Worst Mistake Never Made
- Thread starter zhao
- Start date
he regularly emitted sense and reason didn't he.
a board member (not sure if would like to remain anonymous?) kindly brought this to my attention quite a while ago. but at the time i was in no mood to (re)start a big topic of dissension. not that i am in the mood now: i am neither interested or have time for flame wars --- would only like to present this material as important information, with which everyone can do what they like.
War & the Noble Savage
A Critical Inquiry into Recent Accounts of Violence amongst Uncivilized Peoples
i would start with the slide cast linked to above, as it is a good overview of the book and its key points -- a look at both the history of the notion of the "noble savage" as well as analysis of recent theories concerning them and pre-civilization.
(Vim, you may find this especially interesting as i think it was you who posted the declining levels of violence through out history chart once?)
War & the Noble Savage
A Critical Inquiry into Recent Accounts of Violence amongst Uncivilized Peoples
i would start with the slide cast linked to above, as it is a good overview of the book and its key points -- a look at both the history of the notion of the "noble savage" as well as analysis of recent theories concerning them and pre-civilization.
(Vim, you may find this especially interesting as i think it was you who posted the declining levels of violence through out history chart once?)
but don't let the above stop you from responding if you have something to say about the slide show or book and its ideas...
Primitive human society 'not driven by war'
glad for these truths to begin to be backed by not only what are perceived to be "fringe" (primitivist) voices but sources trusted by mainstream society.
from another, a bit more indpeth, article about this new study:
additionally, from my archeologist friend Philip Leckman:
Marx said surplus is the source of inequity. And there has been observations that it is equally important for these kinds of gatherer-hunter micro-societies to control population size as well as make sure that there is just enough food, not more than needed. And yes, by the time we get to studying them, what remains of these remaining pre-"civilized" groups have been marginalized and pushed to the outskirts of their environments, which is surely drastically degraded and provides resources much reduced compared to conditions prior to the ARRIVAL OF ASSHOLES.
Philip adds:
glad for these truths to begin to be backed by not only what are perceived to be "fringe" (primitivist) voices but sources trusted by mainstream society.
from another, a bit more indpeth, article about this new study:
additionally, from my archeologist friend Philip Leckman:
Marx said surplus is the source of inequity. And there has been observations that it is equally important for these kinds of gatherer-hunter micro-societies to control population size as well as make sure that there is just enough food, not more than needed. And yes, by the time we get to studying them, what remains of these remaining pre-"civilized" groups have been marginalized and pushed to the outskirts of their environments, which is surely drastically degraded and provides resources much reduced compared to conditions prior to the ARRIVAL OF ASSHOLES.
Philip adds:
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OK where are the staunch supporters of Pinker now?
it's quite common sensical isn't it: a much more abundant earth prior to the extinction of millions of species of plants, many of which probably bore tasty fruits, during the last ice age. Small groups of band level nomads who barely, if ever, even ran into each other. Why on earth would they hack each other to pieces?
in your experience, most people who did not grow out of traumatic or deprived childhoods, do they have an "in-born, genetic bloodlust which must be controlled by The Law, or otherwise it goes berserk at the drop of a hat and they massacre people at random?"
in my experience, most people who are well fed and had relatively healthy upbringings love to share things and good cheer with each other.
There are theories of genocide at the advent of our species, when homo sapiens emerged as only survivor after conflict with other hominid species. I am skeptical, but even if true, that would have happened around 3 million years ago, which still would have left a period of 3 million years in which humans existed largely peacefully, in egalitarian societies with out social inequity or subjugation of any kind.
knowing that this is POSSIBLE seems very important to me.
The often repeated propaganda story of our violent dog-eat-dog past is only an excuse for our violent dog-eat-dog present. It, at even a cursory examination, bears zero connection to reality.
it's quite common sensical isn't it: a much more abundant earth prior to the extinction of millions of species of plants, many of which probably bore tasty fruits, during the last ice age. Small groups of band level nomads who barely, if ever, even ran into each other. Why on earth would they hack each other to pieces?
in your experience, most people who did not grow out of traumatic or deprived childhoods, do they have an "in-born, genetic bloodlust which must be controlled by The Law, or otherwise it goes berserk at the drop of a hat and they massacre people at random?"
in my experience, most people who are well fed and had relatively healthy upbringings love to share things and good cheer with each other.
There are theories of genocide at the advent of our species, when homo sapiens emerged as only survivor after conflict with other hominid species. I am skeptical, but even if true, that would have happened around 3 million years ago, which still would have left a period of 3 million years in which humans existed largely peacefully, in egalitarian societies with out social inequity or subjugation of any kind.
knowing that this is POSSIBLE seems very important to me.
