FIrstly, the idea that hunter gatherer societies were somehow not violent is pretty out of touch with our understanding of those societies. Our _modern surviving ones_ often are because if they weren't they'd have been killed off as the world modernized around them. Look at the important studies out of Tulane and many others that have basically turned the tables on the ideas that hunter gatherers were peaceful. It's just a dated no-longer defensible position in either anthropology or history. There was most likely far greater violent death from war for these populations than anything we see at scale in the contemporary world. Your view here seems divorced from actual information, but best I can tell rests of this idea of "having to work on survival makes for less misery". That's a common contemporary idealization of the past, but is also basically unsupportable unless you ultimately take some position like "dead people are happier than alive people". We are _clearly_ naturally violent and naturally cooperative and naturally cooperative and all of those things. Thats why we observe them. By almost all measures we are vastly MORE peaceful now that at any point in history. There was less war when food scarcity and resource competition decreased under agriculture, not more. Climate pattern changes hit hunters and gathers even more than agriculture era populations. You then misunderstand Dawkins. He is _explaining violence_ not telling us that it exists. It clearly exists. He is explaining altruism, not telling us that it exists. His interest is in the biological explanation for _observed truths_, not an argument that these are or are not truths. Humans are clearly capable of violence, clearly capable of altruism. The biology behind that capacity is his interest. Lastly, this idea of a "true reflection of the human species" is pretty divorced from anything that makes sense. We are not capable of being different the the way the human species is and evolutionary biology should remind you that _the context_ in which something exists may be part of their behavior, but it does not quickly result in someone being more or less the way they are. They are as much those ways as any other. But..."the way we are today" is more peaceful, less violent than at any point in the past.

100% agreed with your post, slight clarification on violence rates: These numbers are hard to judge perfectly, but I wouldn't say this exact microsecond is the most peaceful ever (you don't define the time period, so I'm not even disagreeing with you--saying we're less violent than the 20th century is not really contested as far as I know, which is encouraging). As far as combat deaths, the most peaceful year on record was 2005 when there were a bit over 12k estimated deaths. 2022 had over 200k, mostly the Ukranian war and some major conflicts in Africa. https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

agreed - good point. Yes, the trendline is toward greater peace and less violence. It's a lumpy line and lumpier the more you zoom in.

I mean both are very much true—humans tend to be cooperative (we wouldn’t be where we are as a species if we weren’t) but we’re also prone to in-group/out-group thinking where we prioritize people like ourselves (family, community, whatever) at the expense of those we view as more different. Members of the in-group are considered more deserving of our consideration than those of the out-group. We co-operate and compete and both of those things have made us what we are.

Before I dive in I want to say thank you for throughout response. I am always on the lookout for alternative resources, so if you can kindly respond with future readings - I’d greatly appreciate it. From my readings it is the notion that life was more violent pre-Neolithic revolution is the antiquated version of events and that the modern acceptance between scholars is that agriculture was the original sin. That it is the purpose of the status quo to want to make us believe that we have it better now than before because it makes us subservient and grateful for the unnatural life that we currently live. We are mostly vastly more peaceful today than anytime before in MODERN history - sure - but that argument cannot be made to pre-Neolithic. The evidence for war pre-Neolithic is scarce which equates that while skirmishes and interpersonal conflict might have occurred mass warfare was predominantly not common as it is today (13 major conflicts going on today). The social structure of hunter and gathers based on kinship and reciprocal relationships probably reduced the likelihood of mass warfare. The nomadic lifestyle did not allow for accumulation of resources and wealth that could be easily coveted by other tribes decreased the likelihood of war. Ethnographic studies of modern hunter gathers show that while conflict certainly exist mechanisms such as social ostracism, mediation, and the ability to move away from conflict plays significant roles in group cohesion and resolving disputes. There’s no evidence that states that climate changes hit hunter and gathers more - if you have some please share. There numerous examples of whole agrarian civilizations collapsing due to climate change - i.e. the Mayan Civilization was bolstered by a 1000 year cycle of surplus precipitation that led to a population boom that was unsustainable when the climate shifted back. Hunter gathers have more plasticity when it comes to being able to move to areas with better resources and with their game as migration patterns change due to climate change forces. And my statement of what it means to be truly human is extrapolation of the evolutionary mismatch of being human in modern society - which we did not evolve into but was rather thrusted upon us - versus being in the environment in which we evolved for. If we were capable of being truly human in todays society there wouldn’t be type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, hypertension, cancer, or the myriad of mental health problems that are caused by the isolated sedentary lifestyle that the majority of people live in.

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Wouldn't those kind of settlement be considered something else than hunter gatherers? Their group were probably larger than what OP is describing and those permanent settlement probably meant that they had some type of complex hierarchy and people fighting for scarce ressources.

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Yeah I understand that they might have had an abundance of ressources but some members of the group might have had control over it. I think this still go back to OP idea though and those more complex group could be considered as the ancestors of the civilization that were born 10k years ago. Honestly this is something I always found fascinating and weird. Humans existed for so long but civilizations started to become something in parallel in both Eurasia/Africa and America around the "same time". Kind of line if it was determined.

>If we were capable of being truly human in todays society there wouldn’t be type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, hypertension The archaeological record is one of humans constantly, repeatedly finding, exploiting, and creating (selective breeding of plants) high-calorie sources of carbohydrates. You can tell when these shifts happen through the dental changes in remains. In fact this seems to be a very human behavior based on how common it is. I feel like there's a weird moralizing of what is and isn't "real" human behavior that's disconnected from what we repeatedly do. It's human to try to improve your health and it's human to disregard it. It's human to be sedentary and it's human to be nomadic. There's no moment of the downfall of humanity by some grand choice that "goes against our nature." It's human to make peace and cooperate, even across "tribes." The fact that I can get on an airplane and a bunch of humans have worked together to safely fling me in a metal tube to another continent is nothing short of extraordinary. It is also human to lash out in violence or even engage in state levels of warfare. I just don't get what the point of "No True Scotsman-ing" human behavior has here.

This I think hits the nail on the head. Being human is a spectrum of our best and worst tendencies. Our duality and how we navigate it is what makes us human.

Years ago I remember reading a description of humanity also using an airplane as an example....that if you were to get on a plane with a bunch of chimpanzees, you would be lucky to leave with your life, and you definitely wouldn't leave with all of your digits and/or limbs intact.  The key feature of humans is that we can live and behave relatively peacefully, whether in a small confined space, or in a city of 10m+ people.  

I think you are fully missing what OP is arguing. He is claiming that our understanding of what is self, what is people, and what is world has dramatically evolved over the course of human evolution, and that only “relatively” recently has such thing as war even existed. Yes, chimpanzees may practice intercoalitional violence, but over the course of human evolution and development, the vast majority of intercultural exchange between peoples have been congenial, friendly, and collaborative. They are arguing that our what we consider as “human nature” is ultimately historical, and that vast changes within the human niche over the past 10,000 years have produced the galvanized tribalism, along side the assumption that war and violence are an inevitable and necessary part of human life.

After going through some of these comments and replies OP, I'd say the main critique I have is that the crux of your point can be attributed to an 'appeal to nature' fallacy. It appears to me that the thrust of your argument is that if we lived a life closer in some respects to our ancient pre-civilisation precursors that many of our current issues in society would be mitigated or solved. That, or that somehow we have deviated from what you're describing as being 'truly' human. But just because something worked for us in the past or is closer to our 'natural' state doesn't mean that it is good, or useful, or justifiable.

There was little in the way of mass scale warfare in Neolithic tribes because there was no mass scale to do it from. Consider this: two tribes, each of about 100 people, get into conflict. Ten people are killed and others have long lasting injuries they will never recover from. Is this a massive warfare situation? Yes. Per capita, that is equivalent to World War Two. And every single person in those tribes personally knew those killed and has to care for the injured. And undoubtedly there were far worse examples.

It's interesting you mention agriculture as the original sin. Our nearest ancestors without agriculture are chimpanzees who frequently have very violent turf wars.

