We remain animals, which when it comes to it nevertheless act instinctively to survive. In a world full of conflicts and polarization, a medicine professor calls it more important than ever to understand how these types of instincts make inequality and division worse.
The Argentinian professor Jorge Colombo, previously working at the University of South Florida offers in A New Approach to Human Social Evolution A new perspective on human social evolution.
Instincts
Dominance, urge to survive and competition are still our fundamental motives and are at the basis of our society, he argues. Without a conscious effort to curb these instincts, we maintain the cycles of power struggle, inequality and division that determine a large part of human history. We will also not solve the climate problem.
“In an era that is characterized by authoritarian leadership, economic inequality, environmental crises and nationalism, it is crucial to understand how old survival mechanisms continue to determine human behavior,” Colombo explains. “With increasing polarization in politics, conflicts about resources and the struggle for social justice, I think that humanity can only slow down these instincts through education and universal values to promote a more sustainable and just society.”
Awareness
But that is easier said than done. Our human behavior stems from ancient animal drives, which have evolved very slowly. Main goals: Surviving and winning. This is deeply rooted in our brain and was always very useful. After all, it has ensured that we are already going as a species.
When man changed prey to universal predator, it influenced that the organization of the human brain, the professor states. The human species had to deal with the awareness of mortality. This resulted in survival in our crocodile theres to be ingrained, that our most important drivers became drifting and territory drift and our basic reaction was fighting or flights.
Thin layer of civilization
In the course of time, thanks to its plasticity, our brain has added a sophisticated layer to our animal drives. We became smarter, creative and developed in the technological field. Our vocabulary grew and our communication became much more extensive. But these features have not made those old drives disappear, at most we know how to camouflage them better.
According to Colombo, those ancient basic drives, such as survival, dominance and the need for safe food, are at odds with our cultural motives. “Old animal survival drives continue to exist in people, masked by different forms of civilized behavior, but fighting and flights remain the basic principles. Even with religious beliefs, aggressive behavior appears to defend or fight even the most refined peaceful ideas, “he explains. We also see in history that religion is an important cause of war, but also expansion drive and food shortages cause many conflicts.
As a dominant species with our evolved cultural and technological characteristics, it has resulted in, among other things, the exhaustion of natural resources, the development of mass destruction weapons, massive consumerism and political means to manipulate public opinion. It all leads to poverty, exploitation, division and oppression.
Education
But according to Colombo it is not too late. We must become aware of our primal drives and learn to dam. Education is essential for this, just like the promotion of universal values to protect the environment, for example. If we do not do that, there will only be more poverty and inequality and fewer people will have access to basic things such as care and education.
“The aggressiveness, atrocities, social inequality and relentless ambitions of certain individuals and socio -economic classes are the best proof that people first have to recognize their fundamental nature to change their ancestral drift,” it sounds. “In -depth cultural changes are only possible and permanent if people get a grip on their actual primary condition.” So it’s time to get those primal drives under control, so that we can really work on a fairer, sustainable world.
