Explaination for human conflict

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Keith Henson's thoughts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terrorism

I would put it a bit differently. Terrorism and warfare are both the outcome of stressed human populations.
Also: "that is to say, politics by other means."
I think "politics" misses he evolutionary origin of war and terrorism. I commented about this recently on the virus list when someone mentioned that there was disagreement about the Wikipedia page for "terrorism" and proposed that it might be recast as a memetics issue. My comments there:
(begin quote)
I am sorry to say that memetics is not the right tool for the job. This is coming from a person whose status depends to a considerable degree on work in memetics now dating back over 20 years.
What is needed is evolutionary psychology.
Many of us overrated memes as being causal to wars and related social disruptions. They do play a role in the causal *chain* leading to war and/or terrorism but as members of interchangeable class. They are not at the origin of the chain.
The ultimate cause of "uncaused" wars and terrorism is rooted in the problems of any species that escapes its predators. Without predation, animals always over exploit their environment. This is true of chimps as well as humans. By taking to the trees to sleep and staying in groups during the day, very few chimps get eaten by leopards.
So chimp populations are limited by violence--sometimes total genocide--between groups. (Bumper sticker: Be Your Own Predator!)
For this to be stable, there has to be feedback making violence between chimp groups more likely as the population rises or the food supply falls. I do not know what it is that turns on chimpanzee genocides, though this would be an important question to ask.
Humans have an evolved behavioral switch that is activated by the anticipation of coming hard times. The link through memes is that the switch turns up the gain of circulating xenophobic memes. In the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness, the circulating memes synchronized a tribe's warriors to a do or die attack on a neighboring tribe.
In a situation where the tribe members would all starve without taking over a neighbor's territory, the genes of the warriors were better off *even if the warriors lost and were all killed.* The reason is that their genes were also present in the female children which were normally booty to the winning tribe. (You need to understand Hamilton's inclusive fitness for this to make sense.)
If you wonder why humans seem to have rather flexible morals, it is part and parcel of our evolutionary heritage. Morals *are* situational. If you want peace rather than wars and terrorism, all human populations need to be looking at an improving future (or at least not a bleak one).
[A question for the class to consider is why some parts of the world are much more stable than others.? As a specific case, give an EP account for why population support for the IRA faded out? Date (+-5 years) the origin of the proximate cause.]
As an analogy, removing a lug nut from a wheel with sticks and rocks would be an awful job. But it becomes a simple task with an air wrench. So it is with understanding wars and terrorism with EP instead of memetics.
Unfortunately, the understanding that emerges is extremely depressing. Because it uses the E word, it can't even be comprehended by the rising political forces in the US.
(end quote)
Bradley Thayer's recent book _Darwin and International Relations_ more or less supports this view.
If there is interest for this merging of war, terrorism and relates social disruptions, I will be happy to contribute a draft.
Keith Henson

Hence the need for for a constantly expanding global economy. Supply Side style. Too risky for the socialist economists in academia.