Hobbes Leviathan

LOL, those universals always crack me up.

Of course Anna is a reductionist straight edger, she has no need for things like meaning, interpretation, and difference, all these things simply cloud matters, make it too difficult to neatly box them. So she prefers to work on levels that iron out any creases, gene's or banal universals, by doing so she never actually has to deal with actual human experiance, nothing concrete. Which is exactly why evolutionary psychology is not psychology, because it can't deal with actual concrete humans, it tells us as much about the human condition as a biopsy and when it does stick it's nose into such matters it becomes little more than neat little just so stories, the mapping of our present relations and meanings onto past societies and other species behaviour only to then remap these findings back onto ours, completing the circle of naturalisation. Which is exactly why it's frivolous shite gets so much media coverage and funding.

And yes the technology a society has puts constraints on it but there is still vast differences. You sound like a reductionist orthodox marxist.

Also Anna is it deliberate that the link to those universals is to a website called Robot Wisdom?

It's the kind of shit i'd imagine Data from Star Trek printing out his arse crack.

I prefer to work in terms of science and evidence. If someone wants to show me some evidence that chimpanzees form inter-group alliances, that our hunter-gatherer ancestors differed significantly in lifestyle from modern hunter-gatherers, that primitives do not engage in vicious inter-tribe warfare, or otherwise provide any material at all to back up the claims bandied about in this thread, then I'm all ears.

However, if people want to remain at the level of flimsy assertions and baseless invective, then I'm not interested.

That site's just one of the ones that hosts it. The actual list was compiled by Donald E. Brown, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California. I should think he knows what he's talking about.

well what are troops made up of? Those troops that are up to 150 chimps, are they all relatives? Why is the female chimps cross troop behaviours written out. There has also been wide variations in behaviour between different groups of chimps depending on environment and relations. Furthermore why is it that bonobo's get soo little attention? Couldn't be any sort of ideological bias towards reasserting certain behaviours as normal, no? Why does Wilson take male dominance of society as natural, why doesn't the social relations of Bonobo's complicate the matter, afterall individual males still tend towards being bigger and stronger than females yet the females maintain a matriarchy.

i should think he's not really talking about anyhting, because those universals are simply signifiers we attach to certain behaviours, thoughts and behaviours. yes we all get sad, we all express happiness but that is deeply banal what is interesting is 'what makes us happy', 'what makes us sad'. What is the meaning of the sadness etc.

I mean for fucksake,

He has Social Structure down as a universal, of course there is a fucking social structure how the fuck couldn't you have one.

that our hunter-gatherer ancestors differed significantly in lifestyle from modern hunter-gatherers

Point is you cannot produce evidence to prove or disprove that (and modern hunter-gatherers don't all have the one lifestyle anyways), it is pre-history...before history...that is there is no record, period, postholes and sharpened flints don't really tell us that much about societies. This is what Hobbes et al were doing just filling in blank spaces with whatever took their fancy.

Re: your list of 'universals' there are different societies with widely divergent gender roles, some which are very hierarchical, and some not so, some peaceful and some not. I don't think that really comes across in that list. The only thing that is always male dominated for instance is warfare/hunting, there are societies in which women are dominant in the public realm.

Troops tend to be of about 25-80 individuals, which yes would all probably be related to some extent. But the crucial point is that they can discriminate between members of their groups and outsiders, and treat them accordingly.

Because the inter-troop violence is carried out by males. When chimps go to raid a rival troop, they leave the females and infants at home.

Some variation yes, of course. I would assume a lot of this is due to density-dependent behavioural scaling. But I'd be interested in seeing a study about this.

Um because I just brought up common chimps as carrying out a type of behaviour that is detrimental to the species. Bonobos aren't known for it, so I didn't mention them. Geez.

Fucking hell. I brought up chimps as an example as an evolutionary mechanism, why do you always have to assume I'm pursuing some crypto-conservative agenda? Ridiculous.

He doesn't. What are you basing this on?

The sexual dimorphism, is, however, much smaller. But what relevance is this of? I mentioned an example about common chimps, not bonobos. And I haven't anywhere said that 'human society is exactly like chimpanzee society' which seems to be what you are accusing me of.

Seriously revol, stop jumping to insane conclusions.

