Groups who regularly fight in the face of overwhelming odds leave very few descendants. The odds were overwhelming. They only win by fluke or catastrophic errors on the opposing side.
Groups who regularly surrender in the face of overwhelming odds leave no descendants at all.
This is why humiliation feels so bad; everyone who didn't feel it so keenly got killed off long ago.
In the short term, surrender may be rational. In the long term, it is not rational. Although since the difference between few and none is small, this process is slow. I rather suspect the 10,000-ish* year history of so-called 'civilization' is too short to properly evolve immunity to State control. Surrendering to State control is long-term irrational...but very long term, it would seem.
*(Might be more like 30,000-ish, but it's definitely not 100,000-ish.)
1 comment:
In the long term, the odds of having to survive [a fight against overwhelming odds] approaches 1.
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