The so-called evil

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The so-called evil is a book by the behavioral scientist Konrad Lorenz from 1963. In it he deals with the origin of and dealing with aggression (so-called evil ), i.e. with the intraspecific , "conspecific instinct of animals" as interpreted by Lorenz and human ".

Emergence

According to Lorenz, the decision to write this book arose during a trip to America, where he gave lectures on comparative behavioral research and behavioral physiology to psychiatrists , psychoanalysts and psychologists . There he met psychoanalysts who did not see Freud's teachings as irrefutable dogmas but as working hypotheses . In relation to Freud, he recognized: "Discussions of his instinct theory revealed unexpected correspondences between the results of psychoanalysis and behavioral physiology." This included, among other things, common views on the death drive described by Freud and the aggression drive in humans assumed by Lorenz as part of his instinct theory . This was the first time he stood contrary to Josef Rattner , who said, “... that destructiveness and hostility in human behavior must be related to educational and cultural deformation. "

content

The book begins by describing observations of typical forms of aggressive behavior. The territorial fights of the coral fish, the instincts and inhibitions of social animals, interpreted as morally similar , the marriage and social life of the night herons , the mass fights of the brown rats "and many other strange behavior of the animals" serve as a basis "for understanding the deeper connections". By using the inductive method - proceeding from the unconditional consideration of individual cases to abstraction - the legalities to which all animals obey are to be developed.

Prologue in the sea

You have to start in the wide sea!
You only start small
And is happy to devour the smallest;
You grow up so little by little
And develops to higher accomplishment.
from Goethe

In the first chapter Konrad Lorenz gives his impressions and observations of the flora and fauna , the dive inspired by aquarium observations , to the coral reefs of Florida, on the coast of Lignumvitae Key , the tree of life island . He distilled from this that only the brightly colored “placard” colored fish are resident, only they defended a territory aggressively against their own kind.

Continuation in the laboratory

What you cannot grasp, you are completely lacking,
What you don't calculate, you think, is not true,
What you do not weigh has no weight for you,
What you don’t coin, you believe, doesn’t apply.
from Goethe

In the second chapter the author goes into the natural selection or selection, which has been going on for millions of years, “if an organ turns out to be a little better and more productive due to a small, inherently accidental genetic change, the bearer of this characteristic and his offspring will not be for all equally gifted conspecifics to a competition they are not up to. ”Lorenz is of the opinion that selection is one component of species change; the other one, he writes: "... the material is the genetic change or mutation that Darwin postulated with ingenious foresight as a necessity at a time when their existence had not yet been proven." He consistently questions the selection pressure, what the purpose of the bred changes are. He describes an experimental arrangement: 7 species of butterfly fish, 2 species of angelfish, 8 species of demoiselles, 2 species of triggerfish, 3 species of wrasse and several non-aggressive species were placed in one tank. Around 25 species of poster-colored fish. The realization was that colorful coral fish almost only bite their own species. He calculated as follows: “For each of the fish living in the basin with 3 conspecifics among 96 other fish, the probability of accidentally meeting one of the 3 brothers is 3 in 96.” From such experiments and the free time studies he concluded: fish are against their conspecifics many times more aggressive than against other species.

What evil is good for

Part of that power
Who always wants evil and always creates good.
from Goethe

In this chapter the author raises the question: “Why do living beings fight each other?” Lorenz is of the opinion that we laypeople, due to the need for sensation in the press and film, stylize Darwin's expression “struggle for existence” as an abused catchphrase; "... mistakenly mostly in the fight between different species." However, it is the competition between close relatives. He justifies the disappearance or the transformation of species through the "... advantageous invention that falls into the lap of one or a few conspecifics quite accidentally ... through ... genetic change." Lorenz limits intra-species aggression from inter-species struggles, Catching prey, mobbing and the critical reaction, the so-called desperation fight ("... fighting like a cornered rat ..."). In his opinion, the latter also includes the attack by a hen "... on any object ..." that threatens the young. Whereby the prey is never exterminated in inter-species fights. In his opinion, only the competitor is an existential threat. “The intra-species aggression ... also accomplishes a species-preserving performance." An example of a species-preserving intraspecific aggression is the pushing away from one another when the food sources are exhausted. Or if in a "... certain area in the country a large number of doctors or business people or bicycle mechanics ..." wanted to be based. Here he again cites the example of the coral fish, which live in large populations in a limited space and therefore develop such a blaze of color, or the songbirds that "sing" in the most beautiful tones to keep their competitors at a distance. The author leaves no doubt that mankind has good reason to regard intraspecific aggression caused by cultural, historical and technological circumstances as dangerous. However, he makes a more favorable prognosis if "... we follow the chain of their natural causation ..."

