The Aboriginal people of Australia are the best example I have heard yet, and will do a little more reading on. Good call on that one.
psypher wrote:
> Sodom queried:
>
> > Good posts - It just occurred to me that if you cannot make a bigger
> > them (even if it is temporary), perhaps you can make them not so
> > threatening or rare. I tend to think that people at some level think
> > they need a "them" or feel unbalanced. That without an enemy, many
> > cannot properly function.
> >
> > Are there instances where a group has successfully avoided war and
> > UTism for their survival? Anywhere in history? Even a little bit?
> >
> > Bill Roh
>
> ...to my knowledge the aboriginal culture of continental Australia is
> the oldest surviving on the planet with an intact structure spanning
> tens of thousands of years by some accounts. So far as I know [and my
> knowledge is admittedly sketchy] there is no THEM in the Aboriginal
> ideosphere.
> ...could their survival perhaps be linked in someway to their idea
> that each member of the group is enacting a role in a great tale?
>
> [begin topical drift]
>
> ...this is an area where I think the conception of Gaia [in the sense
> of James Lovelock] may prove quite valuable. If we're all embedded in
> a greater system with comprehensible qualities and states could we
> not organize ourselves towards the propagation and maintenance of
> that ecological entity, thus organising all of US towards some end
> without a THEM?
> [which would also seem to dovetail with some of the extropian
> priority on getting off planet - positing humyns as the Gaian
> reproductive system]
>
> [end conjecture]
>
I like the idea a lot, though I question our overall makeup and our ability NOT to become UTers - I would choose to support such an end. The idea of getting off the planet with the purpose of spreading our own unique (as far as I am aware) life forms is great too, but the FTL thing is obviously a problem. Certainly if we remain on this planet our time remaining will be short (in evolutionary terms). Of course, when we hit space, our species will start to change differently in different groups - making several species eventually. Just imagine what a million years of humans on different planets will make - I wonder if we would recognize our progeny.
Bill Roh