Why We’re Acting Like Animals Again

The nervous-system logic behind tribal politics, online spectacle, and the return of territory thinking

Human societies today are haunted by a persistent error, the instinctive mistake of treating people like animals defending territory. Rather than building on our uniquely human gift, the ability to accumulate knowledge across generations and society, many institutions and narratives regress to the zero-sum scramble of animals in the present.

This regression emerges when “Ghost Maps” and outdated cultural narratives align with our primal instincts of fear, domination, and tribal loyalty. When that happens, society begins treating itself like a cage full of rival animals. Leaders who thrive on spectacle rise to the top. Institutions reward dominance over nuance. People feel like they must fight for every scrap of respect, safety, or clarity.

The core pattern is ancient: under stress, our brains shut down complex reasoning and revert to fast, reactive behaviors. The body is flooded with cortisol. The prefrontal cortex — the seat of long-term thinking and empathy — goes offline. In this state, it’s easier to hate, easier to simplify, and easier to lash out. Fear makes us stupid. But more dangerously, fear makes us primitive.

Let’s walk through how this dynamic unfolds, from individual brains to entire political ecosystems, and what it would mean to choose a different path.

From Brain Chemistry to Street Politics

Under conditions of chronic scarcity or threat — whether it’s poverty, insecurity, or cultural dislocation — the brain adapts. Scarcity makes us stressed, and it changes how we see the world. We become reactive. Our attention narrows. We misread ambiguous cues as threats. And we lose our ability to consider others’ perspectives.

This is how the “Zoological Error” begins. We stop seeing people as human and start interpreting them through binary scripts: predator or prey, threat or ally. Our nervous system can’t afford subtlety anymore.

The result is that we stop planning for the future. We stop seeing our neighbors as part of our story. We act to survive the moment.

When this happens across an entire community, conflict follows. Trust disintegrates. Rumors replace dialogue. Neighbors form factions. Armed patrols emerge — sometimes as “protection,” other times as performance.

We’ve seen this with militia groups on the U.S. border who describe their patrols in military terms. We see it in activist groups — both left and right — who decide they can no longer rely on law enforcement or political processes. They take up weapons not just for defense, but to draw lines in the sand.

This is a feature of modern society. It’s what happens when systems break, and people regress. It’s what happens when the map of cooperation disappears and is replaced by a map of the cage.

The Media Mirror

Today’s digital ecosystem accelerates the problem. Social media feeds on conflict and spectacle. Outrage is rewarded. Polarization sells. The content that travels fastest is the content that bypasses the rational brain and hits something less positive: anger, disgust, pride, and revenge.

Every time a video goes viral of a shouting match, a vigilante “owning” a government official, or a terrifying street clash, we’re not just seeing a moment. We’re reinforcing a model of society as a threat. We’re pushing our collective nervous system deeper into vigilance.

Meanwhile, disinformation fills the vacuum. Conspiracy theories flourish not because they’re convincing, but because they’re useful. They simplify the world. They assign blame. And they offer a sense of purpose when institutional trust is gone.

Cultural Scripts and Old Ghosts

Behind every vigilante action or digital crusade lies a set of cultural scripts. Patriarchy teaches boys to equate control with love. Racial myths teach people to see others as demographic threats. Nationalist stories frame immigration as an infestation.

These aren’t new stories. They’re old operating systems that reassert themselves when society lacks an updated version. In Italy, after a femicide rocked the country, a young woman publicly argued that the killer was not a “monster,” but a son of patriarchy — doing what the culture had quietly taught him. That is time-binding truth-telling: refusing to explain violence away as an anomaly.

In Buffalo, families of shooting victims said something similar. They didn’t just want punishment. They wanted a new ethic. A culture that tells the truth. That names the patterns. That changes the scripts.

Breaking the Loop

Here’s the hard truth: we can’t solve the Zoological Error with more force or more fear. We can’t out-shout it, out-arm it, or out-shame it. We have to outgrow it.

That means rebuilding the conditions for accumulating knowledge across generations and society:

• Reduce chronic stress and cognitive overload. A society drowning in precarity will always regress. Economic security, universal healthcare, and breathable schedules are not luxuries — they’re cognitive infrastructure.

• Restore clarity in law. Vagueness fuels conflict. When laws are ambiguous — as with gun statutes or protest rights — they invite confrontation. The state must make the map legible.

• Rewire public space. Design institutions, schools, and media to reward listening over dominance. Recenter community around shared goals instead of tribal rivalries.

• Make time-binding sacred. That means elevating the needs of future generations, investing in education, and telling the full truth about our past. We don’t need more punishment. We need cultural composting.

The price of adult civilization is choosing children over territory. And it’s also designing systems that don’t reward the “alpha” but nourish the gardener. We can do that. But only if we stop acting like we’re in a cage.

We’re not. We’re in a library. Let’s act like it.