As a short-term solution it works well enough, but the long-term effect is that it strengthens his pseudo-tribal identity instead of weakening it and furthermore helps him widen his pseudo-tribal social contacts. It is interesting to note how we deal with the criminal: we shut him away in a confined, all criminal community.Is this really a fair description of man as a social biological species? It follows from this that is there are laws against theft, murder and rape, then the human animal must, by nature, be a thieving, murderous rapist. It has often been said that ‘the law forbids men to do only what their instincts incline them to do’.If our hunting ancestors had really been ruthless, greedy tyrants, loaded with ‘original sin’, the human success story would have petered out long ago.It is an astonishing testimony to our incredible ingenuity, tenacity and plasticity as a species. This is not something we should accept simple because we are sitting here in the twentieth century, it is something we should marvel at.
What is surprising is that the bloated super-tribes have survived at all and, what is more, survived so well.Notes and quotes from Desmond Morris' "The Human Zoo"
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