Fight Like An Animal

The podcast explores the shift towards niche subcultures and self-expression in politics, facing challenges from declining social cohesion. It discusses a proposal for applying marketing strategies to revolution, the emergence of political tensions in suburbia, and the importance of engaging niche identities for mass involvement in societal change.

In this episode, a 72-year-old Arnold reflects on how our species and the global ecosystem managed to survive to 2050. We discuss the Interstate 5 Security and Commerce Zone, and the revolutionary events of 2032-3 that brought down the I-5 wall. We examine the Scientific Militant's efforts to take control of industrial infrastructure to sequester CO2, and the distinctly psychographic approach they took to revolution. And we examine the formation of Green Spear Security Services, which militarily defeated the I-5 Security Forces, from the perspective of the aggressive differential theory of left-right politics and the tension between specialization and synthesis in complex societies. From this perspective, we attempt to answer the question of why prospects for egalitarian revolution, by means of physical force, seemed to gasp their last dying breath in the 1960s and 70s. Find me on Patreon to unlock the full dizzying scope of this episode: https://www.patreon.com/biologicalsingularity  

In this episode, we take a rollicking journey through the minds of narcissists, the emergence of states, and the seemingly intrinsic relationship between authoritarianism and insane belief systems. We explore how individual personality variation affects group dynamics, and in particular, how a certain type of person is to be found in all times and places who wants to be in charge. Relying heavily on Boem's Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, we examine the notion that egalitarian societies are such because of collective efforts to subdue those with authoritarian tendencies. In this manner, we create a more variable account of human nature, rejecting the notion that sociopolitical structure automatically emerges from a given mode of subsistence, and thus indicate a wide range of potential future societies.   

In this episode, we examine the way the internet is changing us through the lens of evolved group psychology. We follow the trajectory of increasing social differentiation that technology facilitates, and see how Ronald Inglehart's The Silent Revolution predicted events like the Jan. 6 capitol riots in the 1970s. We explore the tendency toward niche self-expression that emerges from post-WWII material abundance, and how the right-wing is finally having its 1960s.  

In our last discussion, Joshua described cross-species uniformities in responses to traumatic experiences, and how he works to help people access their evolved capacities for recovery. In this episode, we discuss why  our society sees such escalating levels of psychological distress and the utter discontinuity between innate human needs and the structure of the modern world. We discuss our species-typical developmental trajectory (as characterized by the hunter-gatherer childhood model), the psychological function of initiation rites, debates about whether children are being coddled or brutalized by current social conditions, adulthood, loneliness, agency, and more.  

Unlock the entire episode at https://www.patreon.com/biologicalsingularity The year is 2050, and I have been making this podcast for 30 years. In this episode, I continue with the themes first developed in the Biology of the Right-Left Divide, using the revolutions of the mid-2030s to illustrate how social conditions amplify innate differences. We focus on two ways the social-technological trajectory is changing us: specialization (i.e. the development of hyper-competence in some domains at the expense of any competence in others) and behavioral changes resulting from alterations to the brain's reward circuitry, a consequence of living among so many easy, compulsive pleasures. We build a foundation for examining how these two types of change interact with the biology of aggression, and thus determine the nature of human dominance hierarchies. 

We use religious cults as an example of extreme group psychology to make generalizations about the group dynamics that determine sociopolitical possibility. We investigate the relationship between ingroup cohesion and outgroup animosity, the oxytocin-laden war rituals of chimpanzees, the unique human developmental biology associated with social cognition, and the general neurobiology of the repetitive group dynamics we encounter.  

Joshua Sylvae practices and teaches Somatic Experiencing, an approach to trauma recovery based on a cross-species understanding of behavior and its evolutionary foundations. Proceeding from the observation that many species routinely encounter mortal peril without long-term traumatization, SE facilitates the innate recovery processes that our culture of restraint impedes, placing an emphasis on the embodied aspects of the trauma response. In this episode, Joshua describes the SE paradigm and helps us establish a foundation for an understanding of how our sociopolitical structures create and maintain trauma, and how our trauma creates and maintains our sociopolitical structures. For more information about Joshua's work see: https://sylvae.net/ 

We continue to describe extreme aspects of group psychology, delving into phenomena like death from social exclusion. We examine cross-species similarities in the drive for sociality for its own sake,  discuss how certain varieties of evolutionary theory cannot account for the behaviors we observe, and how they also contribute to a culture war regarding evolutionary explanations. We look at results from experiments in group psychology, describe the notion of supernormal stimulus, and propose an explanation for the internet fragmenting, rather than unifying, our perceptions of the world.  

How scientific is science? In this episode, we further the argument that "science communication" about the ecological crisis is based on an unscientific understanding of what motivates people. Having described some of the innate components of an ecological worldview in the last episode, in this one we look at the raw empirical reality of public perceptions of climate change, the incessant liberal freakout about declining rationality, and more. On the fictional front, we imagine a scientific upheaval resulting from research into the foundations of scientists' own tribal epistemologies.