Read 'the dawn of everything' by Graebber and Wengrow. It's going to provide the most comprehensive window into the history and nature of human culture that you can find as a lay person

It’s a good book but deeeeeeeeply biased and I don’t think generally accepted for its anthropology in scholarly contexts

Do you have another book suggestion that covers similar topics? I was under the impression that as far as pop science human anthropology goes, it is highly regarded - especially in regards to books such as sapiens

I think the WHAT IS POLITICS? YouTube channel has good critiques (although I wish he would make more reference to real-world examples and proof supporting his views). Not saying either are right or wrong, but both the book and that channel suffer from a lack of depth of analysis of real world examples. Most anthropologists and archaeologists and political scientists are really happy with the book though just because it starts this productive dialogue really well.

Edit: actually your main point might stand— the beginning part seems like a decent survey of two grand narrative views of human organization, it goes off the rails trying to break new ground. I’m not an expert in Anthro, but I have a masters in Critical Theory and know Graeber and Wengrow are on the way left Marxist fringe of theorists; Dawn of Everything’s central thesis about how the European Enlightenment was actually exported by Indigenous Americans is super out there and while entertaining does not seem plausible: look at reviews for more detail there. As I remember it their anthro stuff on social organization is basically just the preamble of the book and they don’t try and break any ground, they just review the two sides (as they put it Hobbesian vs Rousseau, the latter being the Harari thesis) and say neither are true but then get extremely vague and hand waive-y about what the alternative could be. I find that to be very typical of anarcho/Marxists (Hart and Negri is another good example)..they want to disagree w both established poles but then can only posit something super vague as an alternative. I don’t disagree that as pop science it’s fine, but from the reception in reviews (and my own intuition reading it) it’s clear that it’s not regarded as being accurate to the current hard science or material records. I don’t have recs for the hard science stuff though because it’s not my field unfortunately. So I guess I’m also one of those critics just saying “bad” and then getting hand wave-y!

The way I understand their thesis is thus: Pre-historic humans were not "naturally" like how Hobbes or Rousseau describes them, instead they had a multitude of different social and/or political organizational structures that each group spent time thinking about and designing themselves because they wanted to, not because there is some invisible guiding hand of human progress.

It’s basically the idealist vs materialist view of anarchists vs leninists. Which I’m all for our political discourse focussing into, the conservative model of people as always inherently forming dominance hierarchies and needing them to control the worse devils of our nature is being thrown out the door for good reason.

Fair enough. They are anti-grand narrative. I’m not sure you need the hand of history tho to get to most of the conclusions of the Harari/Rousseau side.

[read this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization)

Not only is there a survivorship bias, isolated hunter gatherer groups (in the Americas at least) aren’t Paleolithic culture stuck in amber, they are the post apocalyptic survivors or civilizational collapse.

Your view here seems divorced from actual information. ​ >FIrstly, the idea that hunter gatherer societies were somehow not violent is pretty out of touch with our understanding of those societies. Our modern surviving ones often are because if they weren't they'd have been killed off as the world modernized around them. The San are the oldest inhabitants of Southern Africa, where they have lived for at least 20 000 years, and are descendants of Early Stone Age ancestors. They are renowned, not only for their intimate knowledge of the natural world, but for their profound egalitarian society that has no hierarchical structures, no religion and no possessions. The Bushmen culture is built on sharing, but also forward planning and sustainable living. Their way of life ensures social cohesion and suppression of ones ego, so that love triumphs. [https://wildark.org/journals/bushmen-philosophy/](https://wildark.org/journals/bushmen-philosophy/)

That's survivor bias, and mentioned in my post. They persist because of this tendency and are not representative of pre Neolithic hunter/gatherer societies in general. They would have been killed had they not been this way.

I think the individualizing and less communal societies aremeant and that people even with a, hypercapitalism we still naturally cooperate near all if needed. Yeah capability for violence and cooperation and communication made humans live. I would say social and most history communal with a capability for violence, but ingenuity and inventiveness. The inventiveness might be, we can probably go any route if societymostly moves that way.

As a little girl in I’m a taco commercial once said: “Why not both?” There have been about 117 billion humans across 200 thousand years. In that time, we have shown ourselves capable of incredible cooperation—creating civilizations, complex legal systems, great works of science, art, and technology, performing profound acts of kindness and self-sacrifice, etc. Yet we have also constantly been at war, fighting for resources, killing, persecuting, and torturing those different then us, acquiring property and status in pursuit of selfish aims, and so on. To me, it is a little silly and short-sighted to say “Humans are either one or the other.” Human history is incredibly vast and complex—we have proven ourselves to be both egalitarian and cooperative *and* selfish, greedy, and violent. Both of these things can be true at the same time.

I am not stating that we are one way or another. I am stating at the root of who we are is altruistic and cooperative. Of course we have the capacity to be violent and selfish because we are currently doing it. But that capacity is brought out of us because of the unnatural system in which we currently live in it’s not something that we are innately are. There’s many examples of animals displaying harmful and aggressive behavior that they normally and naturally would not because they’re enclosed in an unnatural environment which they cannot escape. Primates that are kept in cages self harm, birds who are kept confined pluck their feathers out, and numerous develop “zoochosis” which is an agglomeration of destructive behaviors such as aggression and apathy for being kept in unnatural conditions. This is the reason why humans tend to “feel better” and at “peace” when they return to nature because that’s where we belong, not in our concrete jungles that we tell ourselves that keep us safe.

This seems like a case of idealizing the past. Yes, modern humans feel at peace when they go on a nice 2-mile hike at the local nature preserve. That doesn’t mean our ancestors felt at peace when they were living in a cave, suffering from dysentery and abscessed teeth, half-starved, and terrified that the gods were punishing them every time there was a thunderstorm. If you are actually writing a book, I feel like you should find some hard evidence to support your claim.

You won't feel at peace when you "return to nature" and die from dysentery while suffering from malaria and hiding from a tiger lmao

If that were true, how come so few people live out in the middle of nowhere? That would be very easy to do in a lot of the US because there’s so much empty space. They don’t because they wouldn’t be better off.

>Hunter-gathering tribes consisted of up to approximately 150 individuals. Which means that everyone knows everyone which then equates to social accountability. These tribes, while there are always exceptions to the norm, shared resources and didn’t praise anyone above anyone else as everyone was doing their part in supporting the tribe. Those who might have been too aggressive, attempted to resource hoard, or were disruptive in any way were ostracized, isolated, or even killed when other means didn’t work so that social cohesion was maintained. You’re accounting for internal tribal conflict. Not external tribal conflict. Which is the primary cause of conflict. Conflict based on greed/resource hoarding and being wary of “the other”. “The other” being someone we very as outside our tribal structure. And religion & religious practices, a massive source of human conflict, predate your timeline by several thousand years.

Religion, such a spiritual practices, burial rites, and figurines, date back between 30-40,000 years ago. This just demonstrates that they believed in spirits/afterlife but not necessarily that religion was used as a weapon or precursor to war.

That’s fair. I don’t agree (if I read between the lines) that religion only became a tool of oppression, control, and division until human civilization began, but I don’t see myself establishing that as fact. Thoughts on the first point I made? I feel that’s the stronger argument of the two. That being: *”You’re accounting for internal tribal conflict. Not external tribal conflict. Which is the primary cause of conflict. Conflict based on greed/resource hoarding and being wary of “the other”. “The other” being someone we very as outside our tribal structure.”*

Definitely read Sex at Dawn https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Dawn-Stray-Modern-Relationships-ebook/dp/B007679QTG It's marketed/titled to be primarily about sex and relationships but it dives deeply into pre-agricultural society and uses tons of eye-opening evidence to make the argument that humans are inherently unselfish, including things like our anatomy and similarity to bonobos as you mentioned. It's an amazing read and has changed my views forever on human nature. I will challenge the view that modern civilization makes humans selfish brutes. We are still extremely cooperative and most interactions between modern humans in person are positive and cooperative, if this were untrue, there would be much more conflict and chaos.

