"human nature"

hundredmillionlifetimes · Apr 13, 2007

Guybrush said:
What is it you find problematic about it today that you didn’t see then?

The preamble suggests it: [1] Human nature (of either persuasion) as a fiction, and [2] the antinomy of the noble vs ignoble savage (not actually mutually exclusive at all, such an antagonism being inherent) as necessary constructions to perpetuate the fiction of the reality principle ...

zhao · Apr 13, 2007

zhao said:
1. since the 1970s, much archeological study have suggested, and many scientists have come to agree, that Homo Erectus had the same upper cranial capacity and indeed the same brain as Homo-Sapien - a view very different from that we had come to accept up to that point (see Mr. Tea's comments) -- they had more hair, yes, but was just as "intellegent" as us -- extending the history of man on earth to 4,000,000 years.

2. it is commonly accepted that vegetation was much more abundant prior to the last ice-age (10,000 years ago) - thus it is likely that food was everywhere for the taking - thousands of kinds of fruits within reach or an easy climb, leaves, etc., etc. -- I'm sure many thousands of species of these plants did not survive the ice-age.

3. the same brain as us but zero advancement of technology - no tools, no advanced language system, etc., why? only conceivable reason is there was no need.

4. what we do know for certain is that civilization began about 10,000 years ago - agriculture, division of labor, advanced language systems, centralized power, hierarchy, domination, exploitation, slavery, and technology -- our of necessity, because of dwindling resources.

5. also it is commonly accepted that major diseases such as cancer did not exist prior to agriculture, when our diet changed from consisting of thousands of kinds of plants to a dozen or 2, and the advent of large quantities of cooked animal protein.

6. studies of tribal and other societies of today which have more or less retained the characteristics of the way of life of ancients seem to at the very least partially agree with this view -- the tribes of Indonesia, Africa, etc. again, there are volumes to be said about this, but i don't have time here to even cover my own very, very limited research and knowledge.

7. lastly, and fully realizing that this is the easiest one for people to ridicule, but should be mentioned none the less -- the myths and stories of all peoples and civilizations on earth: China, Egypt, Maya, Aztec, Aboriginal Australia, Persia, Greece, etc., etc, etc, all contain a form of paradise-lost theme. much like the garden in the christian bible.

of course myths of paradise can be attributed to the nostalgic nature of humans and a number of other explanations, but the possibility that these alarmingly similar stories coming from remote parts of the earth, from disparate cultures having no connection to eachother for thousands of years, were actually derived from some kind of memory, or even direct oral tradition originating from our ancesters, should not be dismissed.

i think it is very important to consider alternative versions of pre-history like this one, in addition to the pervasive, commonly believed one.

Mr. Tea, why do you defend the majority view so vehemently? does suggesting that it may be biased and tainted, or that there may be other points of view equally as valid somehow threaten to topple your entire philosophy of life? a philosophy based on humans always being exactly the same, since the beginning of time? that there is no way to live other than the way live now? that we are inherently violent and brutal and cruel, and thus never can hope to be any different?

tate · Apr 14, 2007

zhao said:
i think the general gist of this angle is that the developed brains were used for 4 million years, but not to develop "tools" as we know it. proponents of this school maintain that the majority of time these pre-civilized ancesters spent on leisure activities, inventing games to play, etc. much more far out ideas about their life-span (a lot longer than ours), abilities which we would consider to be "psychic" or "para-normal", etc., etc., but i won't go into detail because i know people will quickly jump on these as reason to dismiss everything i'm relating to so far as "Kooky Californian Drivel".

oh really. to what "school" of thought do you refer?

Eric · Apr 14, 2007

the `KCD' school????

zhao · Apr 14, 2007

tate said:
oh really. to what "school" of thought do you refer?

Anarcho Primitivist school

again, before the ridicule and vegetables come flying, I am merely interested in exploring alternative versions of pre-history, other than the one commonly accepted. i am NOT saying that this stuff, which may sound very much far fetched and in the land of fantasy, is what i believe whole-heartedly.

but much of it does make sense to me, and rings true on an intuitive level.

what is important about all of this is the notion that the way we live now may not be the way we have always lived. that it may prove to be a very recent development and brief way of life for humans.

further, what we believe today may be tainted by invisible ideology, and hidden agendas -- and that it may not be nearly as rational or factual as we think.

the way we look at the world and ourselves, in the "modern west", it may be a very limited view, which excludes multiple other ways of perceiving and understanding, which are all just as valid, if not much more valid, than ours.

this is the only way to envision a future. if there is one.

