Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Snooze
Our lizard brains will doom us all.
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Individually, we are much more selfish, but collectively, things change. When people add children and make a family, they look beyond themselves. Maybe it is the subconscious selfish desire to spread ones genes into the future, but regardless, as hierarchy increases from families to groups to towns to cities to states and countries, the perspective grows beyond just the self. For instance, individually a person may want to drive as fast as possible all the time, but when it becomes necessary to share the road with others, they recognize that everyone can't operate selfishly on the road, so even if their desire is to still be selfish, they conform and recognize that conformity to a set of rules is good.
Similarly, we only need to recognize and agree that conforming to a certain set of rules is in our best interest for people to conform to those rules. For instance, we recognize that throwing trash on the ground is more convenient than finding a trash can, but we recognize that if everyone did this then we all wouldn't like the outcome. Neighbors wouldn't be too happy if the other tossed their trash over their neighbor's fence, so we conform (for the most part) to not trashing society. We do this with the acceptance of limitations on car emissions, in favor of catalytic converters on cars, and so forth.
We can do the same if we can agree on the problem. Obviously, we have groups that are not interested in the masses agreeing on the problem. They would rather we blamed each other or blame some minority for our problems. They would rather we focused on squabbling amongst each other for the scraps than focus on who or what are the real problems. Their lizard brain want to maintain its power, wealth and stature.