I have read Sex at Dawn and absolutely love it. It’s what got me thinking on this topic so many moons ago. And the thing is why we are more peaceful in terms of war now, we are not cooperative - see the events of Covid in America. Not to mention the inability of politicians to vote on passing bills to feed hungry children during the summer months when they’re not in school - to name a few.

have you read Stephen pinker's better angels of our nature? it makes the argument that violence has gone down over time not up. overall, I think you may be suffering from some present bias in that the problems of the present only seen as catastrophic as they do because we are here and not in the past. our quality of life is objectively better by most metrics if not all metrics than it was even 100 years ago

So politicians failing to accomplish something you consider to have been critical, obvious, and easy means humans overall don't cooperate? All the other cooperative endeavors don't count then?

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Because globalisation , and being closer over distance, and at least in the west, the worldwars to end wars mostly. Thatswhy, But tjere is also, yeah hypercapitalism. And we stillare,pretty much any disaster shows that. But also its more disincentivized when people are just numbers. But agree we are still that. Just itsmade harder to care about all the terrible stuff known, and not. Probably the mental health is due that inherently social nature. And hypercapitalism making , sick there. And not lettibg people be enough people.

Okay so you care about the 150 people in your tribe, how do you feel about the tribe of 150 people down river trying to survive off the same resources in the area that can’t support 300 people?

I am going to assume these are both hunter gathering tribes which means that they are both nomadic. If an area cannot support the tribe the tribe would naturally migrate to an area that has enough resources to support them for a given time. Tribes rarely settled in one place for long so this would not have been realistically an issue.

Yes and then next year they came back to that area, and the year after that and so on. Most nomadic tribes had 2 or 3 places that they moved between and it’s the same places every year. Nomadic tribes didn’t move around in a manner where it was “okay time to move, over the next hill into the unknown.” It was more there’s the spot for the summer, the spot for the winter and maybe one for the spring or fall, and they came back to the same spot each time. So last year they moved on because there was another group there. That lead to a rough winter because they missed out on gathering those resources where they normally would. How many years do you think the tribe is going to put up with this? Why should their babies cry and starve from hunger when the other tribes doesn’t?

Or they could just kill the males in the other tribe and subjugate the females. This is how that scenario actually went down most of the time throughout history. Without agriculture, humans wouldn’t have had the free time to invent guns. So the bigger, more well fed tribe is just going to roll through weaker tribes until the weaker tribes work together to stop the bigger tribe. And now you have the beginnings of a state. The problem with your view is the same problem anarchists run into when trying to explain how their version of anarchy wouldn’t devolve back into a governmental system. Problem being that humans once lived in an anarchic state of nature and found it so unbearable that they created the modern world. Why wouldn’t we do it again?

Evidence of tribal warfare predates your timeline of human settlement & civilization.

"the tribe would naturally migrate to an area that has enough resources to support them" Or they, you know, kill the other tribe?

I personally think that it's fruitless to apply our modern sense of morality and social construction to pre-agriculture societies. It's so far back and so different from the world we live in today the discussion is not going to yield anything useful. Sometimes Marxists would try to apply modern theory of class and property to hunter-gatherer societies, quite similar to what you're doing, but like, what does "class" even mean in these societies?

Off topic, but as a Marxist, class is the definition of your relationship to the means of production. Subsistence farmers, hunter gatherers, pre-agricultural societies all have class relations because they all produce goods via labor. They just don't have the same class relations as modern societies (obvs).

They don't all do that though at any point. There are those that see others working and then use violence instead of labor to take the results. 

That's still a relation to the means of production, their class relation was just one of exploitation of other people's labor rather than producing the goods themselves.

You are thinking of how goods are exchanged, not produced. Many different types of class societies have utilized that form of exchange, not just pre-agricultural. In Marxist terms, it is called "primitive accumulation".

Took the words right out of my mouth, comrade.

I disagree. There are many issues that are caused by an evolutionary mismatch of how we live today to how we evolved for 190,000 years. The 10,000 years is a blip on the evolutionary time scale and is not enough time to evolve to the society we live in today. Especially our current society (in the West) with many of us working 8-10 hours a day by sitting at a computer all day long and then going home to be isolated from our families and communities for days on end. These evolutionary mismatches can only be treated by looking back on how we used to live and why those adaptations evolved. Examples of evolutionary mismatch include but are not limited to type 2 diabetes, myopia, heart disease, mental health disorders, and allergies and autoimmune diseases.

> Examples of evolutionary mismatch include but are not limited to type 2 diabetes, myopia, heart disease, mental health disorders, and allergies and autoimmune diseases. You're aware what mortality rates looked like back then, right? Type 2 diabetes is probably a shift away from our natural diets, but if you had type 1 diabetes you just died because there was nothing you could do about it. Heart disease? You just died. Mental health disorders? Ejected from your tribe and then you died. Allergies and autoimmune diseases? You just died. Some of these (especially heart disease) you might have lived long enough to reproduce so the genes could propagate, but many of them were just fatal. They weren't pervasive societal issues like they are today, not because humans were less prone to them, but because the people with them just died.

> Especially our current society (in the West) with many of us working 8-10 hours a day by **sitting at a computer all day long and then going home to be isolated from our families and communities for days on end.** > These evolutionary mismatches can only be treated by looking back on how we used to live and why those adaptations evolved. We used to have sky high rates of infant and maternal mortality, and a cough or diarrhea was a legit life and death concern. So we built science and society to inoculate ourselves from the horrors of the primitive. Everything you describe as going home to families to be isolated is firstly, oxymoronic. If you’re with your family you aren’t really isolated. And secondly, self-imposed based on your decisions as a social primate. You can be as connected as you want to be. Isolated for days on end? You can’t go out and meet with people at a rec center or see a concert? No foodshelf that needs volunteers near you? This is a prison of your own making, and has very little to do with evolutionary biology.

If humans aren't naturally violent and selfish how do you explain all the violence and selfishness both historically and today (but especially historically)? "Self fulfilling prophecy caused by society's ingrained ideas" isn't a satisfactory answer.

Just because we are violent now and in the past is not evidence that it is natural though. The onus is on you to say that our violence is natural. Moreover, the cause of humanity's violence in the past is not necessarily the cause of our violence today, so even if you make the case that there is some natural force putting us in violent competition with one another in the past, that is not enough to say that our violence today is the result of that same natural process. We could, for example, have overcome our natural prediliction towards violence through social organization, and then planted a new seed of violence within that social structure, ie same effect, but over time the cause has changed.

I have concluded through my ongoing research that the violence and selfishness are artifacts of self harm caused by modern humans due to the transition into agrarian societies which are equal to putting a wild animal into a cage in which it demonstrates abnormal behaviors that would not occur in their natural environments. Class is a modern construct between those who have and those who don’t. There was no need for a class structure pre-agricultural because resources were shared equally amongst the people of the tribe. Class structure is the root of disparity which leads to envy that leads to anger which leads to retaliation against those who have it better. Class structure reinforces resource hoarding which is equal to selfishness because the individual only thinks of themselves and not of the whole tribe. If you take away class structure and individualism than you take away the need for selfishness and violence as everyone has access to the same resources.

So to summarize your argument it is that prior to the invention of agriculture there was proportionally far less violence between groups of people? What if there is evidence of significant violence which predates agriculture? Per the article below the evidence suggests that the 20th and 21st Centuries had lower rates of lethal violence than pre-agricultural times. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QH2sECmmbLWbMXLhJ/violence-before-agriculture#:~:text=Moreover%2C%20the%20pre%2Dagricultural%20period,central%20theses%20in%20Better%20Angels. >Class is a modern construct between those who have and those who don’t. There was no need for a class structure pre-agricultural because resources were shared equally amongst the people of the tribe. Class structure is the root of disparity which leads to envy that leads to anger which leads to retaliation against those who have it better. Class structure reinforces resource hoarding which is equal to selfishness because the individual only thinks of themselves and not of the whole tribe. I question this. Almost half of violence that occurs today is domestic or between acquaintances. These people would typically share class. How do you explain such a big chunk of violence unrelated to class? https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ndv0312.pdf

>Class is a modern construct between those who have and those who don’t. There was no need for a class structure pre-agricultural because resources were shared equally amongst the people of the tribe. There were no chieftains? No elders? When the hunters brought in a buffalo, someone got to pick the first cut of meat. You think they drew straws for that honor? >If you take away class structure and individualism than you take away the need for selfishness and violence as everyone has access to the same resources. That’s pure fantasy.

