That is, what did our earliest ancestors gain by getting drunk that resulted in their increased survival? — Hanover

It didn't result in increased survival; it resulted in increased enjoyment. Other animals get drunk or high on purpose, too, so the craving may well have preceded sapience.

Having pride in one's work is a feeling which is difficult to qualify. It's what provides one with a sense of belonging, and it really doesn't matter what that work is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Better to have a choice, all the same.
One good thing they did, though: a high quality education for young people with the brains and application. Quite a few made good careers in the west, where they could not have afforded university, all the while ranting against the system that made it possible.
Nothing is pure and simple, is it?

It's a fickle game for the pharmaceutical industry who probably oppose self-medication, — Shawn

Are you kidding?!! How many ads do you see on mainstream tv for over-the-counter remedies for everything from indigestion to allergies to every kind of pain? (Maybe not as many as i do, since they target old people and sponsor the kinds of program old people are likely to watch.) How many emails do you get for detox, vitamins and m.a.l.e enhancement products? The pharmaceuticals love self-diagnosis and medication. And they want in on the cannabis market.

so the government is responding by regulating the use of drugs and not simply legalizing drugs like states did. — Shawn

When legalizing a drug, the government also undertakes to regulate its sales and monitor its safety. So do states that legalized it: they license the distributors, restrict the age at which people can buy it, and how much they're allowed to have.

I mean, I think the mood-alteration is associated, as you say, with anxiety. But, what a strange way to treat anxiety, with dopamine, really? — Shawn

Not so out of-the-box!
In any case, I didn't mean clinical anxiety, for which they would have prescription drugs (for better or worse). I meant feelings of fear, dread, apprehension, insecurity. Coke is supposed to be good for that. Pot lets you relax and see the lighter side. I don't know much about the effects of other street drugs: in the 60's, it was mainly pot - for casual use - and LSD for a special experience.

our federal government legalized recreational cannabis in 2018. There were all kinds of dire predictions about slippery slopes, a surge of drug use and increase in traffic accidents, etc. You know what actually happened? Nothing. People can buy legally what they used to buy illegally, and it's likely better quality.
It brought in a nice revenue from licenses (instead of the money-sink that policing users had been for many years) as well as boosting the legitimate economy. License holders make a decent living as well as paying taxes. Most people take their pot home or to a party and enjoy it in private. If I see somebody driving erratically or weaving as they walk, they're far and away more likely to be drunk than high.

If I was tasked with overthrowing a nation state, or fighting an army, if I could have one condition granted to bestow upon my enemy or targeted population, it would be for them all to be high. — Outlander

I wouldn't be quite so confident. List of psychoactive drugs used by militaries

I'd like to add to my OP, that I don't quite understand the 1960's that well. I know it was the counterculture; but, I don't understand why it became a fascination with drugs... I mean, it was about peace, love, and political activism; but, why the popularity arose to drugs? — Shawn

Because The Establishment made such a huge to-do about forbidding it. And people wanted to explore their subconscious, their creative and spiritual side. To see deeper into the universe, or the void, or the soul... or something. And it was fun.

What's the reason why people want to alter their moods? — Shawn

Most commonly, because they are unhappy or anxious. Most of the unhappy people have good reason to escape the reality in which they live. Most anxious people feel more in control when they change perspective.

If basic human needs for all human beings in a given society can be fulfilled from very little human work, the work being taken over by machines, then what drives the need for further work from those human beings? — Metaphysician Undercover

Personal goals - like the gentleman scientists of the Renaissance and financially independent inventors of the 19th century. A sense of achievement. Contribution to the community. Respect of peers.
The labourers of 'communist' countries had none of those motivations, because they had no real stake in the enterprises that employed them, no voice in management and no share in the income. In spite of that, in spite of the resentment most middle-class people felt, many of them did a conscientious job - even when the new job was a demotion from their previous position (In the early days, the class of one's birth could be a serious handicap to work opportunities. I knew a former history professor who worked on a collective farm and took great pride in his straight furrows. )

There was, indeed, plenty of corruption, nepotism, incompetence, infighting, etc. - as there always is in vertical organizations. There was worker discontent, lack of co-ordination and mismanagement. There was also a good deal of obstruction from the west. Also, far too many resources were poured into military competition - something the booming US could better afford than a nation struggling to rebuild after a devastating war.

