-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All risky behavior violates the sense of self-preservation. Sacrificing yourself for the group violates the sense of self-preservation. Proving your manhood by killing a lion, a la Zulus (I think), clearly violates the sense of self-preservation. Human beings do not actually have instincts. Instincts are complicated behaviors that are inborn, like dam building or flying south for the winter.
^^^^^^^ CB: Agree. Humans have culture, which is to be contrasted with instincts. Most of what we do is not instinctive, but cultural or learned. Also, a significant amount of our conduct violates instincts, as you say. However_Most_ of what we do , though, does not violate our instincts.
Also, killing a lion makes the area safer for you. So, there is a substantial self-preservation aspect to it, so it is not so clear as you claim.
However, disagree that humans don't have instincts.For example, eating , drinking, shitting and pissing. The vast majority of people do _not_ violate their instinct for self-preservation, and most people don't violate most of the time. Most people do not go to war. And most people who go to war, don't go to war most of their lives. So, most of the time they follow their instinct of self-preservation. Most people faced with a deadly threat flee it or fight it. etc., etc.
In analogy to killing a lion, many people who go to war have it in mind that they are defending themselves against a threat. So, even going to war is mixed and contradictory with respect to self-preservation and self-sacrifice. Warriors don't just go out and sacrifice themselves. They try to survive. The instinct of self-preservation comes out big time in war, although I agree going into danger in the first place takes overcoming the fear of danger, that fear being an expression of self-preservation. The fact that warriors have fear is proof that they have an instinct of self-preservation.
In general, the emotion of fear is a fundamental expression of the instinct of self-preservation.
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People do not have a money-making "instinct." However, they do generally have a drive to move up in the social order and live more comfortably, which in some cultures involves money. In others, it does not.
^^^^^^^ CB: Agree. And as you say it is not an instinct. It is learned, cultural.
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Also, wars do not require states, unless you define "war" tendentiously as "organized violent conflict that is carried out by a state." Non-state organizations carry out organized violent conflict all the time.
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CB: What non-state violent organizations are you talking about ? Any waging war do so against a state. Certainly , they all will quickly be engaged by the state's armed personnel.
I would not count gang and criminal gangster violence as war.
Before the origin of the state, there isn't conquest of territory, capturing of slaves and prisoners, or a standing body of armed personnel with the specialized "job" of waging violence on behalf of ruling classes.