Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive

[groovedaddy]

Among the Ache hunter-gatherers in eastern Paraguay, healthy adults with no dependent offspring are expected to donate as much as 70 to 90 percent of the food they forage to the needier members of the group. And as those strapping suppliers themselves fall ill, give birth or grow old, they know they can count on the tribe to provide.

Among the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari in Africa, a successful hunter who may be inclined to swagger is kept in check by his compatriots through a ritualized game called “insulting the meat.” You asked us out here to help you carry that pitiful carcass? What is it, some kind of rabbit?

Among the Hadza foragers of northern Tanzania, people confronted by a stingy food sharer do not simply accept what’s offered. They hold out their hand, according to Frank Marlowe, an anthropologist at Durham University in England, “encouraging the giver to keep giving until the giver finally draws the line.”

Among America’s top executives today, according to a study commissioned by The New York Times, the average annual salary is about $10 million and rising some 12 percent a year. At the same time, the rest of the tribe of the United States of America struggles with miserably high unemployment, stagnant wages and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Now, maybe the wealth gap is a temporary problem, and shiny new quarters will soon rain down on us all. But if you’re feeling tetchy and surly about the lavished haves when you have not a job, if you’re tempted to go out and insult a piece of corporate meat, researchers who study the nature and evolution of human social organization say they are hardly surprised.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/science/05angier.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

[Zoeisright]

1. And a loss of that is what is going to destroy us.

[starroute]

2. Redistribution should not be a dirty word

It's an essential part of what makes human societies so dynamic. The most inventive and high-achieving are able to succeed beyond the rest of us -- but they they reach back to share openly and generously with everyone else.

Any time that principle has been ignored, wealth stagnates -- and so does the society as a whole.

[Odin2005]

3. The earliest governmental hierarchies developed over the need to redistribute harvests.

A tribe would choose a "big man" based on how well he distributed the food stores though huge parties. The potlatch of the Natives of the PacNW are an example.