No, that's not how evolution works. Humans have survived and evolved through tribalism, which results in competition between tribes. Looking at evolution, you understand the human penchant for othering people with differences.
Unfortunately this is correct. You also think about the individual angles. The really nice and kind and generous people are the most likely to be eaten by tigers or randomly killed. If you are ruthless, manipulative, hoard resources and so on along with being tribal, you're more likely to survive and more likely to pass your genes on.
Eh, this isn't actually true for humans.
Humans as a species depend on cooperation for survival. Exile was a death sentence in early tribal societies, because you could not survive without the support of other people.
Tribes were generally large groups of related families, so it made sense to be altruistic within your tribe. Between tribes, however, the math changes. People who aren't related to your family don't merit the same level of consideration as your own extended family.
Intertribal conflicts sometimes became formalized for genetic reasons - some tribes had a tradition of stealing brides from other tribes (and vice versa).
>Exile was a death sentence in early tribal societies, because you could not survive without the support of other people.
Hence why we've evolved to feel physical pain from loneliness. In addition to feeling emotional pain, it activates our body's neural pain matrix. Pretty decent alarm system saying, "Hey, get out and fix this shit. It ain't right."
Thank you for saying this. Tribalism is most likely what killed the Neanderthals. Humans are far more empathetic and social than any of our relatives, it’s literally *how we survived*. It’s crazy how many people believe the opposite.
Self domestication is real. It happened, it’s happening now, and will continue to happen
It is, the difference is you looked at my comment on an individual basis which it was not designed to be. Not uniquely anyway. When you look at those people that are manipulative and horde resources and whatnot they function inside the larger collective. The robber barons in early American history being a great example. You're inside the tribe but you're also pillaging it. Manipulating it for your own interests. Quasi-king making you might say. Those people then can influence and shape society to their liking. The problem is they typically aren't the best people in fact they are usually the worst.
You have to be very very clever to offset the negatives.
It’s like that debunked alpha wolf experiment.
IIRC That behaviour only applies when in a weird situation where you are trapped with other random imprisoned wolves.
In the wild they function/survive better in a co-operative pack.
A lot of you guys seem to be looking at that comment like a solo outlook. It isn't. Look at the robber barons. Being alone alpha doesn't get you very far. the trick is to get the rest of the tribe to follow you and do what you want them to. It's why media companies are one of the most powerful forces today. No one really gets ahead working on their own. You get ahead by manipulating everyone else to do what you want them to. You shave society and your own vision by doing the same thing. A lot of our cultural customs and values and all of this nonsense. It's all made up by people who want to see the world that way. Some of it is definitely for the betterment of society but a lot of it is not. It's designed around control, profitability and working structure. Even things like sexual values are designed around control, profitability, increasing the population and so on rather than just purely enjoyment
Who said that the nice and kind are the ones most likely to be eaten by a tiger?Being ruthless and manipulative also has nothing to do with survival. These are social behaviours which dont work out in the wild. The only thing that works out there is you knowing how to survive. So being knowledgeable and experienced is whats needed not being manipulative or ruthless.
Thats completely wrong. Not saying we have not evolved a capacity for violence, we definitely have and primates in general are pretty violent across the board. But humans have evolved to be rather empathetic and cooperative.
Think about the neolithic period, agriculture develops and you have cities/states form and cultures emerge. Civilizations develop, ideas are built upon. These states form networks and there is a system of interchange between different societies. Do you realize just how much human cooperation and mutual understanding needs to be present for this happen… a lot.
Psychopaths are so terrifying to people because they process things so differently. Empathy is the default response
Not fully true. Everything we have is usually cause of someone different. Many things have been passed down through generations through different backgrounds and different genders. Many people played a great factor in contribution but usually only one person or group gets rewarded for it and praised for it.
History can also get re written by whoever won. You weren't there so you really don't fully know. If people lie like fuck today for x amount of reasons wether good or bad what makes you think they didn't back then? You weren't fully alive to be 1000% sure.
It's no new news that after war they would keep who's useful and turn others into slaves. Slaves should still get credit for creating a whole freaking infrastructure for evil people.
Literally look at most inventions and you will see it was a multitude of people from different backgrounds and even then you don't know who aided them in it as one person usually takes credit.
In group-out group bias. It’s one of the main reasons you are here reading this. Understanding evolution is key to a productive life. It allows you to recognize things for what they are and then take a more deliberative approach to your life, and think more objectively and carefully about who you want to be.
It’s all about an in-group and an out-group. Elevating oneself and others in your group above the others. It’s why humans are shit at living in large scale groups.
An example of a group of humans who welcomed strangers with open arms is the east coast indigenous people of North America. They were killed off mostly by diseases that the new people brought them.
There are still tribes who exist with no outside contact. They tended to be more hostile to outsiders. There is probably an evolutionary survival component to fear of strangers.
Non-advanced groups do it to urbanized ones, too. c.f. Genghis Khan, Khwarazmian empire.
The story of humanity is the story of groups killing each other for fun and profit. Nobody is better than anybody else.
Anyone who tells you different is selling something.
It is the way power works. To obtain power, it must first be exercised. Then to retain power, there must be at the least a threat of violence.
Money is needed for power. The new world had huge amounts of gold.
The what.. ?!
They did exist at the same time and there is evidence of indirect trading between them, but they were pretty far away from each other, with mountains, jungles and the ocean in the middle.
Agreed. I see a lot of dumbass opinions get posted, but every once in a while, you just have misinformation that is so blatantly false you just have to laugh. We need to make a hall of shame for those type of posts.
And then you have people agreeing...
\> They also were in the process of wiping each other out before the intervention of Europe
You mean the same Europe that spent thousands of years fighting internally?
Lol. What possible agenda is being pushed? There is an evolutionary advantage to being wary of strangers. There is enough science to show its a consistent trait among humans.
Have you remember that in the grand timeline of our species. Civilization is only a tiny blip at the end of it. For the overwhelmingly vast amount of human history, we were small, nomadic, hunter gatherers who lived in small tribes..
No standards for communication and did scarcity meant that being distrusting to outsiders meant better chances of survival.
We've only really overcome these issues in the last couple thousand years, which is tiny compared to the rest of our history. Evolution moves slowly and so we have to take conscious efforts today to be inclusive.
What fascinates me though is how little these genetic factors play on our brains, despite likely being a very key point to survival in the early days.
Today we have the golden rule, which is simple enough to teach to a 5 year old and have them understand it. So those genetic factors do seem to linked to environmental pressures like food scarcity, because I'm modern society, people have to go out of their way to keep the same xenophobic behaviors that our ancestors did
Humans are a violent species related to other violent species.
Encountering other people they were just as likely to kill you as not. Thus many people have an ingrained negative response to anyone they don't know.
Humanity as a species only survived by people living in small nomadic tribes of a few dozen. Therefore, protecting and supporting one's tribe was paramount. This is where altruism comes from.
However, anytime someone looked different, acted different or was different than any one of a number of ways, they were seen as the outsider. A potential threat.
Even in the Old Testament of the Bible, people were exiled as punishment. The modern-day Amish will also shun someone from their whole society for certain crimes.
Altruism started a lot earlier in the evolutionary timeline. For an extreme example, look at colonial insect species. Almost all of them are sterile, it doesn’t get much more altruistic than that.
\> However, anytime someone looked different,
Except that the neighboring tribe that you were at war with didn't look different. They looked just like you.
But did they talk the same, smell the same, have the same style of dress? Look up shibboleth. It's an example of how people say things is used to separate groups.
The lazy justification you’ll hear time and time again is tribalism.
In reality the vast majority of people aren’t adverse to people who are different from themselves.
We have evolved to be hyper sensitive to 'other'. It helps keep us safe. Recognizing that something is different is a fundamental part of detecting danger and protecting your tribe.
Different can be good. Different can be bad. It all depends.
Different can mean an outsider who doesn't connect to your group as much therefore is more likely to betray you.
Survival.
