The World Transformation Movement (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, November 04, 2020, 19:54 (1478 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: For me, the “default mechanism” is the very same mixture of love and cooperation on the one hand, and selfishness on the other, that we find in our fellow animals.

Xeno: I wasn't trying to suggest that tribal warfare was nonexistent. Where I'm coming from isn't romanticism either: when you study hunter-gatherer tribes, where are the armies or police forces? They don't exist.

They would have had their own means of keeping order in the event of disputes or “crimes”, and they would have fought their enemies with their weapons even if they didn’t wear a uniform and give one another ranks.

Xeno: The same goes with nomadic groups. Inuit society for example, to combat greed followed a system where if one member accrued too much, they would be forced to share it with the community.

See what I mean? Greed existed!

So here's where we need to pause. I never said Greed didn't exist.

What I'm very carefully trying to point out here is that by default, even though we're born with a mix of different drives, some more destructive than others, we're born social, with a predilection towards group survival. The evolution of human children being born as early in development as they are probably predates our common primate ancestor.

To have a predilection towards sociality means that we have instincts that drive us to glom into groups. Groups and tribes are the point I'm trying to make here, not that we're somehow born altruistic to all things great and small.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"