People keep comparing communism with democracy, but that's a false comparison. Communism and capitalism are economic models, not political ones. The USSR was nominally democratic in its political structure after its aristocracy had been replaced by a different set of feudal lords.

While the Iron Curtain countries had nationalized industry and agriculture, they still continued to use money as a medium of exchange. More seriously, they had to trade with the west for some commodities. Unless a country is completely self-sufficient in raw materials, infrastructure and technical knowledge, it can't sustain an economic system completely separate from the rest of the world. The US probably could have, but never tried. Russia could not, even with the annexed territories - not even by draining the satellites. And Cuba, which might otherwise have been a valid experiment in communism, never stood a snowball's chance in hell under US embargo.

Capitalism made and deployed the small pox vaccine, — frank

No it didn't! Medical scientists did. They would have worked in exactly the same way if their education had been free and the result of the research were available to everyone on the planet, regardless of means.

Jenner himself worked tirelessly to see the scourge of smallpox eradicated. Although awarded many honours, he never became a rich man. He devoted so much time to vaccination that his business as a country doctor suffered. He would often vaccinate poor people free of charge.

It seems plausible to me that any large Communist regime will inevitably end up in tyranny. Again, that's my "seems to me" opinion, not a solid claimi. — T Clark

I'm inclined to agree. I can't see communism on a large scale at all, unless it evolves naturally through the stages of democratic socialism. And that cannot happen in a monetized economy, because powerful vested interests will do anything to thwart it.

But then, other kinds of political system also fall prey to despotism of one kind or another. Right now, capitalism is blundering its way toward implosion, while democracies are failing at various rates.

Wikipedia says that a very uncertain estimate of deaths caused by Communist regimes is between 60 and 150 million. — T Clark

Let me amend that:
deaths caused by self-styled Communist regimes is between 60 and 150 million. They're dictatorships that gained power under a red flag, on the blood of the working and peasant classes, then systematically eliminated the idealists, the trade unionists, the intellectual and communal leaders of the movement. On the large scale, all popular and populist movements are co-opted by demagogues who then become despots.
If the contents smell like rat droppings, though the label says Caviar, don't eat it!

Is democracy a grand but failed experiment? — Tom Storm

There is no reason a commune can't be governed democratically. I should imagine democracy would actually work very much better in a communist economic arrangement, where people are pretty much equal, than a capitalist one, where a few individuals wield immense political power through their wealth. Might go so far as to say that democracies are failing because of capitalism.

They killed tens, hundreds, of millions of people. — T Clark

Hundreds of thousands killed one another. 'They' just conducted one side and took over when the carnage was done.

Opinion - communism goes against human nature, so it can only be forced on people from above. — T Clark

Of course it can't. But nobody's ever tried to. What passed for a communist regime was a top tier of pigs, a layer of Dobermans and millions of workhorses.

What I mean to say is that if the population of Russia’s working class proved to be inadequate for operating its industries, — EdwardC

They were never given a chance to try.

I would assume more highly educated members of the party would be tasked to this. — EdwardC

Educated? Maybe. The main requirement for managers was loyalty to the regime.

For Russia, communism was a grand; but, failed experiment, according to Google. — Shawn

It was an aborted experiment. For starters, the Russian revolution had been brewing since 1905; what actually set it off was a bunch of women. All of that was erased in Stalin's revised history. He had no intention of attempting the Marxist vision: he was an emperor. The regime made some changes according to the (reasonably conceived but badly implemented) agenda: consolidating farms; nationalizing industries, and some social reforms like free education and health care. But the stratification continued, only with different players in the top three tiers of the hierarchy.

