Collective violence, extending from riots to warfare, presents a challenge to our ordinary understanding of free will. Actions that would rarely be taken by an individual on their own seem to be embraced when supported by a larger group. This can occur in societies ranging from the communist regime of Soviet Russia to the capitalist free market of modern day England. Given this commonality, perhaps the collective violence of a riot can be best understood as a biological event in which evolved cognitive responses encounter a unique environmental threat. And if that is the case, do individuals caught up in such incidents have any choice in the matter?

Freedom to Riot: an evolutionary perspective on collective violence.
posted by Rumple on Sep 6, 2011 - 49 comments

Husband-and-wife team Christopher Ryan and Calcilda Jethá have written a book, Sex at Dawn, that challenges what they describe as the "standard narrative" of human sexual and social relationships. In a recent Savage Love podcast featuring Ryan as a guest, Dan Savage described the book as "...the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948." [more inside]
posted by kitarra on Nov 5, 2010 - 67 comments

Talking Primates with Frans de Waal: Frans de Waal is a primatologist who's challenged male supremacy in evolution, the belief that monkeys don't perceive images as we do, and the idea that they don't possess emotions ascribed to humans. His new book, Our Inner Ape, posits that the human duality of good and evil is in fact something we've inherited directly from primates.
posted by veronica sawyer on Aug 30, 2005 - 28 comments

Make love not war. Amoung humans closest relatives, these monkeys solve conflict by makeing love. A lot. Female dominate society they have no homicide and tensions in the group are non existent.
posted by stbalbach on Jul 1, 2001 - 17 comments