[ExI] Evolutionary psychology and recent selection was trump

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 10:01 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Does anyone want to go to war when they are rich?  Well, historically, I
suppose
> many did, but now it would just hurt trade.  So much interdependency.

I think there's the paradox that being more market-oriented -- even back in
ancient times -- generates more wealth and that can fund militarism. Maybe
I'm cherry picking examples, but ancient Athens was probably the wealthiest
Greek city-state when it started building its empire. (And I mean on a per
capita basis here. Someone pointed out that in absolute wealth, the Persian
empire probably had more overall wealth, but the average Persian subject
was living at a subsistence level compared to average Athenian subject who
was likely living two times above subsistence level. So, in Persia, a tiny
ruling class was fabulously wealthy, but the per capita wealth was small,
but in Athens there's was more distributed wealth and per capita wealth was
much larger, probably double or more above that of the Persian or Spartan,
etc. Cf. Jonah Ober's _The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece_ on the wealth
comparisons.)

> There are some very interesting statistics on genetics and crime which
would likely
> startle everyone in this group.  Plays a small role at best.

I'm not sure how much these play in militarism though. After all, if you
have a population that's well behaved, they might have good genetics in one
sense that makes for higher social cohesion: obedience to authority.
(Presuming there's some genetic control there.) If so, then it just takes
bad policy to send a very cohesive society down a militaristic path. How
so? Most people will obey and you only need a tiny fraction to carry out
actual brutality. There seems to be some data that the average person
anywhere can be trained to obey to kill someone. Sure, there are outliers,
but, again, only a small fraction of the population needs to beat, shoot,
or bomb others. (And bombing is actually one of those things that's so
remote, I'm betting it's far easier to do without much psychological
blockage -- unlike shooting, stabbing, or beating someone.)

This is leaving aside the usual problems with evo psych arguments.

Regards,

Dan
  My latest Kindle book, "The Late Mr. Gurlitt," is free today PDT from:
http://mybook.to/Gurlitt
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