There was a thread on the previous philosophy forum, something to the matter stating that with central managers being coal workers or shoe salesmen, then it wouldn't seem hard to conclude that the whole endeavor would have failed. — Shawn

Nothing like that. The soviets ('governing council'; something like trade unions) already existed and had considerable political influence.
((Shoe salesmen?))

Regarding this, if one day a computer can do the same work central managers can, without any issue about competence, then would communism be not condemned to the ineptitude of Soviet styled central managers? — Shawn

Huh? If a computer can do the work of all the 'managers' of human societies, and that computer recognized humans as worth keeping, it would distribute goods and services far more equitably than any so-called communist regime. The operative word there being IF.

Maybe you just disagree. — EdwardC

I disagree with some of your statements about history, values and 'ethic'. As for the rest, I simply can't decipher what you're trying to say. Maybe simplify the vocabulary for us literalists?

This paragraph, for example, seems to have some major lacunae; I can't parse it:

This entry is intended to highlight a cultural ethic which is communicated through industry and academics, describing also how the government’s functionality during this time period, disengaged and unreachable, allows for said ethic to effect the people, leaving them without significant recourse. — EdwardC

The US government is obviously reachable https://www.usa.gov/agency-index; if not altogether functional. But here, a distinction should be made between the stalemated Congress and the various capable and effective agencies that carry out the nation's daily business. They're not in the ethic business; their job is to distribute welfare cheques, test food and bridges for safety, curtail flooding, supervise the entry ports and hundreds of other essential services, which they mostly do quite well, in spite of politically appointed department heads.

This is not an improvement on the first version.

During any age, there is always an ethos, an ethic by which that age develops its political character and social personality. — EdwardC

Demonstrate it. Or at least describe its manifestation and give examples.

For if there was tyranny would it not be recognized by those who have eradicated it in the past? — EdwardC

There is and it is recognized by some of the descendants of those who have defeated one or another form of it in the past. Tyranny has never been eradicated.

If there was propaganda would it’s application not be investigated by the free in thought? — EdwardC

There is and it is.
Neither of these conditions is new or unique to the present.

At this point, the civic body has undergone malaise, behaving in a way that transfers a state of imposed pacifism onto the general public even if they are invested in political affairs in that its offices are used for only menial tasks. — EdwardC

What pacifism - in a country that has never been without some kind of war for more than 11 years in its short history? Who is currently pacific in the armed-to-teeth USA?

Please try to articulate your theory and ground it in something less vague than discontent with the current pop culture.

What is not exactly what?
Okay, so you're pretty much down to Europe, rather than the whole era. Given the period - say 1000-1300 CE, does that make the definition and/or description of ethos/values/character any clearer? The roots of it any better exposed?

See, my problem here is that you seem to have an interesting theme, possibly an interesting theory, but so far, you presentation of it has been far too nebulous to discuss.

I believe the prevailing value set that runs through a society and even a time in history certainly can be said to have philosophical, ethical, and even mytho-spiritual roots. This is what I’ve come to conclude based primarily on first hand observation and research into anthropology and the arts. — EdwardC

Anything can be said to have roots, but locating the root and identifying the plant are particular tasks that 'an adequate' observer should be able to perform.
Can you define or describe this universal value set for any specific date? For ease of verification, try 1200 CE. Which civilizations shared what values and what were the ethical and mytho-spiritual roots of those values?

During any age, there is always an ethos, an ethic by which that age develops its political character and social personality. — EdwardC

I have a problem with that basic premise .... after which, it gets a little confusing. How long is 'an age'? Two centuries? Five? Wasn't monarchy the standard form of government during the European 'age' of Enlightenment? Don't fascist and communist regimes exist concurrently?

