It has always been tempting for rational actors to look upon themselves, with smug superiority, as representing a higher stage of human development than that reached by tribal actors. For the rational actor, ethnocentric tribalism is primitive and backward; the culture created by rational actors is sophisticated and modern. The rational actor is not only on a higher stage of moral progress but a different kind of human being from the tribal actor -- he has superseded the stage of tribalism, and he lives the life of a rational and autonomous agent. He has escapted the prison of the tribal mind and has learned how to think for himself, calculate his own advances, and pursue his own goals and objectives. What this narcissistic self-glorification overlooks is that rational actors are the product of a serendipitous escape from the jungle -- the rational actor can behave as he does only because he is confident that the other people he deals with will refrain from using tactics suitable to the jungle.
Lee Harris
