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Not so clearly after all. The harm caused by the orders may well be less than the harm caused to the social structures in the group by one or two people disobey
by srl 15y ago
Not so clearly after all. The harm caused by the orders may well be less than the harm caused to the social structures in the group by one or two people disobeying - or by everyone disobeying, and the group needing to somehow select a new authoritarian figure (which usually gets nasty).
- frankydp 15y agoAlso known as war. Which one could argue is not good for the species statically speaking. Nicholas Wade also addressed part of this issue in The Faith Instinct. He postulated that religion as a whole was the translation of our hereditary pack instinct following consciousnesses evolution and that conformity was rewarded over time with a bigger stronger more aligned pack and more babies or more DNA in the pool. It could be argued that the non-conformist is rewarded in the opposite, through persecution by the pack and a smaller group of mates. But, of course great change requires great sacrifice and cost.
- firefoxman1 15y agoThanks for the info on The Faith Instinct. I knew I couldn't have been the first to suggest this idea. Another idea I might add to my original thought would be people's fear of change. I would guess that goes back to before the days of agriculture, where you had to move with your food source. Any change could be dire to you tribe's survival. Change in food source means learning new land, hunting techniques, poisonous plants, etc. So I think that anyone challenging authority is also challenging the status quo and is seen as one that wants to bring about change. The primitive (lizard) brain cares about two things: survival and reproduction. Change threatened survival in the past, and that fear is still with us, causing us to condemn the changers. People who are in a position to prevent social change (like, say, a psychologist) will do anything in their power to feed that fear of change because they like the way things are. "Things right now are the way they are supposed to be," their lizard brain tells them. And so they close the minds of individuals who might have otherwise had a great impact on society. What gets me is how people never learn. Socrates was condemned and executed for questioning religious and governmental authority. Soon after the Greeks regretted it and erected statues in his honor, yet that same mistake of casting out the independent minds is made every generation. Sad, really.
- syawaworht 15y agoHumans don't learn because of our short lifespans. If humans from ancient Greece were still alive, we might have learned something. But our short lifespan is also a boon in many other ways.