> society can't just have people expressing their so called real self and still function in the way it does today. That is a subtly insightful comment. As I a

> society can't just have people expressing their so called real self and still function in the way it does today. That is a subtly insightful comment. As I am doing some self-learning on human history, I. wantes to expound on this point a bit. It is true that one of the primary objectives of societies, communities, etc., is to restrain the individual ostensibly for the greater good. In the modern era, the greater good has become conflated with those who hold power. However, before we broke out of the Malthusian trap, self-actualizing and expressing one's real self could spell doom for a community. In general, risk-averse behavior has been common among all groups that operated along the margins of survival. The sheer challenge of survival in premodern societies always constrained the behavior of the poor. Taboos and social constraints limited experimentation innovation, and self-expression. For example, the role of marriage and infidelity is the reverse of what it is today. Marriage was a contract, not an expression of love. Often, the only way to express true love was through an affair. Also, it explains the taboo on homosexuality. Since infant mortality rates were higher, couples tended to have more children than we do today. If the union didn't produce children, who would farm the next generation? This was a rational reflection of the fact that experimentation increases the variability of results. Greater variability means not only potentially greater gains but more ominously for those at the very margin of survival potentially ruinous losses. A great part of the cultural energy of poor farming societies has always been devoted to suppressing experimentation and self-expression. This repression, in effect, was their substitute for insurance policies. Personal ability and personal choice individual "pursuit of happiness," in the modern sense were suppressed by Taboos and social restrictions that have always been most emphatic among the poor. Such restrictions were usually superseded only in societies with high productivity. This makes me really thankful I was born in the modern era or I'd be doing what my father did, as he would be doing what his father did and so on.