The often repeated propaganda story of our violent dog-eat-dog past is only an excuse for our violent dog-eat-dog present. It, at even a cursory examination, bears zero connection to reality.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
OK, I'm well aware at this point that we're both just rehashing stuff we've been saying for years, but it seems there's no point even trying to resist the Curse of Dissensus, so here goes:
The Edenic image of hunter-gatherers happily roaming the earth with ripe fruit falling into their hands wherever they go is fundamentally incompatible with stasis and equilibrium. When times are good, births outstrip deaths and populations increase. More people = more mouths to feed. In the absence of increasing food supply (which, in a pre-agrarian society, rapidly maxes out over a given region and eventually collapses if put under too much pressure), demand will outstrip supply which will lead to conflict.
The only alternative is for population levels to remain stable, which requires a high death rate - which is kind of incompatible with your idealized prehistory of prelapsarian ease and plenty.
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
This depends totally upon what you are defining as a healthy upbringing, as I radically disagree with the normative idea of what is 'healthy', and I daresay you might disagree with it too. In that case, I would agree with your statement, but with the caveat that the number of people who had genuinely healthy upbringings is actually relatively few (but then you might argue that this is a product of present society, and I'd be largely with you on that).
And that many people who had traumatic or deprived childhoods grow up, through dealing with their shit, to be way more fond of sharing/good cheer than lots who had nominally 'healthy' childhoods by the standards of our society.
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you are forgetting 1 important element: culture.
in the band-level (<100 members) lifestyle of the nomadic gatherer-hunters, 2 of their fundamental rules are 1. keep population size down (by not murder, but abstinence after a birth) and 2. no surplus: you eat what you can, and never carry excess along.
In this way, egalitarianism and absence of war lasted several million years.
Have you reviewed the new study in the journal Science? A globally reputable, peer reviewed source central to the scientific community, yes? or at least the BBC article about it?
What you and people like Pinker claim is not only insupportable and contrary to all evidence, it is deeply troubling: the view that we are essentially evil, and need laws and the state to contain our blood-lust - i guess stemming from the legacy of doctrines like Christianity as well as capitalist propaganda, and indeed civilization itself.
And again, i am not advocating that we "return" to anything. But what i am certain of, is that if we do not know ourselves, especially if we have a sick, distorted, and limited view of ourselves, of our past, and of our possibilities, we can not move forward.
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right, i realize a lot more needs to be said about my brash statement, and it's more complex than that, but i just wanted to get the main point across: when people are not in pain, they are generally nice to each other.
and absolutely right with your last part... i do not mean all "damaged" people are assholes... they are indeed often more humane because of their experience of suffering, and see through the sickness and lies of our society more clearly than those who are well adjusted (to bullshit).
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
yeah, i'd go with your first point. If only it was more societally acceptable to admit pain, because so often inter-personal vitriol is just a result of unacknowledged (sometimes even to themselves) pain on the part of the person being an arsehole. Agree completely that at base, human beings all have both the capacity and the inclination to be decent to each other
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
OK, several points here:
As far as I can see, your evidence that voluntary abstinence was widely practiced in prehistory comes from the fact that it's currently practiced by a single, tiny ethnic group in modern-day Africa. I think it's far more likely that for the great majority of human existence, people did what comes naturally to them (in common with every other living thing) and simply reproduced willy-nilly. Deliberately not breeding is not a trait favoured by selection pressure.
To put it another way: consider two small tribes (or bands, posses or whatever you like) living nearby. One group deliberately keeps its numbers in check, while the other doesn't. Assuming there is sufficient food, the second group's population will increase exponentially, so that even if the two groups started out the same size, after just a few generations the second group will outnumber the first several times over. Now, which group are you more likely to be descended from? Our ancestors were fecund, by definition.
Of course, small populations grow much more slowly than populations that are already large, so for most of human existence there was plenty of new land for the gradually growing population to expand into. It would be very stupid (which is to say, not evolutionarily selected for) for people to start killing each other over resources straight away when one group could just move into the next valley and live there in peace.
This probably depends very much on the kind of environment you live in. In tropical areas, plants fruit and animals breed all year round, so there is a more or less constant food supply. In other parts of the world, it's a very good idea to gorge when food is plentiful because the rest of the time, food is hard to come by and it's vital to have energy reserves (which are also useful as insulation, again not something you have to worry about in the tropics).
Well, there would still probably have been a hierarchy of breeding rights as there tends to be among the other great apes, but yes, I agree there would broadly have been egalitarianism, certainly compared to nearly all modern societies. And you can't have war without large groups of people to form identifiable 'sides', obviously.
Again, sounds reasonable, although the article says "violence in early human communities was driven by personal conflicts rather than large-scale battles" - which is not the same thing as "there was no violence".
As usual, a huge straw-mannish misrepresentation of what I'm actually saying. I don't claim humans are "essentially" morally anything - all I'm saying is that we are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as all other living things and that it's fallacious to think otherwise. I'm arguing for looking at our species in terms of a holistic ecology, rather than as an exception driven by some divine force of absolute Goodness that's only been thwarted by agriculture, religion, capitalism, racism, traffic wardens, really loud adverts in the middle of films, &c. &c.
