In light of recent fossil discoveries in Morocco. it now seems true that our noble and esteemed species of fur-challenged, poo-flinging super-apes is at least 300,000 years old. By most scientific accounts, we spent almost all of that vast time evolving to live in small, remarkably egalitarian, social groups of typically about 200 or so individuals.
Now, there once upon a time was a popular political idea, nearly universally accepted among Europeans for roughly 2,000 years, that if you traveled far enough back in human history, you would come to a time when humans did not live in groups, but rather struggled to survive as lone and lawless individuals. We now know that idea was ridiculous.
Not only is the evidence conclusive that our own species was always a social animal living in groups, but it is nearly just as conclusive that the parents of our species, and their parents, and their parents -- and so forth -- were all social species going back for up to 20 million years.
All of which almost necessarily means that we have spent "considerable" time evolving, adapting, to cooperate with, and even to depend on each other, for our survival.
It goes even further than that. Much further. Yet to keep this OP as short as possible, I'll pretty much leave the overwhelming evidence that we are fundamentally social animals at that for now.
For all that can be said in support of the notion that we are an inherently social species it is absolutely crucial here to recognize that we are also -- at the same time -- a just as inherently individualist species! I have few clues as to how or why we also evolved as individualistic animals, but I think it quite obvious that we did.
Now something quite strange to our past began happening about 5,500 years ago, first on the sweltering plains of Sumer. We started to organize ourselves into complex societies with largely hereditary hierarchies. Things we now call, "civilizations".
Gawds! That was such a mistake in so very many ways! Ways too many to get into here, except for one, an extraordinarily significant one: We traded egalitarianism in order to have social, political, and economic classes. In the most basic sense, just two classes: Elites and commoners, rulers and ruled, rich and poor.
Ever since, our noble and esteemed species of super-adept spear-chuckers has been embroiled in nearly constant -- although often purposely obscured and hidden -- "war" between the two classes. It runs through all of civilized history -- through every civilization -- like a powerful, mostly subterranean river that so many of us do not know is there until one day it boils up in violent rebellions, great revolutions, causing even the most blind to gain the sight to see it.
Typically, the elites have on their side wealth, power, authority, armies, governments, and so forth. The commoners, on the other hand, have the masses, the great majority of people. But the odds are always stacked in favor of the elites for they also typically have the two greatest advantages of all: Clear insight into what's going on, combined with the means to obscure and hide those realities from most of us largely via "smoke and mirrors".
This is not a conspiracy theory. I do not mean to imply the elites are always or even usually united in some vast and secretive plot. On the contrary, they are usually split into two or even more factions and interests within any given society. Yet, none of that should we allow to obscure the most basic of social, political, and economic divisions, that between elites and non-elites, or commoners.
Certainly not all, but so much of human history and politics can only be thoroughly and accurately understood in light of that conflict.
Comments? Questions? Derisive snorts? Cute pics of your children or grandchildren? Touching memories of the very first time you stuck a snowball down the back of my shirt?
Now, there once upon a time was a popular political idea, nearly universally accepted among Europeans for roughly 2,000 years, that if you traveled far enough back in human history, you would come to a time when humans did not live in groups, but rather struggled to survive as lone and lawless individuals. We now know that idea was ridiculous.
Not only is the evidence conclusive that our own species was always a social animal living in groups, but it is nearly just as conclusive that the parents of our species, and their parents, and their parents -- and so forth -- were all social species going back for up to 20 million years.
All of which almost necessarily means that we have spent "considerable" time evolving, adapting, to cooperate with, and even to depend on each other, for our survival.
It goes even further than that. Much further. Yet to keep this OP as short as possible, I'll pretty much leave the overwhelming evidence that we are fundamentally social animals at that for now.
For all that can be said in support of the notion that we are an inherently social species it is absolutely crucial here to recognize that we are also -- at the same time -- a just as inherently individualist species! I have few clues as to how or why we also evolved as individualistic animals, but I think it quite obvious that we did.
Now something quite strange to our past began happening about 5,500 years ago, first on the sweltering plains of Sumer. We started to organize ourselves into complex societies with largely hereditary hierarchies. Things we now call, "civilizations".
Gawds! That was such a mistake in so very many ways! Ways too many to get into here, except for one, an extraordinarily significant one: We traded egalitarianism in order to have social, political, and economic classes. In the most basic sense, just two classes: Elites and commoners, rulers and ruled, rich and poor.
Ever since, our noble and esteemed species of super-adept spear-chuckers has been embroiled in nearly constant -- although often purposely obscured and hidden -- "war" between the two classes. It runs through all of civilized history -- through every civilization -- like a powerful, mostly subterranean river that so many of us do not know is there until one day it boils up in violent rebellions, great revolutions, causing even the most blind to gain the sight to see it.
Typically, the elites have on their side wealth, power, authority, armies, governments, and so forth. The commoners, on the other hand, have the masses, the great majority of people. But the odds are always stacked in favor of the elites for they also typically have the two greatest advantages of all: Clear insight into what's going on, combined with the means to obscure and hide those realities from most of us largely via "smoke and mirrors".
This is not a conspiracy theory. I do not mean to imply the elites are always or even usually united in some vast and secretive plot. On the contrary, they are usually split into two or even more factions and interests within any given society. Yet, none of that should we allow to obscure the most basic of social, political, and economic divisions, that between elites and non-elites, or commoners.
Certainly not all, but so much of human history and politics can only be thoroughly and accurately understood in light of that conflict.
Comments? Questions? Derisive snorts? Cute pics of your children or grandchildren? Touching memories of the very first time you stuck a snowball down the back of my shirt?
