Difference between revisions of "User talk:NonZeroSum"

Revision as of 23:05, 28 January 2025

Dale is in agreement with Ted that high-level technological societies cannot exist without a fairly large amount of stratified, suffering inducing hierarchies. However, Dale simply values the trade off, i.e. the ability to be connected internationally, and so use one’s intellect to stay vigilant over one’s rights in one country in comparison to other countries, etc. A primitive world is unappealing in so much as it’s the luck of the draw whether you could be born into a fairly egalitarian tribe or a tyrannical one, plus escaping a tyrannical one being born female would have been harder than today in many countries.

Here’s a long quote from the recently released book The Invention of Good and Evil by Hanno Sauer:

The shift from prehistoric small groups to pre-modern large-scale civilisations has almost always been a shift from communities with an egalitarian structure to social inequality and despotic rule. The fact that we still live with extreme social inequalities in wealth, power and status seems to have been the inevitable price to pay for social evolution towards complex large societies. But was it truly inevitable? There are growing doubts about the oversimplified narrative that humans throughout the Pleistocene lived in scattered small groups organised in an egalitarian way.

The anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow have warned against falling for the allure of these kinds of simplifications, and recent research shows that even back then, tens of thousands of years ago, there was a plethora of social structures that were more entrenched, larger and politically more unequal than previously assumed. The popular narrative of the shift from egalitarian tribal societies to large inegalitarian societies prepares us to accept that this shift – and the forms of social inequality and political domination that came with it – was inevitable and had no alternative. What appears to be a sober description of the historical course of events is actually an ideologically charged narrative designed to suffocate our political imagination.

In fact, according to Graeber and Wengrow, we humans have always lived in all kinds of conditions and, regardless of climate and group size, in all kinds of socio-political arrangements. We have always been conscious political actors who would not allow ourselves to be put in an ‘evolutionary straitjacket’; some micro-societies were familiar with strict hierarchies and despotic exploitation; and the inhabitants of some impressively large indigenous communities of North America with tens of thousands of members made fun of the lack of self-respect shown by the French and English who had just arrived in the New World, cowering in front of their social superiors and kissing their boots. Some societies were familiar with leaders or chiefs, but they were understood to have a serving role; other groups moved effortlessly – depending on the season – between radically divergent political structures, and were free masters of their own destinies during the summer months of abundance, but in the barren winter months would at any given time temporarily subject themselves to the necessary evil of a political sovereign.

The existence of different varieties of socialisation over the course of social evolution is not surprising. The real question is why we are stuck today: why do material inequality and political hierarchy seem to have no alternative, and feel non-negotiable to us? Graeber and Wengrow rightly point out that thinking about political alternatives is always worthwhile; what would we miss out on if we agreed with Francis Fukuyama that the liberal-democratic-capitalist compromise was the end of history, and the only remaining serious candidate in the competition of political systems?

Yet even if we manage to throw a spanner in the works when it comes to simple stories of progression from small and equal to big and unequal, and show that human history has always been a history of intense political plasticity and social variability, in which we largely shaped our coexistence ourselves, could modern large societies really exist without inequality and domination? Perhaps this is precisely the reason why it seems as though we are stuck now: we really are stuck, and beyond returning to radically simpler forms of living – with their own particular blend of romance and harshness – it is very unlikely that developed societies can be organised without considerable socio-political stratification.

Personally, I agree with Dale that the trade-offs are better than an uneven primitive world. However, I have some of Ted’s optimism that huge political change can still happen. Quoting Ted: “Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost.” I just have hope for reform and revolution towards a far-left anti-authoritarian world.

Everything we're capable of doing and nurturing is contained within the limits of our nature, I just think our nature is that we're capable of being very flexible in how we’re capable of nurturing kids to think critically and be able to pick who they want to be from a wide array of options.

Here’s a quote from a media critique that details what is missed out on or limited in scope when viewing all social problems through an evolutionary lens:

One way that TIME reduces the complexity of the human experience is through the rewording of the human condition in ways that simplify who we are. In an article on the prevalence of mental depression in the late 20th century, Wright (20th Century Blues) describes how mental health is a product of the genetic traits we inherit as individuals and the collective behaviors we learn as members of a social community that seeks to sustain itself. ...

Here, understanding what it means to be human is being reframed from a state-orientation to a traits-orientation. In terms of states, the human is seen as dynamic, responding to the relatively temporary, highly contextualized conditions of a situation. The first paragraph provides a long list of these types of conditions (“burdened by,” “stifled by,” “mired for hours in,” and “deprived by“). But understanding the human in terms of states (state-orientation) beings to be reframed to traits (trait-orientation) in the transition between the two paragraphs. The phrases “modern life is not what we’re designed for” (¶2) and “the human mind evolved in an environment lacking” (¶3) simplify what the mind is about. Understanding the human is thereafter framed in terms of traits. Traits are context-free. All the experiences that stimulate the mind are stripped away. This second paragraph foregrounds mental traits (“Mental traits conducive to genetic proliferation are the traits that survived”) to explain why we experience stress, anxiety, and the like. That is, the mental traits we possess are not designed to handle the modern social complexities of life. In minimizing the ways in which humans are constructed by the external world, this view undermines the dynamic nature that defines the relationship between humans and their environment.

I think we need both lenses of analysis, but when analysing social dynamics, I think we can often get more value from a folk-psychological way of studying the current maladies we face as a species. Everyone has different views as to what percentage of study in the hard sciences vs. soft sciences is the most productive balance for gaining new insights into human behaviour short term and long term. I lean heavily towards if we want to come to a fruitful understanding of what matters to us, our perspectives as agents in the world, we need to look to social science and the very complicated holistic social framework we build up through perceiving what others are thinking and modifying our actions accordingly.

I think there is a strong imperative to build more communitarian societies less people can fall through the cracks of. That doesn't mean trying to make it impossible that people would feel socially alienated but offer lots of secure positive liberties to make up for felt alienation when it does occur.

If Ted's guidance counsellor in school had been less concerned about moving kids up a year and more concerned with asking whether Ted had a rich social life, everything may have gone differently for him. Or at the very least, it would be worth providing benefits for the poverty stricken to seek counselling, since there was a point where Ted sought out counselling, but ended up giving up on the idea because it was too expensive. “He was told that he would have to find a way to travel a considerable distance to the office, and that he would have to find some way to pay for his sessions. Both of these were more than he could manage.”

Finally, I think many people could simply benefit from Carl Jung’s recommendations to a depressed friend:

“If I had to live in a foreign country, I would seek out one or two people who seemed amiable and would make myself useful to them, so that libido came to me from outside, even though in a somewhat primitive form, say of a dog wagging its tail. I would raise animals and plants and find joy in their thriving. I would surround myself with beauty - no matter how primitive and artless - objects, colours, sounds. I would eat and drink well. When the darkness grows denser, I would penetrate to its very core and ground, and would not rest until amid the pain a light appeared to me, for in excessu affectus [in an excess of affect or passion] Nature reverses herself.”