What is interesting is trying to produce an explanation of 'sadness' or 'happiness' themselves that isn't circular. It's pretty much impossible to do this without evolutionary theory.

Well, you could have solitary individuals living on their own, which tends to be the rule, rather than the exception, for most species.

I'm sure archaeologists would disagree with you there. But in any case you have ceded that there is no reason to suppose that the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers 12,000 years ago would be significantly different to those today. Of course cultural variation exists, but surely the type of cultural variation exhibited by our ancestors would be the same type of cultural variation exhibited by modern primitives.

As regards power relations, I think there is generally an inequality. Now before anyone starts claiming that I'm 'naturalising and legitimising patriarchy' or some shite, of course I'm fucking not. It tends to be the case in a lot of tribes that the men will 'trade' women with other tribes and girls have little say over who they marry. Doesn't mean I think that's right, of course I don't.

Wilson does fucking claim male dominance is innate.

He then says that we can try and compensate for this but,

This sits perfectly well with his quote about gender differences in modern society being simply extensions of natural differences.

Oh and he has this to say about anarchism, though I suppouse you can justify that too,

Face it evolutionary psychology is a politically motivated crock of shit trying to pass off pseduo scientific speculation and just so stories as matters of fact. Why a communist woul want anything to do with such shit is beyond me.

Also in another thread where we were arguing about human promiscuity you said,

Kinda seems to go out the window with the old Bonobo, no?

Oh, you mean in homo sapiens, not generally in animals.

Do you think that if we gave men and women absolutely identical upbringing, they would end up exactly the same?

So you think we should treat men and women differently to try and cancel out their innate propensity to diverge?

He says they are extensions, but not 'simply' extensions. Sure we can find biological precursors for them, but that does not mean that they are right, nor that they are inevitable.

Bakuninism is shite. I don't see what relevance this has for anarchists that are more sensible than Bakunin.

You know fuck all about EP and constantly display your ignorance of the science involved. Forgive me if I do not trust your judgement on this one.

Not at all. We have more sexual dimorphism than bonobos, and are somewhat less promiscuous than them. I don't quite see your point.

I'm sure archaeologists would disagree with you there.

Dunno about that, I have yet to read an archaeology book that wasn't about the material culture of pre-history, as opposed to being really able to tell us about the rest of their societies, which would be really fucking difficult given the absence of a historic record. Archaeology for historic times is of course different. I studied archaeology for a year btw. Any archaeologist I can recall discussing this with would also think our ability to understand pre-historic society based on the archaeological record is pretty limited.

But in any case you have ceded that there is no reason to suppose that the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers 12,000 years ago would be significantly different to those today.

Not really seeing hunter gatherers today have different lifestyles, so the question is framed in such a way as it doesn't make any sense.

Of course cultural variation exists, but surely the type of cultural variation exhibited by our ancestors would be the same type of cultural variation exhibited by modern primitives.

So it would include then societies which are brutally patriarchal, and ones in which women are more dominant, ones which are very hierarchical, and ones that are not, and so on. They probably all have sharpened flints alright.

It is limited yes, especially before the 'great leap forward' about 40,000 years ago it was all just 'bones and tools'. But after that it gets a bit more interesting. The existence of the skeletons of old frail people tells us a bit about social structure and the increased possibility of cultural transmission. Plant remains and animal bones can tell us what we ate. We can also reconstruct population density etc. Then there's art and technology that comes on in leaps and bounds. I agree there are some things that archaeology is at a loss to comment on, but I see no reason why there is any reason to suppose that the lifestyles of modern primitives should not be instructive in these respects.

I'll put it more simply. Leaving aside cultural variation, is there any reason to suppose that the similarities between modern hunter-gatherers were not shared by past hunter-gatherers? Geez this is ridiculous, all I'm suggesting is that if you want to learn about hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the best thing to look at is hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Yes. It probably did. I've not said that it didn't. This does not mean that there are traits that all these groups share though, nor that the quest to reconstruct our ancestors' lifestyles is pointless and we shouldn't even try.
And surely this variation itself is useful in understanding the type of variation displayed by hunter gatherers thousands of years ago?