The spontaneity of aggression

You see, with this drink in your body,
soon Helen in every woman.
from Goethe

An important lesson of his observations that aggression against conspecifics is in no way "... disadvantageous for the species in question, but on the contrary an instinct that is indispensable for its preservation ...", he again did not refer to humanity. Lorenz establishes the relationship between innate behaviors, minor changes in environmental conditions and the inability to adapt quickly, and concludes that it is precisely the innate behaviors that "... can be completely unbalanced ...". That the aggression instinct is not pathological and its cause is not to be sought in any kind of cultural decay, but "... that the aggression instinct is a genuine, primarily species-preserving instinct, shows us its full danger: ..." While various sociologists and psychologists viewed aggression as a reaction to possible environmental conditions, the author concludes that it is spontaneity that makes it so dangerous. At this point Lorenz refers to Sigmund Freud , who for the first time differentiated aggression as an independent problem and viewed any loss of love as a strong driving force. For a further understanding, he also referred to the work of Wallace Craig , who found after experiments with laughing pigeons that "... prolonged silence of an instinctive behavior ... the threshold value of the stimuli that trigger it drops." Lorenz relates this to this also involves people and makes a way out clear. For the discerning person, this consists in "... that he quietly sneaks out of the barracks ... and hits an object that is not too expensive, but with ... noise ... jumping to pieces." Lorenz was also close with his opinion with Friedrich Hacker , in a foreword he wrote on this topic: "... I know Friedrich Hacker's views on the nature of aggression quite thoroughly ... The essential finding ... The fact that aggressiveness through various environmental influences in a lawful manner can be triggered as a reaction is not an argument against the assumption, supported by many reasons, that it, like all other instincts, has its special spontaneous drive. "

Habit, ceremony and magic

Don't you have a man yet, not a man
word recognized?
from Goethe

Nature has various means to "... in double and triple security ... to guide aggression in harmless paths." The reorientation and reorientation as well as ritualization , by which he understood: "... that certain modes of movement in the course of phylogenesis Losing their original, original function and becoming purely 'symbolic' ceremonies , “are the natural means for this. Here it was the studies of the British zoologist Sir Julian Huxley on the behavior of the great crested grebe on which he based his theory of phylogenetic ritualization. “This always consists in the creation of a new instinctive movement, the shape of which mimics that of a changing behavior caused by several impulses.” He made his observations and others. a. on rust ducks , mallards , shelducks , red ducks , gadgets , wigeons , dance flies , Egyptian geese and gray geese . One of the latter was Martina , who lived in his house. Through these observations, Lorenz established how a ritual develops phylogenetically, "how it acquires its meaning and how it changes it in the course of further development ..." Here he leads the rite ceremony. “As with many birds ... the women of the ducks are smaller but no less aggressive than their men. In arguments between two couples, it often happens that a duck ... pushes too far against the hostile couple, then gets 'afraid of his own courage', turns around and hurries back to the strong, protective husband. When she arrives at him, she feels new courage awakening and begins again to threaten the hostile neighbors without, however, once again moving away from the safe vicinity of her drake. ”Further studies showed that the animals also behave like this or similar without offered appropriate occasion. Such results, and perhaps those that differed in their meaning, made him realize, "... that the process just discussed represents the exact opposite of a so-called phenocopy." a. that through the ritual "... a new and completely autonomous instinct arises, which is basically just as independent ... as that for nutrition, copulation, flight or aggression." Habits can also be demonstrated very nicely in horses ; “Every rider knows the phenomenon when these animals have only been brought to a stop or galloped a few times in the same place, how quickly this is internalized with them and what efforts may then be necessary to proceed differently. Customs, ceremonies and spells are transferred to humans. B. in the 'smoking pipe of peace', knocking on wood, sprinkling salt, 'path training' and the like. a. "

The great parliament of instincts

How everything is woven into the whole
one acts and lives in the other
from Goethe

If the phylogenetic process of ritualization creates a new, autonomous instinct that intervenes as an independent force, then according to Lorenz's thesis, it can also, “... as we will see more precisely in the example of the geese's triumphant cry, as an independent instinct attain such great power that in the great parliament of instincts he is able to successfully oppose the power of aggression. "Lorenz speaks of a parliament, a" ... more or less holistic system ... "He makes it clear here, that the naming of an instinct is by no means its explanation. The crucial question for him is why, which in his opinion was answered too early by asking why. “... The finalist in this bad sense of the word is the one who answers the question 'What for?' with the question 'Why?' confused and therefore believes that with the demonstration of the species-preserving purpose of any achievement, to have already solved the problem of its causal occurrence ... "His endeavor is the explanation for

