In general I agree with you, although encouraging and policing are not the same thing, and history shows that concerted advocacy is the only thing that ever leads to change. If it makes people feel squirrely to think of flattening the hierarchy and having more equality, that's because they are deeply indoctrinated into a patriarchal dominance hierarchy system. The only way to challenge that is to point out the issues with it, which some people will vehemently resist, but just because that's a bit uncomfortable for them to have their status quo challenged doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.
As for your assertion that when resources are short, societies become selfish, this isn't necessarily true. We assume that's what would happen because we've been taught that this is human nature, but studies show that even babies will share their food with others, even if they themselves are hungry. And then there's this:
"Communities that have been devastated by natural or man-made disasters almost never lapse into chaos and disorder; if anything, they become more just, more egalitarian, and more deliberately fair to individuals. (Despite erroneous news reports, New Orleans experienced a drop in crime rates after Hurricane Katrina, and much of the “looting” turned out to be people looking for food.)
Before the war, projections for psychiatric breakdown in England ran as high as four million people, but as the Blitz progressed, psychiatric hospitals around the country saw admissions go down. Emergency services in London reported an average of only two cases of “bomb neuroses” a week. Psychiatrists watched in puzzlement as long-standing patients saw their symptoms subside during the period of intense air raids. Voluntary admissions to psychiatric wards noticeably declined, and even epileptics reported having fewer seizures.
According to German psychologists who compared notes with their American counterparts after the war, it was the untouched cities where civilian morale suffered the most. Thirty years later, H. A. Lyons would document an almost identical phenomenon in riot-torn Belfast.
As people come together to face an existential threat, Fritz found, class differences are temporarily erased, income disparities become irrelevant, race is overlooked, and individuals are assessed simply by what they are willing to do for the group. It is a kind of fleeting social utopia that, Fritz felt, is enormously gratifying to the average person and downright therapeutic to people suffering from mental illness."
Junger, Sebastian. Tribe (pp. 53–54). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Don't feel bad about a long comment. I appreciate the discussion. Hope you feel better soon.
