The ideas I write about here are constantly evolving in my head, but I may not update them in writing. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the story of our evolution and its relationship to politics.

The story goes like this. Mankind evolved into what we are today over a couple of million years, depending on who you ask. Regardless of who you ask, it’s what I consider a long time. The vast majority of that time was spent in small tribes wandering around searching for food. Then, around 10 to 12 thousand years ago, the agricultural revolution began and changed the course of human history.

Genes are funny. They are what make you what you are, but they’re very complex and subject to errors, some of which can benefit the owner while most disable him to some degree. People don’t like to admit this, but it’s true; your psychology is just as much a product of genetics and your individual genes as your physiology is. Genetic errors may occur where your immune system is weak or you only have one arm or you have too many or too few chromosomes, or you’re a psychopath. Genetic errors are easier to see when they’re physiological, less so when they’re psychological. Psychological genetic errors may result in various deficiencies, including pathological personalities, like the aforementioned psychopathy, narcissism, megalomania and so forth. These types of pathological personalities can lead to antisocial behaviors. In the pre-agricultural revolution, hunter-gatherer days, the tribe was small and mobile and could easily deal with pathological personalities by ostracizing the individuals in question, where they were unlikely to survive, or by simply killing them.

In those days, ostracism was a death sentence. Humans are a social, but individualistic species. We each have different strengths and weaknesses and we tend to work together to minimize our weaknesses and maximize our strengths. This is the economic idea of the division of labor. If you’re good at catching fish and I’m good at collecting coconuts, we can trade with each other for fish or coconuts and both of us will have fish and both will have coconuts and by doing this, we increase our chances of survival. Those of us whose genes influenced us to engage in this type of trade tended to survive and reproduce, therefore transferring these genes to our offspring and those of us who didn’t do this tended not to survive or reproduce, and we have, therefore, become genetically hard-wired to engage in this behavior. So, anyone rejected from the tribe was unable to use the strengths of others to offset his own weaknesses and was unlikely to survive.

Being accepted by and having good standing in the tribe meant survival and passing on genes and ostracization from the tribe meant death and not passing on genes. Over time, the genes that encourage behaviors that promote good standing in the tribe have been selected for and we have become hard-wired to seek acceptance and standing in society.

Before the agricultural revolution, the tribes survived according to the strengths of their individual members. The strongest and most beneficial members of the tribe became the tribal elites. One of the best ways to secure acceptance and standing in the tribe was to support and assimilate to the ideas and beliefs of the tribal elite. Over time, genes that promoted that behavior became selected for and we became hard-wired to adopt the ideas and beliefs of the tribal elites in order to survive.

So, people sought acceptance by the tribe and its elites and people with pathological, anti-social personalities could be ostracized or killed. Good system, until…

The agricultural revolution changed all of that. While mankind was evolving all of these tribal instincts, he was also evolving a powerful intellect. It’s this intellect that has made mankind successful and is unique (in its magnitude) among the other species. We used this intellect to create tools, develop hunting strategies and learn medicine. The more we used intellect to survive, the more powerful it became due to the same genetic selection forces that led to our tribalism. Eventually, however, we learned that, instead of wandering around searching for food, we could grow it, either by farming or by animal husbandry, without moving. Even though this led to an overall decline in health, birth rates exploded and mortality rates declined. It’s this agricultural revolution that allowed for the accumulation of capital, the development of complex economies and, eventually, the industrial revolution and modern civilization as we know it.

Many, if not most, would argue that the agricultural revolution was the greatest development in the history of mankind because of the the results, above. I argue, however, that the agricultural revolution may have doomed mankind.

Mankind was a completely evolved and adapted species achieving success in nature. Life may have been more difficult, but who’s to say? We were fully adapted to that way of life. The problem is that now, men are tethered to a piece of land on which they’re farming or herding, tying the tribe to a certain geographic location. When there are genetic errors that lead to pathological personalities, they can no longer be walked away from. While the well-adjusted tribe members are growing their crops and tending their herds, the pathological personalities have the time to develop tools and strategies to dominate and exploit other tribesmen and steal the product of their labor. With these people expanding their power over the tribe, killing them becomes a much more difficult task. Ostracizing or killing the anti-social becomes impossible. As the pathological personalities gain wealth and power at the expense of their tribesmen, they emerge as the new tribal elite, supplanting the previous meritocracy.

Here’s the real problem; human beings are hard-wired to seek acceptance from the tribe by supporting the tribal elite and adopting their ideas and beliefs. After the agricultural revolution, the tribal elite were no longer the meritorious, but the pathological. Once that paradigm shifted, the pathological created governments and propaganda to prey on the tribal instincts of their victims, establishing a new political class capable of holding mankind hostage forever. It’s a distinct possibility that the political class could eventually completely enslave mankind and/or destroy civilization. Mankind may have an evolutionary flaw which will will eventually destroy us; namely, an intellect strong enough to discover agriculture and tribalism too strong to overcome.

P.S. A libertarian political order can’t be manufactured. It can only arise temporarily from cultural circumstance. The political class are now fully in control, a libertarian political order doesn’t serve their interests, and the one or two percent of people who have the libertarian genetic mix (a weak tribal survival instinct, talents, like curiosity, reason, intellect and values where truth and justice rank highly) lack the numbers and personality traits to replace the political class as the tribal elite and then redirect the tribalism of the masses toward a free society.