At first, the Pentagon’s announcement that women will be allowed in combat, upset me. My response was a knee jerk. It seems to violate my sense of the normal biological order of things. The more I thought about it the more I realized there are many things in our culture that seem to violate that sense of order. At a fundamental level, I have to ask my self, from where does that sense of order originate. Evolutionary psychologist’s claim our genes are the basis of our behavior. If that is true, and I believe it is, then our behavior should always be in tune with the Darwin influenced axiom of “survival of the fittest” in terms of both individual survival and species survival. As any biologist can tell you, when behavior in respect to the part females play in society is not in harmony with survival, individuals are in danger and eventually the species would be in danger of extinction. That was the basis of my initial response to the Pentagon’s announcement. I also understand that I am “culturally” out of date by about 5 generations ranging from my mother and father to my great grand children. Five generations is not more then a blink of the eye in terms of humankind’s trip from our bestial beginning to what we are today. While recognizing the increasing complexity as well as the escalating acceleration of what is taking place, I chose to reduce it to what we can label as our ‘humanization’.
My mother liked the idea of being a wife and mother, of having my father open doors for her, changing tires and checking the oil on the family car, and supporting the family while she stayed home cleaning and cooking taking care of my siblings and me. My father insisted we stand up and give a woman a seat on the “street car”, open doors for women, and respect their femininity. My parents would be shocked if not horrified by today’s world—the concept of a sister soldier would not set well with them.
It is not just the part women play in modern society but also many other things. Many things in out culture seem to be in direct conflict with our biology. For example, we condemn anyone who dares say that women are not equal to men even though we know they are emotionally and physically different. Nevertheless, gender equality issues are minor when we consider the overall changes taking place. We treat disease to prevent death. We have laws to protect the “lives” of people incapable of living without machine assistance. We develop tests to detect genetic disease and the use the information in a variety of ways. We have welfare programs to help people to live even though they are incapable of self-sufficiency. We easily recognize xenophobia in the animal world but are horrified with people who are racists (physical) or followers of one religion, hate followers of another (behavior). Groups of people, slave owners and Nazis for example, developed definitions of moral groups in cultures that sanctioned slavery and genocide. In the past and in some cases still do engage in moral punishment—ostracize non-compliance—when it comes to marriage and many other ways to keep groups ethnically pure. The list goes on-and-on.
The punch line is that we bring about change or shape culture by the way we respond to both the physical and social environment centered on emotion. “Survival of the fittest” at the biological level does not recognize cruelty but we as human beings we do. I am reminded of a story told by a biologist while watching a film of orphan sea lion cubs seeking out female to nurse. Obviously, the cubs are condemned to die. The audience gasped in horror. The mother’s milk was too precious to waste on a cub that was not her own. That is just biology but it seems reflected in our politics: a party of greed verses an altruistic party. Sympathy, empathy, shame, pride, and envy are examples of emotions that have lead more and more to altruistic behavior. In evolution theory, altruism may lead to species survival, greed will lead to individual survive.
Thus, emotions often lead humankind to shape culture in a way that seems to violate the normal biological order of thing. At first, female combat soldiers seem incongruous, to stretch the weaker-sex thing a bit too far, to put it in a place it should never be. If I am not politically correct in today’s world for believing society should not accept the idea of putting women in harms way, so be it. Society may punish me for my outdated sensitivity to gender inequality, thus induce me to change my position on this one issue but only to a point.
I can imagine muscular women with guns and 90-pound backpacks as sister soldiers; of course, there are women who can do this. We intuitively know they can do this but that is not the point; nor is the unfairness in promotions and pay because of lack of combat experience the point. The point is that women with guns ready to kill people seem out of step with the natural order of things. Except for basic, bestial, unadorned survival of the fittest, we should not allow the sense of fairness or unfairness associated with inequality of gender to twist the biological order on its head to fashion a new culturally sensitive of “sameness” that may eventually be inconsistent with survival. In a tribe of 100 people, one male can impregnate many females but one female can only have one baby at a time and probably not have another until after lactation ceases, which translates into years. Perhaps our seven billion people on the earth, the Malthus caveat, make this aspect of the problem a moot question.
One of the questions that remain in respect to the natural order of thing, as I advocate here, is what happens when someone follows the dictates of his or her genes and ends up outside established norms, keeping in mind that normal people are following the dictates of their genes. A gay or a lesbian person, for example, is the way they are because it is in their genes. Thus, we can and should label homosexuality as normal. Then what do we do about criminality; according to some scientists, certain criminals are, for the most part, genetic. Of course, we cannot accept criminality as normal. Under the premise that we are irrevocably responsible for what is in our genes, just as we die if we have a fatal genetic disease, they are responsible for their behavior; we should punish them for crimes committed. This is different from punishing them because they have a criminal propensity. Homosexuals do not hurt anyone but criminal do—we can accommodate both but in entirely different but in morally correct ways—can it be that simple. Would the same holds for a physical attribute; a person who is seven feet tall is following the dictates of his genes? Do we have a “moral obligation” to raise door jams to accommodate them? Seven billion people on this earth are following the dictates of their genes. We cannot accommodate all of them but we can accommodate most of them. As one geneticist said, evolution hates outliers, while so does culture. Certainly, we should be able to learn to cope with the problems biological variation causes; the principle accommodation is through what we call it culture or humanization. It may include jails, asylums, and old age home as well as abortions, euthanasia, soup kitchens, and people sleeping on grates to keep warm, some measure I agree with others I do not. If our humanization includes sister soldiers, as well, so be it.
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