But for a creature to be suited to a cultural existence requires a far greater degree of flexibility than other animals require or possess.
This high degree of human flexibility actually turns out to be part of the trap that humankind has fallen into. It means that societies have considerable power to mold people into whatever form the societies require.
Can you see how these minimal requirements -- creativity and flexibility -- combine with inevitable dynamic of the selection for power to dictate the non-intuitive conclusion that the monstrous and dark nature of so much of human history can be explained without positing anything dark or monstrous about human nature?
If the societies molded by the selection for power require people to be aggressive, or power-lusting, or misogynistic, or greedy, or warped by projection, or workaholic, or ruthless, or whatever--the cultural animal is capable of being shaped into such forms.
Whatever the costs, whatever the resistance, the inevitable dynamics rising with civilization could exploit the necessary plasticity of any cultural animal to meet the demands of power.
What this implies is that the monstrosity visible in history is a property of the inevitable disorder of the system that emerges with civilization.
What it implies is that if human civilization were to blow it, but twenty million years from now the descendants of some other species evolve into cultural animals, and their culture eventually evolves to cross the threshold into civilization, the same destructive dynamic would arise and, regardless of the inherent nature of that species, that dynamic would contort them into whatever forms -- whether benign or monstrous -- power requires.
And it implies that if somewhere else in this vast cosmos, there are creatures that have crossed that threshold, they too will have had their social evolution warped by this same inescapable selection for power, and their nature warped by the demands those warped societies impose upon their members.
Our history tells us little about human nature. Except that we are creative and flexible--both of which would be required of any creature -- on this or any planet -- that could cross that fateful threshold of breaking out of its biologically evolved niche.
ONE BENEFIT OF THIS 'INTEGRATIVE VISION'
The parable of the tribes is an important part -- but not the whole -- of that "integrative vision" this series is attempting to convey.
And the parable of the tribes delivers what I promised earlier: a way to understand our species that unburdens us of the weight of species self-loathing that has been so prominent a part of our civilized consciousness for so long, from original sin onward.
We are not inherently the fundamentally flawed creatures portrayed on the pages of human history. Rather, what we see in history are creatures struggling to cope with an impossible situation.
That understanding would be no small thing, for it can elevate our prospects for the future in two ways.
First, it will allow us to tackle our considerable challenges unhampered by the weight of guilt about the nature of our kind, and the record of our atrocities.
And second, it can allow us to dissipate the darkness of pessimism about our possibilities. It encourages us to look toward a future in which that greater potential we are now entitled to envision gets realized in a more whole, more human civilization.
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