The First to Fall

Was Hobbes right? (and other holes in Wrangham’s narrative)

Wrangham’s reading becomes “Hobbesian” only if I treat modern Homo sapiens as a transparent example of “what nature does.” But if I see most modern humans as the outcome of a runaway selection process (which I do), then what he’s describing isn’t “the natural course of things”…it’s one very peculiar path, shaped by group-enforced control, ecological shocks, and self-reinforcing dynamics.

In Wrangham’s frame, humans reduced reactive aggression “naturally,” like bonobos, by killing off bullies. This made us more cooperative and domesticated, enabling civilization. This makes our docility some kind of moral progress…proof of “better angels.”

But when we look at this as runaway selection, we see that humans reduced disruptive reactivity not because it was inherently maladaptive, but because control systems selected against it. Those who resisted were killed, enslaved, or excluded, while compliant individuals reproduced. It wasn’t a noble trajectory toward peace. It’s a feedback loop of domestication…each round of control flattens diversity, narrows behavior, and strengthens the system’s grip.

I propose that modern “cooperation” isn’t evidence of a gentle human nature, but of attenuation. A domesticated phenotype optimized for predictability. And what Wrangham calls “our success” is really a fragile state of overshoot. More docile humans and larger coordinated systems make for the massive ecological extraction we see today. Instead of Hobbes’s “nasty, brutish, and short” as the baseline, the baseline was probably messier but more adaptive…with greater tolerance for autonomy, variability, and feedback from the environment.

I think the Hobbesian story is itself a product of domesticated minds narrating their condition as “progress” (I’m in full agreement with Christopher Ryan here). What looks like the triumph of peace is really the triumph of control which, taken far enough, undermines both autonomy and ecological survival.

I want to take a second (third? fourth? tenth?) look at Wrangham’s take on reactive aggression now. Because there’s a lot about it that doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

Reactive aggression (the “heat of the moment,” crimes of passion) is still recognized as human. It may be tragic or destructive, but the law often interprets it as impulsive, unplanned…an overflow of feeling. That makes it mitigating. Proactive aggression (premeditated, calculated), on the other hand, is seen as more dangerous. It reflects intentional control, not eruption. Society punishes it more harshly because it reveals a deliberate strategy of harm. This suggests (to me, anyway) that people intuitively grasp that reactivity is part of being alive, whereas proactive aggression is a sort of deviation…weaponizing intelligence for domination.

Wrangham says that humans became “civilized” by suppressing reactive aggression. But I think everyone can agree that cultural practice indicates we still see reactive aggression as understandable, even forgivable. What we really can’t tolerate is schemed violence…the kind of proactive aggression that builds empires, executes slaves, or engineers genocide. I think the very logic of law undermines Wrangham’s claim. If reactive aggression were the great evolutionary danger, why is it less punished than the thing he ways persisted unchanged?

Which brings me back to the better explanatory model…domestication didn’t simply reduce hot tempers. It systematically removed resistance (any kind of reactivity that disrupts control). But at the same time, it rewarded (and still rewards) the forms of aggression that can operate through the system…planned, symbolically justified, and bureaucratically executed. This is why the “banality of evil” (Hannah Arendt’s term for the bureaucratic normalcy of atrocity) feels so resonant: proactive aggression is what really flourished under domestication.

My next bone of contention with Wrangham is that most examples of reactive aggression he provides in his written work and lectures sounds a hell of a lot like bullying. Proactive bullying.

With one hand, he defines reactive aggression as impulsive, hot-blooded, emotionally charged aggression…triggered by provocation or frustration and more or less immediate (not pre-planned). But in the same breath, he gives examples that clearly indicate planning, calculation, and strategic targeting. He cites situations where aggression is used to produce submission in the victim…not some kind of heat-of-the-moment explosion. I don’t know of any psychological taxonomies in which that behavior is a fit for reactive aggression.

