Two modes

The more I carry on with my research into D/s the more I realise how much evolution has played a part. It appears that most animals that live in flocks, herds or groups of one sort or another are organised into hierarchies based on submission and dominance. It has been this way for millions of years.

If you were a solitary, territorial creature like a robin you wouldn't have to worry about these things, you would just chase off any potential competitors and sing nice songs to attract potential mates. You would need aggression for the former, sexual behaviour for the latter, and your hormones would tell you which to use. If you were a wolf living in a pack, or a chicken in a flock then life gets more complex. You would still have your aggressive and sexual instincts, but if they were left unchecked the social group would quickly disintegrate in an orgy of lust and bloodshed. To avoid chaos these basic survival instincts have to be partially inhibited, and overridden by social instincts which promote group cohesion. Humans experience these instincts through feelings of guilt, shame, depression and mania amongst others, but that is a topic for another post.

To prevent chaos nature has arranged for groups to be organised hierarchically, with a dominant leader ("top dog", "alpha male", etc.) at the top of the hierarchy, and all other group members exhibiting varying degrees of submissiveness below. A gentleman with the unpronounceable name of Schjelderup-Ebbe described this hierarchy in chickens in 1935, coining the well known concept of a "pecking order" [1]. In its simplest form the hierarchy is linear, with each individual being submissive to the one above and dominating the one below. I once had a conversation with a monk from a monastery in England where they operate this exact same dominance hierarchy.

Where there is a hierarchy there is rank, and ways of gaining or losing it. High ranking individuals get first pick of the food, the best quality of life, and get to have the best sex. In some species the leading male controls all the females in a harem arrangement, and subordinate males either have to fight him for the dominant position or just grab whatever sex they can when the alpha's back is turned. Rank, so the theory goes, would have originally been determined purely by aggression, with the strongest, fittest and most skilful fighters achieving dominance, and the losers ending up wounded or dead. This is called agonistic behaviour [2]. To reduce the carnage the fighting evolved into ritualistic encounters where the no-holds-barred aggression was replaced by contests conducted according to rules that limited the damage sustained by the combatants. An example is this video clip of male stags rutting that I found on YouTube. Note the one turning his back and running away right at the end.

This type of behaviour pattern was studied by Michael Chance [3-5] who called it the agonic mode. Agonic mode is therefore agonistic behaviour with the brakes on, the instinctive aggressive patterns are inhibited in favour of group cohesion. Submissive signals from the loser can be used to terminate the contest, and these signals automatically trigger cessation of attack by the winner. Sexual behaviour can serve as an appeasement signal - one of these is presenting the rump, which is both a signal of submission and sexual availability. From this it is not too difficult to see where the ubiquitous "bend over and touch your toes" posture comes from, and how sexual and aggressive behaviours are inherently linked.

Agonic behaviour is widespread amongst species that live in social groups, and once you start looking for it it's not too difficult to see in humans, from politics, sport, military organisations to playground squabbles. When the going gets tough and resources are limited it rears it's ugly head pretty quickly. A few years ago we had a few days of petrol shortages, and it wasn't long before some of the good folk of my town were thumping each other in the queues at the pumps.

Chance was mainly studying monkeys, and in so doing discovered a second mode of social behaviour which he called hedonic. The hierarchy is still there in this mode, as is rank, but it is no longer determined by fighting, ritual or otherwise. Conflict is replaced by a broader set of criteria for status involving social attractiveness, group approval, and what might in humans be called "charisma". Think of the way you go about choosing who to vote for in a political election, and you get some idea of the hedonic mode of selection.

Only humans and some higher primates have the hedonic mode, and the agonic is lurking not far beneath the surface, The implications of these two modes are vast, and theorists have applied them to issues such as domestic violence and mental illness, particularly depression. I can't go into the details here because they would fill a book, but if you want to know more see the books by Sloman & Gilbert and Stevens & Price [2, 6]. Price also has a website which contains many relevant articles [7].

I would hope by now that the connections with D/s are becoming obvious. In D/s play the agonic mode is made explicit, it is brought into the open. This contrasts with the rest of human society, at least in the West, where it is repressed and kept hidden behind closed doors - except when it erupts as riots, street violence and wars. Sports are the commonest socially sanctioned form of agonic behaviour, but while the competitive and aggressive elements are displayed, the sexual components are kept hidden. D/s is not just about agonic behaviour, however, as in my experience there can be a lot of love too. Perhaps D/s is about fully expressing both aspects of our genetic inheritance, and searching for a synthesis between them. One of the problems that has puzzled researchers into sadism and masochism is how sexuality and aggression become "fused" [2, p180-198]. The two modes theory removes this problem, as it makes plain that the two were never really separate - they have been fused for most of our evolutionary history, and it is only the overlaying of hedonic behaviour that disguises this fact.

In bringing this post to a close I realise that I have skipped over quite a few important issues:

· How what may have started as single sex competition between males or females only translates into agonistic behaviour between the sexes.

· How voluntary submission triggers nurturing behaviours in the dominant individual which reward the submissive, making submission a more attractive option.

· How dominant behaviour may be a trigger for both males and females to become sexually aroused - fighting followed by mating, which increases the likelihood of successful reproduction.

· We have an innate ability to assess our own rank compared to that of others, which enables us to decide whether or not it is worth competing. This evaluation may be equivalent to self-esteem.

I hope to find time to fill in these gaps at some point in the future. This has been a mammoth post, and if you have made it this far without skipping bits you can email me for some hedonic praise! I'm sure there are still more insights to be found in Chance's theory, but that will have to wait for another time.

References

1. Schjelderup-Ebbe, T., Social behaviour of birds, in Handbook of Social Psychology., C. Murchison, Editor. 1935, Clarke University Press,: Worcester, MA. p. 947- 972.

2. Stevens, A. and J. Price, Evolutionary Psychiatry: A New Beginning. 1st ed. 1996, London: Routledge.

3. Chance, M.R.A., ed. Social Fabrics of the Mind. 1988, LEA.

4. Chance, M.R.A., Attention Structure as the Basis of Primate Rank Orders. Man, 1967. 2(4): p. 503-518.

5. Chance, M.R.A., 176. The Sociability of Monkeys. Man, 1955. 55: p. 162-165.

6. Sloman, L. and P. Gilbert, eds. Subordination and Defeat: An Evolutionary Approach to Mood Disorders and Their Therapy. Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ.

7. Price, J. Website at: http://www.johnprice.me.uk. [accessed 22nd July 2007 ]