There's even more scientific evidence to back this up. I'm curious if Hudson dives into in-group/out-group psychology like Muzafer Sharif's Realistic Conflict Theory or Social Identity Theory, or empirical experiments like The Robbers Cave Experiment or Jane Elliott's classroom demonstrations using eye color.
There's even more scientific evidence to back this up. I'm curious if Hudson dives into in-group/out-group psychology like Muzafer Sharif's Realistic Conflict Theory or Social Identity Theory, or empirical experiments like The Robbers Cave Experiment or Jane Elliott's classroom demonstrations using eye color.
I note in the review above that the book appears to put it in context of treating people as "means to an end" vs "as ends in themselves", specifically assigning to Enlightenment philosophy, "This is the path of individual liberty and human rights, in which the state exists to protect each citizen’s freedom to pursue happiness as they see it. This path is an outlier in human history, only recently discovered by European philosophers during the Enlightenment."
But, the review hints to the psychology at the end by referring to "tribes". Indeed, the highly repeatable in-group/out-group experiments seem to suggest we all have an innate "module", akin to "fight or flight" but with respect to "us vs them" tribalism.
It's existence implies we had hit a bottleneck of population exceeding resources at some point, possibly prior to 6 million years since that is out common ancestor with chimpanzees who share this trait. In that context, natural selection could easily drive a "tribal" psychology as a first approximation as a survival mechanism, along with developing cultural cues of who is "us" and who is "them", driving cultural differences (as in Robbers Cave Experiment), purity tests, purges, and why we tend to vote in groups of unrelated beliefs & policies.
Thanks for the review. I'm putting this book on my reading list as it appears to align very nicely with the philosophical side of the same considerations.
There's even more scientific evidence to back this up. I'm curious if Hudson dives into in-group/out-group psychology like Muzafer Sharif's Realistic Conflict Theory or Social Identity Theory, or empirical experiments like The Robbers Cave Experiment or Jane Elliott's classroom demonstrations using eye color.
I note in the review above that the book appears to put it in context of treating people as "means to an end" vs "as ends in themselves", specifically assigning to Enlightenment philosophy, "This is the path of individual liberty and human rights, in which the state exists to protect each citizen’s freedom to pursue happiness as they see it. This path is an outlier in human history, only recently discovered by European philosophers during the Enlightenment."
But, the review hints to the psychology at the end by referring to "tribes". Indeed, the highly repeatable in-group/out-group experiments seem to suggest we all have an innate "module", akin to "fight or flight" but with respect to "us vs them" tribalism.
It's existence implies we had hit a bottleneck of population exceeding resources at some point, possibly prior to 6 million years since that is out common ancestor with chimpanzees who share this trait. In that context, natural selection could easily drive a "tribal" psychology as a first approximation as a survival mechanism, along with developing cultural cues of who is "us" and who is "them", driving cultural differences (as in Robbers Cave Experiment), purity tests, purges, and why we tend to vote in groups of unrelated beliefs & policies.
I've written a little about this topic here (as part of a DEI [EDI] series): https://adnausica.substack.com/p/dire-warnings-part-3-dire-tribalmakers
Thanks for the review. I'm putting this book on my reading list as it appears to align very nicely with the philosophical side of the same considerations.