paul Bingham: The evolutionary break was that the human branch developed the arm structure and mobility to throw stones with deadly accuracy.
Think about it. If the only way to take down the alpha male is direct physical confrontation, he’s going to rule the roost. He’s going to take the choicest meat and the choicest mates, and the rest of the tribe will have to lump it until someone bigger comes along, in which case you just exchange one bully for another. But add the ability to throw stones, and the politics changes. A majority can hit back from a safe distance, and suddenly the alpha male is not on top any more. He can be driven out or even killed–or he could just stop being so obnoxious and accept a place as a cooperative member of the society.
Why the biology lesson? Because we’ve seen its parallel in present-day Washington politics. There we have the alpha male, the mighty Donald Trump, who beats his chest and roars that he has the best words even when the words are not true. He got away with it for years because he lived in a small society of the elite, defined by wealth, where the few people he dealt with valued what he could give them more than their independence or self-respect. But Trump was not content to stay in the world of the wealthy and the sycophantic wannabes. He tried to evolve into a great politician, and that meant venturing into the wider world of people who simply are not impressed. What is worse, the pundits and comedians took his own words, the words that he blathered unthinkingly for years because few bothered to correct him, and turned them into stones of ridicule which they flung with deadly accuracy.
Those unending tweet-storms coming from the Oval Office are the outraged screams of an alpha male under constant attack, unable to fend off the barbs of criticism. And there is nothing he can do about it. He could rule the roost in his family-run business, but this is the U.S. government, upheld by the Constitution. It’s bigger than he is. As much as he admires the strongman rulers of dictatorships, the law will not grant him the power to trample the Bill of Rights. All he can do is pound the ground in fury and gnash his teeth, screaming at the stones of ridicule and fearing the boulders of impeachment or the 25th Amendment. There’s no protective cover.
Well actually there is. He could retreat back to his safe little gold-plated nest, where he was welcome to make his millions and trade in one trophy wife after another, because no one in the outside world really cared. In other words, Trump could resign.