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Gene - please see my comments below:
On Sun 01/10/17 6:33 PM , Eugene Halton [email protected]
sent:
Dear Edwina, The evidence contradicts a number of your claims.
1] Edwina: "Most tribal economies are focused around stability
and can't economically afford peripheral deviations from the hard
work of their economic mode." GENE: 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.
EDWINA: So what? Hunter-Gather economies require less work than
agricultural because they do not make the land produce food; they
only hunt-what-is-there; and gather-what-is-there. BUT this means
that this type of economy can only support a SMALL population; the
normal band size is about 30 people - and - they are usually
migratory. See Lee and Devore's various studies;
2] GENE: 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).
EDWINA: I don't think that the domestication of animals and plants
emerged from a 'myth of control of nature'. I think that, first, the
local environment had to include plants that could be domesticated
and animals that could be domesticated. That is, you seem to be
putting the ideology first..and actions after. Whereas, I put the
objective reality of a nature-that-is-amenable to 'making
food'...first. Ideology comes later. The environment has to be
accessible to agriculture.
As I pointed out, you can't harness a zebra to a plough. And I
still don't 'get' your definition of 'civilization' as 'living of and
from cities'. You don't get a city, i.e., a large hierarchical and
specialized population without FIRST being located in an ecological
area that can produce a surplus of food; that can support a large
population; that then becomes specialized in tasks.
3] GENE: 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.
EDWINA: Again, I disagree with your definition of 'civilization'.
What led to the development of agriculture, was an amenable ecology,
where the local 'flora and fauna' were able to be domesticated.
Nothing to do with cities. Agriculture doesn't require cities: you
can have medium size populations [in the hundreds, low thousands] in
swidden agriculture, in pastoral nomadism, in small scale
horticulture] - and there are no cities in these modes.
And I don't agree that 'civilization'...introduced the idea that
humans could control nature'. Certainly, the societies that HAD
cities, such as the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians...rejected that humans
could control nature; - the various gods certainly didn't give such
powers to Man.
4] GENE: 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.
EDWINA; I didn't say that 'social co-operation' is not innate. I
said that our KNOWLEDGE of 'how to live' is not innate - and
therefore, we are necessarily, a SOCIAL SPECIES. We must learn 'how
to live'; how to grow food; how to build a house..etc - and we do
this by existing within a community, within a society. We are
necessarily social - and the fact that our knowledge is not innate,
means that we can CHANGE how we live. We don't need to physically
adapt; we cognitively adapt and rather than grow wings - we build a
plane.
Born to be wild? Sorry - I've no idea what that means; I think we
are born to be socialized - which is why we have language, a symbolic
form of information storage and communication.
:-)
Gene
On Oct 1, 2017 3:51 PM, "Edwina Taborsky" 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]
[2] 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" 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 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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