Quote from: jupiviv on Apr 23, 2024, 12:16 AMYou seem to be more or less agreeing with me except for the part about connections in the brain being genetically determined at birth. As for us being most successful under simple social structures, well those lead to where we are now and current hunter-gatherer societies are as fucked as the rest of us. The minuscule population of genuinely isolated peoples are allowed to live that way by other people. And even if those other people magically vanished, there will always be a need and a desire for more complexity and universality else we wouldn't have transitioned from one to the other when allowed to do so by circumstances.
Actually no, there is no universal "need and desire" for more complexity, that is post agricultural social development that came with the discovery of metallurgy and large sedentary societies that divided up a working caste, military caste, spiritual caste and ruling caste. Societies such as the tribes of the Pacific Northwest lived quite peacefully for 1000s of years in a relatively open and loose confederacy with each tribe numbering anywhere from about 150 to 1500 in size and at the tie of the European invasion of Turtle Island totalled about 250,00 by some estimates. Other estimates put it higher at over 1M. They didn't use money, production in the society was distributed by the Potlatch system and they governed themselves with a council of elders and periodic gatherings where representatives from the tribes met and gifts were exchanged between the groups.
What occurred in the fertile crescent in the Middle East, in India and China in the rice paddies didn't happen everywhere in North America, though it did in Central America and was beginning in the Ohio Valley also. Long as you don't take that step as a society that leads to greater population size and density and demands you control and protect property and perpetually expand to new land and subjugate it and the people living there, a society can maintain a relatively stable population size that uses resources at a sustainable rate. If we were to start over, hopefully that would be one ofthe bits of knowledge and experience we will retain for a redo.
QuoteHaving five toes, or being a living organism needing food/air... is very different from personality, talent and rational thought and learning. It's a truism that genes determine who we are and are influenced by environment. The contention is about the terms of that interaction. So far nothing from you explaining why Homo Saps living in complexity surpassing hunting-gathering are innately dumb and evil.
Personality, talent and rational thought differ between people partly duee to genetics and partly due to their environment. The easiest example of this comes with identical vs fraternal twins. While doing my Master's, I did my thesis for my Child Development class by studying the various forms of intelligence displayed by competitive gymnasts (I coached girl's team, so I had a ready made population to study), contrasting their behaviors, academic ability and musical talent with the general population. Basically it demonstrated how people are wired differently and it manifests itself on how they end up behaving.
Later I had a great opportunity when I had a set of triplets, all girls 2 identical, the 3rd fraternal. Raised by the same parents, given the same opportunities, they even all wore identical clothing though since 1 was not blonde you knew she wasn't identical. The 2 identical ones had similar gregarious personalities, talked a lot and were very fast in their reaction times with a lot of quick twitch muscle. The 3rd was quiet and shy and hard worker. She didn't have quite the physical gifts her 2 sisters did, but she made team first because she didn't waste time chit chatting and stayed focused. The 2 identical ones thought so much alike they answered questions the same sway at the same time. The other one nearly always answered differently. All these differences add up over time, but they begin because of differences in the genetics.
I also never said homo saps living in an ag society are inherently dumb and evil. What individual people develop in terms of intelligence and moral behavior is not the same thing as what societies demonstrate in aggregate behaviors. That is an emergent property of systems. You can have good people and bad people, smart people and stupid people under any system. No matter what system you have, if stupid, evil people run it the system will be stupid and evil. But even if you have good people inside an evil system, the results always come out evil.
QuoteI admit the decadent part was a bit mean-spirited. The argument itself isn't personal at all. You are in fact reproducing the logic of the liberal-capitalist mode of surplus accumulation, even while being critical of it. Liberalism assumes a contradiction between human nature and scarcity, and postulates the state as a regulating/harmonizing force. (The problem being human nature is a self-serving assumption and scarcity is a historical category.) You're just swapping out the state as a regulator with a future situation of less complex organization caused by collapse.
No idea HTF you can come to the conclusion I am in favor of surplus accumulation or how I am swapping out the state as a regulator of anything. There isn't much of a state with tribal organization, that's why it's called tribal and not nation-state. lol. I am in favor of minimalist living and no private property beyond what you can carry with you when you move around. I lived my whole life as a nomad, most of it out of about 5 bags and containers with my clothes and cameras and computers in them. Human nature isn't self-serving or an assumption, it's just a quality I observe. It doesn't account for all human behavior, because it adapts depending on the environment it is immersed in. You appear to have a lot of preconceived notions about what I believe and read a whole lot into my writing that just isn't there. I think you do this to justify your own ideas about democratic management as asolution that I don't agree with.
QuoteBut you do see it as A New Hope (TM) with different possibilities, and the best/only way out of the current situation which has exhausted it's own. 1000 breeding pairs won't have FFs but there'd be a whole bunch of other stuff they could use to build more complexity. My view is that the current situation is the best way out of itself, while also being resigned to bitter soul-crushing disappointment. Speaking of which I might be (reluctantly) alive to at least witness the general direction of how it ends/up.
I see it not as a new hope but rather a goal to seek of reducing complexity and reducing our demands and impact on the environment we live in. There really won't be a whole lot we can build without the copious energy supply we've burned through here, and whatever existence we do have post collapse, it's going to be a pretty meager one.
Perhaps we'll both be reincarnated in 5000 years and we'll bee able to chat about how it all played out then.
RE