Why? Again, I think part of it has to do with his bonobo comparison. He needs “reactive aggression” as the thing bonobos and humans both suppress, to link his self-domestication theory. It certainly makes the story cleaner, too. “We eliminated bullies” sounds more like moral progress than “we empowered the strategic aggressors.” And it smells like simplification to me. By labeling bullying “reactive,” he folds it into his main category, even if the behaviors clearly involve planning.

And by stretching his definition of reactive aggression, Wrangham masks the real driver. It wasn’t just hot tempers that got culled. It was all forms of disruptive autonomy. Including resistance, refusal, and yes, sometimes reactive outbursts. What flourishes is strategic aggression aligned with control systems (raids, executions, conquest, slavery). He’s essentially misclassifying proactive violence as the very thing his model claims was eliminated.

The reason I’m attacking Wrangham so much is (likely) that there’s so much else I like about his hypothesis that makes the abrupt turn he takes extra upsetting. First, coalitionary enforcement absolutely matters. Once language and symbolic coordination were possible, groups could target individuals who disrupted group order. Second, domestication traits absolutely show up in humans. Smaller brains, more gracile features, extended juvenility…these parallel what happens when animals are bred for compliance. And Wrangham’s distinction between proactive and reactive aggression is useful, even he overcommits to one side.

I get upset when he emphasizes a moral arc…we became “nicer” by suppressing reactive group members. The archaeological and historical record (slavery, bottlenecks, harems, systemic violence) points to a far darker dynamic…proactive aggression, control, and planned violence were selected for because they succeed in hierarchical systems. I don’t know how he doesn’t see this. How doesn’t he see the removal of disruptive resistance to control systems when he browses a history book through a domestication lens?

I like Wrangham’s theories without the irrational optimism. For me, that looks like scarcity and group size growth leads to more need for control and coordination. Coalitions form, but instead of only targeting bullies, they target all disruptive reactivity (anyone who won’t conform to the group’s “world-as-it-should-be” model). Reactive individuals (autonomous resistors) are killed or excluded…predictable, compliant individuals survive and reproduce. And, as a byproduct, proactive aggression thrives…because it’s the aggression most compatible with systems of control. Paradox solved.

Written by

Ken

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Wrangham’s reading becomes “Hobbesian” only if I treat modern Homo sapiens as a transparent example of “what nature does.” But if I see most modern humans as the outcome of a runaway selection process (which I do), then what he’s describing isn’t “the natural course of things”…it’s one very peculiar path, shaped by group-enforced control, ecological shocks, and self-reinforcing dynamics.

In Wrangham’s frame, humans reduced reactive aggression “naturally,” like bonobos, by killing off bullies. This made us more cooperative and domesticated, enabling civilization. This makes our docility some kind of moral progress…proof of “better angels.”

But when we look at this as runaway selection, we see that humans reduced disruptive reactivity not because it was inherently maladaptive, but because control systems selected against it. Those who resisted were killed, enslaved, or excluded, while compliant individuals reproduced. It wasn’t a noble trajectory toward peace. It’s a feedback loop of domestication…each round of control flattens diversity, narrows behavior, and strengthens the system’s grip.

I propose that modern “cooperation” isn’t evidence of a gentle human nature, but of attenuation. A domesticated phenotype optimized for predictability. And what Wrangham calls “our success” is really a fragile state of overshoot. More docile humans and larger coordinated systems make for the massive ecological extraction we see today. Instead of Hobbes’s “nasty, brutish, and short” as the baseline, the baseline was probably messier but more adaptive…with greater tolerance for autonomy, variability, and feedback from the environment.

I think the Hobbesian story is itself a product of domesticated minds narrating their condition as “progress” (I’m in full agreement with Christopher Ryan here). What looks like the triumph of peace is really the triumph of control which, taken far enough, undermines both autonomy and ecological survival.