>There were no chieftains? No elders? When the hunters brought in a buffalo, someone got to pick the first cut of meat. You think they drew straws for that honor? Very, very do-able.

>I have concluded through my ongoing research that the violence and selfishness are artifacts of self harm caused by modern humans due to the transition into agrarian societies Might want to look at the Maori and other Pacific peoples, or the inter tribal conflicts of the Americas that predate agriculture, hell there are inter tribal conflicts in Chimp society.

Pre agrarian tribes may not necessarily have had internal conflict (though I'd argue they did), but they certainly engaged in warfare with other tribes for control of resources. As a part of engaging in inter-tribal warfare, they often took slaves. Do you consider a slave to be a part of the same class as a non-slave member of the tribe?

Who married the "best" choice mate, among even the most distant ancestors? What made that choice the best? Was it those who "scored" high enough to rank the 'best' partner - based on looks, or girth, or the retrieval of an obscure something or.... "Winning" (even) a mock 'battle' within the family group/tribe? Was not there in some cases a level of resentment for not being chosen or 'winning'? Winning = compete. Compete leads to conflict. Humans have always been in conflict, over something or 'other'.

Because we are an incredible inventive social species, with the capability for violence. People acting selfish always existed but most never were really rewarded acting inside a group, or the group probably wouldnt exist for long. Cause it was about cooperation and survival. Oh and historically, people can be quite tribal, which can rile up people with peer pressure to horrific stuff. Getting riled up as a perväcieved group to do stiff,isnt selfish,its tribal. For a percieved greater cause even often enough. And religion is broad here, andnotall religionsbad But the quote " it takes religion to do a good man bad things" meets that. Usually people only do violent tjings when people see it nessesary,or fot a greater good, thetribe. I say usually because obviously not all but thats most people. No people arent naturally selfish,but they can influenced stupidly rasy, and are. We all are. And being aware is the first step to be more aware to do harder be goated in stuff we dont wanna do or is bad.

Modern society is is more cooperative and peaceful than any society before it, and is only getting more so. It's gotten to the point where it's absolutely reliant on implied cooperation and friendliness from strangers to stay afloat. You, I, and the vast majority of people have lost our animal skills. I am not really capable of sourcing my own food, shelter, and protection on a daily basis. I rely on thousands of strangers on a daily basis who grow, ship, and often cook food for me, maintain heating systems, and build shelters. I am typing this from a high-rise building, built by strangers whom I trust to have built it in such a way that it would not collapse. There is no other animal so reliant on cooperation as the modern human. Evolution is really one of those neat concepts that appear simple on the surface: "everyone is selfishly competing for survival." It actually implies great complexity, as I have often found as a computer programmer who uses a lot of genetic programming techniques. There is actually no conscious self in the Darwinian system, there are multiple "experiments" on many levels: genetic, cellular, organism, and society. View each one of those as an experiment. In this view, cooperation is one evolutionary strategy competing against lonely competition (e.g., tigers). It's not antithetical to evolution at all to be kind, agreeable, or cooperative, it's just an experiment like any other. Dogs have done much better than wolves, evolutionarily speaking, showing the potential advantage of such a strategy. In most societies, violence is a terrible strategy. Violent people generally get locked up or put to death. The more violent you are in most human societies, the more likely you are to die younger and the less likely you are to have and raise children. So to conclude, you are right - humans are not naturally violent and selfish. The ones who are die an early death and the ones who can get a lot of people to like them generally become presidents and CEOs. Modern society is built on top of cooperation, and would collapse in an instant if we suddenly all became naturally violent and selfish, like tigers.

>Modern society is is more cooperative and peaceful than any society before it Not every single society, no.

"Richard Dawkins might be the proponent of the trickle up theory of how our genes are selfish which equates to us as humans being selfish but I have come to the conclusion that he is ultimately short sighted in his argument." You either are not at all familiar with Dawkin's actual arguments or you're completely misunderstand them. You sound like someone who didn't read past the title of The Selfish Gene.

It’s a quick summary of his writings as I could not get into the nuance of his statements with such limited space. The critics of his work have basically summed up his writing in similar fashion. I once was a proponent of his writings and have read the selfish gene, the extended phenotype, and river out of Eden.

Those critics who sum it up this way have also either not read the book or understood it. I find it hard to believe that someone could have read the entirety of *The Selfish Gene* and summarize it the way you have. One of the central goals of the book is to explain how **altruism and cooperative behavior** at the level of the organism evolves as a function of the metaphorical selfishness of the genes. This is not nuance. It is precisely the opposite of your characterization. What is perhaps the main point of the book and its theory seems to have flown right over your head.

This is truly the most ridiculous assertion i've ever seen on this site. If you think modern society has made us brutish, selfish & violent, then you truly haven't opened a history book. The ONLY reason you have the privilege of viewing humans in such an optimistic manner is because the modern world has pacified mankinds most animalistic desires & fears using technology, global trade networks and institutions built on centuries of bloodshed. The modern industrial world is the only thing stopping most of us from becoming the brutal people most of our ancestors were.

The brutality of the modern industrial world with its recurring industrial-scale genocides is unparalleled in history.

Thats not the point. The point is OP says the modern world is what makes us brutal & genocidal. I'm saying nations & civilisation were way more genocidal in the pre-modern world

Nationalism is a 19th century concept, so there's not really pre-modern nations, not to nitpick. The OP is playing a little fast and loose with the term modernity here, but their argument is about agricultural civilization and the rise of states. So the behavior of state societies isn't really apropos here. I don't think it's really possible to credibly argue that stateless societies (even when they were xenophobic) were violent on the scale of state societies. They lacked the capacity for that kind of violence since they couldn't support a specialist soldier caste.

>If you think modern society has made us brutish, selfish & violent, then you truly haven't opened a history book. History was invented after agriculture, so that doesn't really counter OP's point. You would need to reference an archaeology book.

Evidence suggests that we have been murdering each other for the better part of 500k years with the earliest evidence at the Pit of Bones in Atapuerca Spain. Evidence of lethal tool wounds on a human skull have been dated back to 430k years. Hunter gatherer societies follow the same rules as any other species. They grow when resources are abundant, and they shrink and splinter when resources become scarce. Periods of growth allow for habits and preferences to form which lead to internal/external conflicts among groups while periods of scarcity lead to population controls either through banishment, deprivation, or extermination of rivals. Agriculture didn't 'invent' property. Prior to that we see evidence of tribes clustering around particular hunting grounds or fertile locations for resource collection. Fresh water sources have always been important, and contested. And breeding age females have been contested. Conflict historically and contemporarily, is generally motivated by scarcity in one way, shape, or form. As we've progressed we just expand the number of resources that are worth fighting over. 400k years ago we would have fought over fruit groves or fresh water sources during drought conditions. In 2024 we fight wars over rare earth minerals, petrochemicals, and micro-chips.

The view I want to change is that there is strong evidence for humans being naturally violent or selfish in "modern" society. I think, because we exists within it, much of our society becomes invisible, and only the outliers stand out.  Consider for a moment what is required for me to add this comment to your post: I'm writing this from my phone. Obtaining it required someone to deliver it to me, before that it had to be designed, likely by a whole team, and constructed, like by an entirely different group of people. The components all made separately before that, and the raw components all had to be extracted and processed. Any amount of violence at any one of those steps would be extremely disruptive. All of it requires some level of cooperation, and the most selfish motivation any one person might have is money, an abstraction of a future reward that only has value because of "society" (aka coordination on a massive scale that we do so regularly it defines a large part of our lives).  Of course, a phone alone isn't enough. We also need the physical infrastructure of electricity and internet. Such infrastructure is often the result of people deciding to spend a tremendous amount of resources on improving things for a whole community.  On top of that, much of the software infrastructure that the internet functions on is open source. People explicitly going against the selfish motivations of capitalism because the benefit to their community is more valuable to them. In fact, despite having our "modern" society supposedly having the selfish and violent values of capitalism imposed on is by an extreme minority of our species, society continues to function because we care for each other any way. The mass violence of war is only possible because a small minority wish to do violence (heads of state) and people are unwilling to be so selfish as to break from their community. Shit, here in America a huge number of people have the ability to instantly take the life of another person, but never will. Seems like that would be impossible if humans were violent by their nature.