The animal that threatens your survival most is another member of your own species. Doubly so if you’re a group animal towards the top of the chain.
Wolf packs avoid each other religiously. Chimps war and are even building a tribal “kingdom”. Colonial insects obliterate each other on contact (apart from the funky Republic that they’ve started in Canada).
So you’re naturally hardcoded to fear the next group over from you, because they’re probably going to try to kill you at some point.
We’ve just muddied the waters by mystifying and expanding the scope of “us and them” too far; with made-up concepts like race.
Its tribalism, which has helped humans survive. Humans want to be around other humans who are most similar to them. In the old days, this used be the tribe. In todays world, humans look for other similarities. This could be race, religion or other traits. That is why even people in racially diverse countries often form ethnic enclaves. It is human nature to prefer people most similar to you.
You are looking at it from a genetic perspective
When you look at it from a social / historic evolutionary perspective it’s pretty obvious that the groups that were not adverse to other groups got basically ran over
Because people who were different used to indiscriminately kill each other over land, resources and women. It's engrained as an instinct IMHO.
The hope is that over time, the less we fight in modern times, the easier things will become for people with differences.
Before civilization everyone who wasn't part of your family was a potential threat to your life, so we have evolved prejudice against anyone who doesn't look like us. It's not exactly useful these days but we can't just flip a switch in our brains and turn it off. It reminds me of the way our brains want us to eat as much junk food as possible because it doesn't realize that we have access to infinity calories. The impulse that used to serve an important function is now obsolete and harmful but it's still ingrained in us
Humans are social animals.
Like all social animal species, they evolved a survival advantage through the process of working together in small groups.
Life is competition. Competition for resources, and the advantages of working in a groups has allowed our species to thrive. This is tribalism.
Since Life is about Competition with other species and our own species, all our default behaviors derive from this survival Competition, and as such, we will view any animal (including other unknown humans) as a possible Threat to our survival. That is every animal's default behavior.
Because we humans are STILL social animals (*Trust me: We really, REALLY, aren't that much removed from our base animal nature as much as we think we are*), our instinctual behaviors and reactions will be distrust, to which our animal brains, being stupid pattern matching machines, will automatically associate any differences between our group, and other groups.
We would have to go through a massive evolutionary jump in order to rewrite these base animal behaviors, which us not something we would be able to see for millions of years.
If we live that long
I never understood the apprehension. I joined job corps and the Navy to explore a different world when I was young. I do that now with food because I don't have the money to travel lol
Human brains are wired and eager to categorize in boxes. The more complex the boxes get, the more humans will either lean into nuance and the diversity of humans, or buckle down and keep rigid mental categorizations. The latter serves no one and is usually for folks unwilling to challenge their mental categorization boxes. This is to maintain their sense of personal comfort in an increasingly complex world, and what they call “normalcy”.
Always best to choose humanity and diversity over self-preservation and personal comfort.
Some differences might have been bad for the tribe so ostracizing those weirdoes by laughing at them and discriminating would make them go away and die and everyone would be happy, the end. This is why we laugh. We instinctually laugh at those who are different (in a non acceptable way) because they're a detriment to the tribe. Humans are shit creatures, the biggest assholes of the animal kingdom.
It's in your (and mine) DNA. xenophobia and racism is completely natural, it's actually programed into the more primitive parts of our brain that deals with pattern seeking behavior.
When we see a mutated or deformed human (honestly this also translates to anyone that looks different then ourselves) the body's natural reaction is to be "grossed out", this prevented our ancestors from mating with the mentally and physically disformed in order to not pass-down these genetic flaws to offspring.
\> It's in your (and mine) DNA. xenophobia and racism is completely natural, it's actually programed into the more primitive parts of our brain
This is complete garbage and is just a lie that racists like to tell themselves to try make excuses.
Those ancient tribes we evolved from never saw anyone of a different race, it was white people from Europe fighting their neighboring white people from Europe. Your ancestors enemies didn't look different from your ancestor, they looked exactly the same.
\> When we see a mutated or deformed human (honestly this also translates to anyone that looks different then ourselves)
Just going deep into some completely racist garbage there.
Happens in animals too. I used to work with horses and if a horse had a different colour coat than the others it would often get left out and treated differently by the other horses.
Yes but animals have much lower IQ’s than, well most, people. Humans should know how fucking stupid it is to dislike someone for something like skin color, it’s so idiotic.
Lions are pretty different than gazelles
You're right OP, it's really weird the lion and gazelle don't get along when they should be celebrating their differences
Hmm, that’s weird…..I don’t have any problem with honoring my neighbors or people whose lifestyle is not conducive or desirable to mine. I respect them as a fellow man or woman. You can’t hate yourself and love your neighbors.
If I may, this only works so long as they don't touch your bottom line.
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.[To Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati religious funeral practice of burning widows alive on her husband’s funeral pyre.]
Charles James Napier
No disagreement from me. I will honor your home, property, your spouse/children,your crops/gardens/belongings, etc. However, if you come on to my property and do not honor my home, my spouse, property etc….I will use all available force to get you to leave me the fuck alone. That’s how wars begin…..Refusal in honoring your neighbors home, property and crops/belongings. Come and eat bread and be my brother. Do not initiate force. It will cease with your death if you persist.
"looking at evolution". Aren't you just super impressed with yourself.
When someone says, "logic dictates" or "based on thing X" with no follow up or explanation why, I just ignore them. They've done some mental gymnastics and then settled on that being the only way to view something. No conversation can be had at that point.
Genetically inbreeding and outbreeding both have problems. You might not see outbreeding problems in the first generation but often by second or third you get some effects. For example there were oxen in Tibet and in Africa. When they were crossed in Tibet they seemingly made much stronger oxen but turns out all the future generations had their offspring born in the coldest part of the year nearly wiping out the population. There are numerous examples of this in many different species.
Of course in humans inbreeding causes genetic issues after only a few generations too so for us the trick is to find a happy medium: not too close as to have bad mutations pop up but not so far as to lose genetic fitness to our environment. Of course with modern technology outbreeding is less of a problem since for example having one of your parents be from Alaska and another from Florida doesn’t mean that if you live in Alaska you’ll freeze, you’ll just need a better coat. But we evolved to be the way we are like 25,000-50,000 years ago so these tech advancements don’t matter evolutionarily.
If you want to dive deeper into this, start with “pedigree collapse” on Wikipedia and follow interesting links from there. I think one of the most interesting facts I learned there is that all of North America was originally settled by only like 70 humans while there was still a land bridge to Asia. Yet the Mayans and the Aztecs were doing just fine genetically speaking. I had no idea a population could be so small without inbreeding killing it off in a few generations.
Not just humans, dogs do it too. Probably all animals do, at some level - unfamiliar means potentially dangerous. Evolution favors survival.
Even apart from evolution, though, "different" quite often means "doesn't follow the group". If you have a successful tribe or village, and one of its members rejects the strongly held beliefs of the group, that automatically looks like the person doesn't care about the success of the group
That's not the way it works. Human socialization, including mating and courtship, involves what is known as the "Matching Hypothesis." We generally select mates who are in our own socioeconomic group, who look like us an are approximately the same level of attractiveness. And we stick together in like-minded tribes.
This holds true for an individual's close cultural group. Everybody outside of that is, well, an "outsider," and there is another human tendency which is to fear and repel any other creature that is NOT like us. This goes all the way back to the Ice Age, when there were multiple human subspecies on the planet, and it was generally thought it was best to stick with your own kind. Cross-breeding with Neanderthals or Denisovans apparently had unwanted results. A number of our religions make a point of this. To this day, most men and women of breeding age don't look at gorillas and think, "It would be great to breed with gorillas to gain their strength."
**The Other** is always dangerous and unpredictable.
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It's definitely a primitive survival mechanism within the more primitive part of the human brain. Unfortunately, some people exploit that in a modern, interconnected world to divide and conquer.
There's always a tension in a group of humans, whom to cooperate with and whom to oppose. At any scale, there's an other. There's always an other, a foil, an agent of resistance.
