In order for a life-form to be successful, it must persist. It does this by growing strong enough to reproduce and then it assures the survival of its offspring. All life does this or it vanishes.
When viewed close up, Man appears to be a very special creature. He has created a powerful industrial technology that has produced huge cities, instant communication, transportation, entertainment, knowledge and more. His effect on the natural environment has been great. He has cleared forests, leveled mountains and made many other creatures extinct.
But when viewed from a distance, Man's patterns of behavior take on other meanings. Man is also a creature like the other creatures on this planet. He spends most of time doing the things that characterize other life-forms: eating, breathing, excreting and reproducing.
One of the most significant features of Man's behavior is that he is a social creature. Men live and work in groups. This is very important to understanding what Man is. It would have been impossible for Man to have succeeded without this social characteristic.
Since a human being has limited physical strength and defense, he must constantly acquire from the environment those things he needs for survival such as material for weapons and shelter. Because of his lack of physical ability, Man cannot, on an individual basis, compete in the natural environment against the other creatures. Man must operate on a collective basis to get from the environment those things he needs for his survival. Only when men team up and work cooperatively does Man produce enough to be biologically successful. This process of gathering and distributing resources is called economics and it is the most powerful single motivator of human behavior.
Man's second strongest motivator, as in other animals, is reproduction. The human male is constantly driven to mate with as many females as possible. The male selects potential mates on the basis of probable reproductive success. He looks for young, healthy females who seem to possess strong maternal instincts. Females, on the other hand, look for males who will be effective economic providers and will have strong emotional dedication to both her and her offspring. The object of this is to create better babies. In many species, human beings included, the female selects mates and controls the mating process. The female chooses whose sperm will fertilize her eggs. The male only tries to persuade the female but the female has the responsibility to make the choice to ensure the continuation of the best genetics possible.
In order to secure their economic survival, Men long ago banded together to work cooperatively towards common goals. At first, he formed small groups called tribes to hunt, gather, and manufacture those things needed for his survival. Later on as it was discovered that larger bodies of collective organization could produce more effectively, the tribes grew into nations.
Societies start to take on the appearance of living things themselves. The individual persons act like single cells in a larger organism. As the size of the social organization grows, its members become increasingly specialized just as in a cellular organism.
Members of one society are identified by unique characteristics that they agree to conform to. These can be languages or elements of appearance. Persons from outside the society who do not conform to these identifying standards are identified as strangers or aliens.
Within a society, various structures develop to manage the flow of gathered resources and to maintain internal order. Governments and religion form. In some nations both operate, while in others, one dominates. Their purpose is to uphold standards among individual members. Rules of personal conduct are used to keep members engaged in productive behavior. Members are prohibited from killing each other and from doing other things that would disrupt productivity. Religion frequently takes on the responsibility of regulating members' sexual behavior, which if left uncontrolled, would lead to the production of offspring without suitable family structure to support them.
This set of rules is called morality and its effectiveness in maintaining the internal order of a society is influenced by the economic conditions present within the society. When economies are good, the need for strong control is not needed and personal freedom (including sexual freedom) increases. But when times get harder, various mechanisms act in an attempt to raise productivity. Government becomes harder on deviant elements in a society. Religious zealots appear like white blood cells to clear the body of moral "infection".
There are circumstances that will cause a society to dissolve. When economics become very good and remain so for a long time, moral decay will take place. Members no longer see the need for productive behavior and the society crumbles. At the other extreme, when times are very bad, members will sometimes lose faith in their social order and stop conforming with social rules. This is anarchy and is usually associated with revolution, which is the violent formation of a new controlling social structure.
Occasionally two societies will find themselves in competition for the same resources. When this occurs, conflict develops. Often, one or both groups will try to kill off the other "alien" group in order to secure possession of the resource. Religious restrictions against killing only apply to killing members of one's own group. "Thou shall not kill (anyone who looks and sounds like you)". This is called war.