This has nothing to do with the main thread of my posts, it is something i thought of while in the shower.
Say someone kills someone close to me. I naturally want to kill him. But It's not enough that he dies. I want him to know it was me who killed him, and that I killed him because he hurt me. (see: The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe)
Why is that? If it were merely to punish him it shouldn't matter. If it were merely to prevent him from hurting others it shouldn't matter. Furthermore, killing him won't bring my loved one back. And two wrongs don't make a right.
So why is revenge so inextricably tied into our nature?
This is putting social punishment aside. Social punishment acts to discourage others from similar actions and/or to rehabilitate the perpetrator so they can contribute to society.
That is a separate subject. Why do individuals seek revenge?
Because we want others to feel the same emotions towards us that we do towards them. If i hate someone, and they don't hate me back, there is a net loss of emotional energy. Try hating someone who doesn't know sometime. It's exhausting. Now try hating someone who hates you back. Much more satisfying. Your antagonism towards each other almost seems to create energy.
So when we hate someone who doesn't hate us we seek to balance the checkbook. Say again that someone kills someone close to me. Not because they're out to get me (in that case revenge is easily explained) but because of some random confluence of unfortunate events. Like a random mugging gone wrong. I want to hurt the person who killed my loved one. Not only that I want them to know why I am hurting them. Why? So they will hate me as much as I hate them. So they can feel some of the same pain that I have felt. Once they hate you back it's easy to feel good about killing them.
Hence the hippy-dippy adage that has been passed down through the ages "hatred begets more hatred" or alternately "only love can conquer hate" are literally true. When you hate someone, you are going to put pressure on them to hate you back to keep things even. When you love someone, you are putting pressure on them to love you back.
This explains a variety of behaviors. Such as when people find out that someone they don't like is in love with them. Their natural response is a mild disgust (mild hatred) to put a downward pressure on the person to stop loving them. This is also why love and hate are the two strongest human emotions. They are self reinforcing. Once someone starts loving or hating someone who feels the same towards them it is self-sustaining, like two mirrors reflecting each other.
Note: last time someone went around loving everyone he got nailed to a tree, please don't try it.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Critical Mass
Did the problems that modern society faces exist in the time of small bands of hunters living a nomadic lifestyle? Yes, but they were not nearly as acute. Every increase in human density has exacerbated social problems. Dunbar's number has already been mentioned. Human beings are only capable of dealing with about 150 individuals. So what happens when social density forces us into contact with hundreds or thousands of people?
We group.
We start filing people into groups and treating that entire group as if it was one individual. These groups can be "coworkers", "delivery guys" what have you. Or, very commonly, they are things like "Black people", "Jews" etc...
I think you can see the problem.
Forcing humans to deal with an overload of people causes racism, sexism and other social bias. It's not really our fault, it's a psychological handicap.
That's only one problem, there are many others such as resource distribution, ossification of social hierarchies etc. Every problem is exacerbated when you add more people. So why do we continue to cram more and more people in?
Expansion is in our genes. Like individuals, societies that were most effective at spreading themselves the fastest squeezed out those that didn't. What we were left with were a few social systems that were great at expanding. They eventually coalesced into city-states, then nations, then the mega-nations of today (the European Union). How much bigger can they go? Can the whole world be encompassed by the winner?
Monopolies are bad, competition forces good customer service.
Centralization is inefficient at the scale humanity has taken it to. Unfortunately it is the natural result of our evolutionary drive for expansion. How do we solve this problem?
Ideally we return to city-states, a very efficient method of grouping, but I have no idea how to do that.
We group.
We start filing people into groups and treating that entire group as if it was one individual. These groups can be "coworkers", "delivery guys" what have you. Or, very commonly, they are things like "Black people", "Jews" etc...
I think you can see the problem.
Forcing humans to deal with an overload of people causes racism, sexism and other social bias. It's not really our fault, it's a psychological handicap.
That's only one problem, there are many others such as resource distribution, ossification of social hierarchies etc. Every problem is exacerbated when you add more people. So why do we continue to cram more and more people in?
Expansion is in our genes. Like individuals, societies that were most effective at spreading themselves the fastest squeezed out those that didn't. What we were left with were a few social systems that were great at expanding. They eventually coalesced into city-states, then nations, then the mega-nations of today (the European Union). How much bigger can they go? Can the whole world be encompassed by the winner?
Monopolies are bad, competition forces good customer service.
Centralization is inefficient at the scale humanity has taken it to. Unfortunately it is the natural result of our evolutionary drive for expansion. How do we solve this problem?
Ideally we return to city-states, a very efficient method of grouping, but I have no idea how to do that.
Slide Rule
So what causes society to drift towards the left or right?
