Homo Homini Lupus Est

Wolfs have got such a bad lobby. They are social animals like humans and humans might gain from behaving a bit more like wolfs do. Mankind has a long history of pointing out the difference between man and animal. It has become harder to find things to point to since the age of enlightenment. We still do the pointing but a lot of former pointings have turned out to have been misdirected. What we found were lots of similarities between man and animal. I do not believe there is a qualitative difference between man and animal, but that does not matter all that much. It suffices if you agree that there are many similarities.

So what kind of animal is man? Or since this is about society, what kind of social animal is man? Prehistoric men lived in groups ranging from small families to tribes of a couple of dozen individuals. Man is extremely adaptive to whatever circumstances require but that is probably his natural way of living. Humans do not breed distinct alpha animals. Individuals can take the lead but this does not seem to be grounded in biology. Humans cooperate, individuals are not fit for surviving on their own. Humans care for each other. A lot. Privacy for anybody but the higher clergy and nobility is a very recent invention.

Humans can be most anything they choose to be. But Borg like hive societies or atomizing worship of individualism is not grounded in human biology. I think a society should respect human biology. It should allow humans to be almost anything they choose to be, but it should make use of human biology and make the default life in the society conform with the way humans lived before they started to look down on their fellow animals.