The author argues that there are specific turning points in
evolution. Structures and behavioral patterns that evolved in the
service of discrete functions sometimes allow for unforeseen new
developments as a side effect. In retrospect, they have proven to
be pre-adaptations, and serve as raw material for natural selection
to work upon. Love and Hate was intended to complement Konrad
Lorenz's book, On Aggression, by pointing out our motivations to
provide nurturing, and thus to counteract and correct the
widespread but one-sided opinion that biologists always present
nature as bloody in tooth and claw and intra-specific aggression as
the prime mover of evolution. This simplistic image is,
nonetheless, still with us, all the more regrettably because it
hampers discussion across scholarly disciplines. Eibl-Eibesfeldt
argues that leaders in individualized groups are chosen for their
pro-social abilities. Those who comfort group members in distress,
who are able to intervene in quarrels and to protect group members
who are attacked, those who share, those who, in brief, show
abilities to nurture, are chosen by the others as leaders, rather
than those who use their abilities in competitive ways. Of course,
group leaders may need, beyond their pro-social competence, to be
gifted as orators, war leaders, or healers. Issues of love and hate
are social in origin and hence social in consequence. Life has
emerged on this planet in a succession of new forms, from the
simplest algae to man-man the one being who reflects upon this
creation, who seeks to fashion it himself and who, in the process,
may end by destroying it. It would indeed be grotesque if the
question of the meaning of life were to be solved in this way. In
language that is clear and accessible throughout, arguing
forcefully for the innate and "preprogrammed" dispositions of
behavior in higher vertebrates, including humans, Eibl-Eibesfeldt
steers a middle course in discussing the development of cultural
and ethical norms while insisting on their matrix of biological
origins.
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