Economic prosperity. Hard times cause the group to band together to defeat the external foe. Caveman Ugh may be pissed at Caveman Lurg because Lurg stole his favorite mate, but unless they work together to fight off the enemy tribe there aren't going to be any mates at all. In times such as these fear rules. Leaders who promise safety will be much preferred to the ones grumbling about personal freedom.
In times of plenty internal conflicts tend to come to the fore. Everyone is well fed and there is time and excess energy to spend on hierarchal fighting. Leaders who promise to maximize the individual freedom and thus the chance for upward social mobility will win out.
What does this mean in modern times?
During times of economic downturns society will drift towards the utilitarian side. Safety will be the deciding factor in leadership decisions. During economic booms there will be a greater focus on the individual, and individual freedoms will be the deciding factor in leadership decisions.
Now the economy goes in cycles. So too will the left/right drift. The long valuation waves of the economy will coincide with more liberal/more conservative swings of government policy.
Economic prosperity. Hard times cause the group to band together to defeat the external foe. Caveman Ugh may be pissed at Caveman Lurg because Lurg stole his favorite mate, but unless they work together to fight off the enemy tribe there aren't going to be any mates at all. In times such as these fear rules. Leaders who promise safety will be much preferred to the ones grumbling about personal freedom.
In times of plenty internal conflicts tend to come to the fore. Everyone is well fed and there is time and excess energy to spend on hierarchal fighting. Leaders who promise to maximize the individual freedom and thus the chance for upward social mobility will win out.
What does this mean in modern times?
During times of economic downturns society will drift towards the utilitarian side. Safety will be the deciding factor in leadership decisions. During economic booms there will be a greater focus on the individual, and individual freedoms will be the deciding factor in leadership decisions.
Now the economy goes in cycles. So too will the left/right drift. The long valuation waves of the economy will coincide with more liberal/more conservative swings of government policy.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Vector man
First I'd like to clarify my justification of the main drives of humanity.
People seek power in order to broaden their mate selection as well as gather resources for both themselves and their potential offspring. People seek a decrease in conflict in order to ensure the well-being of their offspring.
Men tend towards the former since broad mate selection is the foremost priority of the non-child bearing gender (sowing your seeds across as wide a spectrum as possible). Women tend towards the latter since they are the gender that puts much more energy and risk into childbearing. A man can impregnate hundreds of women. A woman can only have at most perhaps 2 dozen children (there are a few who do more, the world record is something like 33).
Now for something completely different.
I already mentioned that the social contract is constantly changing. It is in a tug of war between the rights of the individual and the efficiency of the group (objectivism vs. utilitarianism).
What happens in a tug of war? Well if the two sides are evenly matched and are diametrically opposed in their vectors of force they cancel each other out. Not so reality. In reality the two sides are always waxing and waning in strength and the two sides are not always pulling exactly 180 degrees apart. This creates a new vector that society moves in. like so:
Forgive my crude MS paint diagram.
What's important here is that society is moving in a direction that no single person is in favor of. Rather the vector is a product of all the different forces pulling society to the right or left. This leaves one with the sense that there is no captain at the helm. This is true. Individuals can be very influential (have more pull), but ultimately no single person can force society onto their personal vector. Great leaders in history generally occur when the movement of society coincides neatly with that particular leaders goals. That is, the vectors were very close already.
People seek power in order to broaden their mate selection as well as gather resources for both themselves and their potential offspring. People seek a decrease in conflict in order to ensure the well-being of their offspring.
Men tend towards the former since broad mate selection is the foremost priority of the non-child bearing gender (sowing your seeds across as wide a spectrum as possible). Women tend towards the latter since they are the gender that puts much more energy and risk into childbearing. A man can impregnate hundreds of women. A woman can only have at most perhaps 2 dozen children (there are a few who do more, the world record is something like 33).
Now for something completely different.
I already mentioned that the social contract is constantly changing. It is in a tug of war between the rights of the individual and the efficiency of the group (objectivism vs. utilitarianism).
What happens in a tug of war? Well if the two sides are evenly matched and are diametrically opposed in their vectors of force they cancel each other out. Not so reality. In reality the two sides are always waxing and waning in strength and the two sides are not always pulling exactly 180 degrees apart. This creates a new vector that society moves in. like so:
Forgive my crude MS paint diagram.
What's important here is that society is moving in a direction that no single person is in favor of. Rather the vector is a product of all the different forces pulling society to the right or left. This leaves one with the sense that there is no captain at the helm. This is true. Individuals can be very influential (have more pull), but ultimately no single person can force society onto their personal vector. Great leaders in history generally occur when the movement of society coincides neatly with that particular leaders goals. That is, the vectors were very close already.
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