The limit of reversion to a primitive state: It's where you set it

I lived in one of the poorest areas of Zimbabwe, a "high density" area, in a country without social welfare. Zimbabwe is also a country that experienced a traumatic economic crisis in 2008. I would say that the crisis taught Zimbabweans to value life, to strive to get along, and not to obsess too much about the niceties of civilisation and its mores.

To me, this was evidence enough that humans are not victims of their emotions, or of their biology, but can adapt to tremendous degrees of stress and actually learn something positive from very negative situations.

However, we have to believe that we can do it. The ideology that we are merely animals and will therefore "revert to type" tends to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. You have to WANT to be something more than just an animal, in order to transcend mere biologism. But many people in more affluent situations don't necessarily want that. Their relative affluence has made them soft and so they put up no resistance to being treated -- as well as treating others -- like apes.