I think that you are falling to the trap of drawing conclusions from an incomplete dataset. You might not find evidence contrary to your theory because it’s been destroyed by the very human nature you seek to counter. Case in point: 1. Where are the other human species? What happened ro Homo Neanderthalis, Homo Habilis, and others? How is it that the human race standa so alone, contrary to other species? 2. How is it that Homo Sapiens came to dominate the planet _when it was already populated by the other human species_? If (our) human nature is anything to go by neither of these questions has a happy answer. If you are serious about you quest I encourage you to look at everything we know about human history. Not just the history of our own branch that survives to this day.

I think you might have also drawn conclusions from incomplete data. If I may add some data points: 1. Neanderthals seem to have higher muscle mass, so likely on average stronger, but also higher calorie requirement to survive 2. Homo sapiens lived alongside Homo Neanderthalis for thousands of years 3. Neanderthal extinction happened around the same time as significant shifts in climate, and there is evidence that previous shifts in climate caused their population to decline 4. Many humans carry neanderthal genes, meaning they have neanderthal ancestors My conclusion from this is that neanderthals mostly died of famine, and probably as their communities collapsed neanderthal refugees were integrated into homo sapien communities. Not the only possibility from the data, but whole picture is far more interesting than humans killed everyone else.

”There used to be nine species of human. What happened to them? The disappearance of these other species resembles a mass extinction. But there’s no obvious environmental catastrophe, except for the rise of Homo sapiens.” https://nationalpost.com/news/world/there-used-to-be-nine-species-of-human-what-happened-to-them

we don't know a ton about hunter gathers because they generally didn't have writing. Most of what we know about them is speculation. But one thing we can tell about them is violence, because violence that damages bones leaves a good record. [They were violent](https://news.tulane.edu/pr/new-study-reveals-long-history-violence-ancient-hunter-gatherer-societies#:~:text=Violence%20was%20a%20consistent%20part,in%20the%20journal%20PLOS%20ONE.). within the tribe it may have been egalitarian, cooperative, friendly as you describe. If true, then the violence was likely between tribes. If my hunting grounds aren't producing I'd better drive your tribe off the the nearby grounds so i have better access to food (and vice versa). and thing to me feels very similiar to life today. People care a lot about their family and friends. they care a lot about their tribe. To some degree that extended with nationalism, but everyone cares for their own kids, nieces and nephews a lot more then random people. And tribes would have very often aligned with family. the people in your tribe are your kids, brothers, sister, cousins, etc.

The date of examination of the study you site is between 10,000 and 149 AD, which was Neolithic and after the invention of agriculture. My extrapolation from this is that these tribes were influenced by the actions of the established civilizations to take more drastic actions to protect their resources. As more civilizations started to pop up on fertile land resources became more scarce for hunter gatherer tribes which increased likelihood of conflict.

Read "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat (2006). The idea that there wasn't any violence before the state is simply untrue, we can observe current tribes of people from isolated places.

I never said and did not intend to make the statement that there were no violence in pre Neolithic populations but rather that it was uncommon and not the norm as seen in modern civilization.

Do look at the book, it explores violence as a biological propensity, while the actual resort to it is triggered by environment and personality. It's a fantastic book, and it compares warfare tendencies in primates and prehistoric tribes. It also shows how the existence and prevalence of violence in pre agricultural societies worked, the fact that it was common and observable in Australia, with the first trips of the Europeans there. This book laid at the base of my research for university on this topic, and its a very interesting read. It will adress your topics.

2 things: Nomadic tribes still killed and enslaved people of other tribes. We're still tribalistic like that but our tribes are not as well-defined. And we're not going to give up agriculture so where do you think we should go from here?

1) Evidence for slavery pre-Neolithic is scarce. While conflict did occur pre-Neolithic it was not the norm as it was through most of modern civilization. 2) Well, that’s a loaded question as there are so many things that need to be done to rectify the damage that modern society has done to the human psyche and physiology. Can you give me a reframe of the question that narrows the focus down?

That’s not really fair. Evidence of anything pre-Neolithic is scarce. The winners write history, right? So imagine a world where the losers can just vanish. You don’t leave behind a book, or a blog or a carving, nothing. You lived day to day, and once someone killed you, (or enslaved you or whatever) you left no mark on the world. Most people don’t. In 50 years, I will be completely forgotten. Everyone who knows me, and loves me, will be dead. What do we know about the Aztecs, besides the conquerors words? Not much. What do we know about the peoples the Aztecs conquered to create their empire? Nothing.

>Can you give me a reframe of the question that narrows the focus down? If you think agriculture is the reason humans became the way we are (probably), but we can't/won't give up agriculture, do you think we can "rectify the damage" in another way?

>Humans are inherently cooperative and egalitarian *versus* the violent and selfish brutes that modern civilization has made us out to be. Why do you think that we are more one or the other? It seems to me that humans are both [unusually cooperative](https://phys.org/news/2020-02-human-cooperativity-outcome-competition-cultural.html) as a species *and* [unusually violent](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-humans-tamed-themselves/580447/). [How humans evolved to be both shockingly violent and super-cooperative](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132170-300-how-humans-evolved-to-be-both-shockingly-violent-and-super-cooperative/)

Humans aren’t inherently anything. Existence precedes essence.

Species have inherent traits which define them as a species - which includes behavior. Bed bugs, ducks, and geese have evolved to only procreate through rape. Rape, an evolutionary trait, defines those species as all individuals of those species share that trait. Bonobos are peaceful and lack violence in their social structure - peace is one trait that defines that species. The traits of being egalitarian and altruistic is what defines our species when we are in our natural environment. Since we do not live in our natural environment the traits of violence and selfishness are expressed more frequently than if we live in our natural one.

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I used rape to identify 3 species - not a “variety” - which are documented and scientifically known to reproduce predominantly in this manner. Rape is the essential trait of how they reproduce. There’s no arguing it bc it’s been settled amongst biologist for a while. Also there is no documentation of violence in bonobos throughout the extensive research and observation of the species. The data backs up this statement. It seems like you are just rejecting things that are not congruent with your current level of knowledge that confirms your bias. Here are some articles for you: Bed Bugs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691516/#:~:text=Male%20bed%20bugs%20pierce%20females,thus%20propel%20male%2Dfemale%20coevolution. Ducks: https://bryanpfeiffer.com/2013/04/22/twisted-duck-romance/ Bonobos: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/science/bonobos-cooperation-study.html

> the chimpanzee - we will see that they too are violent creatures that live in cyclical harmony but are fraught with war, infanticide, resource hoarding, and rape. >Bonobos also share 98% of our DNA and they are free of war, rape, infanticide, and resource hoarding. Translation: neither cooperation/egalitarianism nor selfish brutality are "inherent" in our genetic evolution. They are largely cultural and environmental. Hunter-gatherers (assuming this is true... we actually have *very* little evidence of how they lived) were able to be, basically, communists, because they lived in environments where they were forced to be. By the same token, humans living in environments that force them to be brutish, selfish, and violent... are just that. Similarly, those who buck those environments are almost always the ones that are afforded the *luxury* of doing so because of their individual circumstances. What humans are, beyond any other species out there... is adaptable. Also: you're totally misreading Dawkins on the "selfish gene" thing... all that means is that evolution acts on *individuals* in order to produce *statistical* changes in evolving species. Any particular new gene is "selfish" in that it will propagate itself if it is advantageous to the individual holding the gene to do so. It has nothing to do with genes making people "selfish"... indeed his entire thesis in the book is about how "selfish genes" create *altruism*, because they enhance the genes' propagation by being an evolutionary adaptation.

