Chapter 2: What Were They Thinking?

Digression: Government from the Paleolithic to Philadelphia

Page 52: Loyalty, Intimacy, and Bonding

SIS (narrating):  LOYALTY is trust (and cooperation) on steroids.

Two women embracing while looking at their paint job.

WOMAN 1:  I’m so invested in this other person that her success…

…matters to me.

It feels like my success.

She’s part of who I am.

WOMAN 2:  I’m not merely open to giving her a hand…

…I really, really want to help her!

Jack Aubrey defending Stephen Maturin with a broken bottle.

STEPHEN:  Have I given provocation?

JACK:  You certainly are a repeat offender.

I’ve got his back, even when that’s not great for me.

People working a farm.

GIRL CARRYING WATER:  As a community, we’re loyal to each other — we all feel we have a stake in our group.

HOER 1:  We share the risks, as well as the rewards.

HOER 2:  We cooperate for the community because we have skin in the game.

HOER 3 (startled by bear):  Literally!

SIS (narrating):  These feelings aren’t automatic. Trust is learned (and loyalty earned) from experience.

Specifically, from what we experience when we are vulnerable.

Chimps grooming.

SIS (narrating):  Our cousins the chimps do this by “grooming” (picking parasites off others’ backs). They’re vulnerable to attack when they expose their back and head to a potential rival…

CHIMP 1:  Hold still…

CHIMP 2:  But instead of taking advantage, she’s taking care of me!

SIS (narrating):  This trust-building exercise builds two-way relationships of reciprocal altruism.

[EDIT SUGGESTION: CHANGE “TWO-WAY” TO “ONE-ON-ONE”]

CHIMP 3:  I scratch your back, you scratch mine!

SIS (narrating):  Which is nice, but it’s no basis for a system of government.

Chimp grooming Donald Trump.

SIS (narrating):  Even though we share almost all our DNA with them, humans are not chimps. We don’t bond by grooming each other… we don’t have “alpha males” (no, we really don’t)…

CHIMP:  Do hold still, Mister President!

TRUMP:  Tweetin’ like an alpha!

Examples of human society: Barn raising, big church service, large protest, downtown Manhattan skyline, Napoleonic-era army charging forward, United Nations.

SIS (narrating):  …and human society is not chimp society.

We come together in communities we know practically as well as ourselves…

…and with masses of people…

…we haven’t even met.

Chimp barber cutting a human’s hair.

SIS (narrating):  To form these kinds of relationships, grooming just ain’t gonna cut it.

CHIMP BARBER:  Life’s too short!

SIS (narrating):  We have many more ways to experience vulnerability and reinforce our trust in each other. For example…

Napoleonic-era soldiers on the march.

SIS (narrating):  We share harships…

SOLDIER 1:  We’ve been through hell together.

SOLDIER 2:  I’d give my life for these guys.

Women sharing a secret.

SIS (narrating):  We share secrets…

HEARER:  She trusts me with this!

WHISPERER:  I’d be mortified if anyone else knew!

Woman helping a man with a big blueprint.

SIS (narrating):  We share the load…

MAN:  I couldn’t have done this without her help.

WOMAN:  I feel like his goal is my goal, now.

People voting on election day.

SIS (narrating):  We share beliefs and practices…

VOTERS:  This is how it’s supposed to work!

Two girls claiming the same guy.

GIRL 1:  …We share everything!

GIRL 2:  Wrong.

SIS (narrating):  None of this is possible unless we can share something more…

Human-scale cooperation demands that we know more than our own personal feelings about the people we interact with. We need to know how they feel about us… and about each other.

Loving couple.

GIRLFRIEND:  Intimacy! We can be completely vulnerable with each other.

Men seeing the couple while carrying a heavy load.

MAN 1:  Excellent. If he helps us, then we can count on her help, too!

MAN 2:  Not so fast — she faked being sick last time we needed her.

Gossiping women.

GOSSIP 1:  That’s just because she wanted to go “hunting” with his brother.

GOSSIP 2:  *Gasp* What will the neighbors think?

SIS (narrating):  We must be able to share our thoughts.

And for the longest time, we couldn’t.

Average Joe and Sis.

JOE:  Framers…

SIS:  Getting there!

If you would like to learn more, here are just a few suggestions to get you started:

52. Loyalty, Intimacy, and Bonding

Books:

Zachary Simpson, “Community: Creating Belief with Others,” in The Paradoxes of Modernity: Creating Belief through Art, Community, and Ritual, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Deborah Tannen, You’re the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships, New York: Ballantine, 2017.

Blaine J. Fowers, “The Deep Psychology of Eudaimonia and Virtue: Belonging, Loyalty, and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex,” in D. Carr et al., eds., Varieties of Virtue Ethics, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver, eds., Mechanisms of Social Connection: From Brain to Group, Washington: American Psychological Association, 2014.

Joan B. Silk, “The Evolution of Cooperation in Primate Groups,” in Herbert Gintis et al., eds., Moral Sentiments and Material Interests, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005.

 

Articles:

Weiwei Peng et al., “Suffer Together, Bond Together: Brain-to-Brain Synchronization and Mutual Affective Empathy when Sharing Painful Experiences,” NeuroImage, Vol. 238 (September 2021): 1-11.

Andrew Dawson and Simone Dennis, “Social Intimacy,” Anthropology in Action, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter 2020): 1-8.

Kyle Green and Clifton Evers, “Intimacy on the Mats and in the Surf,” American Sociological Association: Contexts, Vol. 19, No. 2 (May 2020): 10-15.

Gregory S. Parks and Jasmine Burgess, “Hazing in the United States Military: A Psychology and Law Perspective,” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, Vol. 29 (2019-2020): 1-63.

Ullrich Wagner et al., “Beautiful Friendship: Social Sharing of Emotions Improves Subjective Feelings and Activates the Neural Reward Circuitry,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Vol. 10, No. 6 (June 2015): 801-808.

Brock Bastian, Jolanda Jetten, and Laura J. Ferris, “Pain as Social Glue: Shared Pain Increases Cooperation,” Psychological Science, Vol. 25, No. 11 (November 2014): 2079-2085.

Johan M. G. van der Dennen, “Combat Motivation,” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, Vol. 17 (2005): 81-89.

Robert A. Strikwerds and Larry May, “Male Friendship and Intimacy,” Hypatia, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer 1992): 110-125.

Feel free to offer more suggestions in the comments!