A justification for ending the shutdowns and quarantines is, is that humans are a social animals, and although I oppose the shutdowns and quarantines, I am not so sure about the social animals part. In a recent YouTube video, Ram Z Paul says this like it’s a truism, but is it? I think humans are social in so far as human flourishing and survival is optimized by the formation of societies, but that does not necessarily mean humans, at the individual level, seek social situations or that socializing is necessary. In the post Stop blaming introverts for mass shootings I question the commonly held assumption that humans are social animals. If humans are supposed to be so social, why do people spend so much money and effort trying to distance themselves from other humans? Some examples include:
vacation homes (wealthy people spend millions of dollars on secondary residences that are secluded from the masses)
first class and business class plane tickets, which are considerably more expensive than regular tickets
private planes
luxury boxes (for sporting events)
the existence of social and economic classes and hierarchies (people tend self-segregate based on characteristics such as race, class,IQ, educational attainment, ethnicity, etc.)
‘man caves’ (I dunno if such an equivalent exists for women, but many men prefer to be left alone to work on their hobbies as opposed to socializing)
incidents of domestic violence have risen since the lockdowns and quarantines, suggesting that keeping people confined together, even if such people are family, is detrimental to mental health.
Why is being a ‘people person’ a category or deviation from the normal rather than the default?
Even political philosophers throw the term around, invoking Aristotle, who is quoted as saying, “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.” Other confuse or conflate socializing with the concept of a ‘social contract,’ as if the existence of ‘rule of law’ necessitates socializing. It does not. This seems to be an example of the ‘Appeal to nature’ fallacy; surely, if humans are biologically similar to primates, and primates are social, then it logically follows that humans must be social too, and that socializing is good and desirable. My theory is, humans, unlike primates, are smart enough to not need socializing. Humans are unique in being sufficiently cognitively advanced to conceive and rationalize abstractions and form imaginations, making socializing unnecessary. For example, watching TV, working on a crossword puzzle, playing a solitary computer game, or reading a book–none of these activities involve the presence of other people, and in the mind are treated or processed as substitutes for human interaction.
Maybe it’s more like humans are social animals in so far as they get to choose whom they socialize with, which is people of similar social class and intellect. This even transcends politics. High-IQ dissident and neo-reactionary conservatives have little affinity it seems for ‘normie’, average-IQ, Fox News-watching conservatives despite both being of the ‘right.’ I cannot imagine someone like Moldbug being an avid Fox News watcher or Rush Limbaugh listener.