I think that if more solitary species such as the orangutan had evolved intelligence, they probably wouldn't have achieved as much as we have. Our ability to cooperate multiplies our power and effectiveness. Adam Smith described how division of labor led to civilization and commerce; being a primate himself, it probably wouldn't have occurred to Smith to add the obvious, that division of labor is suicidal without cooperation. Some degree of cooperation is assumed among humans.

Alpha Apes and Flunky Apes are both characterized by strong affinity to the group, in which they occupy different places. There's a third type of human, the "rogue" or "lone wolf" who eschews membership in the group and goes it alone. Primate tribes and human societies have always been uneasy with the rogues, because they're capable of unexpected action and less easily controlled by social norms, and their relative position is not as easily determined; as a consequence, life is generally not easy for the rogues. I think that many rogues, to survive, become alphas--better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. And that those rogue leaders have likely tended to be our worst tyrants. Rogues don't become benevolent despots, because they feel little responsibility for and to the group.

I think that the "Rugged Individualist" is largely a myth. A true RI would cut himself (and it's always "him") off from civilization completely, and live at a level no higher than what he can accomplish entirely alone. Think of those caricatures of rugged individualists, the "survivalists". They couldn't be survivalists without a civilization at their backs to supply the guns and ammo and other weapons, the canned and freeze-dried foods, the vehicles, the generators and fuel, the radios...survivalists want to skim the cream off civilization to found their own offshoot societies in which they can be little kings. They're not really individualists at all.

I always thought that the basic secret of human nature and history would have been revealed if you could have locked Ayn Rand and Jane Goodall in a house for a year.

Hmm...well, that seems like an irreconcilable argument waiting to happen. Wouldn't Ayn Rand have to deny that humans are primates in order to deny the primal instincts that bias us toward cooperation, forming societies and following rules, and in general just fitting-in? Rand would be arguing the rogue case, and from within a primate society that might well seem like arguing for insanity.

(I'm observing that that's how it would seem to a comfortable member of the tribe, not that it necessarily is insanity. Human societies are complex enough to generally be able to accommodate minorities that fit uneasily into the larger society--homosexuals and members of minority religions are just two examples.)

My admittedly amateur opinion has always been that the glory and tragedy of human nature has been the evolution of a brain that uses reason and individual thought as a survival mechanism, installed in an animal with strong tribal primate instincts.

We yam what we yam, and that's all we yam. The human psyche is a tangled snarl of conflicting instincts and impulses...and that's what makes us so interesting...and so prone to create "interesting times" for our amusement.

We're all amateurs around here. If there were any professional sociologists at the Zone, I'd long ago have been called on my dilettantish ramblings. We have a license to make it up as we go.