Sabertooth Kochs
Listening to some dull TED talk about the usual TED stuff. Fight or flight, evolved, cortisol, evolved, Hunter-Gatherers, evolved, stress reactions, evolved, The Savannah, evolved, neuroscience, evolved, sabertooth tigers...

Wait. That's wrong. I know you HAVE to invoke sabertooth tigers in a TED talk, but they don't belong there.

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(1) Why is it wrong?

In general**, smart social mammals and birds simply don't give a fuck about other species. Watch a mixture of Crows and Default Brown Birds foraging in a freshly mowed yard. The Crows are intensely competing with other Crows. Hey! That worm is mine! Oh no it isn't! And the DBBs are intensely competing with other DBBs. I saw that bug first! No you didn't, asshole***. Take that! Biff! Bam! Pow!

The DBBs and Crows literally DO NOT SEE the other species. They live in separate universes. Crows walk around DBBs or even across DBBs in the same way that they walk around or across a rock. DBBs are in the same category as inanimate objects. Nothing to get stressed about.

Apply this to primitive humans. They weren't mainly worried about sabertooth tigers. They were mainly worried about That Nasty Tribe That Lives Across The River. Those subhuman freaks tie their loincloths backwards! Evil vibrations! They must be eradicated!

The worst fears and nastiest violence have always been between the closest groups. Two tribes that didn't fight before will start fighting after they share some culture. When our cultural edge-detectors have to crank up their selectivity, we get especially fierce.

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(2) Why do TEDies so consistently use the sabertooth tiger as our primal fear? That's easy. TEDies are stuck in the leftist model that cannot allow intrinsic desires or differences or impulses. All actions result from training. All problems are caused by Koch Brothers. The Koch Brothers weren't around in prehistoric times, so humans didn't have any problems with other humans. It had to be sabertooth tigers.

Of course the unstated backpressure behind this delusion is more specific: We can't assume humans are different because that would eliminate our rationale for forced integration. If humans have real differences in abilities and temperament, we would have to allow them to live and learn and do business in different ways and different places, creating borders where necessary to maximize their own comfort and minimize friction.



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** Footnote 1. There are narrow exceptions to this rule. Some rodents have builtin fears of specific hawks and eagles, and everyone is afraid of Snakes.


*** Footnote 2. Among birds, 'asshole' is a much more potent insult than it is for mammals. It's like calling your adversary an asshole, dickhead, cunt, and pissant all at once.
  ¶ 5:18 PM