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Richard Wrangham’s hypothesis that teams of beta males systematically killing off alpha males is what made us Homo sapiens is perhaps the most dramatic “selective killing driving evolution” argument.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1713611115

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"communally approved killings of group members emerged in the Pleistocene as a cultural adaptation for suppressing domineering bullies and norm violators"

I'm not sure about that timing.

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The problem is that in reducing the propensity for violence, the ability to mount vigorous self-defence is also hindered. No wonder Western societies are being overrun by aggressors from less pacified cultures. Sadly, pacification may be the proverbial self-cleaning oven.

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Dec 20, 2023·edited Dec 20, 2023

Dr. Frost, your very interesting proposed project regarding genetic pacification could be enhanced by considering the temporal variation in the onset of the State monopoly on violence as a function of geography. The Scottish-English Border region came under the full weight of the justice system approximately 600 years later than, say, Wessex. My personal experience in the American South with descendants of Scots-Irish immigrants (Ulstermen themselves descended from Borderers) suggests that genetic pacification in that group may be less than in Germans, for example. Albanians would be another likely group whose pacific selective pressure began much later in time.

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Yes, that's an excellent example. There seems to be a general tendency for men to be less pacified in highland regions, probably (as you point out) because such regions are less easily brought under State control.

Such men are notably common in the “martial races” who have supplied so many recruits for military service—the Gurkhas and Sikhs of the Himalayas, the Pashtuns of the Northwest Frontier, the Chechens of the Caucasus, the Berbers of the Atlas, the Highland Scots, and so on. Living in highland regions, they have experienced the State monopoly on violence only in recent times.

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Mountains are the quintessential refugia from government control. The British Borderers were, however, an outlier from strictly elevational causation because they were pastoral societies which were motivated both by their own raiding "business" across the national frontier and by their royalty's use of them for low-intensity international warfare.

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"Medieval times - most people fail to develop mentally beyond the stage of preoperational thinking."

No, the issue is not the stage of preoperational thinking, but the stage of preformal thinking. The people of the European Middle Ages were at the concrete-operational stage, i.e. above preoperative thinking; but they had not yet reached the stage of formal-operative thinking.

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A good study of executing enemies in the micro, and its effect on the rise of Western Civ. A macro study could, perhaps, be done on the fall of Western Civ being the result of no longer killing our enemies (since August, 1945), but in the absurdity of limited “war,” a contradiction in terms. Charlemagne built Western Europe in part by his annual war on the Saxons. Rome erased Carthage in its entirety.

The hotspots in the world today - the obstacles to peace - all are in areas where too much concern about collateral damage stopped us from killing our enemies. See Israel v Gaza today.

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I am a pacifist, especially in the context of modern warfare. Wars are no longer fought to defend families and communities. They are fought to advance the geopolitical interests of global elites.

In the case of the Gaza "Operation," this is not a war with an unfortunately high level of civilian casualties. The civilians are the main target. This is mass murder.

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