Reply #45: "Why is it wrong to hurt people"?

[Cat Atomic]

What a great question.

I read something last year by a zoologist who studied primate behavior that might be useful here. He said that, while violence in primates varies, the motivation is consistent. It got down to defining the concept of "we".

Babboons will attack babboons outside their immediate family group- even babboons in the same "pack"- without suffering any social punishment. It's acceptable. The babboon's "we" is it's family, and that's all.

A chimp, on the other hand, will be a social outcast if he/she attacks chimps in the same group, whether they're family or not. But they WILL openly fight chimps in other groups and it's perfectly acceptable.

He went on to say that humans show the same behavior, but our concept of "we" varies greatly. So when we say that "hurting people is wrong", we're really only syaing that hurting "we" is wrong. War with some "other" is perfectly acceptable to most people.

So anyway, I think it's based in biology. As social animals, we're always looking out for "our" safety.

If this were translated this to politics, I'd say conservatives consider "we" to mean the United States. Evangelicals might define "we" as other Christians. So to these people, hurting people in other countries is just fine. It doesn't matter if the motivations are questionable, the people in the other countries aren't "we" and they simply don't count.

I don't know that Liberals are quite as monolithic. I think some see "we" as the poor, others see it as the secular, or the gay, or the pacifists, or even humanity as a whole.