I may be committing an error, by unshared assumption, that anyone except me would even want a less violent civil war, all else being equal. In assuming this, I’m effectively arguing against the reproductive strategy of the majority of people, which demands large R-selection culls as part of their Malthusian boom and bust population cycle. They would probably be confused if offered an alternative which preserves parts of the national infrastructure for the remaining balkanized states because the cycle predicts they will feel a pressing need to eliminate as many reproductive competitors as possible during this time (so that e.g. poisoning the wells seems like a good idea, at least at the time). The idea of eliminating both evil and “evil” people during peacetime by enforcing laws is probably a non-starter for homo sapiens because, again, articulated standards of behavior oppose their reproductive interests. After all, vertical cultural transmission of articulated, functional systems is group selecting, and R-selected individuals will oppose this on general principle because it supports their (individually) weaker reproductive competition (e.g. nerds).
This opposition to vertical cultural transmission is also why destroying as much infrastructure as possible seems like a good idea: infrastructure supports the Tutsis, therefore removing it increases the number of Tutsis dead (and tacitly Hutus also, who are direct reproductive competitors to other Hutus) and the remaining Hutus are quite content to return to their natural state in mud huts. So we will probably see calls to limit access to and eventually burn libraries, dig up copper wire, and whitelist the internet. In fact, we should expect Hutus would be offended by the idea of imposing fewer costs on the general population, as this would defeat the sexual purpose behind the purge. After all, eliminating pedophiles from the genepool during peacetime incurs individual costs on the the lawmen, and if people were capable of that they would be k-selected and show a stable population at carrying capacity, not purges and explosions.
So I suppose I need to get my priors in order as part of this effort, because I’ve been avoiding the question of overlaps between biological reality and absolute morality in order to maintain a modicum of intellectual disinterestedness in the biological realities. But there are quite clearly some overlaps, such as pedophilia in R-selection (which is clearly immoral in the absolute sense, aside from the costs it imposes in multi-level selection theory), and to a much lesser extent anxious temperaments in K-selection (the Bible is very clear about fearing the Lord, and nothing else). I still intend to do the posts about relatively nonviolent balkanization, but what I’ve realized is that even if it seems obvious to me that this is preferable both as outcome and strategy, I may be ignoring a very difficult matter of persuasion for most people (for whom I’m predicting the opposite is obvious). There’s no sense in selling things nobody wants.
Aeoli Pera 