The Huddling Instinct

There is a behavior common to all humankind that is so habitual it seems instinctual. I call it “the huddling instinct”. We instinctively form huddles with others of our species based on some common denominator: genealogy, territory, faith, politics. As members of a huddle, we give up some of our individual freedom to enjoy the benefits of being in a huddle.

There are three reasons why we huddle. First, we are a gregarious species. We like and seek out the company of other humans. We are, by nature, more like a troop of chattering chimpanzees than lone wolves stalking prey. Secondly, we huddle because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whether it’s raising a barn or benefitting from each other’s inventiveness, we can accomplish more as members of a huddle than as individuals. Third, we huddle out of fear, fear of other huddles.

As with all our instinctual behaviors, the instinct to huddle must serve some evolutionary purpose. The positive aspects of huddling, as far as the species is concerned, are obvious. Faced with a natural calamity, such as a starvation-inducing drought, a group can survive it better by working collaboratively than as individuals. The acquisition of knowledge, which has contributed so much to our species wellbeing, is owed to thinkers down through the ages who were members of our own as well as other huddles.

The third reason we huddle, out of fear, has its positive aspect, but also a very deadly (literally) negative aspect. We fear other huddles because we are not sure of their intentions toward us. Do they mean to steal our land or property, and take our very lives? Suspicion leads to an aspect of human behavior so universal it, too, seems part of our DNA: inter-huddle conflict, i.e., war. Competition between rival huddles, even to the point of war, can be considered positive if one huddle prevails because of superior institutions (e.g., the Romans), advanced technology (e.g., Europeans), or some other positive mutation. In such cases (but not in the case of supra-human intervention, such as the storm which sank the Spanish Armada, causing Spain to give up its attempt to conquer England), from an evolutionary point of view warfare can be said to be the mechanism by which the fittest huddle survives.

But that second reason we huddle—to enjoy the benefits of cooperation—has made the third reason problematic. The marvelous, uniquely human, technological genius which has graced us with such material comfort has also endowed us with weapons of such lethality as to threaten our very extinction. Days of yore, when contending huddles fought it out on some remote battlefield, the victor winning the loser’s territory, treasure, or women, are gone. In modern warfare, the concept of “innocent civilians” has become passé, it often proving safer to be on the front lines than the home front. Will the grotesquely awesome means we have created to kill each other—nuclear, pathogenic, electromagnetic, or something yet to be devised—prove to make the extinction of our species—at our own hands—not only possible but probable?

Thinkers down through history have tried to explain man’s proclivity for war. Nothing definitive has been arrived at so far, but one thing is clear: there can be no war without huddles. Violence between individuals is not war; it takes a huddle (familial, tribal, national, or whatever) to make a war. As one wit morbidly put it, “Killing one person is murder; killing 100,000 is foreign policy”. What is it about huddling that leads to bellicosity?

At the heart of it is the belief that the huddle to which we belong is special, better than other huddles. Ever since the biblical originators of the concept of huddle superiority held that their huddle had been chosen by God, chauvinism (the modern term for the conceit) has led to huddle being pitted against huddle in mortal combat. Perhaps if we could disabuse ourselves of chauvinistic attitudes, we could end war.

Not an easy task, as the pandemic which has wracked humankind for the last three years has demonstrated. Those who argue the SARS-CoV-2 virus came out of a laboratory, while bemoaning China’s lack of transparency concerning its lab in Wuhan, never direct their attention to America’s own biolabs, which are cloaked in the apex of secrecy.* In failing to call for a comprehensive investigation of all possibilities, these chauvinists show they place their loyalty to their huddle over their duty to others, even if their huddle-patriotism risks the fate of all mankind. If the virus did originate in a lab, failing to correctly identify the lab responsible will cause the sort of research that led to the COVID virus to continue, assuring that a more devastating pathogen will be released—accidentally or intentionally—in the future.

One characteristic of chauvinism is that acts that would be considered odious, even criminal, if engaged in within the huddle, are not only condoned but praised when committed against a huddle seen as an enemy. There are those who look wistfully at the possibility of developing a superweapon that can kill based on genotype–the ultimate instrument of genocide. Imagine working on a weapon that could kill a billion or more of God’s children without a single casualty on your own side (I won’t say which billion, you know); only the proverbial mad scientist could. If it became known a country was working on such a weapon would not even the citizens of that country join with the rest of mankind in declaring such a weapon inhuman and insist that the development of one be stopped?

Probably not. An unfortunate concomitant of huddling is that the members of a huddle believe theirs has the best of intentions when it comes to its relations with other huddles. Therefore, anything it does in the name of huddle defense is justified, even altruistic. Americans, if they be the culprits behind the COVID virus, would be especially hesitant to admit their role. We would denounce the claim as enemy propaganda or justify the project as defensive, citing the Golden Rule of foreign policy: “You’ve got to do it to them before they do it to you”.

Without huddles, war would be impossible, but to give up huddling would deprive us of the benefits of huddling, as well as require surmounting our instincts. We may not be able to abandon something as instinctual as huddling, but couldn’t we control our huddling as we do other instincts, like scratching where it itches, but not in public when the itching is in a private area? Anyone so prideful of his own huddle as to suggest bombing a rival school because they threaten to defeat his school in an athletic contest would be considered crazy (except maybe in Texas where Armageddon pales beside the high school state football championship). Couldn’t we enhance inter-huddle understanding through travel, cultural exchanges, international bodies, arms negotiations, etc.—all things already engaged in but with less than total success—making it equally unacceptable to go to war against another huddle?

Not very likely, is it. I’m betting we can’t, a bet I would be delighted to lose. The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus will never be traced to the appropriate lab, if lab origin be the case, and we will continue down the path towards our own extinction, huddling like lemmings embarking on a trek to the sea.

Happy New Year! May we all be around to join in celebrating the next one.  

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* The evidence that the virus may have originated at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Ft. Detrick is part circumstantial, part incriminating. The circumstantial evidence includes: (1) the date of the earliest known case of COVID-19 keeps getting pushed back to well before the disease appeared in China, (2) Trump reinstated funding for gain-of-function research at Ft. Detrick and USAMRIID is known to work with coronaviruses, (3) Ft. Detrick is demonstrably leaky—remember the post-911 anthrax scare?, (4) our refusal to allow an independent body to investigate Ft. Detrick’s possible culpability, (5) the near universal ban in our media of even suggesting Ft. Detrick should be investigated, (6) our failure to thoroughly investigate when the virus first appeared in this country. The incriminating evidence (fully substantiated, unlike most of the charges levelled against the Wuhan lab by anonymous intelligence sources who provide little or no evidence to back up their claims) are: (1) USAMRIID was closed down for safety violations in August 2019, shortly after some unidentified pathogen killed a dozen or so at two nursing homes in Virginia and the lab remained closed until November— the exact period when SARS-CoV-2 made its appearance, (2) A handful of US military personnel were treated for some ailment, possibly respiratory, at the World Military Games held in Wuhan in October 2019, (3) A memo warning that China was in the grips of an epidemic made the rounds in the Pentagon even before the Chinese were aware of their plight. Hardly a smoking gun, but enough to justify an investigation (for further discussion, see my posting “The Virus of Nationalism”).