Sunday Firesides: Is It Safer to Be Cautious Than Brave?

The Semai, an indigenous people who inhabit the Malay Peninsula, may represent the most non-violent and conflict-averse society on earth. Anthropologists posit that after enduring a century of predation by Malay raiders and slavers, they developed a sense of “learned helplessness”; because it didn’t seem possible to fight back, they adopted a pattern of…