Mr. Tea · Apr 15, 2007

zhao said:
there are many reasons. just a few main ones off the top of my head:

1. since the 1970s, much archeological study have suggested, and many scientists have come to agree, that Homo Erectus had the same upper cranial capacity and indeed the same brain as Homo-Sapien - a view very different from that we had come to accept up to that point (see Mr. Tea's comments) -- they had more hair, yes, but was just as "intellegent" as us -- extending the history of man on earth to 4,000,000 years.

The intelligence of a person or animal is not proportional to the size of their/its brain. Blue whales, for example, have far larger brains than humans, and while it's obviously not possible to give a whale an IQ test, I would say it's pretty certain they're not as intelligent as us. Furthermore, men generally have bigger brains than women, and I'm sure you wouldn't say this makes men cleverer, would you?

zhao said:
2. it is commonly accepted that vegetation was much more abundant prior to the last ice-age (10,000 years ago) - thus it is likely that food was everywhere for the taking - thousands of kinds of fruits within reach or an easy climb, leaves, etc., etc. -- I'm sure many thousands of species of these plants did not survive the ice-age.

This doesn't alter the fact that there's abundant fossil evidence for hunting and meat-eating even in very ancient hominid species.

zhao said:
3. the same brain as us but zero advancement of technology - no tools, no advanced language system, etc., why? only conceivable reason is there was no need.

Do we 'need' TVs, cars, computers, iPods? Event the most primitive human cultures have technology of some sort, even if it's just simple stone tools, examples of which certainly predate the last ice age.

zhao said:
4. what we do know for certain is that civilization began about 10,000 years ago - agriculture, division of labor, advanced language systems, centralized power, hierarchy, domination, exploitation, slavery, and technology -- our of necessity, because of dwindling resources.

I would agree with this, as far as it goes.

zhao said:
5. also it is commonly accepted that major diseases such as cancer did not exist prior to agriculture, when our diet changed from consisting of thousands of kinds of plants to a dozen or 2, and the advent of large quantities of cooked animal protein.

Cancer is a disease which overwhelmingly affects middle-aged and old people, who are few and far between in primitive societies because the life expectancy is so low. Furthermore I expect cancer only became widespread since the industrial revolution, when pollution became a serious problem for the first time - I'm sure it wasn't a common disease in, say, the middle ages. The link with red meat only applies to people who eat far too much of it and not enough fibre, so that it sits in the lower gut for a long time: a sensible amount of animal protein is a vital part of a healthy diet.

zhao said:
6. studies of tribal and other societies of today which have more or less retained the characteristics of the way of life of ancients seem to at the very least partially agree with this view -- the tribes of Indonesia, Africa, etc. again, there are volumes to be said about this, but i don't have time here to even cover my own very, very limited research and knowledge.

Again, I think this has more to do with these societies being pre-industrial and pre-urban, rather than pre-agricultural.

zhao said:
7. lastly, and fully realizing that this is the easiest one for people to ridicule, but should be mentioned none the less -- the myths and stories of all peoples and civilizations on earth: China, Egypt, Maya, Aztec, Aboriginal Australia, Persia, Greece, etc., etc, etc, all contain a form of paradise-lost theme. much like the garden in the christian bible.

of course myths of paradise can be attributed to the nostalgic nature of humans and a number of other explanations, but the possibility that these alarmingly similar stories coming from remote parts of the earth, from disparate cultures having no connection to eachother for thousands of years, were actually derived from some kind of memory, or even direct oral tradition originating from our ancesters, should not be dismissed.

Weeell, maybe. There cerainly would have been no such thing as organised warfare before civilisation existed, but I'm sure there would have been violence of various kinds nonetheless. As you say, nostalgia is a common part of human 'nature' - but weren't you trying to argue against the very existence of such a thing when you started this thread?

zhao · Apr 16, 2007

can we focus on the big picture for just one minute? Mr. Tea, do you absolutely rule out the possibility that human beings have lived in ways drastically different than our way of life now? is it possible that our species is capable of much more empahty, compassion, connection, symbiosis, co-operation, inter-relatedness, than we display in these times?

do you rule out the possibility that the way we view ourselves and our history might be heavily biased and distorted by the ideology of the times we live in?

whether the Anarcho Primitivists are hopeless idealists or not, whether their version of pre-history is absolutely accurate or not (which is up to debate), the main point is that they provide an alternative reading of the origins of our species. and i think this is very important.

but ok, details:

Mr. Tea said:
The intelligence of a person or animal is not proportional to the size of their/its brain. Blue whales, for example, have far larger brains than humans, and while it's obviously not possible to give a whale an IQ test, I would say it's pretty certain they're not as intelligent as us. Furthermore, men generally have bigger brains than women, and I'm sure you wouldn't say this makes men cleverer, would you?

that makes sense. but in the case of the development from monkeys to humans, such a big difference in upper cranial capacity can reasonably be interpreted as precondition and cause for, more likely than not, an increase in intellegence.

