“It is obvious that our early and barely human ancestors cannot have been acting on a thought-out and deliberate policy, but must have been prompted by an instinctive mechanism—the dual mechanism of friendship within the tribe and hostility to all others. As the primitive tribe was so small, each individual would know intimately each other individual, so that friendly feeling would be co-extensive with acquaintanceship” (13).
In one of Bertrand Russell’s arguments, he reaffirms that since early human civilization, our survival instinct was to rely heavily on our families or tribes because of their familiarity, which developed into social cohesion amongst the members of the tribe. Naturally, outside tribes were seen as a threat and treated as competition for resources. Later, he suggests as we evolved, we continued to use social cohesion as a way to expand our tribes into nations and start to employ conquering other territories to gain power through fear. Instead of just having instinctive loyalty because of the pride of the tribe or the fear of imprisoned outsiders, humans began to look at creed as way of relating. Today, our social cohesion relies on the common interests of man, however the common interests of man are ever changing. I think if we look at most powerful nations of the past, we will find that the above is true. In fact, if we look at more recent news we will see that this still holds true. The September 11, 2001 attack in New York City united an otherwise divided city. Many people witnessed New Yorker’s who usually are highly focused on themselves, become concerned about their neighbors, whom some happened to be trapped in spaces together not knowing whether they were going to make it out alive. Everyone’s common goal at that moment was to survive; however it was going to occur.
Karia Hill