Why Men Rape and Murder
Or, is there an evolutionary reason for crime in our society?
👋 Hey, Abhishek here! Welcome to the ✨ monthly free edition ✨ of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about decision making, clear thinking, better living, and anything else that’s stressing you out in the business of life.
As all of you, I’m devastated by Russia’s invasion on Ukraine. There are two different narratives of the situation — one that blames the US along with Russia and one that blames only Russia. Here are two video recommendations with opposite narratives, and a bonus video in Hindi, for you to get the full picture.
But no matter who is “truly” responsible, the bottom line remains the same. It is the people of Ukraine, people no different than you and I, who are suffering the most. After all, when big men rage war it’s the small people who die. Strength to them! 💙💛
On to this week’s essay!
Note: If you find this issue valuable, can you do me a favour and click the little grey heart below my name (above)? It helps get the word out about this budding newsletter. 😍
Q: Why is there crime in our society?
The Netflix series Delhi Crime is based on the 2012 gang rape case that took place in a neighbourhood of South Delhi. The series follows the story in the aftermath of the event, where DCP Vartika Chaturvedi is tasked to find the culprits responsible for the assaults.
There is a scene where one of the perpetrators confesses to committing the assault. “Yeah, I had an argument with the guy. So we started hitting him.” he says. “The girl came in between to help him, so we bashed her too. Then we dragged her to the back of the bus. We pinned her to the floor. She fought back hard. I got really pissed off.”
As he narrates these lines, there isn’t even an ounce of guilt or remorse in him. It makes you wonder, how can human beings stoop so low?
Today, let’s talk about crime. Let’s ask a very basic question that all of us have seem to taken for granted. Why is there crime? Yeah, we know all the cliched answers: some men are evil, some are unscrupulous, some are driven by their problems, some don’t have options, it’s the society that sets the stage, etc.
These reasons aren’t wrong, but they don’t paint the full picture. We either look at them from a socio-economic point of view, or from a psychological point of view — therefore we cannot tell the full story. There are missing pieces in the puzzle.
The goal of this essay is not to justify but to build an understanding of the root cause of such heinous acts. Is there something wrong in our nurture? Or, is there an evolutionary incentive for crime?
To answer this, let’s go to neuroscience.
We are biological beings. We have descended from countless generations of other biological beings. Each and every one of our ancestors was successful in having at least one offspring, which in turn had at least one offspring, and so on. Our lineage goes back billions of years.
Throughout this entire stretch of time, the ultimate measure of success was passing one’s genes on to the next generation. Brains were useful only if they increased the survival and fertility of an animal.
The first nervous systems were simple. They only controlled reflex reactions and bodily functions. Their design and function were completely specified by genes.
Over time, these functions expanded to include behaviours we consider desirable today — such as caring for offspring and social cooperation. All to serve the purpose of evolving as a species more efficiently. But at the same time behaviours we look less kindly upon or consider “bad” also appeared.
It should be noted that all behaviours, regardless of whether we think of them as desirable or not, came into being only because they were successful adaptations in replicating the gene.
We still have these primitive parts in our modern brain. Interestingly, these primitive parts still harbour some “bad” behaviours. We all live with this heritage.
Of course, each of us lies somewhere along a spectrum of how much we express these old-brain behaviours, and how much our new brain, the more logical neocortex, is able to control them. A part of this variation is genetic (nature). How much of it depends on the environment (nurture) is unknown.
In other words, even though we are “intelligent” our old brain is still here. There’s a “reptile” in all of us. It is still operating under the rules laid down by hundreds of millions of years of survival. We still fight for territory, we still fight for mating rights, and we still cheat, rape, and trick our fellow humans.
Not everyone does these things, and we teach our children good behaviours. But a quick look at any day’s news will confirm that, as a species, we haven’t yet been able to free ourselves from these “less desirable” primitive behaviours.
Now, it’s important to mention (again) that these behaviours are less desirable from an individual or societal point of view. From the perspective of genes, these behaviours exist because they work. Among the numerous behaviours that have come and gone over the course of our evolution, these are the ones that have survived.
I love watching wildlife shows on the National Geographic channel. You can tell a lot about animal behaviour just by watching.
A carcass of a wildebeest floats down a tributary of a river in Africa. The soon-to-be meal passes two hungry crocodiles. Seeing the food, they both lunge at it. But only one will win.
The faster, stronger of the two will be the one to eat that day. Acting completely out of instinct, it will consume the carcass and swim away with a full stomach and absolutely no care in the world about the other crocodile. And though the other crocodile may swim away hungry, unlike us human beings, it will harbour no ill will toward its adversary.
There is no part of the crocodile’s reptilian brain that rewards any cooperative behaviour. The animals have no positive feelings when cooperation is offered and thus no incentive to cooperate. One of the reasons they cannot be petted. They are by design cold-hearted loners. That’s just how they were designed to work. Nothing personal. All instinct. All reptile. And for a crocodile, it works.
Crocodiles don’t have a neocortex. And unlike human beings, reptiles don’t need a neocortex. They don’t have a “complex” life such as us.