Mr. Tea said:
This doesn't alter the fact that there's abundant fossil evidence for hunting and meat-eating even in very ancient hominid species.

sure hunting existed back then. what the Primitivists say is that the importance of hunting is priviledged by civilization, in relation to gathering and foraging, which may have been the primary food source - thus inverting the phrase "hunter-gatherer" to "gatherer-hunter".

does it not makes sense that a society which champions competition and aggression would play up such attributes in its representations?

Mr. Tea said:
Do we 'need' TVs, cars, computers, iPods? Event the most primitive human cultures have technology of some sort, even if it's just simple stone tools, examples of which certainly predate the last ice age.

remember we are talking about an aledged period of roughly 3-4 million years BEFORE CIVILIZATION.

Mr. Tea said:
Cancer is a disease which overwhelmingly affects middle-aged and old people, who are few and far between in primitive societies because the life expectancy is so low. Furthermore I expect cancer only became widespread since the industrial revolution, when pollution became a serious problem for the first time - I'm sure it wasn't a common disease in, say, the middle ages. The link with red meat only applies to people who eat far too much of it and not enough fibre, so that it sits in the lower gut for a long time: a sensible amount of animal protein is a vital part of a healthy diet.

Again, I think this has more to do with these societies being pre-industrial and pre-urban, rather than pre-agricultural.

according to the APs, life expectancy drastically dropped with the advent of agriculture. and the causes of these new diseases are myriad, the change of diet -- less raw greens and more carbohydrates and carcenogens from cooked animal protein is only one of them. the primary one is probably stress of "work" and alienated labor. also losing touch with ourselves and intimate connection with others.

Mr. Tea said:
As you say, nostalgia is a common part of human 'nature' - but weren't you trying to argue against the very existence of such a thing when you started this thread?

well if you read my original sentence in its entirety, what I mean is that "sure paradise myths CAN be interpreted as some sort of nostalgia, but the possibility that they are much more than that should not be ruled out:

of course myths of paradise can be attributed to the nostalgic nature of humans and a number of other explanations, but the possibility that these alarmingly similar stories coming from remote parts of the earth, from disparate cultures having no connection to eachother for thousands of years, were actually derived from some kind of memory, or even direct oral tradition originating from our ancesters, should not be dismissed.

zhao · Apr 16, 2007

whew! i need a beer after that

Mr. Tea · Apr 16, 2007

zhao said:
can we focus on the big picture for just one minute? Mr. Tea, do you absolutely rule out the possibility that human beings have lived in ways drastically different than our way of life now? is it possible that our species is capable of much more empahty, compassion, connection, symbiosis, co-operation, inter-relatedness, than we display in these times?

Whoa - who ever said people *don't* live differently now from how they/we used to? Of course there are huge differences in lifestyle, culture and worldview. Whether there existed in the past some universal 'brotherhood of man' where everyone cooperated and lived in perfect peace and harmony, however - now that's a very different matter, and I think it sounds pretty unlikely. For one thing, I don't think a strain of ancient humanity with no tendencey whatsoever towards aggression or selfishness would ever arise, or, once arisen, would last very long, becuase a more aggressive and competitive strain would wipe them out. Of course, a strain that was too aggressive would wipe itself out, so we arive at a kind of optimum or equilibrium level of human behaviour whereby people sometimes fight over resources and sometimes cooperate and share them: this sounds like a pretty reasonable description of the way the world is now, in my opinion. Yes, there are terrible wars and economic exploitation and so on - and I'm not saying it's inevitable or that we shouldn't be trying to stop it, either - but there's cooperation and mutually-beneficial behaviour and even acts of selfless altuism, too.

zhao said:
do you rule out the possibility that the way we view ourselves and our history might be heavily biased and distorted by the ideology of the times we live in?

No, I don't rule it out, but I fail to see why archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists would have such an overriding political agenda. In addition, you have to consider archaeological evidence that doesn't have much leeway in terms of interpretation - early or proto-human bones with scratch-marks from human teeth or stone tools, for example.

