Will the human species react on a fundamental biological level against world government because it is too dangerous for species survival?

Yes. Bio chemical and electrical is how we operate. And, our Modus Operandi is to survive.
No matter how it has to be done.

Doubtfully

What world government?

A better question is could human beings ever drop their biological tendencies toward tribalism, geocentrism, and just plain fear of “otherness” sufficiently to even form a world government.

Human thought always triumphs over biological responses. There is always a way to override – or ignore – stimuli. It is what makes us human.

How exactly would our genes and proteins detect the difference between a world government and its many alternatives? Just wondering, you know, from a biologic standpoint.

please show first that it is more dangerous for the species survival than the multistate solution with its countless wars and international conflicts.

@Grisaille I am not talking about an individual response here. I do not know the mechanism that the species might use. What it always does though is use all of its resources to maintain maximum diversity. It goes after every ecological niche. Putting all of its eggs in one basket is not it’s way and it could be possible that it is not the way of human cultures either.

@shilolo No possible way. Do you have a name? Do you have a culture. These things too are a function of your biological nature.

@walterallenhaxton
“Putting all of its eggs in one basket is not it’s way”
I say that is untrue.
“Putting all of its eggs in one basket” is what humans did when they first lived together as couples to raise offspring.
“Putting all of its eggs in one basket” is what humans did when they collected into tribes.
“Putting all of its eggs in one basket” is what humans did when they formed larger communities.
“Putting all of its eggs in one basket” is what humans did when they founded nations.
“Putting all of its eggs in one basket” is what humans did by forming the first international communities.

Your claim that “Putting all of its eggs in one basket” is not the way of humans and human culture is simply not true.

Furthermore, part of human nature is competing with others, for whatever reason.
Staying single and competing with others eventually breeds conflict, violence, and death.
Forming a community brings stability, and this stability improves the survivability of all involved.
Staying in a community that competes with other communities eventually breeds conflict, violence, and death.
Forming a nation brings stability, and this stability improves survivability of the inhabitants of the nation.
Staying in a nation that competes with other nations eventually breeds conflict, violence, wars and subsequently, death.
Forming an international community , again, brings stability and increased survivability.
A world government would simply be an extension of that system, and increases the survivability of the species as a whole, and strengthens the ability to compete with other species in the interstellar environment, once we really have access to it.

No. That is impossible and completely contradicts evolutionary principles. Evolution does not evolve “against” things. Evolution is a contest to see who can get along the best with however things are, and how they change over time.

@walterallenhaxton I think you need to educate yourself more on fundamentals in genetics and biology. Things like names and culture ARE NOT genetically linked. If I were born in Germany, I would absorb and adapt the German culture, whereas if I were born in England I would absorb its culture. There is NO genetic component to culture.

@ragingloli History shows us that governments of any kind; republic, democracy, socialism, communism, monarchy, feudalism, etc. are all susceptible to forces of tyranny. That is, when people of . . . less than altruistic motives . . . take power, the government, in whatever form, degenerates into despotism. Despots don’t give up power readily; they pass it along to their biological or political offspring, who are frequently even less worthy to rule than the ones who grabbed power to begin with.

Despite the distasteful nature of war, history has relied heavily on it to overthrow despots, who are generally not reasonable people who respond well to intellectual discourse. War can come in the form of Revolution, as it did with the United States, or it can come from outside forces, as it did with Hitler’s Germany. In both cases, the result was increased freedom and decreased oppression. Having a single government would make Revolution more difficult, and essentially eliminate outside opposition, like the opposition that Hitler faced from Allied forces. I’m not advocating war, or saying it is the only way, simply pointing out that individual and separate nations, whatever problems they may have, and whatever unjust wars they may tend to foster, have also acted to some degree as checks and balances to each other. If they can learn to do this with economic and political methods rather than military methods, so much the better.

I won’t argue that a single government is more dangerous for species survival; it may well be better for species survival. I simply don’t know. But a single government is far more dangerous for individual liberty. So whether a person desires world government is dependent, I think, on what they consider more valuable—individual liberty, or the survival of the species.

Uhm, seing the tendency to create the bigger and bigger, even though unnatural and detrimental to some of the most feebleminded (serial killers, for instance, are a prerogative of western or westernized countries), societal constructs i don’t see HOW would we oppose to that.

