[extropy-chat] so is America fascist yet?

[Keith Henson]

At 03:27 PM 28/01/05 -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote:

snip

>What makes you think that ANY society isn't or is no longer capable of
>being incredibly savage and inhumane to their fellow man?

Under the right conditions, any society can turn vicious.  So what are 
those conditions?  Since the thesis of modern evolutionary biology is that 
all physical and behavioral traits were either directly selected or are a 
side effect of some trait that was selected, a restatement is: what 
recurrent situations in the environment of evolutionary adaption (millions 
of years as hunter gatherers) selected the human traits that in historical 
times are exemplified by WWII?  Or Rwanda.  Or Easter Island?

>You watch
>innocents being beheaded by savages on al Jazeera and you call Bush the 
>fascist?

Yes.

But what Bush is doing is more like the war leader of a tribe of hominids a 
million years ago.  Responding viciously to an attack (9/11) is what one 
little hunter gatherer band did to another.  Since fighting in the EEA was 
(half of the time) suicidal self sacrifice, where the interests of the 
genes and the person diverged, genes built psychological mechanisms that 
shut off rational thinking when activated by war or the need for war.

Thus it isn't hard for an attacked tribe to work themselves up to attack a 
third tribe that had nothing to do with the original attack.  Of course the 
third tribe can be expected to fight back viciously.  In the old days this 
was what ultimately kept the population in check.

So what makes for an unprovoked attack?  In the olden days it was running 
out of game and berries because the tribe had expanded and eaten them 
all.  Now we probably map anticipation of a bleak future into triggering 
the psychological mechanisms that lead to wars.

The whole thing is profoundly depressing.

Keith Henson