Dear Edwina,
The evidence contradicts a number of your claims.
Edwina: "Most tribal economies are focused around stability and can't
economically afford peripheral deviations from the hard work of their
economic mode."
It has been known for some time that hunter gather economies
traditionally require far less work than agricultural, see, for example,
Marshall Sahlins, *The Original Affluent Society*. Agricultural
civilizations typically radically increased work load.
A simple definition of civilization is living of and from cities. But
that entails a number of attributes such as bureaucracy and institutional
division of labor, and, historically, inventions such as kingship,
literacy, etc.
Just as the domestication of animals and plants through confinement
was originally rooted in a myth of control of nature, civilization
legitimated the confinement of human beings to radically increased work
loads, greater social inequality, and reduced nutrition, through mythic
kingship and its religious faces (the Babylonian creation myth, The
Atrahasis, is a great example). I have also written on some of these issues
in different places, including my book, *From the Axial Age to the Moral
Revolution*. The human body was literally confined, shrinking an average of
4 to 6 inches wherever agriculturally-based civilization broke out, old
world or new (Mummert A, Esche E, Robinson J, et al. (2011) Stature and
robusticity during the agricultural transition: Evidence from the
bioarchaeological record. Economics and Human Biology 9(3): 284–301).
The idea that humans in industrial countries have been getting taller
in the past hundred or so years is simply a return of the human body to
pre-agricultural levels with recently improved diet. Civilization
introduced a radical departure from the long-term evolutionary tempering
that constitutes the human genome. And it introduced the idea that humans,
of all creatures, could control nature, if not ourselves. We are on the
verge of the extinction of that idea.
Your idea that "social cooperation" is not innate is belied by the
example of the socially cooperative newborn, capable of participating in
precisely phrased communicative and even musical dialogue with its mother,
as Trevathen and Malloch's research has shown, from the subcortical brain.
As they say, we are born intersocial. This is not to deny the intense
effects of socialization of course. But such an example and related
research does deny your claim that "social cooperation," or social, is
something that can't also be genetic, however much socialization enters
into the developmental processes of its expression.
And as I will say, given our long term evolutionary legacy, we are
born to be wild.
:-)
Gene
On Oct 1, 2017 3:51 PM, "Edwina Taborsky" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Gene, list:
>
> The so-called agricultural revolution is only possible in an ecological
> environment with plants and animals that can be domesticated. You can't
> hitch a zebra to a plough; you can't grow wheat in the arctic; you can't
> have cattle in a rain forest; you can't grow tomatoes in the steppes.
>
> The richest biome on the planet is that of western Europe - with its deep
> fertile soil, regular rainfall, moderate temperatures, and, and, animals
> and plants that could be domesticated. This 'base' was the reason for 'the
> rise of the West'.
>
> And - to have a 'revolution'; i.e., a mindset that looked at the
> environment as something to be manipulated, requires freedom of thought and
> action, where someone can invent a horse harness, a deep plough, a windmill
> etc. Most tribal economies are focused around stability and can't
> economically afford peripheral deviations from the hard work of their
> economic mode. Indeed, individualism is usually rejected and disdained.
>
> I don't know what the term 'civilization' means.
>
> Agriculturalism - and there are a variety of types, dependent on the
> ecology - enables large populations, but, there are critical thresholds for
> each type - and what is needed, is innovative technology...which in itself,
> requires risk-taking, an acceptance of instability [which a no-growth
> tribal society can't deal with] - and freedom of thought.
>
> I don't think that the 'advent of civilization produces shifts toward
> greater hierarchical organization' - and again, I don't know what the term
> 'civilization' means. I think that the increase in population produces
> shifts towards greater hierarchical organization - exactly as a biological
> organism that has more 'matter' is organized in a more complex manner than
> a simple bacterium.
>
> As for the characteristic of 'social cooperation' being embedded in the
> human temperament, this is due, I suggest, to the fact that the knowledge
> base of our species is not innate, is not genetic, but is social. We have
> to learn-how-to-live. The advantage, of course, is that we can change our
> mode of life, can adapt far faster than any species which has its knowledge
> base stored in genes. The disadvantage is when we get it wrong - and - I
> consider that greed, anger, hostility, [Firstness, Secondness]are as basic
> to our species as co-operation [Thirdness].
>
> Edwina
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun 01/10/17 2:53 PM , Eugene Halton [email protected] sent:
>
> What's missing in John's comments on the counter rise of greed and
> related, and in Edwina and Daniel's responses, are the transformative
> effects of agriculture and civilization. The agricultural revolution
> produces population explosion systematically, and it has never ended. The
> advent of civilization produces shifts toward greater hierarchical
> organization and in equality, much harder work time, and other systemic
> changes.
> But the interesting point is that the long-term evolutionary
> characteristics John mentions, which include increased social
> cooperativeness, remain deeply embedded in the human temperament.
> Gene Halton
>
> On Oct 1, 2017 2:25 PM, "Edwina Taborsky" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Daniel Everett - I was indeed referring to the hunting-gathering
>> economy - using information from such as Richard Lee [the !Kung], Devore
>> and others who worked in the field. Just as you say, they do not have the
>> luxury of accommodating people who cannot participate in the production of
>> sustenance [ie. by hunting/gathering]. AND - it also depends on the
>> ecological viability of the land. Since this economy does not 'make' the
>> land produce, then, they must rely on what the 'natural land' can produce'.
