From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sat 22 May 2004 - 19:56:39 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Henson" <hkhenson@rogers.com>
> >Did the US go to war with either Canada or Mexico during the Great
> >Depression in the 30's or during any of our lesser economic downturns,
> >such as during recessions?
>
> Origin of the trait from when our ancestors lived in little tribes means
> that it is a really hard to see exactly what activated the mechanisms in
> the modern world. One thing probably does work, being attacked generally
> switches a population (originally a small tribe) into war mode.
Anthropologist Mark pagel says,
Despite the fact we managed to overcome our major differencies, many of
us do live still in small groups, family, a few friends and a good pair of
neigh-
bours, that is all.
We could easily have a hundred or more friends but we choose to invest
in a limited group of people. We choose for the tied bonds which we can
trust rather than for the many loose contacts.
Xenophibia, and thus racism is a natural response to all what is alien,
where
racism of people on the bias of their skin colour is only one facet of our
mis-
trust of strangers.
Culture Pagel says, is maintained by keeping up the diversity among people,
and thus, basically to mistrust the other. If we wouldn 't have any
advantage
to keep those differences in place, we should get rid of them a long time
ago.
But we didn 't !
The advantage to keep strangers at a certain distance, is to get more trust
and altruism and loyalty within the own group.
But IMO, that doesn 't mean that " groupselection " is now the major
dimension of cultural evolution, we choose individualistly still our
friends,
that a certain facet of groupselection is on the blink, I don 't doubt that
it plays a role behind the scenes, but it all boils down to the
individual....
Regards,
Kenneth
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