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Permalink Reply by Chris Barrett on May 4, 2011 at 12:39am

this is what i know, and why i think that humans have a great deal of social evolution ahead of them before we change the way we treat each other.  One of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, behave in an almost identical way.  Roving bands of chimpanzees from a particular group hunt down others from different groups. Usually singling out one that is separated from the rest of its troop. Then they chase it down and circle, they beat it until it's exhausted. Then they tear off it's testicles and chew up it's face. If they can't find one from another troop and really worked up sometimes they choose one from their own troop. This behavior is fairly unique to chimpanzees and humans. Oddly our other closest cousin, bonobos, don't behave in  this way at all and are very peaceful, far more likely to mate with one another rather than kill. It seems to me that these traits are common in our evolutionary branch.

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Permalink Reply by Boci Boci Tarka on May 4, 2011 at 3:24am

I'd say because the real or artificially upheld scarcity of resources. The fewer the available resources are, the more people we percieve as competitors.

 

Also, indoctrination plays a big role just like the divisive power of religion. And maybe because our brain can't handle a social circle wider than 150-200 people (this is the number of hunter-gatherer groups humans used to live in in the pre-neolithic age).

 

Anyway, I can imagine a better society where people accept eachother more and cooperate better, but I don't think it will ever be realized.

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