Oolite Bulletins

Indeed all religion is quite sad - the cause of more violence, bigotry, and war than perhaps any other subject.

You forgot Sexism.

I'd put Hierarchism at the top of the list..

Religion isn't nearly as sad and pathetic as human nature. Sure atrocities have been commited in the name of religion, but more so in the name of territory, resources, and just plain old pride.

So I wouldn't blame religion as much as the people practicing it.

As for Jedi... I don't know of a single one. Mainly because admitting it in public around here will get you laughed at.

Diziet Sma wrote:

I'd put Hierarchism at the top of the list..

This is what organized religions, sexism, racism, speciesism, etc, have in common.
The idea that is legit for someone to dominate some other.

OneoftheLost wrote:

Religion isn't nearly as sad and pathetic as human nature. Sure atrocities have been commited in the name of religion, but more so in the name of territory, resources, and just plain old pride.

Those are symptoms of hierarchy, not human nature.. all anthropological studies have shown that humans are naturally cooperative, not competitive.. Most things generally considered "human nature" are actually by-products of the sick, diseased culture that began some 10,000 - 12,000 years ago with the invention of monocrop agriculture and hierarchy, and has now spread around the world.

Diziet Sma wrote:

OneoftheLost wrote:

Religion isn't nearly as sad and pathetic as human nature. Sure atrocities have been commited in the name of religion, but more so in the name of territory, resources, and just plain old pride.

Those are symptoms of hierarchy, not human nature.. all anthropological studies have shown that humans are naturally cooperative, not competitive.. Most things generally considered "human nature" are actually by-products of the sick, diseased culture that began some 10,000 - 12,000 years ago with the invention of monocrop agriculture and hierarchy, and has now spread around the world.

Agreed - we are much more kosher with each other than chimpanzees. Farming in general, never mind mono-culture, is what really brought paradise to an end - as a history professor I had said "we never had it better than when we were hunting and gathering".

Yep.. funny how critics of the 'cooperative' POV always point to chimpanzees as their "proof".. when the fact is, humans are much more like Bonobos than chimps.

I included the term 'monocrop' because even some HG societies practised limited agriculture.. settling in one place and specialising in one or two crops was what did us in.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Yep.. funny how critics of the 'cooperative' POV always point to chimpanzees as their "proof".. when the fact is, humans are much more like Bonobos than chimps.

Well, chimps fight and kill each other, while bonobos tend to release their stress by sex and masturbation. So chimps are perhaps more like humans in this regard, although genetically bonobos are closer.

Wolfwood wrote:

...well, chimps fight and kill each other, while bonobos tend to release their stress by sex and masturbation.

I think I'm with the bonobos on this.

CommRLock78 wrote:

Agreed - we are much more kosher with each other than chimpanzees. Farming in general, never mind mono-culture, is what really brought paradise to an end - as a history professor I had said "we never had it better than when we were hunting and gathering".

The hunter-gatherer "paradise" shouldn't be overstated ... different tribes of hunter-gatherers have been happily murdering each other throughout human existence.

Probably in terms of general contentment, a hunter-gatherer existence will come out on top: it is, after all, what humans evolved to be. Every adult knows what to do and how to do it, what they'll be doing tomorrow, and next season, and next year. They know too where they stand in the tribal/extended family group hierarchy. And there's definitely still a hierarchy: it might be flatter, and more obviously based on things like knowledge and prowess rather than birth/office/who owns the magic hat, but it's still there.

Disembodied wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

Agreed - we are much more kosher with each other than chimpanzees. Farming in general, never mind mono-culture, is what really brought paradise to an end - as a history professor I had said "we never had it better than when we were hunting and gathering".

The hunter-gatherer "paradise" shouldn't be overstated ... different tribes of hunter-gatherers have been happily murdering each other throughout human existence.

Probably in terms of general contentment, a hunter-gatherer existence will come out on top: it is, after all, what humans evolved to be. Every adult knows what to do and how to do it, what they'll be doing tomorrow, and next season, and next year. They know too where they stand in the tribal/extended family group hierarchy. And there's definitely still a hierarchy: it might be flatter, and more obviously based on things like knowledge and prowess rather than birth/office/who owns the magic hat, but it's still there.

From what I've read/been taught, HG societies were exceptionally peaceable with each other (it makes sense, too, because there were certain hardships that came along with the lifestyle, which would have been mutually recognized), but, once they started planting and calling a little patch of ground their own, things changed for the worse.

Smivs wrote:

Wolfwood wrote:

...well, chimps fight and kill each other, while bonobos tend to release their stress by sex and masturbation.

I think I'm with the bonobos on this.

Hehehehe - those Bonobos know how to get it on

CommRLock78 wrote:

From what I've read/been taught, HG societies were exceptionally peaceable with each other (it makes sense, too, because there were certain hardships that came along with the lifestyle, which would have been mutually recognized), but, once they started planting and calling a little patch of ground their own, things changed for the worse.

