Page 56 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

RETHINKING THE FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURE

and energy. That would be the optimal alternative. Evolutionary preference
should then be given to conventionalized fighting and threat displays. Com-
munication – the exchange of signs – would take place instead of physical
interaction, being beneficial to both contenders. What used to be a belligerent
interaction is made into a means of communication. The initial function of all
movements of a fight is altered: actions that were exclusively part of fighting
mature into a message.
Even in the case of a strategy beginning with conventionalized conflict that
escalates to total fight, we would have a communicative scenario. Organism A
starts conventionally, in other words, sends a message to its opponent, organism
B. If B accepts the message, then the fight will be conventional. But suppose
that organism B either distrusts or does not accept the message and escalates
fighting. Organism A reacts by escalating, following the received message. Here,
we have more than mere conflict. Traded messages determine the kind and
scope of animal conflicts.
Threat displays are even more advantageous to the contenders. It is no sur-
prise that so many animals adopt threatening instead of total fight. Animals
assume aggressive postures, they emit sounds, they grind teeth, but there is no
physical fight. Again they deliver messages. At some point in the conflict, one
of the fighters admits defeat, the other wins, but none of them is physically
hurt. Maynard Smith (1972) argues that in such ritualized conflicts both sides
somehow lose if the dispute goes on endlessly: precious time is wasted that
could be devoted to other important activities. So, there is a point at which the
persistence in fighting is a loss for both contenders. When must display threats
end? Is there a contractual rule binding contestants in ritualized con flicts? If we
think that the two fighters cannot have the same physical endurance, owing to
distinct genetic legacy or even acquired skills, the rule of ritualized displays is to
trick your opponent to its limit.
The whole point of the threat display is, at first, manipulation and deception.
Even weaker animals will try to show themselves as stronger than they are.
Signs and the behavior that they are supposed to represent are in close ana-
logical relationship. The intensity of a sign indicates intense future fighting.
According to Darwin’s principle of antithesis (1998), the decrease of intensity
of a sign implies its opposite: therefore, it means weakness. There is a tenuous
line separating true information about an attack and manipulative deception of
an opponent. Organism A must not reveal its limit of endurance, therefore the
emission of threat signal must be kept at its highest intensity for the longest
period of time. The first to diminish the intensity of the threat is in fact admit-
ting defeat and thus inviting outright attack. From this moment on, it does not
pay to persist in the conflict. It is better to leave the dispute.
Viewing the fight as an interaction, where organisms A and B interact on
equal terms, we have to recognize that deception is only an occasional
strategy. The repetition of deceptive strategies will leave them open to codifica-
tion on the part of the other contender. Deception can then be seen as a

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