Wired For It

Utopia is impossible. Humans will never live in a society of complete equality, tolerance, and cooperation. We're not wired for it.

Here's a study by NIMH which examined people's brains in a situation which put them into an arbitrary hierarchy. Certain parts of the forebrain were highly affected by where the players seemed to be in the game's imaginary hierarchy.

We are social animals. This is known. Our ancestors apparently lived in small troops, more or less the way our close relatives the chimps live today. Troops are intensely social, with constant jockeying for position. It may well be that our intelligent brains evolved in part to handle the demands of primate troop politics.

What does this mean for human society? It means we'll never reach some ideal stasis of equality and cooperation. Our brains are literally wired to make us compete socially and sexually. Life will always be fraught with tension, rivalries, and disagreements. Utopia is off the table.

And you know what? That's a good thing.