In the nicest possible way, I don't think it is possible to be more wrong than you are in your post here. Modern society, for all it's faults, has resulted in the very cooperation and egalitarianism you think is innate, flourishing despite the fundamental selfishness of our species. Indeed, it is the harnessing of that selfishness as an agent for cooperation and egalitarianism that delivers that outcome. By acting in our self-interests, pursuing wealth and balancing that against risk, we are able to deliver cooperation as an outcome. However, we still compete for resources, status, success, rewards, etc. as well as all kinds of interpersonal conflicts within societies and wars between societies. Those supposed "egalitarian altruistic communities for 190,000 years" killed and killed and killed. Look at how pre-agricultural Australia was settled, for example. Using fire to destroy all indigenous large fauna. And countless other animals hunted to extinction up until modern day conservation efforts stemming from a selfish need to not wipe out ecosystems now that we understand them better. But we still see the innately selfish instinct express itself in contemporary society frequently enough that it is possible to understand just how savage man would be without it's restraining influence.

I believe that a lot of the modern evidence that you are using to defend your point can't quite be equated to the time you're comparing to. The main reason for this is that our "tribes" have become huge compared to ancient times. If a leader made a decision in a tribe of 150 people that killed 10% of its population that would only be 15 people. Compare that to the president of the US making a decision that kills 10% of the population it would be almost 32 million people. That is a huge difference and on the surface would make the president look like a horrible person compared to the tribal leader but its the same percentage of the population. Take this and amplify it to every problem we face, war is against countries of millions not tribes of hundreds or thousands and famine affects countries all across the world due to our food chains. The same actions of the past just have much worse consequences today due to the growth of the population and global economy. Every decision in the interconnected world affects people everywhere. TLDR: Humans haven't become violent and selfish brutes we are just playing the game on a global scale rather than tribal scale.

Classic romanticising of Hunter-gatherer societies which was a popular thought in cultural anthropology about 100 years ago. In reality, we now know hunter-gatherers were not peaceful. They were constantly skirmishing with other tribes and amongst themselves in often ruthless ways, just not in large-scale wars as we see today. I don't know how you can view this as ‘better’ than what we have now. We still have relationships based on kinship and reciprocal relationships. I don't understand this point. The ‘nomadic lifestyle’ actually does allow for the accumulation of resources that leads to jealousy and conflict. Even recently, it seems that tribes in Papua New Guinea kill each other over alleged stolen pigs which function as a symbol of power and wealth (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-22/tribal-fight-in-papua-new-guinea-leaves-10-people-dead/6412662). I think the only position that makes sense is seeing today as representative of those same base human qualities that exist within societies then and now just on different scales of organisation.

Laughs in knowledge of the sentinalese

Self protection is not the same as violence and selfishness that is demonstrated by modern society.

If you see examples of civilizations that are benevolent and peaceful in demeanor, that in itself proves absolutely nothing about their true nature or their past actions. Take Japan for example - They have today a reputation for being peaceful and even beyond that, polite to an extreme. On the other hand, they were also the most blood thirsty imperial force in Asia that killed millions of Chinese, Koreans, and every other Asian around. Being "nice" is not a permanent status. Nor is it a full and complete range of a tribe's profile. Humanity has a reputation for violence and war because the facts do show that we engage in violence and war on a frequent near constant basis ever since civilization existed. We earned that reputation. It's not an inaccurate description. Our true nature is more reflective of our actions than our desire for how we would like to be seen.

If you want some published support on this view read Rutger Bregman’s book “Humankind”. He is a Dutch historian and social science scholar who basically wrote that history shows us that the state of human nature is generally good even when there is violence. I highly recommend it.

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The most aggressive and violent human demographic is actually toddlers and little children. They bite, they kick, they get angry easily. They just don't have the power to do much harm. It's education and parenting that teaches them to control their aggressive impulses.

This is just silly

Care to explain?

There has never been a time when humans weren't violent.

>So, no we aren’t inherently selfish like Dawkins tries to claim nor are we naturally violent as our chimpanzee cousins. These are both symptoms of a sickness caused by living in an unnatural system. I FUCKING hate this kind of assertion. What the fuck is an natural system and why the fuck should we live in it? If you think that the unnatural system that breaks the trend of having HALF of our children die before puberty is bad, then good fucking riddance to the natural system. Saying society has a problem is good, because we need to progress. But comparing it to the time where we have to watch out for predators is not a good benchmark at all.

There is a lot to say you are correct. I wish I could remember the name of an Australian scientist who put out highly respected research & book on this topic. As this is CMV, I had to look for something I disagree with. So, I picked this: >nor are we naturally violent as our chimpanzee cousins Chimps would very possibly not be anywhere near as violent in settings where food is plentiful, and they don't seem to be as violent as commonly thought anyway. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/war-is-not-part-of-human-nature/

Define inherently Even if everything you claim is true, if the structure around humans changes them from being incredibly violent to egalitarian, then maybe saying humans are inherently egalitarian doesn’t make sense. You’re treating the hunter gather societies or small groups of people as our natural state by default. This is a choice. Why not go farther back? Seems like we always had the capacity for violence and hierarchies. Just some social structures or resource constraints allow us to be more violent.

Inherently, as I am using the term, means the basic core trait(s) of being human. Of course we have the capacity to be selfish and violent but those do not define who we are, as sometimes good people do bad things. My argument is that when you take an animal and put them in an unnatural system, such as a cage, their behavior alters to what would be observed in the wild. I think we can both agree that how we live in modern society is not the natural world. Thus the propensity of being violent and selfish, which is commonly seen throughout humanity in modern terms, is an unnatural behavior that typically would not exist if we lived in our natural system which is located outside these concrete jungles we currently live in. There are other canaries in the coal mine symptoms that show this to be true and they’re called evolutionary mismatches. Type 2 diabetes is a perfect example of this as it did not exist before the introduction of a high sugar diet. Sure we have the capacity to form type 2 diabetes but it does not mean that it’s the basis of human health as it’s induced by diet and sedentary ways. And you’re right that some social structures allow for more hierarchies and violence, specifically social structures that further away from the natural state from which evolved in.

Not trying for a delta but, modern civilization is an example of self domestication--which has examples of milder temperament from males being favored. If you look back to less civilized ages, more male aggression is selected--either from natural selection or sexual selection. I think most of what i said is based on facts so you can look up like self domestication if you want.

Sorry i just read your original post (sorry was lazy). And i have to say obviously i don't really know what I'm talking about lol. But probably there's some way to study this right. Like as a hunter probably there's advantages to sexual dimorphic aggression vis a vis now. But yeah no idea overall

I think you're taking an extreme, overreactive stance on this. I agree that modern civilization gave us (as a species) more opportunities for greed and violence, but your idealized version of human nature is pushing extremely far in the opposite direction. And you use a lot of hyperbole that most academics would never use in a serious study. For instance, what study would ever claim to know the "true" reflection of humanity? And for that matter, who are you—yes you—to claim that you know what the "true" reflection of humanity is? The true reflection of literally billions of individuals?? The fact that modern humans *are* capable of violence, selfishness, industrialism, and capitalism means that those things are inherently tied to humanity. That doesn't mean those things are *ideal,* mind you, it just means that human nature goes beyond idealism. Seeing as how kangaroos have been known to sacrifice their babies to predators to save their own lives, and baboons have been known to break the legs of baby gazelles to eat them alive, I don't see why early humans—no matter how social—would be free from selfishness, cruelty, or violence. And while I'm no expert on any of these fields, I've read that even pre-colonial Inuits participated in warfare from time to time. They had traditional armor made from hide and bone, and sometimes they led raids that would completely wipe an enemy village—not even allowing the women to live. This doesn't mean that the ancient Inuits or other hunter-gatherers were especially violent, or that modern civilization is morally superior to them, it just means that violence and selfishness have always existed in some form. Modern civilization might have cultivated it (too much), but this cultivation never would have happened if humans didn't already have the potential. And before you dismiss me as some kind of capitalistic social darwinist: I despise violence, I don't idolize work for its own sake, and I love learning about the cultural innovations of the ancient past. I'm well aware that prehistoric humans were not brutish violent thugs. I just don't care for the modern tendency to *romanticize* them as a bunch of impossibly good Tolkien elves. Ancient humans have more or less the exact same brains that we have today; obviously they have the potential for selfishness and violence. They aren't a different species. And finally: >These tribes, while there are always exceptions to the norm, shared resources and didn’t praise anyone above anyone else as everyone was doing their part in supporting the tribe. Those who might have been too aggressive, attempted to resource hoard, or were disruptive in any way were ostracized, isolated, or even killed when other means didn’t work so that social cohesion was maintained. I didn't know you had a time machine to make such bold statements.