Different continents, different periods, different cultures can be said to have particular characteristics, but I very much doubt there is much commonality in the ethos or political organization of Asia, Europe and North America in 400BCE or 1200CE.
Some things in human behaviour are constant throughout recorded history: social organization, competition, co-operation and inter-national conflict. These basic urges are expressed in changing forms and patterns, according the religious, or militaristic, or technological or economic trend. In the so-called global culture of today, economic forces are the predominant movers of public opinion and attitude - far more so in North America and Asia than elsewhere, and since the USA and China are the major economic entities, they influence every other culture. But there is a lot of other stuff going on in the shadow of commercialism.

I heard a quite clever historian say the other day: After two or three generations of peace, prosperity and personal freedom, the people of a nation begin to believe that this is the norm. The have faith in the permanence of their democratic edifice. In fact, democracy is a fragile thing, in need of constant protection. When people become complacent they are easy prey for the greedy and power-hungry.

Yes! I tested it first on those filmy little vegetable bags in the grocery store, then yesterday on the recycle and garbage bags. Works on all three types of plastic. You have my life-long gratitude.

The greatest hope I see to conquer our insanity is the fact that there was a man like Jesus, and he didn’t own anything, so maybe you are right. — Fire Ologist

And look what we did to his legacy!

We'll never catch up. — TiredThinker

Catch up to whom? Everybody's in debt, except Switzerland. The whole world economy runs on compound interest; Switzerland runs on keeping it safe.

Try it out: insert any governing body you can think of. — Frog

Elders, who have earned the tribe's respect through honesty and wisdom, and who listen to every voice with considered attention.

If there is a power vacuum, — Frog

If. Why should there be a power vacuum? Why should there be power to hoover up in the first place? What kind of power? How attained? How retained?

Getting rid of owning things to make the world better is like getting rid of things to make the world better. — Fire Ologist

I haven't proposed any such action. I predict that, as has happened many times before, it will happen again, only on a much, much larger scale: people lose what they own, their homes, their land, their livelihood, their social structure, their whole way of life. Then they have to adapt to whatever they find, or die.
You may be right: our genetic predisposition to insanity may prove stringer than our reasoning and need to belong, in which case we will destroy ourselves utterly. But I'm not convinced that it's inevitable.

By “wealth” I meant goods and resources, like food. If there is nothing to distribute, then there is nothing to share. — NOS4A2

How do you distribute what you haven't found yet? In order to ensure co-operation, they have to agree on a plan for sharing the effort - food and fuel gathering, shelter building, child-care, guard duty, first aid, tool-making, scouting - and the rewards of those efforts, then trust one another to keep to that plan, or discuss any proposed changes and get consensus. Otherwise, none of them is safe.

I think it is enough for land. What is more intimate than the ground you’re standing on? — NOS4A2

There is nothing intimate about the ground; it's just something you walk on, trying to avoid obstacles. They won't stand in one place: if they want to keep living, they'll have to keep moving. It's going to be a very long time, 50 or more generations, before they can settle down to permanent architecture and agriculture (as opposed to seasonal or short-term cultivation) If the weather stabilizes by then. That may be long enough to become accustomed to a communal culture and train the young accordingly.

For instance your passive voice leaves to our imagination what group of people or institution is to redistribute the wealth. — NOS4A2

In the quoted scenario, there is no wealth to redistribute or even distribute. These people narrowly escaped from a burning city, clutching their children. They're in a barren landscape, with scarce food and shelter. Alone, each of them would perish. Their options are very limited.

We often treat objects like tools or vehicles as extensions of the body, and I believe something of this process inheres in our instincts towards things we own. This, in combination with a sense of justice and desert, is enough to fill out a theory of ownership. — NOS4A2

Yes, it's enough for the ownership of intimate objects - not of land, water and other people.

I think the kind of stability you're looking for only exists in the grave. — frank

What kind of stability do you think I'm 'looking for'? North American native nations were pretty stable for several thousand years before Europeans arrived. By stable, I don't mean they had no conflict among nations, but even those were brief and less destructive than the 'civilized' peoples' conflicts. Within their own societies, they managed things very much better.

