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| From the Human Mirror mission, ©Improv Everywhere |
Humans are social animals. Glaring evidence is in the fact that subways work. What creatures can you imagine packing into a metal tube, approaching the limits of breathing space, and then you shake it, and bang it around, and every one of them is like "We be cool."
First, they don't eat each other, even if most are carnivorous and some are very hungry. That is a significant accomplishment, a vast refinement over the natural order. There's virtually no killing or maiming. Each comes out possessing the identical accoutrements with which they entered, a violation of this rule being rare and celebrated. Even the most delicate etiquette of eye contact is by and large gracefully observed.
If you started reading this with a vague bristling resistance to the idea that a subway car is a paragon of civility, just think how much keener is the evidence then: not only are humans hard-wired to get along peacefully with strangers, you are soft-wired to expect it.