The way I see it that instinct is the cause behind so much suffering and injustice in the world.
No because there is no natural selection happening for that trait. But in once case aliens. If there where aliens discovered and they where hostile maybe even not I could see humans banding together as a group but it would still be an us vs them situation.
I bet I could kill more aliens than you.
All the Great Apes (probably, definitely), including us, have an instinct and built in skill at identifying snakes.
Researchers did experiments with both humans and other apes where they were shown progressively less obscured images of different predators and without fault we and our relatives were able to identify the snakes faster than any other creature.
This means that the instinct to find, and kill snakes goes back millions of years. Yet now when I encounter a snake my instinct is to move it to a safer spot so it doesn’t get hurt or hurt me.
I think that if we can get over such a deep rooted instinct, we can get over the ‘Us Vs Them’ instinct too.
Wow, good argument. But did you really overcome the instinctual fear for snakes, or do you winch first, before rational takes over to tell you to move the snake to a safer place?
If wincing is all that happens before treating others with respect and rationality, then I’d call that a success.
But the vast majority of people don’t.
I don’t think so. I think the universe is too harsh for a complex, truly altruistic species to survive. But it is possible for us to get to a point where socially we’re better than our base instincts. We’re partway there, although we’ve been backsliding lately.
So you think if we all cooperated, made sure everyone was safe and healthy, ended war, and devoted all our time to ensuring each person reached their potential (whether that be scientific, artistic, etc) it would make us less likely to survive?
I think they’re saying if you start out that way naturally (like a peaceful sapient race on a peaceful planet) they’d be an easy resource for something less peaceful (it would just take one aggressive race to extinguish them). If peacefulness and powerfulness scale together during a species’s development, they may learn to learn strategies for peaceful coexistence before the stakes are too high for screwups.
No. The very tribalism that has allowed us to survive now works against us because we were too successful at survival. The solution is to be aware of and constantly fight against our base selfish instincts through things like what you said. The problem is that we seem to always go back to “fuck you, got mine” as a species. Perhaps the great filter is that a species that’s successful enough at survival to get to the point where space travel is possible will always be betrayed by the tribalistic behavior they needed to survive the harshness of life.
Ok, I agree it’s not likely we’ll get there. That’s certainly and sadly true.
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Now that’s a great question!
We do need a slightly better tool than democracy, for sure
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Us ve them is just a convenient cover for me me me, so I doubt it
As long as power hungry people exist. It is basically easiest thing to implement in your politics and get people behind you.
it’s what kept us alive during our early days as a specie. I think is it baked into our essence as a human. but if it can be controlled or diverted then yeah. fund us an alien and we’ll be an earth tribe against aliens.
Ozymandias was correct
Humans are reactionary and emotionally driven. Thats why empty hot button issues are such a trigger for people. We need to learn to ignore those things and work together, but the pessimist in me doesn’t see it happening. Thats a massive shift and based on what I’ve observed in the US, that divide is doing nothing but widening.
All we can do is be aware of it, not get roped into manufactured propaganda, and unionize.
empty hot button issues
Agree for the most part but this here is also part of the issue. What one considers an “empty hot button topic” tends to be based on what directly affects them. I’ve routinely seen people on both sides use this exact same label to dismiss things like LGBT rights or abortion access. To the individuals that actually suffer, those are not “empty hot button topics”.
Like I very distinctly remember a time when the debate around gay marriage was called a distraction from Iraq. It was a frequent applause line in many, many straight cis comedian’s sets. It may have been convenient in that way, but to the LGBT community, it was real oppression and a real fight for equality. It also wasn’t some facade that was being put on by the right, they were genuine about it. That fight needed to be fought at the same time as the fight to end the war in Iraq, or the recession, or any of the “bigger” issues of the 2000s.
Hey man, we’ll quit fighting when they do.
I hope so. Knowledge and curiousity feed intelligence feed knowledge feed curiousity. A highly educated society with healthy education sytem and good working socioeconomy (concurency in news coverage) can theoretically get over “us vs. them”. Until we someday maybe lose it as evolutionary trait.
Remove? No. Overcome? We’re already doing it.
Our society is far more accomodating than it has ever been. Different sexes, ethnicities, skin colors, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities and whatnot enjoy more acceptance and equality now than ever before. Something like the EU - a voluntary alliance of this size - would have been unthinkable probably just 100-200 years ago. And for all its flaws the participating nations have grown closer through it.
We still got ways to go particularly internationally and we must be ever vigilat against those that want to drag us backward but the progress is undeniable.
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But how would you define the point at which our material needs are met? It feels like it’s an intrinsic desire for humans to gain an advantage over other people. Or at least we want the illusion of being able to gain an advantage through either hard work or gaming the system. For me it seems like capitalism lies in our nature and it requires a complete change of our societal values to move to a different system. Not saying that I think capitalism is a good thing.
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There’s a book I read a few years ago named “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging” that delvs into this a bit and why humans are so tribal instinctively. Would highly recommend.
I just finished this one today! Introduced me to a lot of new ideas and contexts. Good read
Yes and no.
The reason why we form societies this to look after one another, make life easier and safer for us, and find mates.
We have successfully gone from the days where not having kids was a literal death sentence in old age, where a small scratch could easily get infected and kill you, and where starving to death was a frequent occurrence (interestingly enough, your body has all sorts of anti-kill-yourself measures built into your BIOS, such as exercise optimization curves so you don’t burn up all your calories exercising (hunting), and starving yourself causes your body to do its damndest to keep as much fat as possible to keep you alive through famines, but I digress).
In some ways, we are at the highest peak of not being tribalistic. But people also invent new ways to create us vs them situations, such as worshiping a gourd vs beating up the shoe worshipers for being blasphemous. You see this often and it’s the dumbest shit in the world, lol. Though that particular one skewers it well, haha.
Eventually, I think stuff like race and sexuality will be behind us largely, and it will be the latest minor thing.
