this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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OK, I'll bite: What systems reward kindness?
Swinger clubs.
How else do you play golf?
For one, hunter-gatherer tribes before the rise of civilisation were most certainly built on kindness and cooperation
Except towards other tribes. Can't have them clear our hunting grounds, now can we?
Check out The Dawn of Everything, puts to rest a lot of the myths about prehistoric societies that we tell ourselves. Early societies were consciously experimenting with different social arrangements and they were far more peaceful and egalitarian than we usually give them credit for. Their ideas on property were vastly different than ours as well. There wasn't really an "our hunting grounds" to speak of. If you're interested I'll leave this video by Andrewism about human history. It's well sourced and pretty informative
Turns out to have warring tribes you need to be organized enough to carry out a war.
Jericho had walls when most of the rest of humanity was nomadic hunter-gatherers.
City walls generally weren't built because people feel safe and secure already.
I think it sort of depends on what time period we're talking about. Jericho and other walled cities came about after a certain point. By then, there certainly were societies that lived off raiding the less nomadic agrarian societies, not very peaceful or egalitarian.
There was plenty for everyone since there were a lot fewer people, plus there were no real territories that people claimed over longer periods at all since we were nomads.
The Agrarian Revolution really was where humanity started going downhill.
This is true, but agriculture is a trap in the sense that once we adopted it, there was no turning back.
It's not just about systems, It's about conditions. Certain conditions make certain strategies more profitable - see game theory. I think low population density and hard life conditions cam lead to kindness being among the winning strategies.
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