Why war, greed, arguments, killings, and strife. Why does Kumbaya never win?
Do you really want to know? "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!"
Anna Freud said "My father Sigmund once told me that he should have studied STATUS DRIVES, not sex drives. They are more important to understanding people."
Status drives everything: we are social animals. Without the group we die, and in the group, we must compete for scarce resources.
Sure, cooperation works in hunting and gathering, but when the food is passed out, and when the mating essential to gene survival is done, it is allocated by status.
Think about it: why do teens fight each other? Access to women. Why do people struggle painfully to acquire possessions by hook or crook? Status, the approval of other people.
People of high rank grant food, shelter, and support. We all know it, but it hurts to think about it. So we don't.
Think networking. Last on night on TV, there was a program about race in America. Everyone was talking about status, and the unfair portion blacks get.
But no one called it that. We're conditioned not to talk about it because the people who manipulate us would have a harder time of it if we knew.
It's like SUV's. Can you see them as status symbols? I can't see them as anything else. They're stupid and popular.
Bling? Status symbols that keep you in your place. You get sex, you get a cheap kind of approval from the wrong people. And you're identified by bling as a fool. No real status.
People buy into the American dream of power, and burn themselves out buying the consumer crap/status symbols that they think will get them access to the high-status society they crave.
But there are many many more people with low status and lots of expensive status symbols, than there are people with high status.
There's a lot of profit in selling status, because you're hooking up to the basic human drive: be high status and get food and sex.
"It's true because it worked. The mantra of evolutionary psychology.
Whether it's NOW the best way to behave doesn't matter. Genes don't think about our survival.
We can, but rarely do.
There are too many people, so we will live in times of scarcity. Status will determine who gets the food and females.
Until most citizens understand how status works, class wars will sort it out. (Religion is just a tribal identifier.)