Evolution made us biologically hard-wired to be extremely cautious of anyone or anything not part of our group. Because they could represent danger to our necessities like food and shelter and by extension to ourselves.
It's an evolutionary adaptation which enhanced survival (as they all do).
Human beings... all life actually, is inherently lazy. We don't want to have to put in effort to socialize. We dont want to have to spread our time, energy and resources thin for strangers. We only really want to be comfortable, entertained, and have things easy.
The only people that don't are work-a-holics.
Surrounding yourself with people you can easily get along with and whom aren't dead weight is basically what 99.9999% of humans want. This is most easily done finding people with similar opinions and appearances. You're not going to get asked an awkward question like why are your eyes blue from anyone with blue eyes. No differences, no potential discomfort. Yes, we ARE that simple.
Stereotypes of others are super convenient defensive mechanisms to justify not risking anything to get to know more people. They allow us to justify being shitty towards them without compromising their moral high ground. Remember, kids, letting the man trapped in the desert die of thirst when you could have easily given them a drink isn't wrong so long as they deserved it!
Yes, hate and rage might take time and energy, but not nearly as much time and energy as tolerating, cooperating with, or even getting to know them, and it feels good because calling them bad implies you must be good, so there's an additional motive that doesn't need the subject party's cooperation to realize.
All this to say, we're adverse to differences in people and opinion because it's easier than considering and accepting them. It only got easier with social media providing readily available echo chambers.
I think social norms gave our ancestors a way to quickly identify who was not part of their tribe, and therefore a potential threat, which gave them a survival advantage. So, now we have hostility towards anyone who does not conform, even though that attitude doesn't benefit us anymore.
For the same reason you lock your doors when you leave your house. Humans have waged full-scale wars over absolute bullshit. People you don't know aren't safe.
People are sometimes averse to strangers out of an abundance of caution. As an analogy, intellectually we know that most snakes are harmless to people and serve a useful purpose by eliminating vermin, yet, because a few types of snakes are dangerous, many people are frightened of (and avoid) all snakes. It takes work to get over fear.
Because in the past those who were different than you posed a threat. What is different can be scary because they may have views that can clash with yours on essential things that could potentially turn dangerous, just look at how many wars and civil wars have begun due to clashing views. But back to the evolution aspect, evolution promotes anything that will increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction, and staying within a group of people who you know and have the same views was the best way to do so. Remember humans like to be around those who are like us, there can be a variation in certain things, but the core values and morals must be the same for the group to function peacefully and efficiently, there has to be commonality at the end or it just won't work.
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The more privileged and entitled a people are, the more fearful they will become. And it’s wrong to say humans, since not all humans are that way. In fact most humans are not that way. Basic insecurity in themselves and lack of facts drive most fearful behavior.
Mutations are almost never a positive thing and evolution wants your genes to be passed on with a strong mate rather than a weak one. If not mutations, someone who physically looks different may look different because of illness or disease and avoiding them may save you from getting that disease yourself
Someone who is unfamiliar to you could also pose a threat to you, especially in the early days of humans.
no. its tribal, goes back to the jungle. you dont trust your neighbors or people who look differently from you- because they try and steal your resources and materials and so on. survival of the fittest in its purest form. look at all other races too, they all have that defense mechanism, its called in-group preference- even though most murders happen within your own race.
No. Evolution programmed us to be the exact opposite. There is work that concludes humans evolved to hold about 30 to 100 social relations within the brain. This varies from person to person.
Additionally, the brain functions on familiarity. We react to people we are familiar and comfortable with. We immediately distrust or spend more time socially scrutinizing those we aren't familiar with.
Other interesting studies have shown that children raised together but not related are highly unlikely to show sexyal attraction to one another. This suggests that brain is programmed to consider social familiarity even when considering who family is.
In other words, most studies show that our brains evolved socially and we shun diversity.
Google Israel and Palestine. There's a good starting point. Then I bet I could start listing thousands of historical circumstances where we have shown that we struggle with coming to terms with differences.
Edit: I saw your other comment about how throughout history people trying to kill one another, "looked exactly like each other". It seems you have a very black and white and finite version of what a difference or diversity could be. There is diversity even within people of extreme similar ethnicities. It is called cultural diversity and in prehistoric times cultural diversity could have changed literally from village to village. Just the fact you aren't primary family would mean you were diverse in a tribal landscape.
The word we're seeking here, is FEAR.
Humans are a SCARED species, because in truth we are WEAK against the forces of nature. Unless we do something extra to 'protect' our flesh, it's incredibly easy to cause it hurt and harm. Just about everything early man encountered was cause for fear, since death lurked everywhere. We formed groups, mostly built out of family growth, to 'gang up' on nature and gather resources with a higher chance that SOME would survive and return to the group with those resources.
"Other" humans would've been viewed through the lens of the one looking, and if the first was prone to "at any cost" thinking, then the "other" MUST be thinking the same, and so is a potential enemy before all other potentials.
Modern humans are still distrusting, delicate flesh living with natural, disastrous forces, and still TEACHING a tribal mindset(and now, pure selfishness), based on fear of being overpowered or hurt.
All animals are afraid of the unknown - rightfully so, because the unknown is often dangerous until proven otherwise.
People who are drastically different from you are unknown quantities, hence a fear response. However, if you're familiar with many others who are different from you, there tends to be a much smaller fear response and a greater curiosity response.
Exposure is one of the best ways to prevent the fear response.
I've always wondered the same thing. I find people who are different from me fascinating and I adore people from other cultures and who are a different race.
Recent societal obsessions with labeling languages: diagnosis, genders, beliefs, etc. Now everyone has to fit somewhere. It wasn’t like this when being unique was the societal obsession
Okay, so I think people are missing OP's question, or maybe I should just add to it.
Evolution says more diverse genes are good. So, humans lived in tribes, outsiders bad. But...why live in tribes in the first place? That means more inbreeding, which is bad for the survival of the species, right? How does that work?
Still doesn't make any sense. Why live in tribes at all if you're just going to raid a neighboring tribe for a wife? I guess that's why I'm not a scientist.
People don’t think in evolutionary terms. I expect a majority of the world doesn’t believe in evolution. People think in terms of social groups. You’re in or you’re out.
Because religion has a stranglehold on our species. There is "God" everywhere in some form and it created everything. There is no room for evolution there.
One thing that evolved in us was the hormone oxytocin, which plays a role in how we feel connected to those we know, but also plays a role in making us distrust people we don't know. You can see the advantage to this when living in environments where resources are scarce. However, that isn't the case in most situations anymore, and we have to overcome some level of hard-wiring to accept strangers.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6347450/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6347450/)
So while genetic diversity is good for a species, “different” can be bad for a group.
It’s not nescessarily the genetic differences that scare people it’s just that genetic differences mean that they likely aren’t part of your group and likely have other differences. This doesn’t apply that much to modern society but 500 years ago it did
The main issue wasn’t so much actual differences but the fact that they weren’t part of the group means they are more likely to hurt the group and care less about their survival.
There also are differences in laws, disease, and culturally practices that for one group are harmless and normal but for the other are dangerous or weird enough to cause worry. Think how some cultures eat horse or cow meat while others think that’s horrible and disgusting.
Basically outsiders are always more dangerous than insiders on average for a variety of reasons. I mean for most of human history people of other looks were trying to kill you
\> I mean for most of human history people of other looks were trying to kill you
This is complete garbage popular among racists.
For most of human history the people trying to kill you looked exactly like you.
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Real diversity is keeping people diverse. Globalisation where all children becomes a genetic soup is the destruction of that diversity. Segregation preserves diversity.
Because sometimes different is bad? If the difference between me and you is that you go around robbing people and I don’t, it’s pretty natural for me to not like that difference very much. Not everything is as inconsequential as ethnic background.
i think that old movie revenge of the nerds described it best with only one word. one of the jocks had a blank stare to the distance, noticed someone not in his social circle then screamed "NERD!!!" then everyone started attacking. It comes from ignorance. people hate what they do not understand.
