Evolutionary Theories and the Issue of Nuclear War: Implications for Mental Health

Abstract

The process by which societal stressors are expressed in individual illness is not well understood. The need is ever present to adjust to such exigencies as uncertainty about the future, the alienating pressures of modern society, and destructive situations out of the control of the person affected. Such stressful adjustments seem to have face validity as a process that would debilitate human consciousness. When these stressful conditions are coupled with the notion that some preordained force is moving humans to be aggressive and exploitative and to create such conditions, the possibility of the healthy survival of the individual and society may be irreversibly weakened. The widespread acceptance of such a force, namely, genetic determinism, needs to be examined in light of the complex stresses of contemporary life. In the last one hundred and thirty years, formulations derived from the Darwinian theory of evolution have been the wellspring of theories relating a formidable human history marked by military events and interindividual hostility to evolutionary processes, emphasizing, in particular, the hereditary aspects. The outstanding contemporary examples of such theories of instinctive, inborn or innate behavior are ethology and sociobiology [1,2]. Both offer theories about social behavior that are based on genetic determinismi.e., that genetic processes set the limits for development of all structures and functions and