17-10-2023, 02:44 PM
The Leakey foundation. We really are strange,weird creatures. Perhaps eventually we might evolve into being more peaceful & cooperative, & leave violence & war far behind us.
https://leakeyfoundation.org/the-roots-o...ggression/
"Who we think we are matters. For those who believe we are a naturally competitive species, the frequent reports of violence on the nightly news and the Internet are a reflection of our competitive nature. But this essential image of humans as aggressive beings is not correct.
Humans are more often at peace than at war; we cooperate more than we conflict. In fact, there is mounting evidence that cooperation may be acentral facet in explaining our success as a species.On the other hand, this does not mean we are egalitarian, nonviolent pacifists. Human nature is neither simple nor linear. Our core adaptation is one of cooperation, but we can and do compete—a lot—and often use aggression to do so.
Humans can be aggressive and violent and peaceful and cooperative all at the same time; arguing for a natural state of cooperation or a natural state of conflict is missing the boat. But humans sometimes are both aggressive and violent. Why do we see aggression flare up in so many contexts?
One simple answer is that we are highly social and complicated beings—we spend most of our time around other people. Our big brains, imaginative minds, and super complex social lives often cause interpersonal conflict, confusion, and resentment, to which we sometimes (but not always) respond with aggression and violence. We have to negotiate potentially hundreds of social interactions each day. Most of the time this goes well; sometimes it does not. Because the diversity of individual needs and desires do not always gel with social, political, and economic realities, interpersonal conflicts emerge. Across human history, though, more often than not people have found a way to get along (even if it is more a consequence of social pressure than personal desire).
It is very difficult to train humans to fight and kill one another. To do so, we have to tap our immense ability to cooperate with one another, our strong sense of morality and doing good, and combine that with our potential for engaging in aggression and violence. In war, cooperation and conflict are not in opposition, they are reflections of human potentials combined, and manipulated, for political ends. These same patterns could just as likely be harnessed for peace. In anything, our history has shown our ability to go to war, but it also demonstrates an equally or potentially more resilient ability to wage peace.
Albert Einstein once asked us to us to see what is, as opposed to what we already believe to be true. Cooperation and conflict are not opposites, and neither are aggression and peace. We can get a lot farther in our quest to understand being human if we discard these dualisms."
https://leakeyfoundation.org/the-roots-o...ggression/
"Who we think we are matters. For those who believe we are a naturally competitive species, the frequent reports of violence on the nightly news and the Internet are a reflection of our competitive nature. But this essential image of humans as aggressive beings is not correct.
Humans are more often at peace than at war; we cooperate more than we conflict. In fact, there is mounting evidence that cooperation may be acentral facet in explaining our success as a species.On the other hand, this does not mean we are egalitarian, nonviolent pacifists. Human nature is neither simple nor linear. Our core adaptation is one of cooperation, but we can and do compete—a lot—and often use aggression to do so.
Humans can be aggressive and violent and peaceful and cooperative all at the same time; arguing for a natural state of cooperation or a natural state of conflict is missing the boat. But humans sometimes are both aggressive and violent. Why do we see aggression flare up in so many contexts?
One simple answer is that we are highly social and complicated beings—we spend most of our time around other people. Our big brains, imaginative minds, and super complex social lives often cause interpersonal conflict, confusion, and resentment, to which we sometimes (but not always) respond with aggression and violence. We have to negotiate potentially hundreds of social interactions each day. Most of the time this goes well; sometimes it does not. Because the diversity of individual needs and desires do not always gel with social, political, and economic realities, interpersonal conflicts emerge. Across human history, though, more often than not people have found a way to get along (even if it is more a consequence of social pressure than personal desire).
It is very difficult to train humans to fight and kill one another. To do so, we have to tap our immense ability to cooperate with one another, our strong sense of morality and doing good, and combine that with our potential for engaging in aggression and violence. In war, cooperation and conflict are not in opposition, they are reflections of human potentials combined, and manipulated, for political ends. These same patterns could just as likely be harnessed for peace. In anything, our history has shown our ability to go to war, but it also demonstrates an equally or potentially more resilient ability to wage peace.
Albert Einstein once asked us to us to see what is, as opposed to what we already believe to be true. Cooperation and conflict are not opposites, and neither are aggression and peace. We can get a lot farther in our quest to understand being human if we discard these dualisms."
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)