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> if only we could all just band together, we could create world peace and end hunger

I mean, that does sound like a true proposition. So why is it that we can't band together?

Because humans evolved in a tribal setting with at most ~200 people per tribe (see Dunbars number), and as social animals have a very keen instict for in- and outgroups? Any group larger than that number (and often much smaller) will start to fracture into sub-groups that then compete with each other for status and resources. You can see this effect even in groups as small as 200-person startups, where there can be vigorous "us vs them" dynamics between the dev and marketing teams or even between dev and ops.

This kinda sounds like a copout.

We can escape the fatalism of Dunbar's number and in/out-groups through leadership and recursively hierarchical structures. See any large (>~200 persons) company, collective action (civil rights, wars, social movements), nations, etc.

I was asking a rhetorical question tbh.

Take it up with evolution.

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