I won't make this too long , but could you agree with a thought I had:
once the basic stuff is there , communications cooperation friendships etc you can mosty "advance" into the areas of manipulation competition (as in a zero sum game) and intrigue
which obviously needs resources to maintain - attention education cultural settings in our modern maybe not much more than a century old culture. or in the longer run when genetics change via evolution and selection during the paleolithic and on through the generations which are taken away from functional stuff - for example many organizations , in their top management struggle much more with intrigue and relations stuff rather then cooperating for whatever end goal.
in a nutshell
functional skils - > material advantage - > likely gain from nothing - > everyone wins for himself and the rest.
social skils - > establishing cooperation and some benefit - > along with greater inner-group competition in which social skills (which are meaningless for physically gaining anything) - > that create the need to maintain and pay attention to / evolutionary pressure in the long run hitting the asymptotic limits of gains from cooperation while having to deal with intrigue and put efforts into competition - > end up in a dead end
kind of like an arms race , you can use a gun to keep your borders but you end up making nukes with the best of your societies resources and minds.
this is just a small thought so it might have it's loopholes I didn't contemplate on it too much so... you might help discuss it.
26 Jun 2009, 4:20 am
