מתי ברסקי אבולוציה

The self-domestication hypothesis suggests that, like mammalian domesticates, humans have gone through a process of selection against aggression – a process that in the case of humans was self-induced. Here, we extend previous proposals and suggest that what underlies human social evolution is selection for socially mediated emotional control and plasticity. In the first part of the paper we highlight general features of human social evolution, which, we argue, is more similar to that of other social mammals than to that of mammalian domesticates and is therefore incompatible with the notion of human self-domestication. In the second part, we discuss the unique aspects of human evolution and propose that emotional control and social motivation in humans evolved during two major, partially overlapping stages. The first stage, which followed the emergence of mimetic communication, the beginnings of musical engagement, and mimesis-related cognition, required socially mediated emotional plasticity and was accompanied by new social emotions. The second stage followed the emergence of language, when individuals began to instruct the imagination of their interlocutors, and to rely even more extensively on emotional plasticity and culturally learned emotional control. This account further illustrates the significant differences between humans and domesticates, thus challenging the notion of human self-domestication.

Avineri and the paradox of emancipation and zionism

 

"At the root of Zionism" wrote Israeli prominent historian Shlomo Avineri, "lies a paradox. On the one habd, there is no doubt about the depth and intensity of the link between the Jewish people and the land of Israel: there has always been a Jewish community, albiet small, living in the Land of Israel, and there has always ben a trickle of Jews coming to live and die in the Holy Land; much more important is the fact that during eighteen centuries of exile, the link to the Land of Israel figured always very centrally in the value-system of the Jewish communities all over the world and in their self-consciousness as a group". Otherwise sustained Avineri, "Judaism would have become a mere religious community, loosing its ethnic and national elements", adding that "Jews were considered by others – and considered themselves – not only a minority, but a minority in exile".

This is on the one hand. "On the other" continued Avineri, "the fact remains that for all of its emotional, cultural and religious intensity, this link with the Land of Israel did not change the praxis of Jewish life in the diaspora: Jews might pray three times a day for the deliverance which would transform the world and transport them to Jerusalem – but they did not imiigrate there; they could mourn the destruction of the Temple […] but they did not move there". Hence "the paradox: on the hand a deep feeling of attachment to the Land of Israel, becoming perhaps the most distinctive feature of Jewish self-identity; on the other hand, a passive, quietistic attitude towards any practical or operational consequences of this commitment". The fact though is that Zionism emerged 'all of a sudden', and only at the last third of the 19^th century. Even more so: Zionism was the outcome of emancipated Jews, Herzl for instance, and not a direct reaction to Jewish persecutions, that were part and parcel of Jewish history long before 1897 or 1884 (the year Pinsker published his Auto-emancipation). This issue is even more puzzling, as Avineri neatly put it: "from any conceivable point of view, the 19^th century was the best century Jews have ever experienced, collectively and individually, since the destruction of the temple; for with the French Revolution and Emancipation, Jews were allowed for the first time into European society on an equal footing. Equality before the law was allowed for the first time to Jews; schools, universities and the professions were gradually opened to them. Hence the persistence of the question – if so, why did Zionism emerge in the 19^th century rather than in the Dark Ages? For if you compare the beginning of the 19^th century to its end, then it goes without saying that the 19^th century was the most revolutionary century in history for the Jews – economically, socially, politically".

For Avineri, as for many other scholars, 19^th century should be located between 1815 and 1914. Whereas "Jews in Europe in 1815" pointed Avineri, were "still at the margin of gentile society" (not 'only' in rural areas in east Europe but also in all big cities of the west), in 1914 "the balance of Jewish life have shifted from the periphery to the center of European society". The examples are numerous. In 1815 "Jews are excluded, in accordance with Christian theology, from positions of public service; they are not allowed into schools and universities, cannot be public servants or served in the army, are barred from most professions". In contrast, by 1914 "Jews are heavily concentrated in the metropolises of Europe: Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Warsw […] Jews are prominent in the intellectual life of those metropolises far above and beyond their proportion: universities, academies, and schools draw larger and larger numbers of Jews into their activities; journalism, literature, music, science, painting, philosophy, psychology are areas in which Jews are salient and prominent […] to write a European history of 1914 without pointing out to the prominence of Jewish presence is impossible". In short, Jews "have become the great beneficiaries of the Enlightenment, Emancipation and the Industrial Revolution. And all of this in less than a hundred years".

Hence THE question: "if the 19^th century was so good to the Jews, why did it, for the first time, give rise to a movement which attempted to uproot the Jews from the continents in which they have resided", and lead them to the Land of Israel? In a word, also used by Avineri, the answer was (and still is) Modernity. In more than a word, Avineri continues and explains that "this opening up of non-Jewish society before the Jews" is behind the creation of "a completely novel set of dilemmas and problems for which the traditional framework of the kehillah was wholly inadequate […]". At this point Avineri again pointed out numerous instances of such "novel set of dilemmas", from kindergarten to university, from religion to the working-place. They were not abstractions but "problems of daily behavior, life-style, self-identity and self-respect […] a whole universe of problems to which traditional mores had no answer".

Avineri did not forget to shed light also on the darker side of the moon of modernity:  "the forces unleashed by the French Revolution", included "nationalism" which made people "view themselves as Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Poles, Hungarians", identities which included also suspicion towards Jews (in Avineri's words: "would German students really view Jewish collegues as a true descendents of Arminius […or] would a Jewish boy schoolmates truly view him as a descendant of the ancient Gauls?"), an attitude to be transformed sooner than later to anti-Semitism.