Man is a rational being.
This was hammered into my small brain so many times when studying basic tenets of capitalism. But today I feel it’s more or less a codeword for being selfish. It ultimately means — man is a selfish being.
It’s not an accurate assessment. Like so many other formulaic statements about human nature, this too is a partial assessment.
On the contrary I feel, Man being cooperative and social is quite obvious, albeit he may be selfish at times. Think about it — we are a product of 4 million years of evolution always competing for survival with species far more stronger and able bodied than us. There were so many beings — but we survived and adapted ourselves to varying environments. It simply couldn’t have been possible without selfless cooperation— despite the phenomenal brain power attributed to humans.
So how could we cooperate so long? Evolution of language of course would have helped. But it needs more than a language to cooperate. For sure many animals survive and communicate, even today, without highly developed language.
It was the feeling of fraternity— of being brothers. And how to kindle that feeling? By imagining that we are all one big family. That might have been the basis of tribes. But as human settlements spread out there would have arose different tribes. With growing population and competition for food, there would have ensued battle for survival among the tribes.
So definitely it would have forced us to think beyond tribes. As just being limited to tribes might have hit the law of marginal utility.
Hence next logical thing would have been to enjoin the tribes. How? By invoking that we are all from same father — God. So irrespective of tribal differences we are brothers.
However over the time, as is the wont, these religions would have splintered on details of the “one” fatherly God.
It needed a bigger force to bring heterogeneous believers together.
And that came with gradual changes. From Charter of Charlemagne to treaty of Utrecht, Treaty of Westphalia, Glorious English Revolution, French revolution and American Revolution— we slowly arrive at the concept of Citizenship and nationalism. That we no longer are responsible to one God or one King —but we belong to our one nation-state. We are Indians, English,American etc.
And now we again are staring at a situation when this is not enough. There are bigger survival threats like Global Warming, Life threatening diseases, extinction of flora and fauna— all of which knows no borders of citizenship and nationality. Need of the time is to even overcome the new tribal barrier of — nation state.