Mr. Tea · Apr 16, 2007

zhao said:
according to the APs, life expectancy drastically dropped with the advent of agriculture. and the causes of these new diseases are myriad, the change of diet -- less raw greens and more carbohydrates and carcenogens from cooked animal protein is only one of them. the primary one is probably stress of "work" and alienated labor. also losing touch with ourselves and intimate connection with others.

This sounds distinctly dodgy to me. Life expectancy in developed countries is higher now than it has been in any other culture at any time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_over_human_history
While it's interesting that LE seems to have peaked at 33 in the Upper Palaeolithic before falling, and only reaching that level again in the Middle Ages, it's nowhere near the high-70s seen today in developed countries, is it?

zhao · Apr 16, 2007

Mr. Tea said:
I don't think a strain of ancient humanity with no tendencey whatsoever towards aggression or selfishness would ever arise, or, once arisen, would last very long, becuase a more aggressive and competitive strain would wipe them out.

unless there was an over abundance of food in a lush climate before the last ice-age, from hundreds of thousands of plants that went extinct, rendering competition unnecessary.

Mr. Tea · Apr 16, 2007

zhao said:
unless there was an over abundance of food in a lush climate before the last ice-age, from hundreds of thousands of plants that went extinct, rendering competition unnecessary.

That may or may not have been the case - let's say it was the case, it doesn't sound impossible - but if it was, then so what? The climate changed, the population increased, life got tougher and people got tougher to cope with it. Since the end of the last ice age is ample time for all sorts of new instincts to have been bred into the human population by evolutionary necessity.

A more traditional view of the development of human civilisation (and one which I tend towards) is that the discovery of agriculture and husbandry in the Middle East meant, for the first time, that people had food 'on tap', and that one person could now produce more food than it was possible for him/her to eat alone. (Contrary to what you may think about tropical rainforests, they are not bursting at the seems with edible, easily reached fruit: life in the jungle is difficult.) This meant an increase in leisure time, since people no longer had to forage all the time (harvested crops could be eaten when desired, and animals could be milked or slaughtered to provide meat, which is a much better source of calories than vegetables or fruit), which allowed people to have specialised jobs: potter, builder, artisan, scribe, priest, whatever. Of course, if you want to view the appearance of technology and culture as a largely bad thing, that's up to you, but it's certainly not a view I share.

zhao · Apr 16, 2007

Mr. Tea said:
No, I don't rule it out, but I fail to see why archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists would have such an overriding political agenda.

they don't have overt political agendas, but i think it is entirely possible that you may be under estimating the degree to which science is influenced by ideology. i am of the opinion that science is not nearly as objective as we'd like to think. for instance, (was Nomadology that pointed this out?) the areas we CHOOSE to investigate, out of thousands of possible areas, makes human subjectivity apparent in the process of scientific study.

like Ben Franklin said, reasonable creatues will find reasons for whatever they want to do.

and i would extend that to -- reasonable creatues will find reasons for whatever they want to see, or believe.

this of course leads us to a much bigger debate, one which we've already begun elsewhere on this forum.

zhao · Apr 16, 2007

Mr. Tea said:
That may or may not have been the case - let's say it was the case, it doesn't sound impossible - but if it was, then so what? The climate changed, the population increased, life got tougher and people got tougher to cope with it. Since the end of the last ice age is ample time for all sorts of new instincts to have been bred into the human population by evolutionary necessity.

this i agree with. completely.

Mr. Tea said:
A more traditional view of the development of human civilisation (and one which I tend towards) is that the discovery of agriculture and husbandry in the Middle East meant, for the first time, that people had food 'on tap', and that one person could now produce more food than it was possible for him/her to eat alone. (Contrary to what you may think about tropical rainforests, they are not bursting at the seems with edible, easily reached fruit: life in the jungle is difficult.) This meant an increase in leisure time, since people no longer had to forage all the time (harvested crops could be eaten when desired, and animals could be milked or slaughtered to provide meat, which is a much better source of calories than vegetables or fruit), which allowed people to have specialised jobs: potter, builder, artisan, scribe, priest, whatever. Of course, if you want to view the appearance of technology and culture as a largely bad thing, that's up to you, but it's certainly not a view I share.

this i also agree with. really into the work of Jarred Diamond, etc. but again, you are talking about developments SINCE the advent of civilization. and what i am trying to imagine is a much different climate, with hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals that are now long gone, and a very different way of life for our ancestors.

of course i don't view technology as a bad thing. that is just absurd. we developed tools for necessity, survival. (plus i would have some explaining to do with my love of techno!