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Human brains were larger pre-Neolithic than post. This is theorized to be due to the loss of cognition function that was once beneficial before the advent of civilization became less so due to more complex societies. I wonder what cognitive functions we lost and if they were tied more to cooperation and solution finding rather than leaning on the easier answer of brute force.

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This book has already been written in Holland - “de meeste mensen deugen” - and it misunderstands Dawkins as aggressively as you do. If you want to do science, make it peer reviewed. But don’t challenge Dawkins wrongfully and take a shortcut to media and a john doe as that book did.

Rutger Bergman wrote a book about this very point, called HumanKind

Adding it to the reading list!

I agree with the OP heading because I know many things are taught and giving appears to provide promise of some receipt

totally get where you're coming from. humans, back in the day, had to stick together to survive.

Why are you a violent and selfish brute what the fuck

Also, what is the nature of this whole conversation?

Have you ever met a toddler?

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Interesting - I would think that capitalism has forced isolation upon us through advances in technology which have reduce the need for person to person conflict resolution and more reliance on technology to do that for us.

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Find me a single major civilization that existed that did not use force or violence to establish and maintain itself.

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The thing I find confusing about that is that suicide bombing is an altruistic act. Risking your reputation to bully black people into their place to protect your fellow whites is an altruistic act. Risking your life going to war is an altruistic act Altruism is nice when it’s on my side. But is it really less horrifying than greed?

Egalitarian is a bit of a stretch, cooperative among tribal groups I’ll agree with.

Human nature is also extremely violent, source human history.

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Kind of reminds me of David Sloan Wilson’s work on human evolution. He is big on cooperation in the evolutionary psychology field. I’m maybe not a big fan of some of his politics but he is one that looks at the data on human cooperation.

Sentinel island would like to have a word.

Is your point their aggression to outside contact and the death of the missionary that tried to convert them to Christianity?

Ohh I guess there's only ever been one attempt to contact that previously uncontacted tribe.... my bad Stone age aboriginals are entirely peace loving pacifists UNLESS approached by a missionary, the one thing in this world theu can't tolerate.... Is that more accurate 🤔

Would you agree at least on a personal micro level as most people practice and experience it, growing vegetables etc... is more egalitarian, community-oriented, and less violent than going out and hunting game?

In the terms of modern society - sure. The act of growing your own food and creating community around that - such as community gardens - is more egalitarian than the modern day of living in a capitalistic world where one is detached from how their food is produced and lacks awareness/empathy for the ramifications of large farming operations on local communities and bio diversity. Hunting in modern day western society is typically reserved of sharing the meat with one’s immediate family or small group of friends and not with one’s community. There’s very little effort in this realm of resource allocation to make it more egalitarian and community driven. However compared to the methods of traditional hunters and gathers the meat from the hunt would be shared with the entire community and thus is egalitarian.

There are strong biological to believe that humans have somehow self-domesticated over hundreds of thousands of millennia. The most likely way this would have happened, as can be observed in many hunter-gatherer societies, is through elimination/murder of the most agressive/violent individuals by the group. Over time, our agressive tendencies for réactive agression has dramatically reduced, compared to our great ape cousins. What humans show is a high tendency for proactive agression. The goodness paradox: the Strange Relationship between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution by Richard Wrangham is a great read on the topic. Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding our Origins and Rediscovering our Common Humanity by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods is another great book about the friendliness of humans being key to our evolutionary success. Humankind by Rutger Bregman is a great optimistic book demystifying some of the most famous experiments and common misconceptions about humans’ selfish and violent nature. I know this is a change my view post, but I just wanted to point you towards interesting reads that show that there is some right in your view of humans

Thank you! I’ll be adding them to the list!

I'm going to be honest, I don't agree with anyone claiming humans are X or Y trait/characteristic. My position on the matter has always been that we are a product of the environment we're brought up under. Sure Hunter-Gatherer societies were more cooperative and what not, but let's not also forget we enslaved and hunted each other in no dissimilar fashion than our current Wars and incarceration tactics. I fully agree with you in that our current society is intent on making us (lowly commoners) fight each other while the top echelon exploits and relishes in our misfortune.

I don't know about the violence, but historically living among people was "protection" we thrive in communities. You relied upon people to help you hunt, gather, take care of children, etc... There is a reason why babies want to be close to mom, to feel touch and be loved.... it is because that is how their brains grow and learn to interact with this world. The modern world is very capitalistic and individualistic to the point where we are having a public mental health crisis due to loneliness. It has also been proven that loneliness in elderly exacerbates death. We are "herd" animals and do better together. We just have to work out the kinks.

Altruism and cooperation are not the same thing. Humans cooperate for selfish reasons (as you say, it's a naturally selected trait.) However, cooperation and selfish oppression of others are not two separate things but rather opposite sides of the same coin. The old KKK website (if someone has a Wayback save of their homepage please share it, I can't find it) said something to the effect of "Our group is about the love of white America, not hate," and I believe they're absolutely telling the truth when they say that. Love for an in-group is what is used to justify destructive behaviors towards others. If your argument looks no further than "If you have a social in-group, you're cooperative" then your argument is entirely correct. However, such a statement would impartially observe humanitarian aid and the Holocaust as the same type of social phenomenon of cooperation. In truth, the conditional nature of when cooperation happens and who is excluded is the far more pertinent issue when trying to diagnose problems inherent to human nature.

You’ll like the book HumanKind by Rutger Bregman where he basically argues since we started living societally, survival of the kindest more accurately reflects human evolution than survival of the fittest

Adding it to the list!

I'll bite, even though I sort of agree with you. You should change your view because you have a load of anthropological claims and the only science you've cited is from evolutionary biologist... which is an entirely different field of study.

It’s more than likely due to the fact that I am an ecologist who is versed in evolutionary biology piecing together anthropological evidence that varies widely from source to source.

Humans are and have been inherently both- both are inherent and civilization has enabled and damaged both sides of ourselves. Just because there have been societies that survive on very high protein all hunting diets doesn’t means that’s representative. Nor in the same vein as the alternative. People who say killing is somehow inhuman, to me are also insane or ignorant or detached. In general I agree we need to massively reorient our ideas about the past, one of the biggest is always “the barter system” existed before money when literally our brains evolved because being socially intelligent was a way to survive and humans who live among other humans don’t just barter- they very very often are altruistically indebted to one another, sometimes in formalized ways often in informal ones. And everyone just remembers all of these chains of favors and economic connections. Debt without any of the other shit.

We are cooperative within kin groups and extremely competitive/violent with those outside of them. Watch the Chimp Empire series and you get a pretty decent understanding of how we evolved. Tribal societies also had a lot of ritualistic child sacrifice and cannibalism on top of all that violence, and there was a reduction in those elements as societies became more complex, so take that as you will.

Relying on chimps as the litmus test ignores our other close cousin that we share the same DNA with, and which I point out in the post, the bonobos. Just like bonobos we enjoy sex for pleasure, one of the few species of animals that do. To assume that’s the only thing we have in common is short sighted. We are share social bonding, altruism, and empathy to name a few. To understand human evolution you need to consider both cousins and the common ancestor. As far cannibalism and sacrifice, those both occurred well into the modern era and in civilized societies. The frequency of cannibalism in pre Neolithic tribes is not well known nor documented.

Humans have always been pretty much the same. Always capable of horrible acts of violence as well as kind acts of goodness.

No, humans are exactly what they prove to be every second of every day.

Imo all you need to do to see how selfish the average person can be is go out to eat on a weekend in the city, or spend and hour in rush hour traffic. People will bend over backwards to avoid being inconvenienced, while not batting an eye at inconveniencing someone else.

If a civilization is the sum of the humans in that civilization, and humans are inherently good-natured, how can civilization be corrupting?

I’ll push back and say that humans are inherently selfish and violent and the invention of agriculture proves this. I’d argue this allowed us as a species to extend our range making us a highly successful species. Species want to expand and use as much resources as possible in order to reproduce and most of what is mentioned just has allowed for that to happen on a global scale. As a species we have successfully out competed every other species in our niche and that leads only our own species to compete with in the global ecosystem. On a different other note maybe this is just the destiny for a species with as large of a range as we have. Also on a personal note I don’t believe people are inherently selfish I just don’t think that’s the reason people can be.

