Here is the Introduction  

Humans are social animals and generally depend on each other to provide rules of conduct, information, context and meaning. Mostly, humans are free to conform to the norms and expectations of the local group. Human’s copy what other humans do and are limited to repeating the speech and behaviors of others. Innovations are usually small modifications to an existing method, idea or belief. While there are a great variety of social organizations and diverse expressions of social interactions, there are a limited number of root tendencies that give rise to the many variations

Humans live in the paradox of being isolated creatures with selfish interests, linked inextricably together by needs, thoughts, feelings, gestures and language. Because of a deep assumption of the independent self, humans tend to exaggerate the importance and the autonomy of individual experience and individual action.

The idea of personal freedom is misleading. A self-determining individual is seldom if ever an independent agent acting only on his or her ideas and intentions. The more closely you look at any individual, the more you find group activity and the more you recognize that individuals seldom act alone. Even when humans do act alone, each person is an agent of a common understanding both innate and learned. Each person has the sense of others watching.  A human tendency is to suffer loneliness and to become despondent or suspicious and hostile when alone for extended periods.

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Groups and Ethics

Table of Contents

Who Am I?

Three Worlds

Selection, Competition and Survival

Looking for Something

Group Dynamics

Social Organization

Community

Hierarchy & Social Order

Concealed Hierarchies

Dominance and Submission

Affiliation and Bonding

Conditioning, Choices, Freedom

Cognitive Limits and Group Size

Work

Ant Works

The Family

Siblings

Adolescents as Outlaws

The Family and Politics

Society and Culture

Moral Authority & Innate Behaviors

Alliances, Status and Privilege.

Friends and Acquaintances

Rules

Contracts

Conflict and Law

Error and Limitations

Never Wrong

Mulligans

Cheating & Lying

Intention and the Law

Spiritual

Democracy

Politics

Democrats and Republicans

The Pollster’s View

Putin and Bush

Universities

Human Rights

Money, Ergonomics and Economics

Wealth and Happiness

Assembly and Mobs

Bad and Evil

Sociopaths

Fundamentalists

Aggression and Territory

Killing as a Life Skill

Guns at Home

Columbine High

Holocaust

Doomsday

Good People, Good Deeds

Solving Problems

Empathy and Compassion

Altruism

Ethics

Personal Freedom

Civility and Freedom

New Ideas

Resolving Killing

Idealist’s Fantasy

Dalai Lama and the Good Person

Meditation and Epistemology

Zen Buddhism

United Nations and Human Rights

2008 edition  Author Stephen Gislason MD