The Origins of the “Manichean Mindset”

摘要: This chapter surveys the debate between so-called Nativists and Behaviorists on whether a universal Human Nature exists, before segueing into main tenets of important emerging discipline evolutionary psychology, which emphasizes how ancestral environment continues to exert an enduring influence over many modern human impulses, including instinct for violence. The analyzes ongoing debates Individual Selectionists who emphasize that individual competition is basis all social life, as opposed Group argue humans are at same time instinctly groupish well. As would contend, innate predilection categorization, together with structurally induced looping effects reifying group constructs, creates necessary environmental prerequisites Darwinian natural selection not so much selfish individuals but rather cohesive groups best suited success in intergroup conflict. posits roots this categorization process lie first element Triad, binarity – or tendency employ binary oppositions making sense stimuli. Binarity, importance wider, psychologically comforting Tent profoundly meeting esteem needs resulting potential sometimes self-sacrificial violence against out-groups, implies existence Manichean Mindset. Mindset expressed basic ethnocentric, xenophobic, dominance-seeking behavior in-group vis-a-vis putative out-groups. Hence, intrinsic, potentially combustible, Manichean-minded in-group/out-group cleavages preexist well intervention violent extremist ideology.