Peak Animal Behavior
I’ve never seen such a hilarious display of primal behavior. I recently stumbled across this past interview on CNBC, where UFC fighters Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz take turns throwing insults at each other in front of a female reporter. The reporter asks about their financial income (the social-Darwinist equivalent of whoever has the biggest muscles in the tribe) and I couldn’t help but laugh at how it all unfolded. It looked exactly like two alpha dogs, deep in the wilderness, fighting it out in front of a female observer.
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The first alpha male succeeds in mocking the other, and then the defeated male walks away, self-conscious and embarrassed (Diaz, after losing the verbal fight, took his earphones off and left the interview). What’s amazing, too, is that while the first alpha male was winning, he also showed a faint empathy toward the other male—maybe out of reaction to having won the dominance dispute, and realizing that the other is no longer a threat—thus handing out a little bit of sympathy and pity. Anyways, they later punch each other repeatedly in an octagon cage because why the hell not?
This whole thing made me think about the nature of suppressing our natural behaviors. It's amazing how we can be so civilized in spite of being born out of an environment that encouraged such violent behavior. It’s not easy for an ape to reason with himself, “Why shouldn’t I just kill this guy who’s threatening all my mating opportunities?” And the fact that we don't immediately default to this makes me wonder how we were able to make each other so kind. Kindness is not something we should take for granted. It's very much worth studying how it arises within our societies.
