Robyn Williams: What is wrong with men? Quite a lot of men. Why do so many of them beat women, rape and pillage, form gangs, invade Poland, drive like hoons? You could, if you tried, make young men do anything. Just look at history. Look at the news.

Ross Honeywill, who’s a philosopher at the University of Tasmania, has written a book about this manifest problem. It’s called, appropriately, The Man Problem – Destructive Masculinity in Western Culture. And he worries about genes.

Ross Honeywill: When I first appeared on Ockham’s Razor back in 2008, I declared I was no scientist. While that is still true, it doesn’t impair my lifelong interest in science and a deep immersion in research. Today I intend to take a brief look at destructive masculinity, the choices men make, and whether or not a Moral Gene exists to counteract destructive masculine behaviour.

Every day we hear news of men bashing or killing the person they supposedly love the most. And we’re shocked by the statistics of men raping women and girls they know and don’t know. These are the very visible symptoms of what I call ‘the man problem.’ It is a potential of every man.

But what determines whether we, as men, choose to be the problem or the solution?

One thing I can say for certain is that destructive masculinity is not determined by biology. Humans are animals, but not just animals. Humans undoubtedly feel protohuman urges, animalistic desires, needs, and impulses. But our socially mediated mega-brains intercede before urge turns to action, before impulse becomes behavior. Humans choose how they behave. But what makes most men rise above the beast and reject cruelty or brutality?

For many years the search has been on for an evolutionary basis of moral behaviour – and when I use the term ‘moral’ I make no reference to religion or faith. American scholar Robert Wright argues that morality is undoubtedly an evolutionary adaptation designed to maximize genetic self-interest, a function that is entirely hidden from our conscious experience.

I agree that morality is evolutionary, that it is linked to the genome, and operates unconsciously, ‘hidden from our experience’. The splendid Friedrich Nietzsche told us that unconscious concepts are not simply latent but actively shape our conscious actions. So is there a Moral Gene?

Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene theory modernised Darwinian thinking by insisting that the ultimate explanation of human behaviour lies in its relationship to reproductive and evolutionary success.

The great Stephen J Gould, however, took issue with selfish gene theory, and even with the proposition that the gene is the unit of natural selection. Gould’s criticism brought into focus two fundamental flaws in selfish gene theory: the first, that selfishness itself is not the evolutionary Holy Grail and second, that the unit of selection is not, as Dawkins insists, the genotype but is instead the phenotype.

So what’s the difference? A genotype [gene] is the input, and a phenotype [phene] is the output. A phene is a genetically determined composite of observable characteristics or traits such as eye colour, height or, critically for this discussion, behaviour. It results from the expression of an organism’s genes AND the influence of environmental factors.

I’m with Gould on this. Phenes not genes determine the evolutionarily advantageous exercise of free will and the will to achieve individual and reciprocal altruism - let’s call it morality.

Dawkins’ Neo-Darwinian approach sees the world evolving in a way that relies on gradual genetic mutations or changes, and natural selection: a gene changes, mutates without any environmental stimulus, and natural selection ensures that only the beneficial changes survive. This outdated approach precludes genes being influenced or changed by events going on in the body, the benefit of experience being lost at every final closing of the eyes. Neo-Darwinists believe that our lives have no influence on evolution and are solely the result of a random past rather than also the cause of a better future.

But it’s not only Gould who was critical of Dawkins and his outdated theories.

In a 2007 radio interview on this very network, Robyn Williams asked author and former editor of New Scientist magazine Nigel Calder for an example of a current orthodoxy he considered errant and that will be exposed as such. Without hesitation Calder replied:

Oh, an easy one is Richard Dawkins. His accountof evolution is hopelessly out of date. There are all kinds of things that happen to genes that just don’t figure in his way of thinking: all kinds of ways in which accelerated evolution can occur involving several genes at one time and yet the idea of the single mutation being tested by natural selection, which has been the dogma for what, seventy or eighty years,I mean it’s dead, defunct … that to me is an example of where a top expert is wrong.

So, is morality a factor in human evolution? And if so is it generated by a Moral Gene or a Moral Phene?

Morality is a becoming. It is not fixed, carved in stone, but a situation. It is situated physically and metaphysically along a continuum, and is in itself a situation in which all factors are at play. Different moral judgements are made according to the state of the individual’s moral becoming. This is the constant and continuous choice process men undertake every conscious and unconscious moment.

