Is it possible to form a modern society that can function without external conflict?
From an evolutionary perspective, we are set up to form a bond with those around us for mutual protection and achievement. We are trained to work with each other by necessity, going to great lengths to "fit in" to our immediate social setting. Even today when our social connections with those around us are comparatively irrelevant to our safety and general well-being, we still turn to these basic instincts and introduce massive inefficiencies to the system as our immediate social setting becomes not so immediate in an urban setting. There is not just one group of people that you have to dance for - you have to do the dance a little differently for your friends, your family, your co-workers, and the people you see in the coffee shop every morning.
Many of these social dances could be easily thrown to the wayside by a rational decision from the individual - a whole series of them could be done away with by a single rational decision from the collective. The only possible cost would be psychological. Is that a valid argument against reducing the social strain on the group as a whole? As more and more social demands are contrived as our social networks are forced to grow, is there any choice other than to eventually artificially throw our genetic predispositions out?
It is of course difficult to maintain cohesion in large groups. That which holds together groups at the micro level can hardly work, at least equally as well, at the macro level. What does hold large groups together is a good foreign threat. If we do not reduce (or raise?) the requirements of membership in a modern order to rationality, what else can hold a group numbering in the millions or billions together? An iron fist? A real or perceived external threat is all that keeps us from eventually breaking into tribes, and even then the external problems have to outnumber the internal problems.
So my question is this:
Why are we not giving any thought to the problems presented by the intrinsic instincts that are adverse to uniting so many people under one flag and attending to those, instead looking for patchwork solutions to problems that stem from this basic inability to work in coherent groups numbering over 150*?
* or whatever number, 200, 250, whatever, it's a lot less than 7 billion.
From an evolutionary perspective, we are set up to form a bond with those around us for mutual protection and achievement. We are trained to work with each other by necessity, going to great lengths to "fit in" to our immediate social setting. Even today when our social connections with those around us are comparatively irrelevant to our safety and general well-being, we still turn to these basic instincts and introduce massive inefficiencies to the system as our immediate social setting becomes not so immediate in an urban setting. There is not just one group of people that you have to dance for - you have to do the dance a little differently for your friends, your family, your co-workers, and the people you see in the coffee shop every morning.
Many of these social dances could be easily thrown to the wayside by a rational decision from the individual - a whole series of them could be done away with by a single rational decision from the collective. The only possible cost would be psychological. Is that a valid argument against reducing the social strain on the group as a whole? As more and more social demands are contrived as our social networks are forced to grow, is there any choice other than to eventually artificially throw our genetic predispositions out?
It is of course difficult to maintain cohesion in large groups. That which holds together groups at the micro level can hardly work, at least equally as well, at the macro level. What does hold large groups together is a good foreign threat. If we do not reduce (or raise?) the requirements of membership in a modern order to rationality, what else can hold a group numbering in the millions or billions together? An iron fist? A real or perceived external threat is all that keeps us from eventually breaking into tribes, and even then the external problems have to outnumber the internal problems.
So my question is this:
Why are we not giving any thought to the problems presented by the intrinsic instincts that are adverse to uniting so many people under one flag and attending to those, instead looking for patchwork solutions to problems that stem from this basic inability to work in coherent groups numbering over 150*?
* or whatever number, 200, 250, whatever, it's a lot less than 7 billion.
