I appreciate your advice.
As a note, tribal warfare is actually part of natural selection; natural selection includes species combating or competing with other members of their own or other species - indeed, that’s actually a large portion of it!
At the same time, while war has certainly shaped many aspects of us - often more culturally than biologically, especially in the short term - a large portion of our evolutionary history includes the beginning of morality itself.
You see, morality arises primarily from two aspects: empathy (that is, I don’t steal from you because I don’t want to be stolen from, or wouldn’t like being stolen from) and an understanding of consequences, especially punishment (I don’t steal from you because your brother will beat me up). Both of these are readily observable in the natural world; empathy - or primitive forms thereof - ranges from examples of altruism (in numerous species, primates included), to a concept of fairness (observed in chimps), even to such things as cross-species maternity. I do not believe I have to provide examples of animals understanding consequences - doubly so if you’re a dog trainer.
These behaviors arise instinctively thanks to a key factor: groups often survive better than individuals. Again, this shouldn’t need much demonstration, given the nature of multicellularity itself, however we can go on to extrapolate that traits which allow a group to act together better will allow them to survive better, and out-compete better. This is where such behaviors come in; a simple set of instincts that stops individuals from stabbing those of their group in the back is quite helpful for teamwork.
Now, at the same time, this sort of empathy has to have a shut-off valve, which appears as the “us and them” divide. In conditions of scarcity, where competition is necessary, having empathy towards *everything* would be a sever disadvantage, and thus we can readily explain not only the presence of empathy, but the ability to apply it only to those an individual considers their “herd” - perhaps tribe, if you prefer.
To come back to the point, I’m afraid your philosophical position on evolution is not entirely founded; you are neglecting that a large portion of what has allowed us to advance as far as we have remains cooperation. Rest assured, any anthropologist will be able to tell you about war and its affect on human culture as well.
Oh, as an aside: you appear to have linked voting Democrat to advances in human evolution; this carries an implication that I doubt you intended.
I believe you have a great future as a science writer.
A quibble is tribal warfare is an action of man so by definition is not natural. Very early forms can be considered natural but it became man made 200,000 years ago or much longer. Modern humans are the product of a super natural process. To say this is all natural removes all meaning and point to having a word natural.
I agree about morality. All animals that hunt in packs develop a morality, which is really a set of group rules to protect the survival of the group.
Modern anthropology is an embarrassing field full of crackpots that subscribe to the noble savage theory. Leading anthropologists tell us the Neanderthals likely died off from climate change, and never directly mention modern man killing them off on purpose. They tell us human intelligence came from better nutrition and that we walk upright to see better over grass, not because it frees our hands to wield weapons against competitors. Yes hands help us hunt and gather food, but animals show us that can be done fine without hands. Anthropologists often project their modern leftist values onto ancient people that makes them out to be happy hippies living in a commune until evil white man ruined everything. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
In general leftists come from the left side of the bell curve of their tribe. Their excessive vanity leads to envy which eventually sparks war. Leftists lose and die disproportionally during war. Sometimes the left side of the bell curve gets wiped out completely, however the bell curve spontaneously reforms from those remaining and the process repeats forever, man getting a little bit more intelligent and deadly each iteration. So we owe our high intelligence to the leftists among us, but they have little to be proud of.
At least 75% of academia is government funded, directly or indirectly. Because taxes butter their bread they tend to be pro higher taxes and bigger government and shun anyone not on board. High population density also produces people that have higher levels of vanity and therefore envy, and need bigger government to highly regulate away the freedoms of their neighbors. In the city you can’t have neighbors blaring their music at 3 am or barbecuing steaks on their apartment balcony, while living in the big land of Texas these activities are fine. Universities have high population density, are little cities, so they are prone to high levels of leftism.
The extremely wealthy become limousine leftists for the purpose of envy deflection. It works extremely well which is why they do it. While Warren Buffett talks publicly about how he should pay higher taxes, in private he hires an army of tax professionals to pay the absolute minimum. He can now enjoy his wealth openly and not worry about the left side of the bell curve burning his wealth to the ground. The rich do not fear the right so there's nothing lost in befriending the leftist beast so that they might be eaten last.
Religious people have many competitive advantages in school, sports, war, business, and life in general. They tend to be healthier, live longer, have more successful marriages, have more children, live in bigger houses, own bigger automobiles, which invokes great envy in leftists. You might ascribe their competitive advantages to a placebo effect, but who knows. There’s no easy way to gain these advantages without religion, so to attack religion is to wish the destruction of the competitive advantages of others. I'm not religious myself but I wish I was! It seems to require successful indoctrination during childhood, something the left is well aware of and one of the reasons they've worked to hijack education.