Since the earliest days of philosophy, a question has been pondered and debated, with many of our greatest minds weighing in: What is humanity's essential nature? Are we intrinsically selfish or by-and-large altruistic? In ancient China, humans were thought to be born pure, and it was the world that corrupted them. We see a similar philosophy taking shape during the Enlightenment among such philosophers as Locke and Rousseau.
For Plato and many to follow, the emotions were what corrupted us. The intellect was our salvation. He compared this lifelong struggle to a chariot. The emotions are the horses. The charioteer serves as the intellect, who keeps the horses in line and steers them. This concept was carried throughout the ancient world until the advent of Christianity and the concept of original sin.
Nietzsche saw compassion as an utter failing. If you were really compassionate, you would wish sickness, difficulty, hardship, and woe on your friends, as these were the only things that helped them develop, making them stronger and smarter. With the advent of psychology, we began to see the environment's influence and that of our upbringing. Loving parents for instance brought up compassionate children, while self-centered one's bred selfish offspring.
Now, evolutionary science is weighing in, and finds that compassion may have developed as an evolutionary advantage which helped our species survive and thrive. This isn't a new concept. Darwin himself in The Descent of Man argues that sympathy and compassion are some of humanities strongest traits. Instead, Darwin's “Survival of the fittest" was taken to mean that humans are naturally competitive, and overwhelmingly motivated by self-interest.
Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson reintroduced the importance of compassion as an evolutionary trait in his 1975 book Sociobiology. He argued that we were imbued with a set of social behaviors meant to aid our survival, and that these have a biological foundation. Wilson's theory was called “kin selection." He thought that by working together and helping one another, a clan of hunter-gatherers would improve their prospects, which helped each individual survive. The group benefitted due to this “inclusive fitness."
Years later, Wilson amended his theory, saying that altruism had a limit. After running a mathematical assessment, he and colleagues found that compassion helped the community, but when it came at the expense of the individual, conflict ensued. Of this Wilson said, “We may be the only species intelligent enough to strike a balance between individual and group-level selection, but we are far from perfect at it." He added, “The conflict between the different levels may produce the great dramas of our species: the alliances, the love affairs, and the wars."
The interior insular cortex in orange. By: Brodmann, Mysid. Colored by was_a_bee. - File:Gray727.svg, Wikipedia Commons.
Scientists have made great strides in uncovering what they believe to be the biological basis of human compassion. In 2012, in a study published in the journal Brain, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City declared that they had discovered where compassion resides, in a region of the brain known as the anterior insular cortex. This is the epicenter for what we call the “social brain." Further research has found that much of the central nervous system contributes to what we consider altruistic thoughts and behavior.
An Emory University study followed the brain activity of participants while they helped someone in need. Researchers found that the areas of the brain responsible for feelings of happiness and reward, the caudate nuclear and the anterior cingulate, were activated when participants came to the person's aid.
While the “fight or flight" response is triggered by adrenaline which prepares the body to manage danger, oxytocin is released when we act compassionately. This is the “calm and cuddle" hormone that lowers our heartrate and promotes bonding. It is the very same one that floods a mother's body during breastfeeding, or lovers' bodies before sex.
Dr. Dacher Keltner is an expert on compassion. He is a psychologist at UC Berkeley, the director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, and author of the book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. In his book, Keltner states that human gene survival is dependent on compassion and altruistic acts.
Through their research, Keltner and his team have found that the vagus nerve, a long strand which travels throughout the body and is present in the brain, neck, thorax and abdomen, plays a critical role in the physical component of what we call compassion. This is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. Only mammals have this nerve.
When activated, the vagus nerve creates a warm expansive feeling in the chest, which we often associate with altruistic feelings, but also when say, moved by an emotional scene in a movie or a particular piece of music. Keltner and colleagues have found that those who have a high rate of vagus nerve activity at a resting state, report more altruistic emotions. Meanwhile, psychologist Nancy Eisenberg out of Arizona State University, found that children with more active vagus nerves were more cooperative.
Wildfire survivors. Showing compassion helped our ancestors survive, just as it does today.
If you think back to our earliest ancestors, small hunter-gatherer bands must have interacted on a daily basis. So helping someone not only aided that person's survival. The benefactor would be sure to return the favor, and this exchange of good deeds acted as a social glue, adding to group cohesion, cooperation, and teamwork.
As a result, hunting and foraging efforts improved, and the whole community fared better. The evolutionary advantage of the social brain was more likely to be passed down, as cooperative groups overtook less cohesive ones. Those social and altruistic genes were imprinted and passed on, creating what we now call the “social brain."
Researchers say those who have damage to the anterior insular cortex have similar deficits in empathy as those with certain psychological, mood, or developmental disorders. Schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, certain kinds of autism, and many more are among them. Therapies could be employed to make up for a deficit in compassion. Research in this vein may also help scientists find molecular and cellular processes that motivate social functions, such as altruism. Someday we may even coin the term compassion deficit disorder, and have a cure for it.