As far as I can see, your evidence that voluntary abstinence was widely practiced in prehistory comes from the fact that it's currently practiced by a single, tiny ethnic group in modern-day Africa. I think it's far more likely that for the great majority of human existence, people did what comes naturally to them (in common with every other living thing) and simply reproduced willy-nilly. Deliberately not breeding is not a trait favoured by selection pressure.
To put it another way: consider two small tribes (or bands, posses or whatever you like) living nearby. One group deliberately keeps its numbers in check, while the other doesn't. Assuming there is sufficient food, the second group's population will increase exponentially, so that even if the two groups started out the same size, after just a few generations the second group will outnumber the first several times over. Now, which group are you more likely to be descended from? Our ancestors were fecund, by definition.
Of course, small populations grow much more slowly than populations that are already large, so for most of human existence there was plenty of new land for the gradually growing population to expand into. It would be very stupid (which is to say, not evolutionarily selected for) for people to start killing each other over resources straight away when one group could just move into the next valley and live there in peace.
This probably depends very much on the kind of environment you live in. In tropical areas, plants fruit and animals breed all year round, so there is a more or less constant food supply. In other parts of the world, it's a very good idea to gorge when food is plentiful because the rest of the time, food is hard to come by and it's vital to have energy reserves (which are also useful as insulation, again not something you have to worry about in the tropics).
Well, there would still probably have been a hierarchy of breeding rights as there tends to be among the other great apes, but yes, I agree there would broadly have been egalitarianism, certainly compared to nearly all modern societies. And you can't have war without large groups of people to form identifiable 'sides', obviously.
Again, sounds reasonable, although the article says "violence in early human communities was driven by personal conflicts rather than large-scale battles" - which is not the same thing as "there was no violence".
As usual, a huge straw-mannish misrepresentation of what I'm actually saying. I don't claim humans are "essentially" morally anything - all I'm saying is that we are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as all other living things and that it's fallacious to think otherwise. I'm arguing for looking at our species in terms of a holistic ecology, rather than as an exception driven by some divine force of absolute Goodness that's only been thwarted by agriculture, religion, capitalism, racism, traffic wardens, really loud adverts in the middle of films, &c. &c.
Er... I can only see what you've quoted here, so Im not sure what the argument is, but surely modern humans have only been around for about 200,000 years?
Er... I can only see what you've quoted here, so Im not sure what the argument is, but surely modern humans have only been around for about 200,000 years?
i am speaking of the entire history of Homo Sapiens. The period of several million years is from the emergence of Homo Sapiens as the dominant Hominid species on earth (which some speculate may have involved genocide), and the advent of Agriculture/large scale societies/war.
If you don't know what i'm talking about, don't waste our time
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No, tactics to keep poplulation size down are common with studies of pre-modern life styles. And the Dobe is not just 1 tiny group, but the most studied group in the history of Anthropology.
You are denying that pre-agricultural people had culture of any kind?? You think their micro-societies didn't have rules? And they lived without making conscious decisions? like animals? that is very biased and simply wrong.
why do you insist on acting as if these are silly terms i made up for fun? These are accepted terms within the study of pre-history, and they mean very, very different things. Band level societies and Tribal level are completely different in size and more importantly, structure - and the latter did not arise until 10/12k years ago, while the former lasted for several million years.
If you refuse to acknowledge what the field of Anthropology and Archaelogy has thus far learnt about our past, this conversation is useless. I thought you were someone who had a bit of respect for science??
But this did not happen. no groups prior to agriculture experienced population explosion. Please go read your history. The first large societies emerged with agriculture, and none existed before.
The period of 3-4 million years, after Homo Sapiens emerged as the only surviving hominid species, is more than enough for some of these groups to get HUGE, like billions of people, like India and China huge, if the dynamic you describe occured at all. But none of the original groups did. There is zero evidence for big societies, and every evidence for tiny "band level" societies prior to agriculture.
Earlier (last paragraph) you postulated that population did, in fact "MUST HAVE", expanded to large societies even in prehistoric, pre-ice age, pre-agricultural times. Now you agree with me (and science), that there were no large groups. Which is it?
No one ever said "no violence" (that would be absurd). But no systematic, large scale violence, and much less violence than post-agriculture, post-civilization.
But we are unique in the animal kingdom in that we have rationality and ability to make considered decisions: and this did not occur only 10k years ago -- the brain development of Homo Sapiens was already much more advanced compared to other primates 3-4 million years ago. And as such, as creatures with more brain power, we surely dealt with the same evolutionary pressures in a different way.
not Divine Goodness, no, but our ancestors had much the same brain capacity as us, and figured out a way to live sustainably and peacefully, without power nor subjugation, for a pretty damn long period of time.
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
To me that suggests that the impulse towards population growth was always there but was limited by the scarcity of food and that once agriculture created a (comparative) surplus of food that lid was lifted off population growth, not than that people generally held off shagging until they started farming.