Malfunctions of a certain instinct = aggression

to find and prove. He generally depicts the terms “reproductive instinct” or “self-preservation instinct” as irrelevant, like “automobile power”. This is more about "... a very complicated interplay of many physiological causes ..." In his view, it is the hereditary coordination or instinctive movements that "... are as unchangeable in their form as the hardest skeletal parts ... Everyone reports ... if they have had to remain silent for a long time, forcing the animal or human to open up and actively look for that particular stimulus situation that is suitable for triggering and letting go of them and no other hereditary coordination ... "

Behaviors analogous to morality

You should not kill
Fifth commandment

Social order without love

... cool to the heart
from Goethe

The anonymous crowd

You can only force the mass through mass
from Goethe

According to Lorenz, a flock is "... determined by the fact that the individuals of a species react to each other with affection, that is, are held together by behaviors that trigger one or more individual beings in others." So it is a characteristic of flock formation, "... when many individuals wander in close association in the same direction. ”Examples of this are migratory birds, grasshoppers and schools of fish. The flock is the simplest form of socialization and also occurs in higher animals. "... even humans can, under certain very horrible circumstances, fall into anonymous formation, 'regress on them', namely in panic." Not every accidental gathering is called a crowd in this sense. The question is, what holds this anonymous crowd together and for what purpose. Two possibilities come into consideration here, it “... can be innate, such as For example, with many ducks that react selectively to the signal of the wing color of their own species with subsequent flies, but it can also depend on individual learning. ”With the disadvantages of the formation of large flocks, the procurement of food, the impossibility of remaining hidden , possible parasites, better exploitation by the hunters and others, according to Lorenz it must be a strong impulse that agglomerates them, and that the attraction increases with the size of the flock, in a kind of geometric progression. Here it is easy to imagine that too many animals provoke an ecological crisis in the form of a lack of food.

The rats

Finally, at all devil festivals
Party hatred works for the best,
until the very last horror.
from Goethe

The collective struggle of one community against another is his determination and here Lorenz shows "that it is primarily this social form of intraspecific aggression [] whose failures play the role of 'evil' in the true sense of this word." He differentiates them own society from the general population of rats in such a way that he describes behavior in his own community as "true role models in all social virtues", while members of another society are badly treated. Since it is impossible for the members to all know each other personally, as is possible with jackdaws , geese or monkeys , Lorenz concludes that all members have the same odor. The first to discover that there are large families in rodents that behave according to this principle were Dr. Fritz Steiniger (brown rats in the wild) and in 1951 the behavioral scientist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (captivity observations on the Persian desert mouse (Meriones persicus persicus Blanford): A contribution to the comparative ethology of rodents). Eibl-Eibesfeldt, lived with the mice that roamed freely in his barracks, so "that he could observe them unhindered at close range." Steiniger stated after he put brown rats, which came from different trapping sites, into common enclosures that initially not much happened. As they settled in, they began to occupy territories and became aggressive, with pairing being crucial. “In the 64 square meter enclosures, two to three weeks were usually enough for such a couple to keep all of their fellow inmates, ie. H. 10 to 15 strong adult rats to kill. The man and the woman of the victorious couple were equally cruel ... but it was clear that he preferred to torment and bite men and women. ”Death usually occurs through“ general exhaustion and nervous overstimulation that lead to one Failure of the adrenal glands leads. "The observations showed that serious bites between members of a large family only occurred in one case," ... then namely when an unfamiliar rat is present and has aroused intraspecific, interfamilial aggression. "Rats do not need individual distance, they are contact animals in the sense of the Swiss zoologist Heini Hedigers who like to touch. Lorenz asks himself: "What is the party hatred between the rat clans good for?" Since this hatred of other individuals who do not belong to the extended family does not serve the classic reasons described in the third chapter. His conclusion ; In the context of natural selection, "large families with as many populations as possible ..." were chosen here. The larger people have better chances against the smaller. The animals get bigger and more bloodthirsty. The message is transmitted by broadcasting the mood. "Then it twitches like an electric shock through this animal, and in no time the whole colony is alarmed by a process of mood transmission, which in the brown rat is only conveyed by expressive movements in the house rat but by a sharp, satanic high scream ... . “Rats work according to Lorenz u. a. Observers like humans, “with traditional transmission of experience and its dissemination within a closely cohesive community.” Where knowledge once acquired, for example about a poison or something else, is passed on from one generation to the next. Rats do not know a hierarchy. The big and strong animals attack the prey "When eating, however, ..., the smaller animals are the intrusive: the larger ones willingly let the chunks of food be removed from the smaller ones ..."

