It turns into a war of each against all, in most cases, when some centralized system like a state throws thousands or millions of people together and forces them to compete over an artificially limited resource pool (like putting a bunch of dogs into a small yard, throwing them a single bone, and saying “OK, be nice.”).

Larry Gambone has done some interesting work applying Alice Miller’s theory of cooperator and dominator societies to the rise of the state. The warlike nomadic tribes, that conquered settled areas and founded the first states, came into existence in the environment of scarcity and violence that accompanied widespread desertification. And it created something of a chain reaction, as the brutalization following conquest by a dominator society created dominator characteristics in the conquered. For example, the eastern Slavs before the Mongol conquest of Russia were supposed to have been a fairly peaceful, cooperator type of society. The brutality and authoritarianism we identify with Russian political culture were a product of the Tatar yoke.

What if Nature is, in fact, full of solidarity? What if the conflict is tribe versus tribe, rather than individual versus individual? How does the metaphor change?

Of course nature is full of solidarity in a sense — but it’s practically all kin-based. That is, it’s between genes. It is “identity politics” at its most base — you are “for” someone simply because they are like you genetically.

Does this change the metaphor? No, no really. Tribe vs tribe merely ups the ante; those who can bring the biggest, baddest, best organized tribe win. But we know this: why is Spanish a world language and Tagalog isn’t? Life in nature, even in a big tribe, is still hobbesian. I suppose the metaphor is changed if we focus on the in-group aspects of tribal life: there, cooperation can reign.

Only when the groups are so huge, as modern human societies are, that one can live the vast majority of one’s life in the dynamic of cooperative in-group relations, can one start to glimpse the possibility of a new paradigm.

Well, I agree you can choose to make your own life what you want it be about. But when your ends come into conflict with others’ ends, you’ll find others can be quite ruthless. At that point, you’ll have another choice: You can either become even more ruthless than your opponents, or you can go down in defeat.

“Second, my identity does not fit within arbitrary boundaries of herd against herd, nation against nation, race against race or army against army; I reject nationalism/racism. I choose which identities to support and which ones to reject.”

You can also support whatever identities you want, but you’ll find there are plenty who don’t necessarily support you.

“I choose my *people* and our anti-racist tradition over your *nation* and your nationalist tradition.”

LOL! You’re misinterpreting me. I’m not a racial-nationalist. I’m saying that whatever people and whatever values you align yourself with, others will come into conflict with you. From there, it’s just a matter of winners and losers. Try a few experiments like being a Christian in contemporary Iraq, or a Palestinian in Israel/Palestine, or a member of a polygamous Mormon sect in Texas, or a drug user anywhere in the US and many other places, or a political dissident in China, or a homosexual in Saudi Arabia, or a coca farmer in Colombia, or a dallit in India, or holocaust denier in France, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, or a peasant in Central America, or a person with any independence of thought or action at all in North Korea, and you will indeed come to realize that life is very much a war of each against all.

First, my life is about what I choose to make it about.

Second, my identity does not fit within arbitrary boundaries of herd against herd, nation against nation, race against race or army against army; I reject nationalism/racism. I choose which identities to support and which ones to reject.

I choose my *people* and our anti-racist tradition over your *nation* and your nationalist tradition.

It’s what life is all about.

The Spencer “Survival of the Fittest” is something I consider to be a relic of 19th century thinking. The modern science of neuroeconomics demonstrates the humans are far more cooperative than what was assumed under the neoclassical framework of the rational utility maximizing agent. If I thought anarchism reduced to a “survival of the fittest” meme, I never would have converted to it.

My Laissez faire economics meme centers around the market as a Hayekian spontaneous order of sorts, wherein competition serves the role to optimally extract information in terms of prices. Human cooperation is not something to be enforced by the State, but rather something that not only evolves naturally but is reinforced by the market itself.

TGGP, I think the video can fairly be read as documentary evidence for some of Kropotkin’s wildlife observations. The video’s surprise ending pretty much screams “mutual aid”.

No consistent eugenicist can be a ‘Laisser Faire’ individualist unless he throws up the game in despair. He must interfere, interfere, interfere!

Referenced by Princeton professor Thomas C. Leonard

Spencer’s weirdest analogy was that of society to an organism. Your heart is not free to beat as it chooses.

There may be some group-selection, but due to the variance between groups being much smaller than the variance within groups, the selection at a lower level swamps it.