Though Terry, I'd be interested to learn about which modern tribes have no dominance relations at all or ones in which women are dominant over men. Can you give me some links? cheers

Oh fuck, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

yes leaving aside the very differences between hunter gather societies there aren't any ways in which they differ, infact they are clearly both the same, y'know with being hunter gatherer socieities.

Got to go meet conor now but I'll reply to your other post laters.

Do I have to post my list of universals you love so much again?

Sahlin's article was based on a study by Richard B. Lee that turned out to be very flawed, so I'm not sure how far I would trust his judgement. In 20th century Europe, despite two world wars, the percentage of male deaths by homicide is still only 2%. The rate in tribal societies seems to be greater by at least a factor of ten. Another thing, the rate of homicide actually went down among Native American tribes after the European settlers came, despite what is usually thought. But if you can link me to any studies or anything, I'd be glad to look at them.

I've not seen the program, but from what I've read (eg about new guinea tribes) a member of a tribe would consider it suicidal to venture into another tribe's territory.

I wrote earlier that relationships between tribes have historically been shifting alternations of warfare and alliances for trade. Trade has tended to work in the opposite direction to xenophobia.
But what xenophobia being a universal means, is that we have one mode of relations geared towards members of our own group (which is by and large, a moral and just way of acting) and another mode of relations for acting towards outsiders. The first category has usually been associated with the tribe, but as humans have become less isolated, it has been possible to make the boundaries of this 'in-group' stretch to encompass larger categories. You can see the distinction in social relations eg in a Britsh soldier who is kind and just towards his compatriots, yet will consider it fine to shoot Germans, or a white man who is kind and just towards other whites yet will keep blacks as slaves and beat them...ideally we should gear ourselves so that the 'in-group' encompasses all humans (and maybe higher animals). But definitely this splitting of the world into two categories, one worthy of moral behaviour and the other worthy of hostility, seems to be a human universal.

Peaceful among the confederation, yes. But the Iroquois engaged in a lot of warfare with other groups of natives (and europeans). You can see in this case the 'in-group' has been extended to the confederation, but it has not made the natives any more 'peaceable'.

Antieverything wrote:

Capitalism existed before the factory system became widespread in the 19th century. Its beginning can be traced to what has been called "the long 16th century" with the spread of market relations to more and more aspects of economic life. Seeing society, not as in feudal times as a God-given hierarchical community where different "estates" have obligations to each other, but as being made up of autonomous individuals trading and making contracts with each other was a consequence of this. Of course there's been a chicken-and-egg argument here over which came first -- the reality of market exchange or the idea of autonomous individuals -- with Max Weber, for instance, famously taking the second position with his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. But I thought there was general agreement that there was a "spirit of capitalism" and that it had something to do with Protestantism and that it originated in the "long 16th century" and grew in importance in the following century (when Hobbes was writing) along with the spread of market relations.
C.B. Macpherson in The Theory of Possessive Individualism wrote:

And relates Hobbes's political philosophy to such a society:

Macpherson also argues that Hobbes posited his "state of nature" in which everyone strives to dominate everyone else just to sustain his argument for State power. In other words, he was reading back into nature the economic and social relationships of "possessive market society". Which is precisely what the Flinstones and "Sociobiologists" and "Evolutionary Psychologists" of today are doing.

absolutely, a shit book imho.

made me a bit paranoid anyway - "oh no everyone is an egoist". happily it turned out they weren't/

My point is not that genocide is 'hard-wired' into us or any such rubbish, but that the psychological basis for it exists as soon as we start putting other human groups into a different moral category than us. We have evolved two modes of behaviour, one (co-operative, altruistic, just) that we employed in the context of the tribe, where it paid to be 'moral', and another, warlike and aggressive, one which we employed against rival 'enemy' tribes. Putting someone in the second category makes it easier to hurt or maltreat them. There is plenty of evidence from primitives to the effect that they see other tribes as racially inferior, subhuman etc. Now, in the context of wars, governments spend a lot on issuing propaganda that demonises and dehumanises the enemy, and creating false stories of atrocities carried out by the enemy etc. A soldier, insofar as he sees the man on the other side as something subhuman, can shoot him. But when he starts seeing the 'enemy' as a human being, that creates the psychological basis for a truce. Increased contact with and knowledge about other groups is the best way, I think, of countering racism. But insofar as hunter-gatherers are very isolated, they are also very xenophobic.