The ribbon

I fear nothing anymore - arm in arm with you,
So I challenge my century in its place.
by Schiller

Sermon of Humilitas

This is the branch in your wood
On which the plane hangs and hangs:
This is your pride that keeps you going
wedges into his stiff boot
Christian Morgenstern

Between all of his observations, researches, and discourses with Prof. Hacker and others, one question was always present: What can humans learn from all this? what can be used to prevent the dangers which threaten him from his instinct for aggression? Especially when he realizes that people all too like to see themselves as the center of the whole, as something that does not belong to the rest of nature. “... they remain deaf to the wisest command a sage has ever given them, to the famous

Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, 'know yourself', from Chilon ... "

Lorenz comes up with "... three obstacles that are extremely affected by affects ..." that prevent people from following this old wisdom.

  • The lack of insight into one's own historical existence. Lorenz thus comes to the conclusion, "If people did not know the chimpanzee, it would be easier to convince them of their origin." Lorenz assumes that the subjective impression we have of this animal is well founded: " ... because there are reasons for the assumption that the common ancestor of man and chimpanzee was not lower, but much higher than it is today ... Its origin from animals is not denied, its close relationship with the offensive chimpanzee but it is either skipped with a few logical somersaults or circumvented in sophistic detours. "
  • The emotional aversion to the knowledge that what we do and what we leave it to is subject to the laws of natural causation. Here, too, he refers again, " Bernhard Hassenstein called this the ' anti-causal value judgment'." Of course, humans have the justified desire, "... to let their own actions not be determined by random causes, but by high goals."
  • The division of the world into the outer, "... and into the intelligible world of the inner legality of man ..." He brings the example of a change in meaning of the words "idealist" and "realist" which originally designated philosophical attitudes and today contain moral judgments. Further "You have to realize how common it has become in our Western thinking to equate 'scientifically researchable' with 'fundamentally value-indifferent'."

His credo is, "... Mankind defends its self-assessment by all means, and it is truly appropriate to preach humilitas and earnestly try to blow up the haughty obstacles to self-knowledge ..." The haughty overestimation of one's own behavior, e.g. B. "... when Sigmund Freud tried to dissect the motives of human social behavior ... he was accused of lack of awe, value-blind materialism and even pornographic tendencies." A thesis to make people understand that they are only part of the wonderful nature, is "... you just have to show them how big and beautiful the universe is and how awesome the laws that govern it." Lorenz continues: "People create value judgments ... .that is expressed in the title 'Niedere Tiere', which we read in gold print on the first volume of our good old "Brehm`s Tierleben", ... "

Ecce Homo

I care to pull my black boots off my toes
said: 'This, demon, is a dreadful symbol of man;
a foot made of coarse leather, no longer natural,
but not yet become spirit either;
a form of wandering from the animal's foot to Mercury's winged sole. "
Christian Morgenstern