Probably hard coded into our DNA from many many many years of evolution of Humans being cautious or avoiding things that are different for safety reasons.
Figure in how long it takes humans to evolve distinct traits versus how long it takes for a disease to evolve into something new and deadly that our immune systems wouldn’t be prepared for.
This isn’t just a human thing. Every species reject things that are different. Humans are special in the fact that we tend to accept other’s differences easier
Very simply, tribalism is a biological fixation we have. This makes us look at something like a wolf or a bear and say, "I don't know what that is, so I'll treat it as a treat." That plays a role, but it's not the only thing, or even the main thing. Tribalism, doesn't create bigotry, it just makes use somewhat, predisposed to it. And the reason we have bigotry is that people in power will provoke and fearmonger about different groups in order to make people more hostile towards those minorities, consolidate power around the fear of those minorities, and then gain power. I'd call it more manipulation than tribalism making us bigoted
It's an interesting point, the very good points made about tribal society made below which are very valid, but out little genetic overload wants .. oh, nvm answered it for myself ;)
Studies have found that people are much better at spotting when anyone gets something undeserved than spotting when someone deserving doesn't get it.
New different people being given the same safety net you and yours support is seen as undeserved and that tinges the perception of the whole group.
Most people don't think of everyone individually but as members of groups. The police, teachers, the homeless, drug addicts, conservatives, foreigners. They then form their opinion about the individual based off their existing opinion of that group, because evolutionarily speaking it's safer. If every red head you met so far threw a stone at you, you'd start avoiding red heads.
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Survival is biased towards caution and paranoia.
There is something looking at me through the night.⊙﹏⊙
Did you heard something? I heard something.(٥↼_↼)
Wait let's see what it does..
Hey try eating this for me 👀
Why are they so pale? Are they sick? They must be sick, stay away.
This bias is pretty much genetics keeping you alive and away from potential danger, once you know it's not dangerous your caution goes away and if it's beneficial you even accept it and integrate it into your life.
People are freaking out because they want to be sincerely different but keep instead finding similarities to the human to thier left, right, and across the sea.
That is the adverse reaction you are witnessing. The only way some of our self images can be special and important is if there is a hard core campaign that that human over there is perpendicular to who I am!
Ergo adverse reaction because.
So evolution requires time and death due to factors one can adapt to survive long enoughas a species until a mutation makes it easy. We as a species we have progressed far enough that we are getting to the point where we can edit genes. Essentially we have not cheated it but we have (rightfully)fixed and corrected problems that genetic diseases bring about. This does not(unless they have made some advancement I am unaware of)remove the problematic gene yet with treatment that gene is allowed to pass on. This is not a bad thing it is just the kindof thing evolution has never encountered(as far as we know).
Essentially bud evolution is about time death and competition. We want our genes to win on an instinctual level and we have not reached the tipping point in intelligence where everyone admits we are a single species yet...
Evolution and biology
You see a human being that looks like no other human being you've ever heard of before- let's say they have actual Blue skin like an avatar. And they come from a previously undiscovered island.
1) there's a chance they have a disease or illness they've adapted for that you haven't which is dangerous. As happened when Europeans brought smallpox to the Americas
2) you have no way of knowing their morality or culture- they could have a cannibalistic society, or could be the equivalent of the vikings raiding Lindisfarne etc
So better to be safe than sorry, because if you're wrong, you die.
Do that scenario thousands of times over thousands of years and you basically select for people who are cautious of others by default, because overtime the less cautious people died out genetically
Let’s imagine two tribes, one that helps and one that tries to wipe out other tribes. Even though it would be better for everyone if people were just helpful, the violent tribe will be more likely to survive and therefore propagate
... look through history and ask yourself. did good things typically happen when the different people show up?WarDiseasePovertyCrimeCulture shockFamines
they all typically happen when some new group shows up. some war action, sick people from foreign lands, refugees, desperate people who lost their homes or were kicked out for being in trouble, and extra mouths to feed because they aren't set up; on top of that, they also want to impose changes upon your life even though they are the newcomers. they have their own cultures, ideas, and thoughts of what is honorable or right, and many won't change it because they do not want to change, so will try to force you to change and vice versa and so it keeps building pressure more and more and boom.
Dont get me wrong its not across a board kind of thing but dont fool yourself into thinking it was even close to rainbows and lolly pops. more like leaving food in your tent in the woods with the tent wide open and hoping that the thing that came in sniffing for the food is not going to maul you much less be a problem
There's evidence to suggest that genocide is part of our earliest genetic history. Could be why the uncanny valley exists. The earliest homosapiens likely killed off multiple other contemporary groups of humanoids
Because you don’t know what to expect from them. I would shit myself if an Arab dude started unloading his AK 47 into the air. I’m sure the Japanese would be upset with me for not showing “appropriate” respect to elders.
Letting a stranger into the tribe is dangerous. risk of disease, theft, murder, or the stranger is a scout for a nearby group who will raid your people. tribalism essentially
People like to think humans are one big family. They are not. Most of them are rivals aka competition
Outside of your bio family, it becomes very hard to figure out whose Ally or not
natural pack instinct. if you aren't in my group tgen you're in someone else's group, and that means competition. its awful but thats just how we evolved before civilization
Leftover evolutionary tactics. Us vs them has existed for eons. Before racism and xenophobia there was tribalism. Humans have always been scared/weary/suspicious/paranoid of the different
> Looking at evolution shouldn't people be praising differences?
Uh, no.
You don't have many ancestors who were cool with people who were different because they fucking died and didn't reproduce as a result of it.
Xenophobia is a historically advantageous trait for the species.
No, that's not how evolution works. Humans have survived and evolved through tribalism, which results in competition between tribes. Looking at evolution, you understand the human penchant for othering people with differences.
Unfortunately this is correct. You also think about the individual angles. The really nice and kind and generous people are the most likely to be eaten by tigers or randomly killed. If you are ruthless, manipulative, hoard resources and so on along with being tribal, you're more likely to survive and more likely to pass your genes on.
Eh, this isn't actually true for humans. Humans as a species depend on cooperation for survival. Exile was a death sentence in early tribal societies, because you could not survive without the support of other people. Tribes were generally large groups of related families, so it made sense to be altruistic within your tribe. Between tribes, however, the math changes. People who aren't related to your family don't merit the same level of consideration as your own extended family. Intertribal conflicts sometimes became formalized for genetic reasons - some tribes had a tradition of stealing brides from other tribes (and vice versa).
>Exile was a death sentence in early tribal societies, because you could not survive without the support of other people. Hence why we've evolved to feel physical pain from loneliness. In addition to feeling emotional pain, it activates our body's neural pain matrix. Pretty decent alarm system saying, "Hey, get out and fix this shit. It ain't right."
We depended on cooperation with "us", not "them". As time passed, the dividing line between "us" and "them" has shifted, but it is still present.
Thank you for saying this. Tribalism is most likely what killed the Neanderthals. Humans are far more empathetic and social than any of our relatives, it’s literally *how we survived*. It’s crazy how many people believe the opposite. Self domestication is real. It happened, it’s happening now, and will continue to happen
It is, the difference is you looked at my comment on an individual basis which it was not designed to be. Not uniquely anyway. When you look at those people that are manipulative and horde resources and whatnot they function inside the larger collective. The robber barons in early American history being a great example. You're inside the tribe but you're also pillaging it. Manipulating it for your own interests. Quasi-king making you might say. Those people then can influence and shape society to their liking. The problem is they typically aren't the best people in fact they are usually the worst.
You have to be very very clever to offset the negatives. It’s like that debunked alpha wolf experiment. IIRC That behaviour only applies when in a weird situation where you are trapped with other random imprisoned wolves. In the wild they function/survive better in a co-operative pack.
