Family members helping one another out is understandable. If you share half your genes with your siblings, you are naturally interested in their well-being. But there is such a thing as “pseudo-kinship.” It evokes the same emotions without blood relationship. Such feelings can lead to the most idiotic cognitive error of all: laying down your life for a random group—also known as going to war. It is no coincidence that “motherland” suggests kinship. And it’s not by chance that the goal of any military training is to forge soldiers together as “brothers.”