Here there is a fictional constellation; "... an objectifying behavioral scientist would be sitting on another planet ..." Whereby he observes us as humans. He can only observe gross events such as migrations, battles, etc. “It would never occur to him that human behavior is controlled by reason or even responsible morality.” It is also assumed that this observer himself is devoid of all instincts and knows about instincts and aggressions. "He would be very embarrassed to understand human history." Konrad Lorenz explains, in view of the often illogical behavior and that very seldom learned from history: "... that human social behavior is by no means exclusively based on intellect and cultural tradition is dictated, but still obeys all those laws that prevail in everything phylogenetically created instinctive behavior. ”In a second consideration he assumes that the observer is an“ ... experienced ethologist who knows everything thoroughly ... ", He would have to" inevitably draw the conclusion that human society is very similar to that of rats ... "The types of armament are compared again and again. In the beginning only intended as tools, the hand ax and fire. "He promptly used them to kill his brother ..." According to Lorenz, conceptual thinking gave people control over their extravagant environment. Here he leads back to intraspecific selection and its effects, as stated in the chapter “What evil is good for” and “... on whose debt account the exaggerated urge to aggression, from which we still suffer today, is likely to be placed.” One In his opinion, inhibition mechanisms play an important role, "... which curb aggression in various social animals and prevent damage to and killing of conspecifics." He assumes that in the wild there is no selection pressure that breeds inhibitions to killing. An example would be the poor keeping of animals (lack of space). The symbolic comparison of a pigeon that suddenly has the beak of a raven can be compared with the position of a person who has just invented the use of a sharp stone as a weapon. Lorenz thinks: "The general opinion ... that all human behaviors that are not for the good of the individual but that of the community are dictated by rational responsibility ..." is wrong. When people did not yet have weapons, "... no particularly sophisticated inhibition mechanisms were necessary to prevent sudden manslaughter ..." You could only scratch, bite and choke. A big cat, in turn, needs such mechanisms to enable survival with such dangerous weapons. Only when humans found and invented more dangerous weapons, "... the previously existing balance between the relatively weak inhibition of aggression and the ability to kill conspecifics was thoroughly disturbed." Another fatal fact is the distance of the firearms from the crime scene and the resultant Viewed stimulus shielding. "The deep emotional layers of our soul simply no longer notice ... that our shot ... tears the bowels apart." Lorenz wondered how such self-destructive actions can come about when the aggression drive is species-preserving . Like some psychoanalysts, he justified it with a mistake; here he speaks of a “hypertrophy of aggression.” In his opinion, unexperienced aggressions, perfidious weapons and their effects, intraspecific selection and the high pace of development are the triggering factors. The term accident-proneness is also mentioned here, although here it still refers to the Ute Indians.

Confession of Hope

Don't think I can teach
To reform and convert people.
from Goethe

Konrad Lorenz came to the conclusion: "... Dramatic changes in world events are rarely brought about by research, unless in the sense of destruction ..." and the reasons for this are apparently obvious. Such is the difficulty of the creative application of the laboriously acquired knowledge and the, as it were, laborious acquisition of knowledge through detailed work. He was always interested in deepening the interrelationships of our own behavior. At the forefront is aggression, and the possibilities to "... react to substitute objects ...", catharsis (psychology) par excellence. He understood aggression, in the word meaning of the Latin aggredior ; "... approaching someone or something, and / or starting ..." Nobody knows which behavior of people contains aggression as a motivating factor. Lorenz assumed a lot. Because in the end any tackling of a task or a problem, "... from daily shaving to the most sublime artistic or scientific work ..." is hardly possible without them. Laughter too. Psychoanalysis knows the praiseworthy actions that derive their drive from "sublimated" aggression.

An avoidance strategy, such as keeping away from stimulating situations, was just as hopeless for him as imposing a morally motivated prohibition. "... Both would be just as good a strategy as trying to counter the rise in steam pressure in a permanently heated boiler by tightening the locking spring on the safety valve ..." He even mentioned eugenics in this context, but propagated it Not.
He was an optimismist, because people capable of introspection would be able "... to arbitrarily reorient their swelling aggression against a suitable substitute object ..."
So it is not surprising that sport, as a phylogenetic commentary fight, considerably mitigates the socially damaging effects of aggression so that it preserves the species. "... In addition ... this culturally ritualized form ... accomplishes an important task of educating people to consciously control their instinctual combat reaction ..." One must not forget that the struggle for hierarchy, common struggle for an inspiring Goal etc. "... are behaviors that had a high selection value in the prehistory of mankind ..."

See also

literature

  • First edition 1963, Dr. G. Borotha-Schoeler Verlag, Vienna
  • Konrad Lorenz: The so-called evil. On the natural history of aggression. dtv 1977
  • Konrad Lorenz: The so-called evil. On the natural history of aggression . dtv, 1998, ISBN 3-423-33017-1 .
  • Philosophisches Jahrbuch 73 (1965) 169-172 (book review by Bernhard Casper )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So the formulation of Konrad Lorenz in the preface.
  2. ^ Lorenz, preface to the book.
  3. ^ Josef Rattner, Aggression and human nature, p. 9, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1970
  4. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse, pp. 7-10, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  5. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 7-18, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  6. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 20–26, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  7. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 30–40, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  8. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 55–61, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  9. ^ Friedrich Hacker, Aggression p. 11, Rowohlt Verlag, 1971
  10. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 62–87, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  11. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse, pp. 88-109, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  12. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse, pp. 138–146, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  13. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 154–161, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  14. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 208-221, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  15. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 222–245, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977
  16. ^ Latin-German Concise Dictionary, Volume 1, by Karl Ernst Georges , 7th edition, Hahn'sche Verlags-Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1879, p. 230
  17. ↑ K. Lorenz, Das so-called Böse pp. 246-259, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1977