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This points to the most ironic of evolutionary psychology's implications: many of the impulses created by natural selection's ruthless imperative of genetic self-interest aren't selfish in any straightforward way. Love, pity, generosity, remorse, friendly affection and enduring trust, for example, are part of our genetic heritage. And, oddly, some of these affiliative impulses are frustrated by the structure of modern society at least as much as the more obviously "animal" impulses. The problem with modern life, increasingly, is less that we're "oversocialized" than that we're undersocialized--or, that too little of our "social" contact is social in the natural, intimate sense of the word.
Various intellectual currents reflect this shortage of civility in modern civilization. The "communitarian" movement, lately championed by Democratic and Republican leaders alike, aims to restore a sense of social kinship, and thus of moral responsibility. And various scholars and politicians (including Putnam) are now bemoaning the shrinkage of civil society, that realm of community groups, from the Boy Scouts to the Rotary Club, that once not only kept America shipshape but met deep social needs.
The latest tribute to civil society comes in Francis Fukuyama's book Trust, whose title captures a primary missing ingredient in modern life. As of 1993, 37% of Americans felt they could trust most people, down from 58% in 1960. This hurts; according to evolutionary psychology, we are designed to seek trusting relationships and to feel uncomfortable in their absence. Yet the trend is hardly surprising in a modern, technology-intensive economy, where so much leisure time is spent electronically and so much "social" time is spent nurturing not friendships but professional contacts.
As scholars and public figures try to resurrect community, they might profitably draw on evolutionary psychology. Prominent communitarian Amitai Etzioni, in highlighting the shortcomings of most institutionalized child care, has duly stressed the virtues of parents' "co-oping," working part time at day-care centers. Still, the stark declaration in his book The Spirit of Community that "infants are better off at home" gives short shrift to the innately social nature of infants and mothers. That women naturally have a vocational calling as well as a maternal one suggests that workplace-based, co-operative day-care centers may deserve more attention.
Residential planners have begun to account implicitly for human nature. They're designing neighborhoods that foster affiliation--large common recreational spaces, extensive pedestrian thoroughfares and even, in some cases, parking spaces that make it hard to hop from car to living room without traversing some turf in between. In effect: drive-in, hunter-gatherer villages.
Still, many nice features of the ancestral environment can't be revived with bricks and mortar. Building physically intimate towns won't bring back the extended kin networks that enmeshed our ancestors and, among other benefits, made child rearing a much simpler task than it is for many parents today. Besides, most adults, given a cozy community, will still spend much of the day miles away, at work. And even if telecommuting increasingly allows them to work at home, they won't be out bonding with neighbors in the course of their vocations, as our ancestors were.