At 01:58 04/05/2013,AC wrote:
Subject: Airport Exposes Class Divisions in Silicon Valley - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/us/airport-project-reflects-a-changing-silicon-valley.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130503
Khaneman and Tversky have already introduced economists to the notion that the individual is not as rational as economists had hitherto imagined. In reality we have deep biases and predispositions which which are common to us all no matter how many different varieties of our standard set of genes (and of our epigenetic settings) we carry. But our genes (more specifically their hormonal byproducts) are responsible for a lot else besides irrational decision-taking on occasion. Anthropologists have listed well over 200 that appear in man alone plus 90 that we share with chimps, plus 50 that we share with 3,000 mammalian species, and also -- very importantly -- and appear in every single culture that has been investigated.* For example, one trait that is common to all cultures throughout the world -- whether a hunter-gatherer group or a modern research team -- is a strong in-group/out-group manifestation consisting of extreme loyalty and identification with one's own group when necessary but, to other groups, an attitude anywhere along a spectrum leading to extreme aggression and demonization of other groups on other occasions.
And this also applies to what is trivially known as pecking order. It is very strong and there isn't a group of people, large or small, whether voluntarily associated or otherwise, whether recently appointed or of long term, whether work or social, whether male or female or mixed, where pecking order doesn't apply.
The moral is clear. We can't change human nature. Some universal instincts have been laid down for at least 60 million years (when mammals appeared) or 6 million years (when hominims broke away from the apes). But what we can do is to change the cultures in which groups have their being, so that the excessively ambitious are not allowed to be as dangerous as they are today. Ballot box 'democracy' has already produced Hitler and G. W. Bush which committed their nations to warfare and millions of people to die.
*Brown, D. E. (1991) Human Universals (McGraw-Hill) Keith
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