To learn more about Dr. Keltner and his work click here:
- The Yugoslav Wars started in 1991, but never really ended
- Kosovo and Serbia are still enemies, and they're getting worse
- A proposed land swap could create peace - or reignite the conflict
The death of Old Yugoslavia
Image: public domain
United Yugoslavia on a CIA map from 1990.
Wars are harder to finish than to start. Take for instance the Yugoslav Wars, which raged through most of the 1990s.
The first shot was fired at 2.30 pm on June 27th, 1991, when an officer in the Yugoslav People's Army took aim at Slovenian separatists. When the YPA retreated on July 7th, Slovenia was the first of Yugoslavia's republics to have won its independence.
After the wars
Image: Ijanderson977, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons
Map of former Yugoslavia in 2008, when Kosovo declared its independence. The geopolitical situation remains the same today.
The Ten-Day War cost less than 100 casualties. The other wars – in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo (1) – lasted much longer and were a lot bloodier. By early 1999, when NATO had forced Serbia to concede defeat in Kosovo, close to 140,000 people had been killed and four million civilians displaced.
So when was the last shot fired? Perhaps it never was: it's debatable whether the Yugoslav Wars are actually over. That's because Kosovo is a special case. Although inhabited by an overwhelming ethnic-Albanian majority, Kosovo is of extreme historical and symbolic significance for Serbians. More importantly, from a legalistic point of view: Kosovo was never a separate republic within Yugoslavia but rather a (nominally) autonomous province within Serbia.
Kosovo divides the world
Image: public domain
In red: states that have recognised the independence of Kosovo (most EU member states – with the notable exceptions of Spain, Greece, Romania and Slovakia; and the U.S., Japan, Turkey and Egypt, among many others). In blue: states that continue to recognise Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo (most notably Russia and China, but also other major countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Iran).
The government of Serbia has made its peace and established diplomatic relations with all other former Yugoslav countries, but not with Kosovo. In Serbian eyes, Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008 was a unilateral and therefore legally invalid change of state borders. Belgrade officially still considers Kosovo a 'renegade province', and it has a lot of international support for that position (2). Not just from its historical protector Russia, but also from other states that face separatist movements (e.g. Spain and India).
Despite their current conflict, Kosovo and Serbia have the same long-term objective: membership of the European Union. Ironically, that wish could lead to Yugoslav reunification some years down the road – within the EU. Slovenia and Croatia have already joined, and all other ex-Yugoslav states would like to follow their example. Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia have already submitted an official application. The EU considers Bosnia and Kosovo 'potential candidates'.
Kosovo is the main stumbling block on Serbia's road to EU membership. Even after the end of hostilities, skirmishes continued between the ethnically Albanian majority and the ethnically Serbian minority within Kosovo, and vice versa in Serbian territories directly adjacent. Tensions are dormant at best. A renewed outbreak of armed conflict is not unthinkable.
Land for peace?
Image: BBC
Mitrovica isn't the only area majority-Serb area in Kosovo, but the others are enclaved and fear being abandoned in a land swap.
In fact, relations between Kosovo and Serbia have deteriorated spectacularly in the past few months. At the end of November, Kosovo was refused membership of Interpol, mainly on the insistence of Serbia. In retaliation, Kosovo imposed a 100% tariff on all imports from Serbia. After which Serbia's prime minister Ana Brnabic refused to exclude her country's "option" to intervene militarily in Kosovo. Upon which Kosovo's government decided to start setting up its own army – despite its prohibition to do so as one of the conditions of its continued NATO-protected independence.
The protracted death of Yugoslavia will be over only when this simmering conflict is finally resolved. The best way to do that, politicians on both sides have suggested, is for the borders reflect the ethnic makeup of the frontier between Kosovo and Serbia.
The biggest and most obvious pieces of the puzzle are the Serbian-majority district of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, and the Albanian-majority Presevo Valley, in southwestern Serbia. That land swap was suggested previous summer by no less than Hashim Thaci and Aleksandar Vucic, presidents of Kosovo and Serbia respectively. Best-case scenario: that would eliminate the main obstacle to mutual recognition, joint EU membership and future prosperity.
If others can do it...
Image: Ruland Kolen
Belgium and the Netherlands recently adjusted out their common border to conform to the straightened Meuse River.
Sceptics - and more than a few locals - warn that there also is a worst-case scenario: the swap could rekindle animosities and restart the war. A deal along those lines would almost certainly exclude six Serbian-majority municipalities enclaved deep within Kosovo. While Serbian Mitrovica, which borders Serbia proper, is home to some 40,000 inhabitants, those enclaves represent a further 80,000 ethnic Serbs – who fear being totally abandoned in a land swap, and eventually forced out of their homes.
Western powers, which sponsored Kosovo's independence, are divided over the plan. U.S. officials back the idea, as do some within the EU. But the Germans are against – they are concerned about the plan's potential to fire up regional tensions rather than eliminate them.
Borders are the Holy Grail of modern nationhood. Countries consider their borders inviolate and unchanging. Nevertheless, land swaps are not unheard of. Quite recently, Belgium and the Netherlands exchanged territories so their joint border would again match up with the straightened course of the River Meuse (3). But those bits of land were tiny and uninhabited. And as the past has amply shown, borders pack a lot more baggage in the Balkans.
