I ran across a work of fiction that proposed an interesting hypothesis as to why we have some of this programming:
If you’re a primitive tribesman, and something wipes out half your kin in a single incident, that’s probably not something you can pick up your spear and hope to fight with any effectiveness. But if it gets just one or two, that might be something you can take on and win. And so as numbers grow larger we tend to grow numb to it and prefer avoidance over confrontation as a survival strategy.
I ran across a work of fiction that proposed an interesting hypothesis as to why we have some of this programming:
If you’re a primitive tribesman, and something wipes out half your kin in a single incident, that’s probably not something you can pick up your spear and hope to fight with any effectiveness. But if it gets just one or two, that might be something you can take on and win. And so as numbers grow larger we tend to grow numb to it and prefer avoidance over confrontation as a survival strategy.