As some do, I think a lot about the human condition and why people do the things they do. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, the Leskovar Insight plays a major role in how I understand those things. I think of all human characteristics as being on a curve, as I’ve mentioned in Talent Theory. Leskovar’s tribal survival instinct is no exception. Some people have it more than others. In some, the tribal instinct is so strong that they can’t resist it, to the exclusion of reason. In others, it’s weaker; in still others, it barely exists. This curve, however, is taller near the former than the latter (see the crude curve below*). Most people are sufficiently tribal that they will draw their ideas and beliefs from whatever they consider their tribe to be. This is why the propaganda of political elites is so damaging to society. People, by their genetics, are destined to follow political elites forever. From the dawn of human “civilization” to now, we have been plagued by the same problems, repeatedly. Regardless of how advanced intellectual knowledge becomes and how available that information is, the masses are continually swayed by the sophistry of political elites, who intentionally manipulate the tribal instinct for their own self-interest.
That’s nothing new to me and maybe to you, but what popped into my head is the variability of the intellectual talent of people scattered across the tribal instinct curve. Of course, not all strongly tribal people are morons and not all weakly tribal people are geniuses. This may be the source of the problem of the disconnect between the progress of intellectual discovery and the stagnation of the mass adoption of ideas; there are few people who are weakly tribal and highly intellectually talented.
Those who are weakly tribal and intellectually talented are the only people capable of developing, considering and adopting ideas. These people speak in a code that can’t be understood by others. This is why intellectual progress has so little value in the market. To the masses, it’s gibberish. For the strongly tribal and intellectually talented, it comes from a nonsensical paradigm and for the strongly tribal and intellectually untalented, it’s simply noise.
Those who are weakly tribal, intellectually talented and talented in communication can simplify these intellectual advances in way that makes them available to the weakly tribal and intellectually untalented. People who are strongly tribal and intellectually talented are well-suited in developing elitist propaganda and those of them who are also talented in communication are more capable of delivering that propaganda to a largely tribalist public. Because the curve of tribalism is skewed toward tribalism, the elitist propagandists have a wider audience and naturally occupy higher ground than those promoting intellectual progress.
That, in a nutshell, is why society’s progress doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with intellectual progress and that we may be doomed to this situation forever. On the bright side, I think that there’s a natural tendency for society to self-regulate and to oppose the excesses of political overreach. However, that pendulum swings in an irregular motion and I don’t have clear thoughts on that, yet.
This isn’t meant as a negative assessment of the past or future of human progress, but as an explanation of what we see in reality with the masses holding nonsensical ideas and beliefs despite the progress of intellectual development and dissemination.
*For some reason, I’m only allowed to place the curve in certain places, so that’s as close to the appropriate placing I could get.