I want to take a second (third? fourth? tenth?) look at Wrangham’s take on reactive aggression now. Because there’s a lot about it that doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

Reactive aggression (the “heat of the moment,” crimes of passion) is still recognized as human. It may be tragic or destructive, but the law often interprets it as impulsive, unplanned…an overflow of feeling. That makes it mitigating. Proactive aggression (premeditated, calculated), on the other hand, is seen as more dangerous. It reflects intentional control, not eruption. Society punishes it more harshly because it reveals a deliberate strategy of harm. This suggests (to me, anyway) that people intuitively grasp that reactivity is part of being alive, whereas proactive aggression is a sort of deviation…weaponizing intelligence for domination.

Wrangham says that humans became “civilized” by suppressing reactive aggression. But I think everyone can agree that cultural practice indicates we still see reactive aggression as understandable, even forgivable. What we really can’t tolerate is schemed violence…the kind of proactive aggression that builds empires, executes slaves, or engineers genocide. I think the very logic of law undermines Wrangham’s claim. If reactive aggression were the great evolutionary danger, why is it less punished than the thing he ways persisted unchanged?

Which brings me back to the better explanatory model…domestication didn’t simply reduce hot tempers. It systematically removed resistance (any kind of reactivity that disrupts control). But at the same time, it rewarded (and still rewards) the forms of aggression that can operate through the system…planned, symbolically justified, and bureaucratically executed. This is why the “banality of evil” (Hannah Arendt’s term for the bureaucratic normalcy of atrocity) feels so resonant: proactive aggression is what really flourished under domestication.

My next bone of contention with Wrangham is that most examples of reactive aggression he provides in his written work and lectures sounds a hell of a lot like bullying. Proactive bullying.

With one hand, he defines reactive aggression as impulsive, hot-blooded, emotionally charged aggression…triggered by provocation or frustration and more or less immediate (not pre-planned). But in the same breath, he gives examples that clearly indicate planning, calculation, and strategic targeting. He cites situations where aggression is used to produce submission in the victim…not some kind of heat-of-the-moment explosion. I don’t know of any psychological taxonomies in which that behavior is a fit for reactive aggression.

Why? Again, I think part of it has to do with his bonobo comparison. He needs “reactive aggression” as the thing bonobos and humans both suppress, to link his self-domestication theory. It certainly makes the story cleaner, too. “We eliminated bullies” sounds more like moral progress than “we empowered the strategic aggressors.” And it smells like simplification to me. By labeling bullying “reactive,” he folds it into his main category, even if the behaviors clearly involve planning.

And by stretching his definition of reactive aggression, Wrangham masks the real driver. It wasn’t just hot tempers that got culled. It was all forms of disruptive autonomy. Including resistance, refusal, and yes, sometimes reactive outbursts. What flourishes is strategic aggression aligned with control systems (raids, executions, conquest, slavery). He’s essentially misclassifying proactive violence as the very thing his model claims was eliminated.

The reason I’m attacking Wrangham so much is (likely) that there’s so much else I like about his hypothesis that makes the abrupt turn he takes extra upsetting. First, coalitionary enforcement absolutely matters. Once language and symbolic coordination were possible, groups could target individuals who disrupted group order. Second, domestication traits absolutely show up in humans. Smaller brains, more gracile features, extended juvenility…these parallel what happens when animals are bred for compliance. And Wrangham’s distinction between proactive and reactive aggression is useful, even he overcommits to one side.

I get upset when he emphasizes a moral arc…we became “nicer” by suppressing reactive group members. The archaeological and historical record (slavery, bottlenecks, harems, systemic violence) points to a far darker dynamic…proactive aggression, control, and planned violence were selected for because they succeed in hierarchical systems. I don’t know how he doesn’t see this. How doesn’t he see the removal of disruptive resistance to control systems when he browses a history book through a domestication lens?

I like Wrangham’s theories without the irrational optimism. For me, that looks like scarcity and group size growth leads to more need for control and coordination. Coalitions form, but instead of only targeting bullies, they target all disruptive reactivity (anyone who won’t conform to the group’s “world-as-it-should-be” model). Reactive individuals (autonomous resistors) are killed or excluded…predictable, compliant individuals survive and reproduce. And, as a byproduct, proactive aggression thrives…because it’s the aggression most compatible with systems of control. Paradox solved.

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