Pretty soon after cells started joining together to form animals, some of the animals discovered that they could go up another level of emergence and form even bigger giants made up of multiple animals. If you look around, you’ll see them everywhere—schools of fish, packs of wolves, colonies of ants, waddles of penguins. Groups like these represent... See more

The downside was a major loss of individuality but the survival benefits made it worth the sacrifice, and the multi-celled organism thing stuck.

Human evolution has probably been influenced by the entire human emergence range. We were shaped partially by our spider interactions as we competed with neighboring individuals and partially by our ant interactions as our tribes competed with neighboring tribes. In other words, to survive through human history, it makes sense that our genes had to... See more

If we want to understand why people are the way they are, we should try thinking the same way. A human isn’t simply a perfect survival creature—it’s also just the right element of a perfect survival tribe. Examining the traits of a perfect survival tribe can help us see the specs for human nature, not only illuminating who we are, but why we’re tha... See more

A single cell is itself a giant—a magical living giant made up of trillions of non-living atoms—and an animal is a higher-level giant made up of trillions of cells. This concept—a bunch of smaller things joining together to form a giant that can function as more than the sum of its parts—is called emergence. We can visualize it as a tower.

Combining both emergent properties made the human tribe an incredible survival machine that allowed the species to stay afloat and thrive in a relentless natural world.

So while kindness, in all its manifestations—care, altruism, compassion—was an important survival trait in a world where well-functioning groups were necessary for survival, universal kindness probably wasn’t a great survival trait. Inevitably, other tribes would be selectively kind, shedding all of that kindness when dealing with other tribes. And... See more

But when Higher Minds work together, the effect can be just as powerful: the group as a whole gains superhuman abilities in learning and creativity and discovery.

In the human world, we think of “Me vs. You” selfishness and “Us vs. Them” tribalism as different concepts, but they’re actually just the same phenomenon happening on different parts of Emergence Tower.