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Human groups are a kind of organism. That concept has a long history in philosophical, religious, and political thought (e.g., the “body politic”), and it now rests on stronger scientific foundations. Between-group selection has endowed human social groups with impressive abilities to suppress disruptive within-group traits (just as multicellular organisms police and suppress internally disruptive cancer cells). JB: So a pattern emerges: Evolutionary competition at one level limits survivable “selfishness” at lower levels (e.g., cancer’s mutinous mutations). - bigthink.com