Patriotism

Patriotism denotes positive attitudes by a person to their own nation, to its national homeland, its culture, its members, and to its interests. The word is derived from the Latin patria, fatherland, which has a much broader meaning than a geographical territory.

An evolutionary origin of patriotism?

Why do so many people experience intense patriotic feelings? An evolutionary biology explanation is that patriotism is a form of kin altruism, which is both posited and explained by the theory of kin selection. This explanation is speculative and disputed, and no explicit genetic basis for patriotism has been evidenced.

Related Topics:
Evolutionary biology - Kin selection - Genetic

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Kin altruism, in its simplest form, implies that one animal would sacrifice itself to ensure survival of more than one other genetically related individuals, for instance siblings. To explain patriotism, it would have to apply to a group. Our ancestors certainly lived in small groups of genetically related individuals. Since genes tended to be shared by the entire group, and cooperation likely was critical to group survival, a propensity to experience feelings of loyalty to the group was probably favoured by natural selection. This idea was expressed by Charles Darwin in 1871 as follows:

Related Topics:
Natural selection - Charles Darwin

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:A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.

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Loyalty to the group might have led individuals to take actions that were poorly justified on grounds of self-interest, but helped the group as a whole: this is the analogy with kin altruism. Since Darwin's time, evidence for kin selection has been observed among many species that live in small groups. Frequently, animals in such species have been observed taking actions that risk their own lives but benefit the safety of the group as a whole (an example is the issuance of a warning call against predators, an act which directs the predator's attention to the individual who gave it). Disputed gene-centered theories imply that members of such groups have an evolutionary interest in the long-term success of each other's genetic endowment.

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Today, of course, the feelings of intense patriotism that grip (for example) many Americans cannot possibly be supported in the evolutionary sense by kin selection, since Americans form a huge and genetically very diverse population. Yet the forces believed to have created human nature, and hence these feelings, were in effect over a period of many millennia, during which time all human societies were very small. Speculatively, there was nothing to stop the feeling of group loyalty from carrying over, without biological purpose, from small groups to large.

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The political rhetoric associated with patriotism often compares the nation to a family, as in, for instance, the terms Fatherland and ?Mother Russia? or the Shakespearian expression ?band of brothers?, from the play Henry V. In the kin-selection account of patriotism, this kind of metaphor might be viewed as seeking to focus the natural feelings people have towards kin, onto the nation as a whole.

Related Topics:
Fatherland - Shakespearian - Henry V

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Both kin selection theory, and its use to explain patriotism, are disputed. Some evolutionary biologists believe that the quantitative conditions needed to make kin selection effective in small human societies were simply not met. The controversy hinges on what numerical values are to be plugged into the (generally accepted) equations of W. D. Hamilton that govern kin selection.

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Some people accept the theory of evolution in general but reject efforts to invoke it in the explanation of human behaviour. They would emphasise the great malleability of the human character, including the apparent possibility of creating patriotism through the instruction of youth, as in the Hitler Youth example above. Others would reject the kin selection theory of patriotism, simply because they reject the theory of evolution on religious grounds. For them, their religious beliefs explain why the human character is the way it is. Depending on whether they see patriotism as good or bad, they would attribute it to a free will choice for good or evil.

Related Topics:
Evolution - Free will

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