>> And that land has a critical threshold for population sustenance.
>>
>> When the societal organization is one where it actively 'makes' the land
>> produce sustenance - and this is found only in a land base where this
>> 'interference' is possible and productive - the society can afford a few
>> more 'non-productive members' but only at a low threshold. There is simply
>> no economic means to support the huge numbers of non-productive members
>> that we, in the industrial world, service. And what we don't realize, is
>> that this industrial mode of supporting a large percentage of
>> non-productive members of the population comes at enormous economic price:
>> trillions in debt, and a reduced productive capacity.
>>
>> Most of us don't think about economic thresholds and the
>> sustenance limits of a particular economic method - but, these
>> critical lines are real, and one of the most important variables, besides
>> the ecology of the land, is the size of the population. That is, societal
>> behaviour doesn't all depend on the 'psychological', on the goodwill [or
>> lack of it] of the human psyche. It also depends on the economy.
>>
>> Edwina
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun 01/10/17 2:12 PM , "Everett, Daniel" [email protected] sent:
>>
>> I have spent about 40 years working with hunter-gatherer populations in
>> the Amazon. I have lived among one group, the Pirahãs, for an aggregate of
>> eight years and speak their language, having also written several books and
>> articles about the experience.
>>
>> My experience matches what Edwina says in (1). They are initially
>> welcoming. But you must make yourself useful to the community. They do not
>> have the luxury of accommodating people who cannot carry their own weight.
>>
>> Dan
>>
>> On Oct 1, 2017, at 1:45 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> John, list
>>
>> That's an interesting set of comments. I certainly agree that survival
>> alone is impossible but often it's a network of different species rather
>> than just the members of one species. I've a few points:
>>
>> 1] I think that 'primitive' bands will only welcome visitors IF their
>> economic mode is sufficient to support these visitors. That is, If the
>> visit is short-term, the band might acknowledge this short stay; but - if
>> the visitor becomes a settler - this is a different position, for it
>> requires that the current economic method can support the new person -
>> particularly if he is not productive.
>>
>> 2] Certainly, tribes, which have larger populations than small population
>> bands, will not necessarily accept anyone other than a formal short-term
>> visitor; that is, they cannot, economically, readily support the long-term
>> settlement of migrants, immigrants, ...any increase in their population
>> size.
>>
>> 3] Certainly, war is a key method of reducing the population. But famine
>> and disease are other 'natural' methods and can be found repeatedly when a
>> particular economic method is stressed beyond its capacity to produce
>> sustenance. That is, the local small-scale farming methods of Europe's
>> medieval period could not sustain increasing populations and we saw waves
>> of not only wars but also plagues and disease. Eventually, the technology,
>> the actual method of food production had to change [larger farming
>> areas, deep plough, three-field rotation, market exchanges..] - and for
>> technology to change, the individual must be free to think.
>>
>> That is - I am suggesting something else is needed beyond your
>> 'cooperation and conservation'.
>>
>> 4]This thinking had to be based in objective empirical observation - and
>> the basic right and freedom of the individual to doubt, to question, to
>> explore this objective reality and figure out new methods of interaction
>> with the envt, new methods of production, new tools and technology. In that
>> sense, the community has to allow deviations from the norm, has to allow
>> 'dissent', freedom of thought, of speech, and the right-to-question and
>> disagree.
>>
>> Edwina
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun 01/10/17 1:15 PM , John F Sowa [email protected] sent:
>>
>> On 10/1/2017 6:59 AM, Stephen C. Rose wrote:
>> > The number of values to which all should subscribe is very few
>> > -- I make them to be tolerance, helpfulness, and democracy in
>> > the widest sense.
>>
>> I agree that those values are both important and universal.
>> But they are complex goals. According to Peirce's insistence
>> on continuity, they should be derivable from something simpler.
>>
>> Among humans in "primitive" societies, the natural tendency
>> is to welcome visitors. And by the way, I put the word
>> 'primitive' in quotes because the so-called primitive societies
>> developed from 100,000 years of experience by Homo sapiens, who
>> built on at least 2 million years of genus Homo, who built on
>> a few billion years of living things.
>>
>> Fundamental principle of life: Survival alone is impossible.
>>
>> Free swimming bacteria are extremely vulnerable, but their chances
>> are immensely better in large colonies. Many plants and animals
>> develop defensive mechanisms and even poisons. But they limit
>> the potency to avoid destroying their ecosystems.
>>
>> The values of tolerance, helpfulness, democracy and other ethical
>> principles can be derived from the fundamental principle: we need
>> our friends and neighbors of all species. Even the ones we fear
>> or despise may have their value for helping some of our friends.
>>
>> However, there is a struggle for existence, especially when the
>> resources are limited. That tends to promote the contrary goals
>> of greed, expulsion of trouble makers, and tribal affiliations
>> to the exclusion or hostility toward other tribes.
>>
>> That counter tendency can be addressed in two ways: (1) reduce
>> population by means of war, or (2) increase resources by means
>> of cooperation and conservation.
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>>
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