While touring sites of the antebellum South during my vacation, hearing the stories, thinking about history in general, considering some key forces governing social behavior, and thinking about what we're doing, a couple abstract ideas that have been floating around in my mind for some time now have crystallized a bit more. The notions aren't necessarily actionable in the immediate, but can possibly offer some gyroscopic, navigational, "north star" type guidance.
Simply stated, we humans naturally seek to maximize our circles of empathy but also seek to minimize the social entropy within them. In other words, we gravitate towards order, organization, comfort, abundance, contentment, and all that is "good", yet as social creatures, we attempt to share it with as many of our "kin" as possible -- in whatever way we define "kin" -- be it as our individual selves, our families, our tribes, our corporations, our nations, or as whatever level of commonality to which we feel sufficiently strong affinity. The crux is that these two forces often compete with one another at cross purposes. Securing "goodness" for oneself can imply "badness" for another.
-Greg
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