)

for the 10th time, what i am interested in is an alternative version to prehistory... fuck i feel like a brocken record

Mr. Tea · Apr 17, 2007

zhao said:
for the 10th time, what i am interested in is an alternative version to prehistory... fuck i feel like a brocken record

Well fair enough, I can't say I have too much time for 'anarcho-primitivism' myself (and I didn't mean to imply you upholds all those beliefs as such, you're obviously not a Luddite, by definition of being on the Internet - unless you're gleefully tapping away on a 486 with a 28.8kb/s modem, hehehe).

DigitalDjigit · Apr 17, 2007

Life expectancy of 33 doesn't mean that everyone died in their 30's. It means that infant mortality was high. If you have 100 people dying at age 3 and 100 dying at age 60 you get a life expectancy of 31.5. So there were enough old people.

Anyway, the whole "cancer only affects old people and it is only now that we have enough old people for it to show up" is bollocks. Studies that controlled for age showed an increase in cancer rates during the 20th century.

Just correcting some misconceptions. Carry on.

DigitalDjigit · Apr 17, 2007

Mr. Tea said:
A more traditional view of the development of human civilisation (and one which I tend towards) is that the discovery of agriculture and husbandry in the Middle East meant, for the first time, that people had food 'on tap', and that one person could now produce more food than it was possible for him/her to eat alone. (Contrary to what you may think about tropical rainforests, they are not bursting at the seems with edible, easily reached fruit: life in the jungle is difficult.) This meant an increase in leisure time, since people no longer had to forage all the time (harvested crops could be eaten when desired, and animals could be milked or slaughtered to provide meat, which is a much better source of calories than vegetables or fruit), which allowed people to have specialised jobs: potter, builder, artisan, scribe, priest, whatever. Of course, if you want to view the appearance of technology and culture as a largely bad thing, that's up to you, but it's certainly not a view I share.

Jungles aren't bursting with food as we understand it, but humans right now get the vast majority of their calories from three crops (rice, wheat, corn). Of course you won't find those in the jungle. I think the humans back then did ok or we wouldn't be alive

You could think of the development of agriculture as increasing leisure time. But it's leisure time only increased for the priests, chiefs etc. The majority of the population had to work harder to provide for them. Without agriculture there would be no surplus to hoard (remember that the one of the reasons wheat is central to agriculture is because it can be stored for long periods of time, thus you can take it away and put it under locks and control the population) and if one wanted food one had to get it for themselves. So it's possible to reverse this and say that it wasn't the agriculture that allowed for a leisure class to appear but the appearance of a dominating class that caused agriculture to appear.

Agriculture certainly didn't provide food security as one crop failure would leave you without food for a whole year. There were famines in the Middle Ages every decade or so.

Mr. Tea · Apr 17, 2007

DigitalDjigit said:
Anyway, the whole "cancer only affects old people and it is only now that we have enough old people for it to show up" is bollocks. Studies that controlled for age showed an increase in cancer rates during the 20th century.

Oh, I'm sure it did - my position is that cancer is a disease of the *relatively* recent past (i.e. that it probably started to become a big problem with the advent of the industrial revolution, and has increased since then) in contrast to zhao's assertion that it's been a big problem ever since people started farming and keeping animals.

Also, surely it's possible that both cancer rates (normalised to the age profile) *and* the number of cancer-prone (i.e. old) people have increased?

Mr. Tea · Apr 17, 2007

DigitalDjigit said:
You could think of the development of agriculture as increasing leisure time. But it's leisure time only increased for the priests, chiefs etc.

And scribes, artists, artisans, builders/architects, philosophers, poets, doctors, astronomers, potters, metal-workers, brewers...in other words, people with a skill other than merely amassing enough food to survive, people who are vital to any group that wants to call itself a 'civilisation' rather than just a bunch of guys in mud huts.

I certainly can't see how "the appearance of a dominating class [would] cause agriculture to appear" - agriculture must have come about more or less as a chance discovery, initially, and then led to a surplus of food (and eventually abstracted 'wealth') which, along with a new premium being placed on valuable farming land, would have led to the first heirarchies and leaderships.

Edit: ...not to mention the increased population density due both to larger populations sizes and a greater density of people being able to live off a certain area of land when farming/herding, compared to hunting/gathering.

zhao · Jan 16, 2012

what happened to DigitalDjigit?

"human nature"

Banned

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Honky Tonk Woman

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