A good and stimulating book about how consciences might have evolved and thus acted as a prop for pro-social altruistic behaviour in the face of the stronger interests of egoism and nepotism. Our ancestors ganged up on bullies and either subdued them or killed them, by murder or expulsion from the group. Thus some aggressive genes were simply culled or only survived if coupled with self control. He sees bullying as a form of free-riding, and a very dangerous form. Other free-riders - cheats and sneak thieves could have been similarly punished, by a gang or mob. Hence he doesn't agonise about the individual costs of altruistic punishment. But mob rule does put a premium on communication - you need to make sure the mob is unified otherwise you'll simply start a civil-war-type split. (So here you do have an emphasis on group unity.) First big brains, then language. Both helpful in making sure the mob is as one before the attack. But with the acquisition of language you now have another form of social control - gossip and the threat of shunning or loss of reputation and status.
Boehm argues (convincingly) that it was this early emphasis on social control that gave us our conscience which, when it was fully developed, led us to identify with the group's norms emotionally.
(Chimpanzees have been observed to gang up and drive off or kill alpha male who've become a danger - but this only involves small groups of temporarily united subordinates who hope to seize the alpha crown for themselves. Human tribes were strongly egalitarian as far as adult males were concerned.)
He offers something of solution to the problem of whether we are innately hierarchical or not. There is a (male) tendency to seek status and domination but that is countered by resentment from subordinates who, in the past at any rate, ganged up to enforce egalitarianism.
I found his final chapter disappointing (“Epilogue: Humanity's moral future”]. It dwelt a lot on the threats of war and violence that we now face, and the hope that some global sense of sympathy and empathy might provide a way forward. This struck me as wishful thinking without the basis in evidence that he worked hard to assemble for his theory of the evolution of altruism. Also during the course of his book there had been almost no mention of inter-group violence as a formative force; it was all about intra-group violence and the violent and harsh suppression of bullies and free riders, in ways that would have affected the gene pool. Nothing much about intra-group violence and how that might have militated against culling aggressive men (and rewarding self-sacrifice).
The fact that he ignores inter-group conflict in the body of his work may explain his light touch approach to group selection. He doesn't dismiss it out of hand but he doesn't devote much space to it.
Boehm writes very well, making reading his work enjoyable.
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