Their causes are many and tangled, including conflicts of interest, rival power structures and competition for resources.
We all have an idea of some of the causes of bias and bigotry: divisions between racial and ethnic groups, geographic segregation and economic marginalisation, competition for resources between rival groups.
Civilization can be played against other humans online, but its real strength is as a single-player game where you control a budding society in its race against rival states for resources, technology, land, gold and glory.
Increased competition for resources forces fellow citizens to become competitors and rivals, and the differences between them are exaggerated.
They are rivals for shrinking resources, for marketing spend as well as editorial staffing and budgets.
Fundamentally they are rivals, for space, for resources and for attention.
The current period is "normal" in that rival powers are competing for resources and influence; tension and thus conflict is inevitable.
However, with two rival power blocks competing for resources within a relatively confined space, conflict was inevitable and when it came, it was Athens, always more exposed than Sparta, that was eventually starved to defeat.
This has involved the internalisation of the logic of competition, so that universities, departments and individual academics are all pushed to treat each other as rivals in the struggle for resources.
"Most importantly, a great sense of mutual respect and support has developed between people working in different areas, so that we find people cooperating and supporting each other's initiatives, who in many university settings would be rivals in a battle for resources," Smolin explains.
