As a very simple illustrative example, let’s take a solider in a war. They shoot an enemy soldier dead.

Is this act “good” or is it “evil”? Is it “selfish” or is it “altruistic”?

It entirely depends who you ask.

When the soldier returns to a welcoming parade, he is declared a “hero” by his people for his sacrifices to defend the nation.

But how would the family of the enemy soldier he’s killed feel about it? How would the nation of his enemy greet him? He would, in their minds, be the definition of the “evil” that threatens them.

My point is that the act is simultaneously both “selfish” and “altruistic”. It is an act that is “good” for some people and “evil” for others.

My even more profound underlying point is that all acts share this inherent dualism.

It’s like a coin with heads on one side and tails on the other. Depending on your perspective, you either see “heads” or you see “tails” - but it must be understood that it is the same coin. The same act.

If I go hunting, kill an animal and bring it back to my family to eat, then I have been “evil” and “selfish” regards the animal I killed. But I have been “good” and “altruistic” regards those I am feeding with the animal.

The same act, two different perspectives.

What you declare the act as being depends on which side of the line you’re standing.

If a man runs into a burning building to save a baby, then is he “brave” or is he “foolish”?

Typically, we define our answer depending on whether he succeeds.

If he comes back out having saved the baby, then he is a “brave hero”. If he doesn’t come back out and both he and the baby perish in the fire, then he will be considered “foolish”.

What side of the coin we see - heads or tails - depends on which side of the coin we’re standing on.

In discussions such as these, there tends to be a presumption that “good” and “evil” (or “selfish” and “altruistic”) are separate binary concepts with no overlap and no shared nature.

As I hope I’ve demonstrated clearly, this very presumption itself is in error. They are one and the same thing, merely labelled differently, depending on whether we like it or not, whether we personally benefit from it or not.

And, no, don’t read “personally benefit from it” as being “selfish” either. That’s also the same kind of false dichotomy.

If I personally benefit from it individually, then that is typically deemed “selfish” - but only because those calling it “selfish” aren’t benefiting and there standing on the other side of the coin.

But if we personally benefit from it collectively - and by “we” I mean the whole nation or the whole human race or the whole planet - then, suddenly, it’s now deemed “altruistic”.

The difference? The line in the sand moved. No-one is now “outside”. Everyone is seeing the coin from the “inside” perspective and we all see “heads” (or “altruistic”).

Note that if “we” only means my nation and not yours - e.g. we’re at war and I have killed your people in the defence of my nation - then the line now sits in the middle. I’m a “selfless hero” to those on the “inside” and a representation of “pure evil” to those on the “outside”.

The assumption is that acts can be neatly divided into “good” and “evil”, “selfish” or “altruistic”.

That there is a fundamental binary dichotomy there.

That these are different things. Different acts. With no overlap. No shared nature.

But this is simply not true. They are one and the same thing, just differently interpreted, based on your personal perspective.

We’re not talking about a “yin / yang” duality, but more of a “wave / particle” duality (if you’ll pardon the poor analogies).

The story of Cain and Abel illustrates what happened next: Cain, the farmer, kills Abel, the shepherd, as the Agricultural Revolution spread, and farmers genocidally wiped out every other kind of human culture.

Quinn suggests that we need to spit out that fruit, and go back to live in G-d’s hands again, the way we did when he made us in the garden of Eden. His novel, Ishmael fleshes all this out in much more detail, and given what you’ve written here, I think you might appreciate it. If you share that with your Bible study group, let me know how it goes; I’d love to hear that story!

That is a terribly deceptive comment.

A warfare death rate of 0.5% would equate to 1 person every 2 years for a 100 person band. Based on my reading of “The Forest People” it appears that a Pygmy band of 5 families has perhaps 30 people. so that 0.5% would equate to 1 person in the band being killed in warfare every 7 years.

Secondly, based on this
link:

Approximately 4,126,000,000 people have died during this century from all causes.

So, in fact, citing 2 billion deaths understates the case by a factor of 2.
–
JimFive

I don’t see anything new being stated here, just the same stuff about violence and warfare that we’ve discussed so many times before, repeated with another round of ramped-up rhetoric. The flip-side of close intimacy is savage xenophobia—you simply can’t have that kind of close-knit community, without also feeling the kind of extreme passion to defend it that motivates terrible violence. But as we’ve also seen time and time again, estimates like these are meticulous in cataloguing all violent incidents in primitive society, and downright deceitful in their dismissal of ubiquitous civilized violence. That’s followed up with other prime myths we’ve debunked a dozen times before, from the “Overkill Hypothesis,” to the flagrantly deceptive “correction” to Lee’s work-week estimates for the !Kung. I don’t see a single thing in here that we haven’t addressed; it’s simply repeated here once again, and presented as fact. I really, really hate articles like this. I can take smugness or ignorance on their own, but the combination is just over the top. Which is pretty standard fare for The Economist, from what I’ve read from it over the years. Remember, this is the same periodical that gave us that great essay question, “Do we need nature?” Although, perhaps it says something positive that the message is getting out so effectively that The Economist has to devote its apparatus to its usual, deceptive FUD in our general direction.

Several archaeologists and anthropologists now argue that violence was much more pervasive in hunter-gatherer society than in more recent eras. From the !Kung in the Kalahari to the Inuit in the Arctic and the aborigines in Australia, two-thirds of modern hunter-gatherers are in a state of almost constant tribal warfare, and nearly 90% go to war at least once a year. War is a big word for dawn raids, skirmishes and lots of posturing, but death rates are high—usually around 25-30% of adult males die from homicide. The warfare death rate of 0.5% of the population per year that Lawrence Keeley of the University of Illinois calculates as typical of hunter-gatherer societies would equate to 2 billion people dying during the 20th century.

After all, what alternative do we have but vegetarianism? But plants are people, too. They respond to “pain” (though they no doubt experience it differently), communicate with one another, eavesdrop on one another, and recognize their kin.

Thus, every animal kills to live. That rules every animal’s inescapable fate. We cannot escape that basic truth; if we try, we only serve to delude ourselves, and forget the responsibility that animal life comes with. Because we kill to live, we buy our lives at the cost of that sacred covenant to justify our existence, to give back more than we take.

Every animal gives back more than it takes; that veritably defines sustainability. Modern civilization, however, does not. That does not mean that humans have become innately fallen; even today, humans live in ways that give back more than they take. Humans created the Amazon rain forest and the Great Plains, and after thousands of years of harvesting salmon in the Pacific Northwest, more salmon lived there than before. That kind of legacy follows from a sustainable culture, and a thousand years of human life when every generation understands their place in a more-than-human world, acknowledges and respects other-than-human persons, and takes seriously the covenant that the animal’s dilemma creates, and gives back more than they take.