Civilizational Hacks

Today there is a parade in my city (Denver) to celebrate a Super Bowl victory. I caught a few glimpses of the prep on the TV, and it strikes me how similar this sort of behavior is to the Ancient Roman practice of the Triumph. It made me very happy. Because a Triumph necessitated the previous murder of tons of people. We’ve managed to replace it with a civilized competition with structure and rules instead of carnage and destruction. This is a huge step forward.

I consider this a form of civilizational bio-hacking. There is an innate violence in our species. We long to destroy our enemies and see them driven before us (and hear the lamentation of their women, etc). It’s a wonderful feeling to revel in the shared rushed of crushing a foe and celebrating your mastery over them. In the absence of the tools needed to remove this sickness from our psyches, we found a way to get that rush while removing the harm.

It’s similar to the way that the introduction of easily-available pornography reduces sexual violence. Or how violent video games allow people to indulge their aggressive tendencies without actually harming people (at least for a little while).

So next time someone disparages the stupidness of sports, remind them that they fulfill a biological need with a clever hack that makes all of our lives comparatively better.