Humans as Primitives

There are still many links we share with our more primitive animal counterparts. Many of these make much sense, such as the need to eat, sleep, drink, breathe, and so forth. Yet, others seem to be holding us back from achieving even greater societies than we already have.

With out intellect, one would think that we as humans would have learned by now that in a world that is so small, where each individual has intelligence higher than any other animal alive, we would simply treat each other kindly and with total respect - complete equality and sharing of goods. No, I am not a socialist, for socialism is impossible. This is because there are so many millions of ways and countless reasons for humans to hate each other, that full and total willing cooperation in any large task is ultimately impossible.

There is also the instinct of self preservation above all else, and for the most part this is a good thing, but it holds us back at times. For example, gun ownership. Perhaps if one lives in the middle of nowhere and needs to hunt to survive, or they are a soldier in an active war zone, they should be permitted a firearm. But in today’s day and age, when police and other law personnel are only a few clicks of a button away, why should anyone need a firearm? Granted, this is not completely our fault, rather, the instinct of one to go to the extremes to protect their self is still deeply encrypted within the human brain.

In the past, our primitive ancestors fought hand-to-hand over scraps of meat. Yet for hundreds of years, we have learned to communicate with and trust each other. Our instincts tend to get in the way of this trust. People are naturally drawn to power, and whoever has the largest weapon has that power. Granted, this is highly generalized, but I am trying to make a point through examples.

Humans, of course, specialize in killing themselves. We like killing ourselves so much that we give events in which they happen names (such as ‘the war of such and such’ or ‘the great such and such war’ and so forth). And we only give names to those things that are dear to us, and to keep important records of past events, that is if they are seen as important.

It is only natural that if one were to place ten people who have never had any lecturing on history onto a deserted island, they would eventually draw lines in the sand that separated themselves from others. The island would become ten sections of the same article of land, each with different names (assuming that none of the people at hand were killed or made alliances in this process).

Human law states that we will pretend that we follow a set of rules made by political law. But in moments of sheer panic, people ultimately resort to pure instinct. This has saved many lives, and it has also ended many. Overall, humans know how to wage war very well - we practice it on ourselves all the time. Of course, there is the other argument: the act of gathering power and influence in not, essentially - in the right situations - a poor choice of action.

In the middle ages, governments were run largely by nobility (as, the nobles, even if not in power themselves - which they often were - exerted much influence on the kings and queens they lived under). Disregarding the fallacy of the notion of “divine right” monarchial institutions, the system of government in which a handful of wealthy and learned people govern over the poor actually made sense for that time period. There could not have been a democratic system of government in that time, because the average person during that time could not read or write, let alone make political decisions. If peasants during the dark ages had been given secure voting powers, any country that did so would have surely collapsed.

Granted, in almost every instance, the kings and nobles abused their power. But even most of the the philosophers of the Enlightenment advocated for a system of government in which a small group of learned individuals had great power over the masses, as the masses were largely uneducated in political affairs. The same example can be applied in warfare. In war, we have generals that can see the whole of a conflict. The individual soldier only knows their specific area of combat very well, but it is the high-ranking leaders of that war that can see the whole map, and decide how everything plays out.

This is because, in these two examples, the common majority of individuals were too shortsighted to make the important decisions themselves. In such scenarios, it makes perfect sense that large amounts of power should be placed into the hands of certain, more-intelligent individuals. Today, this is harder to justify, seeing as in most developed nations, citizens are educated very well and at early ages. People today are far more capable of leading and making large decisions than in the past, rendering many still-utilized systems and rules of power rather pointless.

The youngest age one can run for the office of presidency in the United States of America, for example, is age thirty five. James Madison argued in favor of this when the rule was not yet decided on. He declared that a person of leadership, such as a senator, should be a certain age before they can take office. As he stated it, to be in a position of great leadership required “greater extent of information and stability of character...that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages.” During the late 1700s, this view would make sense, as it would have typically taken one a very long time to complete a full education.

In the modern day, however, with education that is far more advanced than what society had back in the late eighteenth century, people can be much younger than age thirty five and still know more than a thirty five year old. The age limit of thirty five on the American presidency is outrageously outdated. Indeed, history has shown that people stick to senseless traditions for far too long. Nature conforms that this is but normal behavior.

As long as a system in any society works well for a period of time, it will be very long until that system is discarded, even if it is long outdated. Humans are held back by this law of basic instinctual (it would seem) conduct. Now, ignoring the obvious, how does the rest of nature fare? Well, actually, not all that different.