Are we rats with a water bottle with no cocaine in it, and a bottle WITH cocaine in it, and are we consistently choosing the one with the drug of violence in it, no matter the consequences? Why? What would underlie this?
I will comment, without offering this as an explanation, but rather an idea that should be folded into the mix, that sacrifice was my particular interest in graduate school. What social role (God has nothing to do with it) did sacrifice play in primitive societies?
I investigated many ideas. One is that the taking of life at the center of a social scene represents a concrete expulsion and creation of difference, at least where human sacrifice–which was very widely practiced–is concerned. There are the living and the living one moment, and then the living and the dead in the next.
And I think the recognition of difference is essential for human tribal instincts. There was an article I might have posted the other day talking about how sacrifice seems to help cement social orders in societies of a certain size, but not once something large like a city has been built.
Difference precedes hierarchy, logically. A hierarchy is merely one type of order.
Oh, this is a bit too deep for me at the moment. I do think that we need to recognize that deep social order is much fuller than the mere absence of conflict, and that we all need to feel like we belong to orders. This need is hard to meet in the modern world, and is made HARDER to meet by the people who call themselves egalitarians, but who seem to have evolved an impulse to throw themselves at the feet of anyone who asks them to, in a sort of will to power that is really a will to victimhood.
I need some tea.