Montagu Human Nature Essay

The biggest issue on which Ashley Montagu and E.O. Wilson disagree is the fundamental nature of humans. Montagu believes humans have no instincts, but that they have been socialized to act aggressively towards each other. His evidence is based on science (evolution). For example, our canines are not for fighting, as previously thought, rather they are for eating plants. Montagu theorizes that before the agricultural revolution, humans were relatively peaceful nomadic hunter-gatherers who did not engage in catastrophic wars. Hunter-gatherer communities developed and survived because of mutual aid and reliance on one another. However, this changed during the agricultural revolution, which separated people and created a person versus person ideology;

Humans are rational - meaning they show aggression to protect themselves and their “clans” (their family, country, etc.). Rational beings consider the continuation of life their number one goal. Therefore, this theoretically means humans will not go to war if they think they will lose, as this would put the very thing they were fighting for, life, in danger. Howard’s theory has some merit, no one goes into a war knowing they will ultimately lose. There could be a perceived possibility of lose, but mostly groups think the conflict is something they can win. Why precisely because of the reason howard gives, humans are rational and want to protect their own lives at all costs. Engaging in a large scale war one know they will lose is not something a rational person does. Howard uses the example of Britain participating in World War II in order to maintain their status as The World Power. Power also factors into this theory, as Howard states many times that wars are fought for power. Britain thought they could win WWII because they had a lot of power, and they went into WWII to maintain their power.
Though E.O.Wilson is critical of what he would call religious ideology, he relies on Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen which states: “…it takes a sense of honor to drive a soldier beyond doing what is right” but “to make such choices is to live a life of difficulty, even sometimes of