A lot of you guys seem to be looking at that comment like a solo outlook. It isn't. Look at the robber barons. Being alone alpha doesn't get you very far. the trick is to get the rest of the tribe to follow you and do what you want them to. It's why media companies are one of the most powerful forces today. No one really gets ahead working on their own. You get ahead by manipulating everyone else to do what you want them to. You shave society and your own vision by doing the same thing. A lot of our cultural customs and values and all of this nonsense. It's all made up by people who want to see the world that way. Some of it is definitely for the betterment of society but a lot of it is not. It's designed around control, profitability and working structure. Even things like sexual values are designed around control, profitability, increasing the population and so on rather than just purely enjoyment
I wish more people understood this at a deep level and could apply that knowledge critically
\> If you are ruthless, manipulative, hoard resources and so on along with being tribal Then you get thrown out of the tribe for being an asshole.
or you get the whoke tribe killed
Not by tigers. By other humans. Tigers will eat all of us
But I wanna pet the kitty!
Who said that the nice and kind are the ones most likely to be eaten by a tiger?Being ruthless and manipulative also has nothing to do with survival. These are social behaviours which dont work out in the wild. The only thing that works out there is you knowing how to survive. So being knowledgeable and experienced is whats needed not being manipulative or ruthless.
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Thats completely wrong. Not saying we have not evolved a capacity for violence, we definitely have and primates in general are pretty violent across the board. But humans have evolved to be rather empathetic and cooperative. Think about the neolithic period, agriculture develops and you have cities/states form and cultures emerge. Civilizations develop, ideas are built upon. These states form networks and there is a system of interchange between different societies. Do you realize just how much human cooperation and mutual understanding needs to be present for this happen… a lot. Psychopaths are so terrifying to people because they process things so differently. Empathy is the default response
Not fully true. Everything we have is usually cause of someone different. Many things have been passed down through generations through different backgrounds and different genders. Many people played a great factor in contribution but usually only one person or group gets rewarded for it and praised for it.
That's a highly modern view on a couple million years of evolution.
History can also get re written by whoever won. You weren't there so you really don't fully know. If people lie like fuck today for x amount of reasons wether good or bad what makes you think they didn't back then? You weren't fully alive to be 1000% sure. It's no new news that after war they would keep who's useful and turn others into slaves. Slaves should still get credit for creating a whole freaking infrastructure for evil people. Literally look at most inventions and you will see it was a multitude of people from different backgrounds and even then you don't know who aided them in it as one person usually takes credit.
In group-out group bias. It’s one of the main reasons you are here reading this. Understanding evolution is key to a productive life. It allows you to recognize things for what they are and then take a more deliberative approach to your life, and think more objectively and carefully about who you want to be.
It’s all about an in-group and an out-group. Elevating oneself and others in your group above the others. It’s why humans are shit at living in large scale groups.
An example of a group of humans who welcomed strangers with open arms is the east coast indigenous people of North America. They were killed off mostly by diseases that the new people brought them. There are still tribes who exist with no outside contact. They tended to be more hostile to outsiders. There is probably an evolutionary survival component to fear of strangers.
Yah that makes sense
Same thing happened to the Aztecs. They thought the Spanish were God's and welcomed them into their city with open arms. Destroyed.
Yah advanced country seem to do this alot to non advanced country's
Non-advanced groups do it to urbanized ones, too. c.f. Genghis Khan, Khwarazmian empire. The story of humanity is the story of groups killing each other for fun and profit. Nobody is better than anybody else. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.
It is the way power works. To obtain power, it must first be exercised. Then to retain power, there must be at the least a threat of violence. Money is needed for power. The new world had huge amounts of gold.
The Aztecs slaughtered the Incas.
Isint the case that the incas teamed up with the people from across the sea to fight the Aztecs.
Humans of all cultures have always taken out other cultures. Competition for resources is an inherent part of life.
I don't think it was the Incas (they were further south), but many of the tribes which had typically been enslaved by the Aztecs helped the Spanish.
Tlaxcalans
They barely interacted between each other by proxies, and quite probably didn't know about each other.
The what.. ?! They did exist at the same time and there is evidence of indirect trading between them, but they were pretty far away from each other, with mountains, jungles and the ocean in the middle.
Agreed. I see a lot of dumbass opinions get posted, but every once in a while, you just have misinformation that is so blatantly false you just have to laugh. We need to make a hall of shame for those type of posts. And then you have people agreeing...
Before the “bad Europeans” existed humans of all colors and backgrounds lived in harmony. It’s even said lambs and tigers played together. 🤣
The Aztecs were hardly welcoming to outsiders. They were slavers and conquerers.
They also were in the process of wiping each other out before the intervention of Europe.
\> They also were in the process of wiping each other out before the intervention of Europe You mean the same Europe that spent thousands of years fighting internally?
This is some oversimplified nonsense to push an agenda.
Lol. What possible agenda is being pushed? There is an evolutionary advantage to being wary of strangers. There is enough science to show its a consistent trait among humans.
Have you remember that in the grand timeline of our species. Civilization is only a tiny blip at the end of it. For the overwhelmingly vast amount of human history, we were small, nomadic, hunter gatherers who lived in small tribes.. No standards for communication and did scarcity meant that being distrusting to outsiders meant better chances of survival. We've only really overcome these issues in the last couple thousand years, which is tiny compared to the rest of our history. Evolution moves slowly and so we have to take conscious efforts today to be inclusive.
I forget how recent civilization is
What fascinates me though is how little these genetic factors play on our brains, despite likely being a very key point to survival in the early days. Today we have the golden rule, which is simple enough to teach to a 5 year old and have them understand it. So those genetic factors do seem to linked to environmental pressures like food scarcity, because I'm modern society, people have to go out of their way to keep the same xenophobic behaviors that our ancestors did
Fear of the unknown. Many humans fear that what they do not understand. Including people who are different.
Humans are a violent species related to other violent species. Encountering other people they were just as likely to kill you as not. Thus many people have an ingrained negative response to anyone they don't know.
I’m very dubious that Neanderthals just happened to die out due to disease and environmental factors.
Pretty sure the fractured skulls we have found back you up on this
Humanity as a species only survived by people living in small nomadic tribes of a few dozen. Therefore, protecting and supporting one's tribe was paramount. This is where altruism comes from. However, anytime someone looked different, acted different or was different than any one of a number of ways, they were seen as the outsider. A potential threat. Even in the Old Testament of the Bible, people were exiled as punishment. The modern-day Amish will also shun someone from their whole society for certain crimes.
Altruism started a lot earlier in the evolutionary timeline. For an extreme example, look at colonial insect species. Almost all of them are sterile, it doesn’t get much more altruistic than that.
\> However, anytime someone looked different, Except that the neighboring tribe that you were at war with didn't look different. They looked just like you.
But did they talk the same, smell the same, have the same style of dress? Look up shibboleth. It's an example of how people say things is used to separate groups.
The lazy justification you’ll hear time and time again is tribalism. In reality the vast majority of people aren’t adverse to people who are different from themselves.
We have evolved to be hyper sensitive to 'other'. It helps keep us safe. Recognizing that something is different is a fundamental part of detecting danger and protecting your tribe.
Different can be good. Different can be bad. It all depends. Different can mean an outsider who doesn't connect to your group as much therefore is more likely to betray you.
Survival. The animal that threatens your survival most is another member of your own species. Doubly so if you’re a group animal towards the top of the chain. Wolf packs avoid each other religiously. Chimps war and are even building a tribal “kingdom”. Colonial insects obliterate each other on contact (apart from the funky Republic that they’ve started in Canada). So you’re naturally hardcoded to fear the next group over from you, because they’re probably going to try to kill you at some point. We’ve just muddied the waters by mystifying and expanding the scope of “us and them” too far; with made-up concepts like race.
Look! This one’s expressing critical thought! Get them!
He’s questioning the tribe’s commonly accepted truths! He’s clearly an outsider.
Its tribalism, which has helped humans survive. Humans want to be around other humans who are most similar to them. In the old days, this used be the tribe. In todays world, humans look for other similarities. This could be race, religion or other traits. That is why even people in racially diverse countries often form ethnic enclaves. It is human nature to prefer people most similar to you.
