…or even just know how to master-debate
I read on Facebook that it normally takes over10 years to test new bug goo and there were no human trials of the goo first.
When do the chimp protests start?
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Yeah, I said this before somewhere here, but even in rugged individualist Texas the first reaction of most people during that horrible winter storm was to help each other as well as they could, rather than shooting each other over your neighbour’s wood stove and firewood.
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There’s also a wonderful video of a pig saving a potentially drowning goat.
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In fact altruism is the great competitive advantage that led to us ruling the planet. Big brains helped as well of course, but it’s been well known in primatology for decades that altruism is the evolutionary trait in primates that really gives us the edge. Working together and helping each other makes us unstoppable, which is why, as a rule, people are all mostly nice to each other most of the time. War and selfishness are the outliers in our behavior. We are hard wired for generosity, hospitality, and support of everyone around us, including those outside our family or tribe.
This is counter to libertarian and neoliberal/neocon agendas though, so this fact of humanity doesn’t get press.
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Even war is in its own way a manifestation of our peculiar tendency to work together. Lots of other mammals fight and kill each other. But it’s not often you have hundreds or thousands come together for the purpose the way an army does. That’s the sort of thing more typical of social insects, and then they’re all siblings, whereas human soldiers can be distant acquaintances or even total strangers and still risk their lives for each other.
There’s of course the horrible exception in trying to kill the opposing humans…but it’s still something that you wouldn’t see in a more selfish animal.
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