Marx believed that capitalism was inherently flawed and unsustainable, and that it created contradictions that would eventually lead to its downfall. — frank

A-yup! Revolution or civil war, it falls down. If climate change and its human detritus gets there first, Marx was off on the time-line. I said he was right about a lot a lot of things, not everything. He underestimated the gullibility of the masses - no question about that!

Maybe after we reestablish stability? A few thousand years maybe? — frank

re-establish? I don't see much stability now, nor any time in recorded history. It looks as if there was stability before, and there may be after. That's if environmental conditions favour social stability. Obviously, our descendants won't have all the resources we burned up.

According to Trotsky, Communism wasn't the kind of thing anyone tries. It was supposed to be the inevitable unfolding of events according to the internal integrity of the universe. That didn't happen. Marx was wrong. — frank

It hasn't happened. Nor could it have happened in those circumstances, in that environment, with that beginning. The ends do not justify the means; the ends result from the means. Marx wasn't Trotsky - he was considerably smarter and less hyperbolic (integrity of the universe, my sweet Fanny!) and he was right about a great many things. Try to put in historical perspective what he was writing about.

The Russians did socialism. — frank

The Russians did a half-assed imitation of socialism, like the Vatican did a half-assed imitation of Christianity. Better that the Czars had done, but still fatally flawed.

They just did it while simultaneously placing the USA, recently morphed into Godzilla, on their shit lists. — frank

And cordially vice versa. They were sort-of-allies in WWII, big shots in the UN.... and implacable rivals for world domination, each terrified of the other.

You're doing the Socialism fallacy: because Socialism didn't work in China, — frank

No, that's the communist fallacy, which I'm on extensive record of not having made. Communism could not have worked in China, because it was never attempted in China. A new emperor simply took over under a different flag. As also happened in Russia.
A capitalist-socialism hybrid of some type has worked quite well in Europe.

except you're saying that because the Church ended up being greedy, it never stood for selflessness. — frank

The Church, as an institution never did: it did stand, quite firmly and consistently, for the poor staying poor and accepting their lot, though it also encouraged the rich to drop a few crumbs here and there, if they wanted to keep their heads. The poor listened better.
Christians have been unselfish, altruistic, communal, and some still are. But organized religions, especially state religions, have always historically supported and been supported by the ruling class. The churches aren't greedy; greedy and power-loving men dominate the churches.

It did, and I think in general, religions are about social well-being as when the people gather to repeat the phrasing of the voodoo priest. It's about us, ideally anyway. — frank

Organic religions, ones that arise from a people and their experience, do unite the community through ritual, chanting, fire (there is always fire involved; burning a bush or some wax is as close to our gods as we ever seem to get) and often mind-bending substances or self-hypnosis. Something of the kind is almost certain to arise in the post-apocalyptic age. But I don't think institutional religions, which are a completely different thing, will make a comeback.

Historically, religion doesn't get along well with money grubbing, so the idea of ownership might wane, — frank

I wouldn't be so sure about that. We've come a long way from "lilies of the field!" - though these guys "sow not, neither do they reap."

When people say, “more money than God,” what might be a real number for that amount of money on Earth that God has? ....If you’re looking at the Catholic Church alone, “God” has at least — and we’re putting a huge emphasis on “at least” — $73 billion in assets.

With assets of more than £22 billion the Church of England would seem richer than many of us would have believed.

While most seminarians don’t pursue a career in preaching expecting to get rich—some spiritual leaders have built lucrative empires comparable to the dynasties previously only enjoyed by star athletes, A-list actors, and corporate elites.

And if you look at the evolution of religious organizations, the tendency is to adapt to the prevailing economy and play it successfully.
No, that's not our best hope. Tribalism is far more likely to become the norm. The collapse of this civilization will leave an awful lot of wreckage, and very slim pickings for the survivors. They will have lost pretty much everything they owned. They'll have no option but to co-operate and trust one another if they have any chance of making another go at human society. They might be cannibals, but they won't be capitalists.