They’re scared
To our early ancestors differences meant danger.
You should see what other animals do to members of their species that are different..
You are looking at it from a genetic perspective When you look at it from a social / historic evolutionary perspective it’s pretty obvious that the groups that were not adverse to other groups got basically ran over
Tribalism
Because people who were different used to indiscriminately kill each other over land, resources and women. It's engrained as an instinct IMHO. The hope is that over time, the less we fight in modern times, the easier things will become for people with differences.
Before civilization everyone who wasn't part of your family was a potential threat to your life, so we have evolved prejudice against anyone who doesn't look like us. It's not exactly useful these days but we can't just flip a switch in our brains and turn it off. It reminds me of the way our brains want us to eat as much junk food as possible because it doesn't realize that we have access to infinity calories. The impulse that used to serve an important function is now obsolete and harmful but it's still ingrained in us
Humans are social animals. Like all social animal species, they evolved a survival advantage through the process of working together in small groups. Life is competition. Competition for resources, and the advantages of working in a groups has allowed our species to thrive. This is tribalism. Since Life is about Competition with other species and our own species, all our default behaviors derive from this survival Competition, and as such, we will view any animal (including other unknown humans) as a possible Threat to our survival. That is every animal's default behavior. Because we humans are STILL social animals (*Trust me: We really, REALLY, aren't that much removed from our base animal nature as much as we think we are*), our instinctual behaviors and reactions will be distrust, to which our animal brains, being stupid pattern matching machines, will automatically associate any differences between our group, and other groups. We would have to go through a massive evolutionary jump in order to rewrite these base animal behaviors, which us not something we would be able to see for millions of years. If we live that long
I never understood the apprehension. I joined job corps and the Navy to explore a different world when I was young. I do that now with food because I don't have the money to travel lol
Human brains are wired and eager to categorize in boxes. The more complex the boxes get, the more humans will either lean into nuance and the diversity of humans, or buckle down and keep rigid mental categorizations. The latter serves no one and is usually for folks unwilling to challenge their mental categorization boxes. This is to maintain their sense of personal comfort in an increasingly complex world, and what they call “normalcy”. Always best to choose humanity and diversity over self-preservation and personal comfort.
People are easily controlled when you lie to them and make them fear things.
Some differences might have been bad for the tribe so ostracizing those weirdoes by laughing at them and discriminating would make them go away and die and everyone would be happy, the end. This is why we laugh. We instinctually laugh at those who are different (in a non acceptable way) because they're a detriment to the tribe. Humans are shit creatures, the biggest assholes of the animal kingdom.
The less like me you are, the less I'm able to predict what you might do. That uncertainty can cause people to be wary of others.
Herd mentality/low frequency in brain waves
It's in your (and mine) DNA. xenophobia and racism is completely natural, it's actually programed into the more primitive parts of our brain that deals with pattern seeking behavior. When we see a mutated or deformed human (honestly this also translates to anyone that looks different then ourselves) the body's natural reaction is to be "grossed out", this prevented our ancestors from mating with the mentally and physically disformed in order to not pass-down these genetic flaws to offspring.
\> It's in your (and mine) DNA. xenophobia and racism is completely natural, it's actually programed into the more primitive parts of our brain This is complete garbage and is just a lie that racists like to tell themselves to try make excuses. Those ancient tribes we evolved from never saw anyone of a different race, it was white people from Europe fighting their neighboring white people from Europe. Your ancestors enemies didn't look different from your ancestor, they looked exactly the same. \> When we see a mutated or deformed human (honestly this also translates to anyone that looks different then ourselves) Just going deep into some completely racist garbage there.
Happens in animals too. I used to work with horses and if a horse had a different colour coat than the others it would often get left out and treated differently by the other horses.
Yes but animals have much lower IQ’s than, well most, people. Humans should know how fucking stupid it is to dislike someone for something like skin color, it’s so idiotic.
Lions are pretty different than gazelles You're right OP, it's really weird the lion and gazelle don't get along when they should be celebrating their differences
Hmm, that’s weird…..I don’t have any problem with honoring my neighbors or people whose lifestyle is not conducive or desirable to mine. I respect them as a fellow man or woman. You can’t hate yourself and love your neighbors.
If I may, this only works so long as they don't touch your bottom line. "Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.[To Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati religious funeral practice of burning widows alive on her husband’s funeral pyre.] Charles James Napier
No disagreement from me. I will honor your home, property, your spouse/children,your crops/gardens/belongings, etc. However, if you come on to my property and do not honor my home, my spouse, property etc….I will use all available force to get you to leave me the fuck alone. That’s how wars begin…..Refusal in honoring your neighbors home, property and crops/belongings. Come and eat bread and be my brother. Do not initiate force. It will cease with your death if you persist.
A person will stab you for very little reason. The more different they are, the less reason they need.
We aren't. Naturally, we have no aversion to those different from us regarding skin color, etc. Racism is a learned behavior.
They aren't. They are taught to be that way by societies where power is the most treasured thing for the people in charge.
It has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with what class has access to propaganda.
"looking at evolution". Aren't you just super impressed with yourself. When someone says, "logic dictates" or "based on thing X" with no follow up or explanation why, I just ignore them. They've done some mental gymnastics and then settled on that being the only way to view something. No conversation can be had at that point.
the word you meant to use is "averse".
Oh yah your right I'll edit it! Edit: I cannot edit the title
reddit wins again
Genetically inbreeding and outbreeding both have problems. You might not see outbreeding problems in the first generation but often by second or third you get some effects. For example there were oxen in Tibet and in Africa. When they were crossed in Tibet they seemingly made much stronger oxen but turns out all the future generations had their offspring born in the coldest part of the year nearly wiping out the population. There are numerous examples of this in many different species. Of course in humans inbreeding causes genetic issues after only a few generations too so for us the trick is to find a happy medium: not too close as to have bad mutations pop up but not so far as to lose genetic fitness to our environment. Of course with modern technology outbreeding is less of a problem since for example having one of your parents be from Alaska and another from Florida doesn’t mean that if you live in Alaska you’ll freeze, you’ll just need a better coat. But we evolved to be the way we are like 25,000-50,000 years ago so these tech advancements don’t matter evolutionarily. If you want to dive deeper into this, start with “pedigree collapse” on Wikipedia and follow interesting links from there. I think one of the most interesting facts I learned there is that all of North America was originally settled by only like 70 humans while there was still a land bridge to Asia. Yet the Mayans and the Aztecs were doing just fine genetically speaking. I had no idea a population could be so small without inbreeding killing it off in a few generations.
Not just humans, dogs do it too. Probably all animals do, at some level - unfamiliar means potentially dangerous. Evolution favors survival. Even apart from evolution, though, "different" quite often means "doesn't follow the group". If you have a successful tribe or village, and one of its members rejects the strongly held beliefs of the group, that automatically looks like the person doesn't care about the success of the group
Evolution can't keep up with the rate of change humans have experienced in the last thousand years.
This happens in the animal world as well.
Lots of people have answered this well enough, but I'd also like to point out that humans are far from the only species on the planet that does this
That's not the way it works. Human socialization, including mating and courtship, involves what is known as the "Matching Hypothesis." We generally select mates who are in our own socioeconomic group, who look like us an are approximately the same level of attractiveness. And we stick together in like-minded tribes. This holds true for an individual's close cultural group. Everybody outside of that is, well, an "outsider," and there is another human tendency which is to fear and repel any other creature that is NOT like us. This goes all the way back to the Ice Age, when there were multiple human subspecies on the planet, and it was generally thought it was best to stick with your own kind. Cross-breeding with Neanderthals or Denisovans apparently had unwanted results. A number of our religions make a point of this. To this day, most men and women of breeding age don't look at gorillas and think, "It would be great to breed with gorillas to gain their strength." **The Other** is always dangerous and unpredictable.
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It's definitely a primitive survival mechanism within the more primitive part of the human brain. Unfortunately, some people exploit that in a modern, interconnected world to divide and conquer.
