“And History, with all her volumes vast,
Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Hath but one page.”
The above Instagram reel includes footage of a three-way stare-down between my cat, Orange Kitty, and two other cats in the neighborhood. The musical accompaniment is Judas’s Death from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. I can vouch my cat is well-fed and assured of a comfortable, protected place to curl up. The other two appear visibly healthy and fed, as even feral cats tend to be in this suburban town populated by families and retirees. In particular, I know the gray cat to have a comfy home with doting owners who feed him a tailored diet and have him wear a smart collar. Yet, in this video, the three cats seem on the verge of war, vying for the last scrap of food on the planet. Kinda funny. Kinda troubling.
Questions for you, Wheat & Tares readers:
Do we humans have any room to talk? Our advanced technological state notwithstanding, are we any better or less barbaric (feral) than these kitties locked in a standoff? Moreover, do religions dissemble when they claim to make ‘bad men good and good men better’? I see no evidence of religion easing tensions in Ukraine or Gaza, and certainly it has failed to prevent such violence. Does church make us more peaceable? Less? Or does it merely amplify whichever tendency we exhibit naturally?
Wheat & Tares 
“Religion” is not just one thing, but plays a lot of different roles, including (sometimes) that of a group identity marker. Other things can be group identity markers. People everywhere seem to divide themselves into identity groups, even if “religion” is not the basis for division (or even necessarily a salient category). Degrees and styles of inter-group conflict also vary a lot.
After reading Lord of the Flys, I would say that human males just love to feud. If they can’t find a difference to fight about, they will creat one. And it is a proven fact that countries led by women stay out of wars compared to countries led by men. My mother called it “testosterone poisoning” but there does seem to be something to the Y chromosome because men with YYX chromosomes are greatly over represented among violent criminals in prisons. So, whether it is social “toxic masculinity” or something in the Y chromosome, there does seem to be something causing humans to just love to feud. And females may be lower on the aggression scale, but nor exempt from just loving to feud. Look at the movie Mean Girls.
Thanks for the image description!
The need to be angry and fight, even when resources aren’t scarce, is both real and disheartening. A childhood sibling fight has stuck in my memory for decades. A brother was attacking a sister for not doing her chores, and now brother had to pick up the slack. I stepped into the middle of it, insisting that I would do sister’s chores. He kept trying to hit her and I finally yelled, “do you want the job done or do you just want to hurt her?” He yelled back, “I just want to hurt her!”
There is something in humanity that just wants to hurt people. It can be schooled out of us. This brother and sister now have a close and kind relationship; they’ve been there for each other through some rough times.
Emotional control, accepting others’ humanity, thinking about whether there’s an actual problem or if we just want to hurt someone — we can learn to behave differently.
Anna – about Lord of the Flies, I’ve seen pushback against its cynical commentary on humanity recently. The author was teaching boys the age of his characters, and had recently fought in World War II. Point being, he was disillusioned and hurting, and the book is a work of fiction. If you search for “real lord of the flies” you’ll find some articles about what really happened when a group of boys got stranded on a desert island. The story is told in full in “Humankind” by Rutger Bregman. The teenagers worked together to keep each other alive and, once rescued in 1966, remained friends for their whole lives. I recommend Bregman’s book in its entirety.
Janey, there have been psychology experiments that contribute to the theme of LoFs, that humans easily divide into tribes that feud. Say, first day of camp put half the boys in red T-shirts and half in blue T-shirts, and competition starts friendly, but by week 2 the boys are competing in nasty ways. Several of these experiments had to be ended before they got dangerous. It doesn’t always happen, and I would *hope* the drive to survive will override that tendency to divide into tribes and so LoF would remain horrifying fiction.
But I do think humans have instinctive tribal tendencies, with xenophobia being normal. But humans can think through which instinctive tendencies are good or bad in a given situation. I do not think war is unavoidable
Thanks for the book recommendation Janey. I’ve started to read. I do have an observation. The six boys who were stranded on an island for over a year were a self selected group, who chose to run away together, and as such already a single “tribe” working together. Whilst LotF is a a work of fiction, that group of boys if I recall correctly were the survivors of a larger group of boys, and not a self selected band. As I am getting further into Humankind, I am reading of the tribal nature, and how hormones both increase bonding in the in-group, at the same time as increase aggression and hostility to outsiders. That would back up what Anna is saying.