I am relatively new to the active reading of philosophy so I did not just want to dive in so a friend recommended a book to start with. I am still working on Critique of Religion and Philosophy but I find it excellent aid in rational thought about the two subjects.

Quote Originally Posted by StormSurge View Post
I disagree, I believe that mankind runs on the basest of instincts, many of which revolve around fighting, for a variety of reasons. The instinct to fight to protect close people, the instinct to fight for food, the instinct to fight for your territory. Without government imposing civility upon us, we would eventually deteriorate back to that state of pure instinct.
When you look at real early man or even proto-humans one could assume that "man" would realize the benefit of peaceful interactions between "new people". The reason some believe this is that man would realize that within their own group people had different views or ways of doing things and that new individuals would increase the likelihood of finding easier ways to do "things."

This slowly allowed humans to build larger cooperative communities that ultimately led small hunter gatherer groups to evolve into larger agricultural based groups. Of course this is something that varied from one place to another and your thoughts were probably true in other areas where resources were in less abundance.

So basically my point is that base human nature would realize the benefit of increasing the numbers in one group if the resources are available.