Completely disagree. Anthropologic evidence from the past and knowledge gained by studying current primitive tribes suggest that there was much greater equity in our past.
We’re kinda like in between chimpanzees and bonobos. We started off more like bonobos but as history marches on we become more like chimpanzees.
Because the fact that the majority of civilizations fought and killed each other throughout known history kinda tells me we’ve been at this game for a while now.
And I feel like only in the last 20-30 years have we decided - hey, maybe that’s not so cool anymore?
Perhaps. I mean yeah the history of humanity over the past 2000 years has been brutal. But we go back much farther than that.
I have a real problem with you saying that in the last 20-30 years humanity has chilled out. We’ve got multiple genocides going on, constant religious conflict, land war in Europe. The United States is so fucked I can’t even begin to list the reasons why, and it’s on the brink of some really bad things.
How many people can you kill with a club?
How many people can you kill with a sword?
How many people can you kill with a gun?
How many people can you kill with a cluster bomb?
(Copying my comment on a similar, older post, because I really want to share this info again since I think it’s fascinating:)
The notion that the early formation of societies was based on security rather than empathy is outdated. Compassion has many evolutionary advantages, especially in primate species where offspring are born vulnerable. It’s clearly evident in other primates who live in groups (or ‘societies’), as a driving force of cooperation and group cohesion.
Those papers are both fascinating reads, and I highly recommend them for a deeper understanding of why and how empathy is crucial to our success as a species.
(For a couple of centuries, the narrative has been humans are warlike and that’s what dominated our development, but that’s simply not true. We’ve been that way for the past couple thousand years, but largely not before that. I’ll leave up to the reader what significant ‘development’ coincided with that shift in our overall behaviour.)
Human society has never truly changed. This is literally what our civilization was built on.
Completely disagree. Anthropologic evidence from the past and knowledge gained by studying current primitive tribes suggest that there was much greater equity in our past.
We’re kinda like in between chimpanzees and bonobos. We started off more like bonobos but as history marches on we become more like chimpanzees.
Maybe it comes and goes.
Because the fact that the majority of civilizations fought and killed each other throughout known history kinda tells me we’ve been at this game for a while now.
And I feel like only in the last 20-30 years have we decided - hey, maybe that’s not so cool anymore?
Perhaps. I mean yeah the history of humanity over the past 2000 years has been brutal. But we go back much farther than that.
I have a real problem with you saying that in the last 20-30 years humanity has chilled out. We’ve got multiple genocides going on, constant religious conflict, land war in Europe. The United States is so fucked I can’t even begin to list the reasons why, and it’s on the brink of some really bad things.
How many people can you kill with a club? How many people can you kill with a sword? How many people can you kill with a gun? How many people can you kill with a cluster bomb?
I found “The Better Angels of Our Nature” interesting and well-researched, it changed my opinion on this.
Dude, I’m just trying to sit here and eat some Oreos.
(Copying my comment on a similar, older post, because I really want to share this info again since I think it’s fascinating:)
The notion that the early formation of societies was based on security rather than empathy is outdated. Compassion has many evolutionary advantages, especially in primate species where offspring are born vulnerable. It’s clearly evident in other primates who live in groups (or ‘societies’), as a driving force of cooperation and group cohesion.
Here’s a recent paper (2022) by Penny Spikins, PhD at the University of York, Department of Archaeology, that explores how compassion shaped early human evolution and the formation of societies: The Evolutionary Basis for Human Empathy, Compassion and Generosity.
And here’s another from 2011 by Goetz et al that explores in detail the evolutionary advantages of compassion: Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review.
Those papers are both fascinating reads, and I highly recommend them for a deeper understanding of why and how empathy is crucial to our success as a species.
(For a couple of centuries, the narrative has been humans are warlike and that’s what dominated our development, but that’s simply not true. We’ve been that way for the past couple thousand years, but largely not before that. I’ll leave up to the reader what significant ‘development’ coincided with that shift in our overall behaviour.)
Good points, and great articles. Thank you.