Sublime

Humans are capable of great empathy and of horrifying callousness and violence. We have evolved this way because it has been in our interest to both cooperate within our own groups and compete with others. Our empathy is therefore largely limited to those whom we see as members of our own tribe and our callous disregard and violence is reserved for

his human flock, and it was thus right and natural for his subjects to obey him

As right as he was about the importance of complexity, Pagels overlooked the most basic fact of all. When the logic of violence changes, society changes.

Pecking orders exist among men, monkeys, wasps, and even nations. They help explain why the danger of barbarians is real and why the assumptions of our foreign policies are often wrong.

Chaos, the eternal feminine, is also the crushing force of sexual selection. Women are choosy maters (unlike female chimps, their closest animal counterparts39). Most men do not meet female human standards. It is for this reason that women on dating sites rate 85 percent of men as below average in attractiveness.

Le Bon’s book gives a play by play of how people respond to crisis. Almost instantaneously, he writes, ‘man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization’.3 Panic and violence erupt, and we humans reveal our true nature.