Dominance
Displays
adapted
from paleopsych@paleopsych.org
email 1/24/03
Dominance Displays
By
distinguished naturalist,
Prof. Valerius Geist former head of the
environmental science department at the University of Calgary
Date:
Wed, 27 Jan 2003
What you refer to as "The John Wayne Syndrome" is the dominance display syndrome found in all vertebrates - just like a liver is found in all vertebrates. It is an indirect form of aggression in which no weapon is used or any show of weapons-to-be-used is made. The latter is a threat. Dominance displays aim at destabilizing opponents cheaply by placing them into a position of unpredictability, and unpredictability generates arousal (fear); it also places the addressed opponent into a no-win position as it must either withdraw (thereby acknowledging the superiority of the displaying aggressor) or counterdisplay (escalation) or attacking and risking injury or further loss of status. Although I discussed the origins, structure and function of dominance displays in clinical detail in chapter 5 of my Life Strategies book because a focus on its roots is so important in understanding the complex manifestations of this system inn humans, including the origins of Art, of humor, of rules in social engagement etc., I failed to add one important insight which explains why we, as primates, have such a dickens of a time "understanding" these very dangerous displays in large mammals, in fact so much so, that fellow ethologists have landed in hospitals and zoo wardens in their graves fostering the perception that large wild mammals are "unpredictable". They are everything but! At fault is a deeply ingrained system of primordial primate communication that precludes all but an intellectual, but not an emotional understanding of the dominance display of the dairy bull before he nails the farmer to the wall! Primates have a - profoundly (and must emphasize that!) - different way of signaling visually than that terrestrial mammals, and that difference goes back to the big asteroid bang that rid the earth of dinosaurs. It exterminated megaherbivores, the arch enemies of trees! Ergo huge coast to coast forests everywhere in the Paleocene and early Eocene as megaherbivores took some 10 million years to re-evolve - and once again keep down forests. However, in that 10 million interlude when tropical forests were king, their 3-dimensional space encouraged the evolution of tree climbers, primates included. That's our origin as tree-climbers. On the ground below the terrestrially adapted mammals continued broadside body displays with eye aversion. As they do to this day. Sitting on branched and exploiting daylight opportunities, primates faced one another (ergo the emphasis on face and butt, the ends, not the middle of the body). We communicate face to face, a most offensive manner of acting to non-domesticated wild large terrestrial mammals. Our dominance display signals have thus been re-orientated to face to face or face to butt orientation. And human beings have a priory no clue whatsoever when a large terrestrial mammal displays at them - remember, it begins always rather subtle! At close range this is acutely dangerous because the displayer will attack you if you run and he will attack you if you stay! Our displays are biologically frontal, but culturally enhanced and sophisticated in an artful fashion from uniforms to superiority displays to artistic performances. By then one is far from the roots. That's in a nutshell.
Cheers,
Val Geist
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 11:09:33 -0800
The central purpose of the dominance display, human or otherwise: it is a put-on, a show to attract attention, to be admired. It's touch of fakery to underline one's self worth, making very sure others notice it. You as the onlooker find this put on offensive - as you should biologically! Large mammals experience probably something quite similar, as they - given the fortuitous, rare opportunity - will punish the displayer. We are dealing here with so ancient a system that it is difficult to analyze it in a detached manner. If phylogenetically dominance displays are to be compared to a tree, then we see the roots in fishes and truck in reptiles and birds. In humans we see such a cultural ramification that we are in the tree's flowers, leaves and fruits - far far removed from the roots.
Cheers,
Val Geist
REFERENCE:Human dominance displays re enormously complex. I identified at least 10 rules by which they run in my detailed discussion of human dominance displays pp. 86-115 in my life strategies book and entitled the chapter: "Dominance Displays: The Biology of Art, Pride - and Materialism."