One factor is probably that people can't afford to retire, or they go back to work part time, so the entire work force is growing older, while the young are unable to find jobs. (And that's a circular problem too: older workers having to hang on, because their kids are still at home, unable to find steady work.)
Probably, most of the older workers didn't go to university, or have any higher education; some developed a specialized skill; many learned on the job, while the young executives, managers and supervisors have MBA's.

The global situation is already falling apart, as complex societies fragment into hostile factions, tribes demand self-determination and populations are displaced by weather, war and famine. Debt/profit -driven economies collapse when the debt can no longer support the profit; international trade collapses when countries default on contractual obligations; commerce collapses when a large enough percent of unemployed due to automation can't buy the products and services. Killing off wide swatches of productive people and destroying infrastructure isn't particularly helpful, either; no more is spending mega-resources on weaponry and waste. And here comes another summer of wildfires, drying-up rivers and deaths by heat-stroke.

I don't hear much from other parts of the about the galaxy; it could be different there.

You don’t think anyone can learn of unselfishness in any society? — Fire Ologist

Any one, given the right temperament, an optimal home environment and excellent guidance can be unselfish relative to his peers, but he can't influence the society.

The UN partitioned two states, — schopenhauer1

taking the bigger and more productive half from a large Arab population and giving it to a smaller population of European immigrants. No, the Arabs didn't accept this plan and Ben Gurion only accepted it as an interim plan, always intending to expand his territory.

Clearly, you not only don’t believe in two states, you wish Israel was never formed. Tough shit news for you, it was. — schopenhauer1

It's caused an awful lot of international strife and cost an awful lot of money. And it's not finished doing either by a long chalk. Still don't see how that justifies war crimes. But by all means, jerk elsewhere!

I don’t see it as a bit-pick. It’s a massive game changer. If there is any ownership (which I can’t see avoiding) then there is no need or possibility of imagining a world where there is no concept of ownership (which the OP asks). — Fire Ologist

OK. They should have avoided the word 'concept' and been more specific.

Further if we admit some ownership, we have to address all that would follow, such as ownership disputes, selfishness, accounting for those who share more than others, etc, etc. — Fire Ologist

People managed to work all of that out among themselves for at least 50,000 years.

It becomes the same world we have today just maybe with disputes over socks and whose trash is piling up over there, instead of percentage of owner profits and whose war has to be cleaned up. — Fire Ologist

That kind of social dysfunction is not due having our own homes and clothes; that's due to very bad social organization.

But any ownership (which I see as unavoidable) refutes the possibility of true communism as an economic and political structure. — Fire Ologist

"True communism" is one of those loaded phrases. People can and do live in communal arrangements of sharing with and caring for one another. If that's false communism, fine.

And I do think that if people were more charitable, sacrificed their personal wants more for the good of others, were more compassionate and less selfish, greedy and proud, the society would look more communal and communist. — Fire Ologist

There's some tail-chasing! How, in a monetized, competitive, profit-driven society, where, if you don't hustle, you end up living in the street and having police clear out your encampment on a regular basis, because the sight of have-nots upsets the haves, are children supposed to learn unselfishness?

The utopian vision is a good one. I just don’t see it happening as a political or economic structure - instead it would have to be a daily, voluntary effort involving daily sacrifice for the good of others - otherwise if a communistic lifestyle had to be imposed from above, it would only be oppression and additional suffering and less equality and less access to all of the things that are supposed to be shared. — Fire Ologist

No imposed political or economic is sustainable. The capitalist lifestyle has survived as long as it has because the people in it - including those who get the least share - were convinced that it's the correct way to live. There is no need for daily sacrifice if the resources are not owned and controlled by a privileged few while the undervalued many do all the work.

Ownership will never go away. — Fire Ologist

Maybe not, but sure will change after the present civilization collapses.

