> Most nations on earth are not at war with each other.
My nation of birth famously took over a quarter of the planet.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move… but only by the people who actually kicked my forebears out — even my parents (1939/1943) who saw the winds of change and end of empire, were convinced The Empire had done the world a favour.
> My observation is that most people are pretty nice, and the assholes are rare outliers. I don't think we would survive as a species if it was the other way 'round.
In-group/out-group. We domesticated ourselves, and I agree we would not have become so dominant a species if we had not. But I have heard it said that psychopaths are to everyone what normal people are to the out-group. That's the kind of thing that allowed the 9/11 attackers to do what they did, or the people of the US military to respond the way they did. It's how the invasion of Vietnam happened, it's how the Irish Potato Famine happened despite Ireland exporting food at the time, it's the slave owners who quoted the bible to justify what they did, and it's the people who want to outlaw (at least) one of your previous employers.
My nation of birth famously took over a quarter of the planet.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move… but only by the people who actually kicked my forebears out — even my parents (1939/1943) who saw the winds of change and end of empire, were convinced The Empire had done the world a favour.
> My observation is that most people are pretty nice, and the assholes are rare outliers. I don't think we would survive as a species if it was the other way 'round.
In-group/out-group. We domesticated ourselves, and I agree we would not have become so dominant a species if we had not. But I have heard it said that psychopaths are to everyone what normal people are to the out-group. That's the kind of thing that allowed the 9/11 attackers to do what they did, or the people of the US military to respond the way they did. It's how the invasion of Vietnam happened, it's how the Irish Potato Famine happened despite Ireland exporting food at the time, it's the slave owners who quoted the bible to justify what they did, and it's the people who want to outlaw (at least) one of your previous employers.
Conflict doesn't always mean "war".