You nailed it Walt!

Would it not be lovely if we could get all those people together and put them on an island somewhere far, far away from anyone else and leave them there.

Not cancer - not evil - not demonic - just biology.

Demonizing and blaming doesn’t help.

Understandable - but not constructive.

The only antidote to bad culture is better culture.

Let’s understand the science, and work to build better culture.

From PubMed:

“…humans are extraordinarily well-adapted rule enforcers, often intrinsically motivated not only to enforce rules themselves, but also to punish others who do not punish violators.

Boyd argues that the so-called ‘second-order free-rider problem’ is not a concern here; so long as only some fraction of individuals fail to punish those who do not punish, while others do so, the proportion of non-punishers should decrease with each successive iteration of the problem. Thus our strong tendency to follow and enforce social norms turns them into a powerful tool for enforcing co-operation at a large scale.

Why, then, are many norms detrimental to individuals and even maladaptive from the point of view of the individual or the group? For Boyd, the explanation lies in our exquisite ability to enforce and stabilise any norm at all; like our tendency to imitate successful others, it is content-neutral.

And while our norm psychology has evolved genetically because it is highly advantageous, its content neutrality means that we are prone at times to adopt norms which themselves may not be advantageous, and may even be detrimental. The selection of adaptive versus maladaptive norms is a distinct process that takes place, Boyd argues, through cultural group selection. Those groups that adopt advantageous norms will be more likely to survive, to attract new members, and to be imitated. Thus at any given time, all manner of norms may be present across multiple groups, but cultural evolution suggests there is an ongoing process of selection and adaptation.”
[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Exactly.

Well said.