Resource Acquisition, Violence, and Evolutionary Consciousness

Abstract

The evolution and development of adaptations result from the gradual selection and inheritance of traits and behaviors that better enable organisms to acquire and maintain resources needed for survival and reproduction. We argue that instances of individual, regional, and global violence are rooted in our adaptations to seek, acquire, maintain, and utilize limited resources, regardless of whether such adaptations are currently successful at doing so. However, violence is not the only strategy employed by organisms to acquire resources; cooperation, reciprocity, and social bonding are behaviors that may likewise prove useful in this endeavor. We speculate about how individual adaptations and their by-products may interact with the adaptations of other individuals and with societal and cultural phenomena, both violently and nonviolently. Finally, we discuss how individual decisions can affect higher level regional and global violence. Individual decisions carry moral weight for the individual in question and for society as a whole. We hope to convince readers that their personal decisions and behaviors have far-reaching consequences on the well-being of others and that an evolutionary consciousness may help us to understand the effects of our personal choices on the existence of individual-and group-level violence.

Exploitative and Deceptive Resource Acquisition Strategies

“…Acquiring resources is an essential activity for living organisms. Resources include food, shelter, mates, and (for humans in modern environments) man-made objects such as tools and currency ( Gorelik, Shackelford, & Weekes-Shackelford, 2012 ). Buss and Duntley (2008) discuss three classes of strategies humans use to acquire reproductively relevant resources: individual resource acquisition strategies (e.g., tool making and solo hunting), cooperative strategies (e.g., social exchange and coalitional formation), and exploitative and deceptive strategies (e.g., coalitional warfare and free riding).…”

The Neural Correlates of Food Preference among Music Kinds

“…In the theory of evolutionary psychology, the main goals of living organisms are survival and reproduction. People are more inclined to choose options that are beneficial for survival and reproduction [73]. This also explains the individuals' tendency towards sweet foods in a state of hunger.…”

Addiction to drugs, evolution and society: a study on the addiction starting from the evolutionary psychology (La adicción a las drogas, evolución y sociedad: un estudio sobre la adicción a partir de la psicología evolutiva)

“…Byproducts are, so to speak, unintended consequences of adaptation. Commonly the social sciences conceive the mind as a tabula rasa, which has no anthropology, neuroscience and biology argue that, on the contrary, the brain already has its own knowledge, and yet, it is modular, that is, it is composed of several 2011; Gorelik, Shackelford & Weekes-Shackelford, 2012). and a range of rules on decision-making and general learning are acquired.…”