A crocodile’s brain is same as a human brain, minus the neocortex. A crocodile has sophisticated behaviours, such as it cares for its young, it knows how to navigate its environment, it knows how to make sneak attacks on thirsty land animals. They do have some level of intelligence, but nothing close to human intelligence.
But here’s the catch. In us “intelligent” human beings, the neocortex and the older parts of the brain aren’t separate organs, they are intertwined and connected via nerve fibres. They are more like roommates with separate personalities and agendas who need to cooperate to get anything done.
On top of that, the neocortex (despite all its intelligence) is at a serious disadvantage. It cannot control behaviour directly. For example, unlike other parts of the brain, none of the cells in the neocortex connect directly to muscles, so it can’t, on its own, make any muscles move.
When the neocortex wants something to get done, it sends a signal to the old brain, in a sense requesting the old brain to do a favour.
For example, breathing is a function of the brain stem, requiring no thought or input from the neocortex. The neocortex can temporarily control breathing, as when you consciously decide to hold your breath. But if the brain stem detects that your body needs more oxygen, it will ignore the neocortex and take back control. You cannot asphyxiate yourself without external help.
Similarly, the neocortex might think, “Don’t eat this piece of cake. It isn’t healthy.” But if older and more primitive parts of the brain say, “Looks good, smells good, eat it,” the cake can be hard to resist. The neocortex and the primitive brain are like two different voices inside our head, forever against each other.
The old brain has its good side, such as nurturing our young and caring for friends and relatives. But it also has its bad side, such as unscrupulous behaviour to garner resources and reproductive access, including murder and rape.
The main problem is that our old brain is still in charge. It’s highly adapted for short-term survival and prevents us from making choices that support our long-term survival.
The neocortex has enabled us to become a civilised species. We are able to live in a society, as a citizen of the world, and thrive together. Yet we are still a biological species. Each of us has an old brain that sometimes causes us to behave in ways that are detrimental to us as civilised beings.
Once we understand this, we can start to understand why we commit evil, heinous, horrifying, villainous acts. From the point of view of our reptilian brain, they aren’t good or evil. In the course of human evolution, these behaviours have been the most successful in replicating our genes. They are inevitable.
In other words, there will always be crime.
Timeless Insight
Andrew Stanton, the director of animated movies like Finding Nemo and WALL-E, is fond of saying, “People need to be wrong as fast as they can. In a battle, if you’re faced with two hills and you’re unsure which one to attack, the right course of action is to hurry up and choose. If you find out it’s the wrong hill, turn around and attack the other one. In that scenario, the only unacceptable course of action is running between the hills.”
It’s better to be right the first time, yes, nobody can deny that. But that may not always be possible. The second best option is to be wrong as fast as you can. This basically means: while trying something new, you’re gonna screw up, it’s inevitable, but be wrong as fast as you can so you can get to the answer sooner.
You can’t reach adulthood before you go through puberty. You won’t get it right the first time.
Interesting Finds
Meaning isn’t a substance, but rather a feeling. In this way, it’s a lot like beauty. Both are subjective experiences that we perceive in response to external cues. In both cases, all people agree about which kinds of things elicit the feeling, while at the same time leaving plenty of room for individual variation. Both meaning and beauty are experiences we crave, and the fact that all humans have these cravings suggests that they’re adaptive. And just as we can appreciate beauty without getting too philosophical about it, so too can we appreciate meaning without requiring it to rest on some ultimate, metaphysical foundation.
You have to be able to say NO; you have to be able to pick your shots. And if success doesn’t earn you the right to say NO, what kind of success is it? If you’re not strong or free enough to pass on things, are you really that strong or free? There is a haunting clip of the late Joan Rivers, when she was well into her 70s and she was asked why she keeps working, always on the road, always looking for more gigs. Telling the interviewer about the fear that drives her, she held up an empty calendar: “If my book ever looked like this, it would mean that nobody wants me, that everything I ever tried to do in life didn’t work. Nobody cared, and I’ve been totally forgotten.” That’s an attitude that creates a lot of work, but does it create anybody’s best work?
What I’m Reading
I urge you to find a way to immerse yourself fully in the life that you’ve been given. To stop running from whatever you’re trying to escape, and instead to stop, and turn, and face whatever it is.
Then I dare you to walk toward it. In this way, the world may reveal itself to you as something magical and awe-inspiring that does not require escape. Instead, the world may become something worth paying attention to.
The rewards of finding and maintaining balance are neither immediate nor permanent. They require patience and maintenance. We must be willing to move forward despite being uncertain of what lies ahead. We must have faith that actions today that seem to have no impact in the present moment are in fact accumulating in a positive direction, which will be revealed to us only at some unknown time in the future. Healthy practices happen day by day.
— Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation
Tiny Thought
How do you innovate? First, try to get in trouble — serious but not terminal trouble.
Before You Go…
Thanks so much for reading! Send me ideas, questions, your favourite Netflix series. You can write to abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com, reply to this email, or use the comments.
Until next Sunday,
Abhishek 👋