Morality is therefore cultural, but not dependent, as is ethics, on society and social rules. Evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander argues that we frequently exhort our children to behave as unselfish altruists, even though such tendencies would, in selfish gene terms, consistently be selected out of human populations, except for one paradoxical and crucial fact – and that is, says Alexander, that actions which would otherwise be truly altruistic will increase the reproductive success of their bearer if they are viewed as true altruism by his fellows. This also debunks selfish gene theory. If it is reasoned, Alexander argues, that parental exhortations to unselfish altruism have, during human history, led human progeny to reproductive or evolutionary success, then it can be argued that sincerity and altruism represent valuable social assets even when they derive from a real failure to recognize the reproductively selfish background and effects of one’s own behaviour.

So, moral decision-making, choosing to surpass the beast of destructive masculinity, is an evolutionary success strategy. But is there a Moral Gene or a Moral Phene?

In 2011 psychologist Abigail Marsh and her colleagues from Georgetown University and the US National Institute of Mental Health found that moral decision-making was influenced by different forms of a single gene. Previous research had found that people taking a particular group of anti-depressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were less willing than the rest of the population to agree, for example, that given a choice, killing one person to avoid killing five is morally justified, even if it is unavoidable. Marsh and her colleagues found that variations in serotonin transmitter genes resulted in different moral choices. Those with the short form of the gene felt that harming one person rather than five was morally neutral. However, those with the long form of the gene were much more willing to approve of harming one person to protect five. They felt that doing so was the better moral choice. Is this correlation or causation? Marsh believes it is causative, that moral decision-making is rooted deep in our genomes. Unquestionably, taking the data into account, a serotonin transmitter gene influences our moral becoming. That does not, however, make it the Moral Gene. It influences not just morality but a whole range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes simultaneously. Correlation not causation.

Moral values, the evolved structure, processes, and chemistry of the brain, all incline humans, philosopher Patricia Churchland argues, to strive not only for self-preservation but also for the wellbeing of allied selves – in other words, altruism. In this way, caring is provided, conscience is shaped, and moral intuitions are strengthened. A key part of the story, she believes, is oxytocin, an ancient body-and-brain molecule that, by decreasing the stress response, allows humans to develop the trust in one another necessary for the development of close-knit ties, social institutions, and morality. While this is pivotal to the examination of whether or not the suppression of destructive masculinity is evolutionarily advantageous, genetic influence only ever provides the physical precursor to morality – not specifically morality itself.

A study published in Nature magazine highlights the role of both oxytocin and serotonin in genetically encoding evolutionary success. Oxytocin is linked with behaviours, and polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor gene are associated with varying degrees of social dysfunction.

To return to evolutionary success, morality is a becoming to strive not only for self-preservation, Churchland says, but also for the wellbeing of our allied selves – that is for altruism. So, if morality (social and individual) and true altruism (individual and reciprocal) deliver reproductive success and evolutionary advantage, are they genetically determined?

Remember that a genotype (gene) is the input and a phenotype (phene) is the output. Phenes, Gould’s true unit of natural selection, result from the expression of an organism’s genes as well as the influence of environmental factors and the interactions between the two. As we have seen, oxytocin and serotonin at the genetic level only provide a framework for morality and moral values to flourish. Abigail Marsh called it causative, believing that positive moral decision-making is rooted deep in our genomes, and in the sense that reproductive success comes from increased morality, and morality is genetically enabled, it could be causative. But genes do not directly cause moral decision-making. As we just saw, genes influence a wide range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes. So there is no precise genetic causation, and no Moral Gene to suppress destructive masculinity. There is no Selfish Gene and there is no Moral Gene. And, as Richard Dawkins is so fond of saying, if something is true, no amount of wishing can make it untrue.

What can be argued, however, is that the moral values of reproductively successful parents connect phenotypically with the genes discussed earlier and positive changes are written back into the genome. This is the Moral Phene at work, genetically and socially influenced, and making its evolutionary way through generations who benefit from being moral, who benefit from surpassing the destructive potential residing deep in all men.

So, it’s time for the voices of men to be heard. Men who reject destructive masculinity have a voice; have in outgrowing the pile of psychosocial wreckage rising skyward under the melancholic eyes of the angel of history, a humanist voice to speak on behalf of all moral men. And that humanist voice is created by a Moral Phene.

Robyn Williams: The external phenotype, as Richard Dawkins once put it. By the way, Professor Dawkins’ own explanation of selfish genes is nicely put in his latest book, Brief Candle in the Dark. But that was Ross Honeywill from the University of Tasmania where he’s an Adjunct Professor. His book is The Man Problem – Destructive Masculinity in Western Culture.

Next week, someone who knows all about that – Shirley Shackleton and a story from East Timor.

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