I’m a (part-time!) student of a discipline known as Generative Anthropolgoy. GA posits that the various forms of human culture come into existence to mediate and defer our exceptional potential for intra-species violence. Culture is an attempt to solve a (human) problem, to escape the resentments that accumulate, over time, on any given scene, and that thus erode that scene and, to the extent bloodshed is avoided, force a retreat from it “back to the future”. Hence the power of Exodus stories in the Western tradition. In time, at least where a healthy culture exists, a new scene will develop to mediate tensions, among those who have a greater capacity to love than resent their humanity; but it too in time will be eroded by accumulating resentments, given the necessity of social differentiation, forcing another flight to a new reality.
In short, this is an anti-Utopian way of thinking that is also sceptical of apocalyptic thinking. You can Google for much more, but here’s one link to a recent GA blog post that speculates on how we might escape from the present impasse:
http://gablog.cdh.ucla.edu/2011/09/exodus-from-the-dead-end-of-history/
