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As we pon­der human nature and our abil­i­ty to com­ply, one way­ward thought. We real­ly have no use­ful per­spec­tive. Whether through seige, inva­sion, or great vis­i­ta­tion of plague, the many once walled cities of the world were sub­ject to bunker­ing down off and on for cen­turies. There were plague vis­i­ta­tions that kept peo­ple locked inside their homes and cities for years… com­pound­ed by actu­al famine…

Do you know how peo­ple die in the US from lit­er­al star­va­tion? Com­pli­ca­tions of pro­longed mal­nu­tri­tion? Plen­ty. Star­va­tion? Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly zero. 

Enforce­ment was often much cru­el­er, but the indi­vid­ual fear that self-enforces was also much greater, too. The idea that human beings are too undis­ci­plined has more to do with the con­text of our behav­iors than any­thing. We no longer exe­cute peo­ple for not dis­clos­ing their symp­toms, we no longer seal the doors on build­ings rav­ished by plague so that the 500 or so afflict­ed inside can be left to die that the 10,000 out­side might live and the city not be brought to ruin. 

The real­i­ty is that we have sur­vived these peri­od­ic events due almost entire­ly to irra­tional fear, over-reac­tion, and inhu­mane util­i­tar­i­an cru­el­ty… and that was all pre-Ben­tham, boys and girls. 

That is not the peo­ple we have large­ly become, but our fear is also less acute than that of our ances­tors, our stress response by rel­a­tive degrees less rou­tine­ly test­ed, such has been our lev­el of rel­a­tive secu­ri­ty for so long. We real­ly are less dis­ci­plined than they were, not because our nature is dif­fer­ent, but because the envi­ron­ment with­in which it oper­ates is an unbridge­able chasm of difference.