As a matter of fact i think we’d oppose to the opposite, now that we’re used to the concept of people and nation i highly doubt that we’d ever fall back to a tribal organization, even though it’d be undoubtably better as far as internal harmony goes.

I don’t follow how a single government is far more dangerous for individual liberty. Though I understand this is a common talking point among weird conspiracy theorists.

Compare the individual liberty of blacks in the south before federal civil rights and after, for example. Or the individual liberty of Iranians today compared to Iranians under a world government.

I think the key would be to make sure the world government functions as a multicultural state with guarantees on freedom of expression and other Western liberal ideals. But the size of a government, in itself, says little if anything about the extent of individual liberties under that government.

@Gundark I disagree: a single government couldn’t and wouldn’t arrive to despotism. Not under the light of day, at least. If the french revolution was victorious and managed to create a system WITHOUT destroying the nation, it was precisely because the revolution was bred INSIDE of the nation. Same as the american revolution. Meanwhile Germany and Iraq , where the “revolution” was forcibly imported by other nations, had (or will have to, in the case of iraq) face a terrible mess, much worse than any possbile aftermath to any revolution.

A “homegrown” revolution guarantees the people’s support, an imported revolution simply shits on everything that could have been reused making it impossible to save the structural integrity of the state while changing the system that moves it. It’s like changing the engine or changing the whole car.
In that respect a global government wouldn’t have to worry about the risk of an imported revolution, any and every revolution would be from the inside, necessarily, thus making it much morel ikelyto be actual expression of the people’s will, rather than that of neighbouring (Or not so neighbouring, i’m looking at you, USA) countries.

As for the option that said government would turn into a despotism behind people’s backs, well, that wouldn’t be much of a difference from things as they are in the western world, would it? Democratic Governments are, with no exception, corrupt to some extent. Some more some less but corrupt nontheless. And this is a form of despotism, it is forcing someone’s interest upon the nation for personal gain.

For a start, the idea of a reaction against world government is ludicrous. Even if it is harmful for human survival, which I doubt, it is much to abstract, complex, and foreign a threat to have any role in natural selection. Thus, any legitimacy this idea might have would be if we have a natural reaction against certain basic social structures that appear under a world government. However, I very much doubt that people have evolved even to instinctively favor any such specific structure. Aside from the doubtful possibility of actually encoding such an abstract concept into DNA, this would not even be evolutionarily favorable. As you say, people don’t put their eggs in one basket; this is precisely what would happen if they were unable to adapt to different modes of government and social organization. Changes in the environment necessitate changes in behavior; roughly speaking, times of hardship necessitate group cooperation and submission to hierarchy, while times of plenty allow individuals leeway to follow their profit motive. Many societies must live for centuries or millenia on one extreme of the spectrum, while others must oscillate between the two with great frequency. So it would be disastrous for our genes to limit the organizational structures we can accept.

Warning: all of the below makes sense to me, but it may be poorly written or straight BS.

A more viable possibility is to rely on our intellects to analyze the situation and tell us how we should organize our society, but this would probably result in chaos where there is no useful structure. A better alternative is, instead of depending on the fragmented intellects of individuals to come to the same and most appropriate solution, to rather use their combined intellects, somewhat like individual bees in a hive can network to produce quite sophisticated behavior. Human civilizations accomplish this by having each individual model their behavior on the consensus they read in their communities; change by this mechanism is slower than if individuals make their own decisions, but also more stable: a compromise. So instead of evolving to favor specific forms of social organization, we have evolved a powerful sense of social conformity and networking, as a means of developing the proper form of organization for the situation. This is why we display such a strong tendency towards groupthink and mass cultural movements, why we invariably value social conformity, etc.

So, returning to your question, there is no fundamental biological opposition to world government, because people have evolved to use one another rather than an absolute standard as their reference for acceptable social organization. Depending on how well world government is administered, this trait may work for or against it.

@shilolo What the hell are you talking about. This question says nothing about genes. If you knew a little more you would realise that a human being is not the sum of his parts but a complex system of systems of his parts. One that is also subject to genetic change during its lifetime. There are a number of processes that change which part of ageneisactive and whichisnot.