Right, well I don't know much about the pygmies except that during the Congo civil war, both sides hunted them down like game, cannibalized them and did atrocious things to their women. This was possible because they were seen as 'subhuman'. As for the people of the Caroline islands, I'm not sure looking at how they live now is a good indication of isolated hunter-gatherer life, because they have been subject to loads of missionary work and christianity is now the primary religion. However, when the first missionaries came, they killed them.

I'm sorry, I don't think so. You really think that in Europe , correcting for people that are saved from bleeding to death by medical technology, the level of male death by homicide would come anywhere near 20-50%? The 'noble savage' is a nice belief, but the anthropological data doesn't really support it. So far in this thread, claims suggesting the contrary have come from 1) a primmie site and 2) your 'peacefulsocieties' site, which I don't think are really that objective.

Actually Hobbes didn't argue so much that human beings were egoists but that they sought to exercise power over others. If this was true it would be a much harder nut to crack than if we were just egoists. No doubt a case can be made out that the best long-term survival strategy for an egoist would be to co-operate with others. But I don't think the same case could be made if all humans were naturally inclined to try to exercise power over others. Part of the anarchist case against representative democracy is based on this (ie the elected representatives will always betray or sell-out since that's human nature) but I'm not convinced they've come up with an answer.
Of course it's a false problem since it is not human nature to seek to dominate others just for the sake of it.

Yeah but exercising power over others by bargaining is hardly dominating them. I mean most punters are quite happy with a lap dance and a blow job, it's not as if they tie them up and whip them all the time.

See this I think is a problem. You are expressing the misguided idea that if we want to uphold the ideal of a communist society, we need to prove it possible by demonstrating it in primitive people and somehow show that it is the natural state of human beings. This then leads to a lot politically-correct noble savage rubbish that departs from the evidence. If I say that hunter-gatherers tend to exhibit vicious inter-tribal warfare, and that this is to be expected from evolutionary theories, I am in no way saying that peaceful communist society is impossible, just that it will require a vigilance against and understanding of the darker side of human nature in order to be implemented. The view I hold that communism is the best and most desirable social organisation for the human race does not require validation from some demonstration that it is 'natural'. As such, I'm more interested in getting an accurate picture of how primitives actually live(d). From what I know of anthropology, I've come to the conclusion that the typical hunter-gatherer lifestyle seems pretty brutal and harsh, and not the egalitarian peaceful utopia some make it out to be. If it can be demonstrated that it I'm wrong, then cool, but that would not make me any more or any less of a communist.

Here's a few quotes I think are pertinent to this discussion:

On female dominance in primitives:

On warfare in primitives

(On the topic of native american tribes, it has been demonstrated that their inter-tribal homicide rate actually went down after the europeans arrived, rather than up, as many have assumed.)

And on egalitarianism in primitives:

The evidence I read was that inter-tribe native american violence decreased after the europeans arrived. But since the Europeans pretty much massacred the native americans, I would surmise that yes, probably lots more of them did end up getting killed after the europeans arrived. The quotes don't say whether the violence was between natives or between europeans and natives. The thing I read (which I can't be bothered to dig out, but I can if you want me to) I think suggested that they fought less among themselves since they realised it was better to band together against the greater enemy. But whatever the case, the point is that they weren't examplars of a peaceful egalitarian utopia at any point, and I doubt this was the case for many primitive tribes if, in fact, any at all were. I don't think there's any doubt that, whatever its faults, modern european society is a lot less violent than (most? all?) hunter-gatherer tribes.

Do you think that in a communist society there would be no 'lawkeeping' organisation? I see it as pretty inevitable that there would have to be some sort of (bottom-up) militia force protecting people against psychopaths and what not, but that this would not require a centralised state.
I think that a study and understanding of human nature is important, but I don't think that we should idealise primitives. Hunter-gatherer societies exhibit some of the good tendencies of human nature (which in a communist society would be encouraged and would hopefully typify its citizens), but they also demonstrate the less laudable tendencies. I think that we have to be realistic and face up to the fact that all humans have the potential to do some very bad things - it would be dangerous and irresponsible not to, and we have thousands of years of history demonstrating what terrible things we as a species have been capable of.