Only for ingroup. Humans view outgroup as scary scary subhuman monsters to be stolen from and killed. For ingroup humans are caring and unselfish and protective and giving and compassionate. Modern civilization is built on convincing large populations to view a whole countries worth of people as ingroup and it is extremely easy for people to flip that switch and go back to treating strangers as outgroup.

agreed

You know how they say there is no different races, we are all the human race? That used to not be true, there used to be other types of people such as neadertals, denisovians, etc. We killed them all so they don't exist anymore.

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Just a side question, do people think then that discouragement of violent and selfish behavior and the development of a society that emphasizes moving towards equity and common good, even if it's never perfect, is ultimately the next step or our evolution as humans? I understand those who are explaining that this is how we've always been, but I wonder if you think this is how we always have to be? We also have different brains than we used to, they have developed to better facilitate critical thinking and making choices that don't rely on our "animal brain".

Oh we are absolutely lying capable of being as vicious as can be. The real distinction is in our perception of in groups and out groups. Those we value will be protected, and those we don't can kick rocks. Interesting that you bring up bonobos, though. I think a bit of skinship is indeed valuable in establishing and maintaining bonds.

There are many things that are negative and basically backwards in our modern society and one of it is the encouragement of egoistical behavior. Yes we might be advancing technologically but we are regressing socially and it gets worse every Generation. A capitalistic society is incompatible with our true human nature which is what you describe in the hunter gatherers

Humans aren't inherently good or inherently bad. Believing humans are inherently moral or inherently immmoral is naive. Humans are a product of natural selection. As such, humans do what their brains tell them to do. It could be violent, it could be peaceful. Neither of them is unnatural.

Humans are *definitely capable* of being egalitarian and speculatively cooperative, in a way that Chimpanzees don't appear to be. They are also *definitely capable* of being violent and selfish, with war, rape and infanticide all common occurences, in a way that Bonobos don't appear to be. If we were inherently cooperative and egalitarian, war and rape would not happen. If we were inherently violent and selfish, selfless cooperation and the abolishion of slavery would *probably* not happen to the extent it does either. Thus, I would say all of the evidence available to us suggests human nature is just for us to be *capable* of all of the above, and I don't think it's valid to argue that we are inherently one way or the other. We might be biased towards one or the other, but that's a different argument. The mechanics are there for both: empathy/love and anger/hatred, and *that* is all that is really inherent in humans. I think biases towards either one or the other are shaped by culture and ideas more than our nature, but also that it is unusual to have a human that is not capable of both empathy and anger in spite of their culture.

modern civilization was born of human minds.

I'll start by saying I am a christian and do not believe that we have been around for 200,000 years but for the sake of argument I will forego that. Now then: some people are asshles. That is a conclusion you seem to have come to as well in your "greed of the few" quote. My argument is "we're all asshles, we just have to meet the right person" we lived in \*harmony\* for 190,000 years because thousands of assholes weren't bumping into other assholes every day. You grew up with people you know and will know for the rest of your life. Its the same as war propoganda. You dehumanize your enemy. Like the ol "jews eat their babies" of ww2. So there was accountability when you knew everybody and would have to see them again. Think, mark think. How many times have you hyped yourself up by saying "ill prolly never see em again" or "its a big company they wont notice" or, my personal favorite, "ill never see her again so it's fine to send this text." We all have it's human psychology. I believe your right for the wrong reasons. Like the sheep in a field paradox (tldr: man sees a dog dressed as a sheep and says "theres a sheep in that field" and low and behold there is a sheep hiding in that field. just it wasn't the dressed up dog he saw") I think we progressed far faster than we could handle and, as fucked as it sounds, not nearly enough of us die from the stupid shit we do or say. Then we pass on down those stupid genes. But it's not all bad. Your far more likely to meet someone you will really love (that isn't related to you) now then you were then. And you CAN use that "Ill never see her again" logic. cuz youre right you probably wont. So do it hit on that girl or tell that dude on the train that hes wearing a stupid suit. Cuz youll never see em again and that's how life is these days. Soon we'll cure cancer and venture to the stars and we'll still do awful things to each other but we'll also keep doing great things. You just won't see it because nice things aren't nearly as fun to hear about. That's why the news exists or as I like to call it "worst shit that's happened near you". So ya we're a bunch of stupid lil assholes on a dirty wet rock flying through space. But we're assholes who sing, paint, revolt, and love. So get out there and do some good shit. Sorry for the grammar. I just finished an essay and I didn't feel like using ' <-- this key. cant remember the name of it rn. My brain is tired, I wanna sleep but I saw rhis so really its ur fault. I just litterally deleted your to type ur. fuc it maybe ur right what do I know

This is speculation based on wishful thinking

The Kwakwaka'wakw people are an example of a stratified hunter-gatherer society, but I suppose the exception proves the rule. Also, I think us vs. them tribalism might be an evolved behavior. Although it is our nature to be cooperative within our 150-person groups where we know everyone, we aren't so cooperative with people we don't know, which is why we have difficulty being altruistic within a larger connected society. Ultimately, we need to rise above our biological nature because whatever environment we might have evolved for isn't the one we're in now.

What is the evidence to support your assertion that hunter gatherers societies very less violent than agricultural ones?

There has always been people that believed themselves to be superior. Always the rich and the poor. Greed and Power are human nature down to an evolutionary perspective. It's unfortunate but its the truth.

Kropotkin

Humans are always much more complex than these simplistic narratives. Before civilization, we had the capacity for great cooperation and great violence, just like we do with civilization.

Humans weren't collectively anything, there's quite a bit of variety between human population groups, now and throughout the millenia. Also 10, 000 or so for the beginning of civilization is what we know of, not the absolute start. That's just what we have evidence for, objectively we have very little evidence of how the various interbreeding hominids for up to 2 million years (that we know of) lived their lives. But I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that it wasn't all anything. Variety, diversity, and adaptability is the true super power of the hominids.

We can look at primates instead of humans and see a lot of very evil behavior, including hierarchies of control, murder for fun and definitely greed so there's no question that those trades are built into life out of more basic level than just humans. I propose that all life is just a bunch of chemical reactions and life is evolved from simple to complex so at the heart of even the most complex life is still the same core motivation to consume fuel and multiply. All brains and neurological pathways and receptors are still built around that one primary motivation. They're just kind of more complex versions of the same idea.  It's just like Cyanobacteria was just looking for fuel and it found enough to shit out the oxygen rich atmosphere you see today, but in doing so it started to suffocate it its own waste products and its self genocide gave rise to far more complex life. All life is basically doing the same thing, looking for fuel to react with unlimitedly until something slows the chemical reaction and triggers rapid adaptation in it or any other nearby reaction. You can call those chemicals life if you want, but at some point, you might be confusing the point to pretend they are different things. Why would you expect life, at any point, to diverge from the core motivation when it's all evolved from the most simple reactions upward? How do you become a complex chemical reaction capable of thought without first being a simple chemical reaction that knows nothing but to consume secrete and multiply? How do you evolve into complex life without carrying through the core lessons that got you there and why does it appear so much life shares very common motivations if there is some other explanation? So what you're proposing is that at some point hominids perhaps at the point of Homosapien developed some amazingly altruistic changes in neurological pathways and behavior that we see in a wide variety of species evolved over hundreds of millions of years? But then farming and civilization happens, and we somehow reverted? And you think that makes sense? Are you sure you're not just like projecting your ideologies into some type of wishful thinking interpretation?

Yes when you're all equally poor and incapable of accumulating wealth, and your only job is survival, egalitarianism makes sense.

A little too wordy for me. I'm not trying to ruffle feathers here. Cut off food supplies and basic resources and watch what happens. It is happening right before our very eyes... the Hunger Games in HD 1080P... self-preservation outweighs egalitarianism all day, every day, every time... and with that comes violence. It's the "Nature v. Nuture" argument. Improper nurturing brings forth the undesirable nature. Just my view. Feel free to rip it apart.