Nature and Nurture
A recent episode of This American Life explored the relationship between two wolves in Yellowstone National Park, and caused me to think about how biology may be in dialogue with culture, but it does not nullify it.
The first wolf, named “8” by the rangers who tracked him, was a scrawny, neglected yearling who left his family, encountering a young mother wolf, desperate for help with the pups she was raising on her own. The neglected wolf quite unexpectedly played with and hunted for this young family, and soon was invited to join it; eventually becoming a surrogate parent.
In time, 8 bonded strongly with “Wolf 21” in his new clan. Wolf 21 grew to be fast, strong, and majestic--almost the exact opposite of his surrogate father—but still loved playing with 8. The pair was so connected that 21 stayed with his original pack for almost three years, an unusually long period for a wolf so powerful. Wolf 21 ultimately had to find his own pack, however, and ended up with the family in closest proximity to his own.
Dominated by a terrifically violent female leader, 21's new pack, much bigger and stronger, had ongoing tensions with his family of origin. One winter, territorial struggles between the packs escalated and rangers expected violence between the two packs. It was an unfair, but seemingly unavoidable, fight for their male leaders—the aged 8 versus the robust 21.
Finally, the day came. The two groups set at each other, charging from opposite sides of a forest ridge, with 8 and 21, father and adopted son, in the lead. Rangers feared the inevitable loss of 8, whom they had tracked and rooted for over many years. But then something remarkable happened: instead of attacking, 21 simply ran right past 8, leading his pack further up the ridge. Wolves ran among each other and howled, but none of them fought. Through his misdirection, 21 had saved his surrogate father’s life.
As This American Life storyteller Lilly Sullivan concluded:
[The ranger] had been watching 8 and 21 day after day for years, their whole lives. And 8 was such a nice wolf….you'd think that in a world as brutal as theirs, niceness could get you killed. But in the end, it was the thing that saved him. After all, 21 learned how to be a wolf from 8. It's like a dad who just poured out all this love, and the son inherited it.
It is a pathetic fallacy, of course, to ascribe human emotion and action to the natural, non-human world. But for me, there is something irresistible in the notion that niceness can overcome brutality, and that love can help us transcend narrow expectations.
We ought not pretend that the boys we raise are free of biological influences; indeed, as Richard Reeves notes in Of Boys and Men, research consistently demonstrates that boys’ greater tendency toward aggression and risk-taking is not simply the product of socialization, but is actually testosterone acting on the male brain. On the other hand, Reeves notes—and I hasten to emphasize—that hormones cannot be an excuse for causing harm, that we are both nature and nurture, and that our relationships decidedly influence how impulses and tendencies can be channeled for pro-social ends.
Perhaps it is too great a leap to suggest that the culture established by 8 was critical in shaping 21’s capacity to be merciful and loving. Yet such a suggestion cannot be beyond our hope for Browning. We encourage all of our boys to grow to be—in some form or fashion—strong, fast, and majestic within their areas of interest, and we never, ever, seek to deny the authenticity of their aspirations. But we also urge them to live the virtues of caring and concern and connection—to understand that it is neither a betrayal of their nature nor an irredeemable social risk to simply be nice.