Have you known anyone who could describe a coherent picture of a society of people where there is no ownership? — Fire Ologist

There was a Hungarian writer back in the 1930's. The book is called Kazohinia.
But that doesn't matter.

Does everyone have a share of everything, or no one have a share in anything? — Fire Ologist

Everyone has a share in the resources and the territory. Everyone contributes labour to the common welfare and takes care of the young, the old and the frail. Everyone respects one another's personal space - if you want to imagine 'owning' air, go ahead - and privacy, and nobody snatches food out of anyone's mouth. Nobody pulls the blanket off anyone else when they're sleeping, but if they have a spare blanket and another person is cold, they give him the extra.
It's not that hard a concept.

Who is in trouble when someone forgets to take the trash out? Anyone given ownership of failed trash duty? — Fire Ologist

What's that got to do with ownership of the trash? Anyway, there wouldn't be a lot of waste in a property-free society.

As I said before, that 'absolutely' is a nitpick you can cling to if you're determined to avoid the idea of a communist society.

There's a nice little documentary about what people really need https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613092/

My point was about the homeland. — schopenhauer1

I know. And 'homeland' was misapplied in this situation. One people's homeland was given to another people, who then systematically persecuted the natives. And are still doing so.

If you only apply that bonded statement to what I was saying here: — schopenhauer1

i would, if that's what the allies had been doing.

The question is should there be a Jewish state. My answer was yes. — schopenhauer1

You're not alone.

I didn’t say anything about taking over farms. — schopenhauer1

I did.

The original UN map was not agreed ti by Arab states and thus, here we are in a 75 year old battle of two peoples. — schopenhauer1

Indeed. The British authorities got Arab help in their war effort with promises of aid to their national aspirations. And the Rothchilds on board with a promise to aid Jewish aspirations. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/why-did-britain-promise-palestine-to-arabs-and-zionists

My point with nation states and North American countries precisely highlights why strictly using property lost in a war or other means in a war might be just perpetuating a badlyheld notion of justice that just festers as perpetual revenge fantasies and vengeance rather than settling the perceived injustice. — schopenhauer1

The injustice was real in every case. The Romans displaced the Jews from a land from which the Jews had previously displaced some other people. The British and Americans were complicit (after a couple of terror attacks) in the displacing Arabs to re-emplace the Jews. How the festering resentment is resolved depends on what people do to restore balance. In this instance, it wasn't a festering revenge fantasy, it was an act of penitence by the big countries that had rejected Jewish refugees and turned a blind eye to the holocaust, plus a calculated attempt to place an ally in the middle of a strategic, oil-rich region.

Look, there should be no Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, or France according to this notion. I’m ok if you’re equal across the board with historical violence and territories. — schopenhauer1

This notion? Colonialism was what it was, it did the harm it did. We have to deal with the consequences. Point here being, both Palestine and Israel have the exact same claim, according to imperialist Britain, but only one of them has the backing of imperial powers.

They too have a historical ancestral claim. — schopenhauer1

With the difference that they actually built the houses and worked the farms.

Hence the dilemma. — schopenhauer1

The dilemma wasn't over who had a valid reason to live there; it was over which promise to keep and which to break.

The Jews had a very specific geographic location they can point to — schopenhauer1

Which very conveniently happens to coincide with Christian notions of the Holy Land. It doesn't seem to signify that, according to the same book, the Hebrews originally occupied that land by means of a sneak attack on people who had done them no harm.

There is no real analogy to Native Americans, who were here before the Europeans arrived and pushed them out or exterminated them. The question of which Natives lived exactly where is a red herring. Nor is there a real likeness to Africans who were captured and kidnapped and thereby apparently forfeited their right to claim any part of Africa, because they don't each know where their ancestors were from.

In this case, not 'homeland' but 'ancestral homeland'. The difference being: Most of us have been living in many other places, but our long-ago ancestors used to live here, so the people who have been living here better get the hell out.

If you go by history, culture and genetics, why are the Palestinians' claim less valid than the European Jews'?