Stotting handicaps the individual, imposing a significant cost on the ability to move. But the cost paid is relative to the individual’s condition. Without the cost and the ability to manage it, everyone could stot. And if everyone could stot, the cats would quickly figure out how meaningless it is and look for other cues to vulnerability.
Stotting appears excessive, but in fact is an honest signal of power. It is, to borrow a phrase from the economist Thorstein Veblen, "conspicuous consumption." By flaunting their superior condition, throwing away resources just because they can, these stotting gazelles benefit in the long run, living longer and leaving more offspring who will inherit their qualities. These ideas carry over into human behavior, from big spenders to, I suggest, big harmers.
The American anthropologist James Boone has suggested that human magnanimity evolved as did stotting, as an honest signal of wealth and power. It represents a desire to impress through wastage. Handicap yourself in the short run to benefit your wealth and status in the long run. Big tippers don't tip 1n private, but in the presence of those who can admire their lavish tips. Hunter-gatherers who bring home large prey from a day of hunting don't make cryptic deposits for others, but make sure that their offerings are public. The Mayan pyramids were not built for personal enjoyment behind walled enclosures, but in the open, visible to potential enemies as displays of excessive power to create something really big and costly. Rappers such as JayZ, Puff Daddy, and 50 cent don't have absurdly lavish cribs with a six pack of sports cars because this is what they like, but because this is what they can show offon MTV. Flaunting, even at a substantial cost, provides a path to power. This is a club whose motto reads “Impress with excess.”
My suggestion is that excessive harms work as honest signals of wealth and power. Here we combine the HOW of evil— discussed in this chapter — with the WHY of evil — discussed in chapter 1. When millions are raped, slashed, burned, chopped up, gored, and dropped out of planes before dying, there are only two possible explanations: the evildoer is clinically mad with no sense of moderation or a healthy schemer who has allowed desire to run wild. The schemers are like stotting gazelles, wanting to impress others of their awesome powers by performing high risk displays. The schemers deploy proactive, premeditated, and cold violence — like predators. As the sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky noted in his commentary on the Nazi concentration camps “Individuals demonstrated commitment by acting, on their own initiative, with greater brutality than their orders called for. Thus excess did not spring from mechanical obedience. On the contrary; its matrix was a group structure where it was expected that members exceed the limits of normal violence.” Unfortunately for society — past, present and future — the Nazis are not an isolated case. When Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadic, and Ratko Mladic launched their ethnic cleansing initiative, they didn’t just displace or kill Albanians and Croatians, they
raped their women, old and young, in front of husbands, fathers, and grandfathers — and then killed man
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 80
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