Stillwhatdogeneshave todowithit.?. Thisspace barhas changedon me.. Organismchangetoo. Iamnot reallarguinganagenda here.Ithinkthatthereis a biologicalaspect toourrelationshimstoothers. Hellpingothersseemstobeabiologicalservivaltraitinotherspeciesaswell.Thereisasizefactorbeyond whichitmight turninto an antisurvivaltrait. That iswhat Iam talking about.

In the immortal words of Whatthefluther: ”...wtf”

@walter; In response to your comment above (such as it was), if you are not talking about a purely genetic cause, then of course the answer is yes, but only because everything that we do is a result of our biology. So saying so with regard to this particular application is rather pointless. The question is really only of value, if at all, if you are talking about genetics, with regard to hereditary psychological traits. And also, I am almost certain that shilolo knows more about biology than either of us.

@walterallenhaxton “Fundamental biological level” “species survival”.... What, pray tell, are you talking about then? Do you even know? Oh, and if you want to engage in a discussion of epigenetics, I would be glad to partake.

@Jayne There is new information comming in at all times. I was suprised when I found out that some prescription drugs made permanent changes in how geners operates. I hope he knows plenty about biology. I just do not think about knowledg as pa hoard that I have so I was not thinking of him having such a hoard.

Another thinking I was thinking of is that every one of us ins nlimited in the number of associates we have as well as the number of things we can hold in our mental focus. Because of these things we loose control when the number gets too great. There is a natural limit to the size of a business. When it gets too big in it’s market it can no longer expand there and needs to move part of it’s business into other markets. That is because it’s decisions affect the market price too much and so it starts getting false pricing signals which lead to either over or under production. When a company has that problem it looses its ability to make a profit in that market and it is best to scale back and go into other products. Governments being monopolistic in the first place have little more than seeing what is happening with other governments to decide what to do. Without that input I suspect the system would go unstable. I see much of such economic processes in biological populations. I think that economics and biology are inseparable.

@ragingloli Quite right! A benevolent ‘World Government’. I’ll vote for that.

@walterallenhaxton; it is reasonable to model some economic phenomena with biology and vice versa. Is that what you’re asking about? Because that really isn’t what your question said. Also, what do mid-life genetic changes have to do with this question?

@Jayne I don’t know. To use biological terms there seems to be a developing consensus that we should let a viral predator control the entire petri dish. I don’t think my question indicates when it will react. It could be easily in the collapse of a world government and fictionalization back into more humanly controllable units.

I do not consider viruses to be living but to be more on the order of biological poisons. They seem to act like chemicals do. They always consume until stoped by lack of food.

So, viruses aren’t predators. They are simply organisms that have carved out a niche in the world. Moreover, it is simply untrue that viruses “consume until stopped by lack of food.” Most viruses actually have evolved sophisticated mechanisms for long-term quiescent survival. Take the herpes virus. It lies dormant in your neurons for decades. Then, if you are stressed, it grows and causes disease. Your metaphors are not working….

I hope so. If not, well. . .

Now I’ve had the time of my life
No I never felt like this before
Yes I swéar it’s the truth
and I owe it all to you
‘Cause I’ve had the time of my life
and I owe it all to you
I’ve been waiting for so long
Now I’ve finally found someone
To stand by me
We saw the writing on the wall
As we felt this magical
Fantasy
Now with passion in our eyes
There’s no way we could disguise it
Secretly
So we take each others hand
‘Cause we seem to understand
The urgency just remember
You’re the one thing
I can’t get enough of
So I’ll tell you something
This could be love because
CHORUS:
I’ve had the time of my life
No I never felt this way beforeYes I swear it’s the truth
And I owe it all to you
With my body and soul
I want you more than you’ll ever know
So we’ll just let it go
Don’t be afraid to lose control
Yes I know what’s on your mind
When you say “Stay with me
tonight.” Just remember
You’re the one thing I can’t get enough of
So I’ll tell you something
This could be love because
CHORUS
‘Cause I’ve had the time of my life
And I’ve searched through every open door
Till I’ve found the truth
and I owe it all to you
CHORUS

Whenever I hear/read/am reminded of that song, I immediately think of that one scene in the Family Guy Blue Harvest special…