These latest eloquent words from the Anthropik Network have me thinking.

The fact of the matter is that there are many societies where murder, theft, deceit and treachery are virtually unknown, where sharing is not just a virtue but simply expected, and where compassion is as fundamental to daily existence as the pursuit of profit is in our own capitalist society. [...]

Consider the issue of theft. In our own culture, there is no incentive to refrain from stealing. So, we invent such incentives in the form of laws and police. But, if you can evade those, then there is no reprecussion whatsoever, and much to gain. Laws exist in our society for precisely this reason, because the society itself suffers from such deep, systemic flaws that such rudimentary stopgaps are required to keep the entire system from falling apart in great chaos and violence.

Yet, there are other societies that have no such laws, and yet are much more peaceful than our own. In our society, sharing is considered abnormal. We thank people for sharing, and teach our children that it is good to share -- which also sends a message that sharing is above and beyond the norm, something out of the ordinary, something that should not be expected. In actual point of fact, we penalize sharing. [...]

Where technology has allowed for a pure form of sharing [Internet P2P], laws must step in to curb such behavior. For if sharing ever became commonplace, expected, then our very society would be at risk.

There are societies where sharing is just such an expectation. People do not share because it is "good," but because there's simply no other way to live. For them, not sharing would be as absurd as to ask one of us to go about the streets naked. It's simply not done. No one thinks of it, no one lauds the person who shares. It's simply the way things are.

Most people in our society generally assume that if a centralized form of authority (i.e. the government) were to one day disappear, everybody would automatically start going around stealing from one another and killing. I'm even inclined to agree that a scenario such as Yanthor described in a recent post about the outcome of a Big Crash is quite likely, not because such violent properties are inherent to human nature, but because we've all been conditioned from birth to think of our fellow humans as adversaries. If the threat of government force were suddenly removed, a signficant number of people raised in the present sociological climate probably would go around being ruthless bullies. (This, of course, assumes that such bullies aren't already in charge of the government anyway, but I digress.)

So here's my question: How can we evolve our society from what we have now toward one where generosity is genuinely encouraged? I'm hesitant to even use the word "generosity" because that connotes sharing as an exceptional behavior, as noted in the article. Is there a way to peacefully dismantle the chains of capitalism (a system which abhors sharing of every form, not just music) without unleashing something even more repressive, or will a dog that has been trained to bite and attack people be forever set in its ways?