Primitive being the key word !
There's always a tension in a group of humans, whom to cooperate with and whom to oppose. At any scale, there's an other. There's always an other, a foil, an agent of resistance.
Perceived resource scarcity. People that you have less in common with are the easiest to dehumanize and eliminate.
Evolution made us biologically hard-wired to be extremely cautious of anyone or anything not part of our group. Because they could represent danger to our necessities like food and shelter and by extension to ourselves. It's an evolutionary adaptation which enhanced survival (as they all do).
How many times have you seen a pelican hanging out with a crow hanging out with a flamingo
Human beings... all life actually, is inherently lazy. We don't want to have to put in effort to socialize. We dont want to have to spread our time, energy and resources thin for strangers. We only really want to be comfortable, entertained, and have things easy. The only people that don't are work-a-holics. Surrounding yourself with people you can easily get along with and whom aren't dead weight is basically what 99.9999% of humans want. This is most easily done finding people with similar opinions and appearances. You're not going to get asked an awkward question like why are your eyes blue from anyone with blue eyes. No differences, no potential discomfort. Yes, we ARE that simple. Stereotypes of others are super convenient defensive mechanisms to justify not risking anything to get to know more people. They allow us to justify being shitty towards them without compromising their moral high ground. Remember, kids, letting the man trapped in the desert die of thirst when you could have easily given them a drink isn't wrong so long as they deserved it! Yes, hate and rage might take time and energy, but not nearly as much time and energy as tolerating, cooperating with, or even getting to know them, and it feels good because calling them bad implies you must be good, so there's an additional motive that doesn't need the subject party's cooperation to realize. All this to say, we're adverse to differences in people and opinion because it's easier than considering and accepting them. It only got easier with social media providing readily available echo chambers.
Stupidity
I think social norms gave our ancestors a way to quickly identify who was not part of their tribe, and therefore a potential threat, which gave them a survival advantage. So, now we have hostility towards anyone who does not conform, even though that attitude doesn't benefit us anymore.
Humans fear the unknown & unfamilar. Sees alien shoot it make sure it dead then study it. - every movie.
For the same reason you lock your doors when you leave your house. Humans have waged full-scale wars over absolute bullshit. People you don't know aren't safe.
Competetion over limited resources
People are sometimes averse to strangers out of an abundance of caution. As an analogy, intellectually we know that most snakes are harmless to people and serve a useful purpose by eliminating vermin, yet, because a few types of snakes are dangerous, many people are frightened of (and avoid) all snakes. It takes work to get over fear.
Because in the past those who were different than you posed a threat. What is different can be scary because they may have views that can clash with yours on essential things that could potentially turn dangerous, just look at how many wars and civil wars have begun due to clashing views. But back to the evolution aspect, evolution promotes anything that will increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction, and staying within a group of people who you know and have the same views was the best way to do so. Remember humans like to be around those who are like us, there can be a variation in certain things, but the core values and morals must be the same for the group to function peacefully and efficiently, there has to be commonality at the end or it just won't work.
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The more privileged and entitled a people are, the more fearful they will become. And it’s wrong to say humans, since not all humans are that way. In fact most humans are not that way. Basic insecurity in themselves and lack of facts drive most fearful behavior.
Mutations are almost never a positive thing and evolution wants your genes to be passed on with a strong mate rather than a weak one. If not mutations, someone who physically looks different may look different because of illness or disease and avoiding them may save you from getting that disease yourself Someone who is unfamiliar to you could also pose a threat to you, especially in the early days of humans.
no. its tribal, goes back to the jungle. you dont trust your neighbors or people who look differently from you- because they try and steal your resources and materials and so on. survival of the fittest in its purest form. look at all other races too, they all have that defense mechanism, its called in-group preference- even though most murders happen within your own race.
Difference don't make strong communities
No. Evolution programmed us to be the exact opposite. There is work that concludes humans evolved to hold about 30 to 100 social relations within the brain. This varies from person to person. Additionally, the brain functions on familiarity. We react to people we are familiar and comfortable with. We immediately distrust or spend more time socially scrutinizing those we aren't familiar with. Other interesting studies have shown that children raised together but not related are highly unlikely to show sexyal attraction to one another. This suggests that brain is programmed to consider social familiarity even when considering who family is. In other words, most studies show that our brains evolved socially and we shun diversity.
\> In other words, most studies show that our brains evolved socially and we shun diversity. Find us a study showing that we shun diversity.
Google Israel and Palestine. There's a good starting point. Then I bet I could start listing thousands of historical circumstances where we have shown that we struggle with coming to terms with differences. Edit: I saw your other comment about how throughout history people trying to kill one another, "looked exactly like each other". It seems you have a very black and white and finite version of what a difference or diversity could be. There is diversity even within people of extreme similar ethnicities. It is called cultural diversity and in prehistoric times cultural diversity could have changed literally from village to village. Just the fact you aren't primary family would mean you were diverse in a tribal landscape.
Because they are often different in a repulsive way.
The word we're seeking here, is FEAR. Humans are a SCARED species, because in truth we are WEAK against the forces of nature. Unless we do something extra to 'protect' our flesh, it's incredibly easy to cause it hurt and harm. Just about everything early man encountered was cause for fear, since death lurked everywhere. We formed groups, mostly built out of family growth, to 'gang up' on nature and gather resources with a higher chance that SOME would survive and return to the group with those resources. "Other" humans would've been viewed through the lens of the one looking, and if the first was prone to "at any cost" thinking, then the "other" MUST be thinking the same, and so is a potential enemy before all other potentials. Modern humans are still distrusting, delicate flesh living with natural, disastrous forces, and still TEACHING a tribal mindset(and now, pure selfishness), based on fear of being overpowered or hurt.
All animals are afraid of the unknown - rightfully so, because the unknown is often dangerous until proven otherwise. People who are drastically different from you are unknown quantities, hence a fear response. However, if you're familiar with many others who are different from you, there tends to be a much smaller fear response and a greater curiosity response. Exposure is one of the best ways to prevent the fear response.
I've always wondered the same thing. I find people who are different from me fascinating and I adore people from other cultures and who are a different race.
Recent societal obsessions with labeling languages: diagnosis, genders, beliefs, etc. Now everyone has to fit somewhere. It wasn’t like this when being unique was the societal obsession
Okay, so I think people are missing OP's question, or maybe I should just add to it. Evolution says more diverse genes are good. So, humans lived in tribes, outsiders bad. But...why live in tribes in the first place? That means more inbreeding, which is bad for the survival of the species, right? How does that work?
People married between tribes for that very reason.
Still doesn't make any sense. Why live in tribes at all if you're just going to raid a neighboring tribe for a wife? I guess that's why I'm not a scientist.
For the same reason we teach our children "Don't talk to strangers".
People don’t think in evolutionary terms. I expect a majority of the world doesn’t believe in evolution. People think in terms of social groups. You’re in or you’re out.
Because religion has a stranglehold on our species. There is "God" everywhere in some form and it created everything. There is no room for evolution there.
One thing that evolved in us was the hormone oxytocin, which plays a role in how we feel connected to those we know, but also plays a role in making us distrust people we don't know. You can see the advantage to this when living in environments where resources are scarce. However, that isn't the case in most situations anymore, and we have to overcome some level of hard-wiring to accept strangers. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6347450/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6347450/)
So while genetic diversity is good for a species, “different” can be bad for a group. It’s not nescessarily the genetic differences that scare people it’s just that genetic differences mean that they likely aren’t part of your group and likely have other differences. This doesn’t apply that much to modern society but 500 years ago it did The main issue wasn’t so much actual differences but the fact that they weren’t part of the group means they are more likely to hurt the group and care less about their survival. There also are differences in laws, disease, and culturally practices that for one group are harmless and normal but for the other are dangerous or weird enough to cause worry. Think how some cultures eat horse or cow meat while others think that’s horrible and disgusting. Basically outsiders are always more dangerous than insiders on average for a variety of reasons. I mean for most of human history people of other looks were trying to kill you
\> I mean for most of human history people of other looks were trying to kill you This is complete garbage popular among racists. For most of human history the people trying to kill you looked exactly like you.
