We are indeed hard-wired to want it all. We choose—generally—to override the firmware and establish civilization. That doesn’t mean the firmware isn’t still in place, only that we are running different software on top of it: the (thin) veneer of civilization.
Much has been written about what it takes to remove that veneer. Lord of the Flies by William Golding describes a hypothetical situation in which a ship carrying a bunch of British schoolboys goes down. No adults survive, so the island the reach is populated only by them. It’s not pretty.
Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee looks at chimp behavior as unveneered human interactions. It pretty much mirrors the way what passes for certain human “civilizations”have acted from time to time. Think: the Inquisition, Crusades, Nazis, large parts of the current arab world. The behaviors are aberrant not because they are unnatural, but because they run counter to whatever it was that caused us to establish societies in the first place.
Recall Kipling’s observation that “nature is red in tooth and claw.”
And there’s the problem. It is anti-natural to be civilized. But without a cohesive civilization, humanity dies off rapidly. Small groups of us aren’t going to have enough food to survive. There are many things in a jungle that you can eat to stay alive. There are also many things in the jungle that can eat you to stay alive.
brilliant, Justin - as always
We are indeed hard-wired to want it all. We choose—generally—to override the firmware and establish civilization. That doesn’t mean the firmware isn’t still in place, only that we are running different software on top of it: the (thin) veneer of civilization.
Much has been written about what it takes to remove that veneer. Lord of the Flies by William Golding describes a hypothetical situation in which a ship carrying a bunch of British schoolboys goes down. No adults survive, so the island the reach is populated only by them. It’s not pretty.
Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee looks at chimp behavior as unveneered human interactions. It pretty much mirrors the way what passes for certain human “civilizations”have acted from time to time. Think: the Inquisition, Crusades, Nazis, large parts of the current arab world. The behaviors are aberrant not because they are unnatural, but because they run counter to whatever it was that caused us to establish societies in the first place.
Recall Kipling’s observation that “nature is red in tooth and claw.”
And there’s the problem. It is anti-natural to be civilized. But without a cohesive civilization, humanity dies off rapidly. Small groups of us aren’t going to have enough food to survive. There are many things in a jungle that you can eat to stay alive. There are also many things in the jungle that can eat you to stay alive.