Really well researched and written. One assertion I have trouble with is that we are well-equipped to accept and rationalize disparities in wealth and power. My reading of the literature strongly suggests the opposite is true, as does the near-universality of "fierce egalitarianism" among immediate-return h/g societies. If you haven't read it, you may find "Hierarchy in the Forest" by Christopher Boehm an interesting rebuttal to this assertion.
In the paragraph below, you seem to be arguing both sides by asserting that we have "built-in mechanisms" but that we also need to become accustomed to disparities over time. It can't be both, can it? Either we have these mechanisms already OR we need to get used to these conditions.
"The third reason is that we appear to have built-in psychological mechanisms designed to rationalize disparities in wealth and power. Moffett speculates that these tendencies may be a holdover from our remote primate ancestors who lived in highly ranked societies like today’s chimps and baboons. In other words, inequality, to an extent, is self-reinforcing and self-justifying. This is because we are socially programmed. We take the existing state of affairs as our baseline—a phenomenon known as the anchoring effect. Numerous experiments have shown that, as social creatures, our assessment of what's fair is based on lived experience, and not on some Platonic ideal of fairness. Extreme inequality entrenches itself over long periods of time due to creeping normality."
Really well researched and written. One assertion I have trouble with is that we are well-equipped to accept and rationalize disparities in wealth and power. My reading of the literature strongly suggests the opposite is true, as does the near-universality of "fierce egalitarianism" among immediate-return h/g societies. If you haven't read it, you may find "Hierarchy in the Forest" by Christopher Boehm an interesting rebuttal to this assertion.
In the paragraph below, you seem to be arguing both sides by asserting that we have "built-in mechanisms" but that we also need to become accustomed to disparities over time. It can't be both, can it? Either we have these mechanisms already OR we need to get used to these conditions.
"The third reason is that we appear to have built-in psychological mechanisms designed to rationalize disparities in wealth and power. Moffett speculates that these tendencies may be a holdover from our remote primate ancestors who lived in highly ranked societies like today’s chimps and baboons. In other words, inequality, to an extent, is self-reinforcing and self-justifying. This is because we are socially programmed. We take the existing state of affairs as our baseline—a phenomenon known as the anchoring effect. Numerous experiments have shown that, as social creatures, our assessment of what's fair is based on lived experience, and not on some Platonic ideal of fairness. Extreme inequality entrenches itself over long periods of time due to creeping normality."
Increadibly interesting and detailed. I really enjoyed how deep it dwells into the subject and the various connection with more recent societies.