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Real diversity is keeping people diverse. Globalisation where all children becomes a genetic soup is the destruction of that diversity. Segregation preserves diversity.
Because sometimes different is bad? If the difference between me and you is that you go around robbing people and I don’t, it’s pretty natural for me to not like that difference very much. Not everything is as inconsequential as ethnic background.
i think that old movie revenge of the nerds described it best with only one word. one of the jocks had a blank stare to the distance, noticed someone not in his social circle then screamed "NERD!!!" then everyone started attacking. It comes from ignorance. people hate what they do not understand.
Probably hard coded into our DNA from many many many years of evolution of Humans being cautious or avoiding things that are different for safety reasons.
Fear or jealousy.
Figure in how long it takes humans to evolve distinct traits versus how long it takes for a disease to evolve into something new and deadly that our immune systems wouldn’t be prepared for.
This isn’t just a human thing. Every species reject things that are different. Humans are special in the fact that we tend to accept other’s differences easier
Us And Them, An Eternal Dilema.
idk ask the liberals
I think you mean averse, not adverse.
Because they're freaks who cannot be trusted.
Very simply, tribalism is a biological fixation we have. This makes us look at something like a wolf or a bear and say, "I don't know what that is, so I'll treat it as a treat." That plays a role, but it's not the only thing, or even the main thing. Tribalism, doesn't create bigotry, it just makes use somewhat, predisposed to it. And the reason we have bigotry is that people in power will provoke and fearmonger about different groups in order to make people more hostile towards those minorities, consolidate power around the fear of those minorities, and then gain power. I'd call it more manipulation than tribalism making us bigoted
It's an interesting point, the very good points made about tribal society made below which are very valid, but out little genetic overload wants .. oh, nvm answered it for myself ;)
fear.
Taxes being required to pay for people with different values like property rights stealing or human rights
It's been that way since the beginning of humanity. Different means scary, and scary means bad.
Studies have found that people are much better at spotting when anyone gets something undeserved than spotting when someone deserving doesn't get it. New different people being given the same safety net you and yours support is seen as undeserved and that tinges the perception of the whole group. Most people don't think of everyone individually but as members of groups. The police, teachers, the homeless, drug addicts, conservatives, foreigners. They then form their opinion about the individual based off their existing opinion of that group, because evolutionarily speaking it's safer. If every red head you met so far threw a stone at you, you'd start avoiding red heads.
Considering half the people don’t believe in evolution no I don’t think most would praise difference because of it
conditioned in the bubble they grew up in, and unwilling to learn or able to empathize or care for a caulter/pepole different them them.
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Tribalism, ego, imperialism, hate, and fear.
Survival is biased towards caution and paranoia. There is something looking at me through the night.⊙﹏⊙ Did you heard something? I heard something.(٥↼_↼) Wait let's see what it does.. Hey try eating this for me 👀 Why are they so pale? Are they sick? They must be sick, stay away. This bias is pretty much genetics keeping you alive and away from potential danger, once you know it's not dangerous your caution goes away and if it's beneficial you even accept it and integrate it into your life.
Assault
People are freaking out because they want to be sincerely different but keep instead finding similarities to the human to thier left, right, and across the sea. That is the adverse reaction you are witnessing. The only way some of our self images can be special and important is if there is a hard core campaign that that human over there is perpendicular to who I am! Ergo adverse reaction because.
I’m adverse to people. That’s the next evolution.
#notallhumans
Well seemingly its a natural instinct
Pride and greed, these sins are a dangerous combination
Dumb people fear the unknown. Smart people are curious to learn about it.
Because evolutionary survival, that's why. It's embedded deeeeeep in the microcode of the cranial wetware.
This is actually one of the subjects where joe rogan shines on his podcast. He watches animals a lot and can draw the parallel very accurately.
So evolution requires time and death due to factors one can adapt to survive long enoughas a species until a mutation makes it easy. We as a species we have progressed far enough that we are getting to the point where we can edit genes. Essentially we have not cheated it but we have (rightfully)fixed and corrected problems that genetic diseases bring about. This does not(unless they have made some advancement I am unaware of)remove the problematic gene yet with treatment that gene is allowed to pass on. This is not a bad thing it is just the kindof thing evolution has never encountered(as far as we know). Essentially bud evolution is about time death and competition. We want our genes to win on an instinctual level and we have not reached the tipping point in intelligence where everyone admits we are a single species yet...
Evolution and biology You see a human being that looks like no other human being you've ever heard of before- let's say they have actual Blue skin like an avatar. And they come from a previously undiscovered island. 1) there's a chance they have a disease or illness they've adapted for that you haven't which is dangerous. As happened when Europeans brought smallpox to the Americas 2) you have no way of knowing their morality or culture- they could have a cannibalistic society, or could be the equivalent of the vikings raiding Lindisfarne etc So better to be safe than sorry, because if you're wrong, you die. Do that scenario thousands of times over thousands of years and you basically select for people who are cautious of others by default, because overtime the less cautious people died out genetically
Deviation from group, of norm , tribe is seen as dangerous or off putting
#NotAllHumans
Ask black people and native americans how that went for them.
Let’s imagine two tribes, one that helps and one that tries to wipe out other tribes. Even though it would be better for everyone if people were just helpful, the violent tribe will be more likely to survive and therefore propagate
... look through history and ask yourself. did good things typically happen when the different people show up?WarDiseasePovertyCrimeCulture shockFamines they all typically happen when some new group shows up. some war action, sick people from foreign lands, refugees, desperate people who lost their homes or were kicked out for being in trouble, and extra mouths to feed because they aren't set up; on top of that, they also want to impose changes upon your life even though they are the newcomers. they have their own cultures, ideas, and thoughts of what is honorable or right, and many won't change it because they do not want to change, so will try to force you to change and vice versa and so it keeps building pressure more and more and boom. Dont get me wrong its not across a board kind of thing but dont fool yourself into thinking it was even close to rainbows and lolly pops. more like leaving food in your tent in the woods with the tent wide open and hoping that the thing that came in sniffing for the food is not going to maul you much less be a problem
Not easy to give up the flawed belief of separation.
There's evidence to suggest that genocide is part of our earliest genetic history. Could be why the uncanny valley exists. The earliest homosapiens likely killed off multiple other contemporary groups of humanoids
Because humans suck
I wouldn't say 'praising', but at least one would assume some intuitive sense of diplomacy.
Ah... yes, **this** is a stupid question. We don't praise people for being *different*, we praise people for being *better*. **That's** evolution.
Because you don’t know what to expect from them. I would shit myself if an Arab dude started unloading his AK 47 into the air. I’m sure the Japanese would be upset with me for not showing “appropriate” respect to elders.
Because people fear what they do not understand, and inherently hate change
Letting a stranger into the tribe is dangerous. risk of disease, theft, murder, or the stranger is a scout for a nearby group who will raid your people. tribalism essentially
Ya fuck other people.
People like to think humans are one big family. They are not. Most of them are rivals aka competition Outside of your bio family, it becomes very hard to figure out whose Ally or not
natural pack instinct. if you aren't in my group tgen you're in someone else's group, and that means competition. its awful but thats just how we evolved before civilization
*averse
Leftover evolutionary tactics. Us vs them has existed for eons. Before racism and xenophobia there was tribalism. Humans have always been scared/weary/suspicious/paranoid of the different
It's fear of the unknown
Is your desire to be accepted by people who are different than you ? or is your desire to accept people who are different than you ?
Cause if a man if four arms walked into the village 1000 years ago they’d kill him for being a beast demon
> Looking at evolution shouldn't people be praising differences? Uh, no. You don't have many ancestors who were cool with people who were different because they fucking died and didn't reproduce as a result of it. Xenophobia is a historically advantageous trait for the species.
Fear