(December 10, 2013 at 9:08 pm)Beccs Wrote: What this says about the mentality of people I'm not entirely sure. I just found it a fascinating, and scary, read.It reminds us that our social instincts are so strong that they can override our rational mind and turn us into a member of the pack. I believe that our desire to fit in is remarkably strong and deeply ingrained and can lead us to behaviors that would normally shock and even repulse us. In a crowd, our subconscious seems to have an even greater influence on our attitudes and actions than it normally does.
The pertinent question may be, can we evolve the necessary mechanisms to overcome that reaction? Or does it still confer some manner of advantage that guarantees that it will be selected for as we continue to breed? Sticking with the pack and singling out "someone else" for punishment or rejection may be too powerful an instinct to overcome. It is a scary thought.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
