Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 509and so on. This runaway process is what we call friendship. If you askpeople why they are friends, they are likely to say, "We like the samethings, and we know we'll always be there for each other."Friendship, like other kinds of altruism, is vulnerable to cheaters, andwe have a special name for them: fair-weather friends. These shamfriends reap the benefits of associating with a valuable person and mimicsigns of warmth in an effort to become valued themselves. But when alittle rain falls, they are nowhere in sight. People have an emotionalresponse that seems designed to weed out fair-weather friends. Whenwe are neediest, an extended hand is deeply affecting. We are moved,never forget the generosity, and feel compelled to tell the friend we willnever forget it. Hard times show you who your real friends are. That isbecause the point of friendship, in evolutionary terms, is to save you inhard times when it's not worth anyone else's trouble.Tooby and Cosmides go on to speculate that the design of our friendshipemotions may explain the alienation and loneliness that so manypeople feel in modern society. Explicit exchanges and turn-taking reciprocationare the kinds of altruism we fall back on when friendship isabsent and trust is low. But in modern market economies we trade favorswith strangers at unprecedented rates. It may create the perception thatwe are not deeply engaged with our fellows and are vulnerable to desertionin difficult times. And ironically, the comfortable environment thatmakes us physically more secure may make us emotionally less secure,because it minimizes the crises that tell us who our real friends are.ALLIES AND ENEMIESNo account of human relationships could be complete without a discussionof war. War is not universal, but people in all cultures feel that theyare members of a group (a band, tribe, clan, or nation) and feel animositytoward other groups. And warfare itself is a major fact of life for foragingtribes. Many intellectuals believe that primitive warfare is rare, mild, andritualized, or at least was so until the noble savages were contaminatedby contact with Westerners. But this is romantic nonsense. War hasalways been hell.Yanomamo villages raid one another endlessly. Seventy percent of alladults over forty have lost a family member to violence. Thirty percent of