[extropy-chat] Space colony behind the moon?

[Keith Henson]

I seem to have copies of the Azar Gat papers in .pdf if anyone wants them 
by email.  Part II is just as good.

Keith

Part II: Proximate, Subordinate, and Derivative Causes

The interconnected competition over resources and reproduction, surveyed in 
Part I of this study, is the root cause of conflict and fighting in humans 
as in all other animal species. Other causes and expressions of fighting in 
nature, and the motivational and emotional mechanisms associated with them, 
are derivative of, and subordinate to, these primary causes, and originally 
evolved this way in humans as well. This, of course, does not make them any 
less 'real' but only explains their function in the evolution-shaped 
motivational complex, and, thus, how they came to be. It is to these 
'second floor' causes and motivational mechanisms, directly linked to the 
first, that we now turn.

Dominance: rank, power, status, prestige

Among social mammals and primates, higher rank in the group gives improved 
share in communal resources, such as hunting spoils, and better access to 
females. In some species, such as baboons and wolves, rank differences are 
sharp, with the so-called 'alpha' males (and sometimes also females) 
reaping most of the advantages, relative to the other group members. Even 
in those social species, like the chimpanzees, where group relations are 
more egalitarian, 'leadership' positions confer considerable somatic and 
reproductive advantages. For this reason, rank in the group is hotly 
contested among social mammals and social primates. Status rivalry is acute 
and never-ending. It is the strong, fierce, and - among our sophisticated 
cousins, the chimpanzees - also the 'politically' astute, that win status 
by the actual and implied use of force (Goodall 1986; de Waal 1996). 
Rivalry for rank and domination in nature is, then, a proximate means in 
the competition for resources and reproduction.

Closer to the chimpanzees' pattern, human groups in the 'state of nature' . . .