Internally, hunter-gatherer societies can be peaceful: violence against other tribe/kin-group members is unlikely, if only because the groups themselves tend to be quite small (internally, small villages are quite peaceful, too, for the same reason). But like other large predators, human beings are territorial - settled or nomadic, we have "our" areas, ranges, hunting grounds and so on, which we will protect and from which we will (violently, if necessary) expel any intruders. Then there are the needs of younger members of the group - usually young adult males - which lead them to seek to expand these territories, move into new territories, or just engage in ritual violence and trophy-taking for the prestige, which can lead to potentially endless cycles of mutual hostility and revenge killings.

Most of the pre-Columbian Native (North) American peoples could be classed as hunter-gatherers, and inter-tribal warfare seems to have been endemic long before European settlers arrived. Inter-tribal warfare was also common among Australian Aborigines before Europeans arrived. Archaeological evidence for European hunter-gatherers, although sparse, points to similar patterns here, e.g. the mesolithic clutch of skulls - of men and women, but mostly children - arranged and displayed in the Ofnet cave in Bavaria, most bearing signs of multiple axe-blows. There's more of this sort of thing listed here:
http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba52/ba52feat.html

Granted, once humans began settling and farming, it greatly increased both the levels of organisation and the specialisation of weapons, as well as producing large pools of population: tribal warfare - raiding parties and small skirmishes - could become pitched battles. But that's due to a difference in capability, not psychology.

Disembodied wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

From what I've read/been taught, HG societies were exceptionally peaceable with each other (it makes sense, too, because there were certain hardships that came along with the lifestyle, which would have been mutually recognized), but, once they started planting and calling a little patch of ground their own, things changed for the worse.

Internally, hunter-gatherer societies can be peaceful: violence against other tribe/kin-group members is unlikely, if only because the groups themselves tend to be quite small (internally, small villages are quite peaceful, too, for the same reason). But like other large predators, human beings are territorial - settled or nomadic, we have "our" areas, ranges, hunting grounds and so on, which we will protect and from which we will (violently, if necessary) expel any intruders. Then there are the needs of younger members of the group - usually young adult males - which lead them to seek to expand these territories, move into new territories, or just engage in ritual violence and trophy-taking for the prestige, which can lead to potentially endless cycles of mutual hostility and revenge killings.

Most of the pre-Columbian Native (North) American peoples could be classed as hunter-gatherers, and inter-tribal warfare seems to have been endemic long before European settlers arrived. Inter-tribal warfare was also common among Australian Aborigines before Europeans arrived. Archaeological evidence for European hunter-gatherers, although sparse, points to similar patterns here, e.g. the mesolithic clutch of skulls - of men and women, but mostly children - arranged and displayed in the Ofnet cave in Bavaria, most bearing signs of multiple axe-blows. There's more of this sort of thing listed here:
http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba52/ba52feat.html

Granted, once humans began settling and farming, it greatly increased both the levels of organisation and the specialisation of weapons, as well as producing large pools of population: tribal warfare - raiding parties and small skirmishes - could become pitched battles. But that's due to a difference in capability, not psychology.

I suppose reality does lie somewhere in between. The difficulty is that we only get snapshots from archeology (although placing many "snapshots" does begin to produce a clear "big picture"). Any peaceful interaction isn't going to leave archaeological evidence. It makes me wish I could travel back in time - be an inconspicuous "fly on the wall" (though human origins is just the first thing that would be fascinating to check out, if I had that ability ).

Wolfwood wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

Yep.. funny how critics of the 'cooperative' POV always point to chimpanzees as their "proof".. when the fact is, humans are much more like Bonobos than chimps.

Well, chimps fight and kill each other, while bonobos tend to release their stress by sex and masturbation. So chimps are perhaps more like humans in this regard, although genetically bonobos are closer.

Chimps fight and kill each other in troops that have been impacted by humans in terms of territory erosion - in troops in deep forest areas similar fights almost never result in purposeful death - with one of the party moving off and living elsewhere - before death or mortal wound occurs.

CommRLock78 wrote:

The difficulty is that we only get snapshots from archeology (although placing many "snapshots" does begin to produce a clear "big picture"). It makes me wish I could travel back in time - be an inconspicuous "fly on the wall" (though human origins is just the first thing that would be fascinating to check out, if I had that ability ).

Oh, definitely! I studied archaeology for a couple of years at university, but I gave it up for history because I couldn't stand the frustration of not knowing, of not hearing any voices. For example, I was a wheelbarrow-pusher on a Time Team dig a few years ago, in an early Bronze Age burial ground in Fife: there were several kist burials, all of children, and some small scooped holes containing the cremated remains of very young infants. In the centre was a large boulder, which turned out to be capping a pit. In the pit was a very large kist, about 5' long, which contained a crouched skeleton of an adult male. The bones showed cut-marks, indicating that the body had been at least partially de-fleshed after death.

And that's all we know, or will ever know. There are no names. There are no traces of the obviously complex beliefs of these people. We don't know if the children died before, or after, the big man in the middle. Was he there to protect the children? Were the children there to accompany him? Were they related to him? (The condition of the bones, and the acidity of the soil, meant that DNA recovery was impossible.) Was he being revered, or punished? Was the boulder to mark his grave, or protect it, or to protect the community from him? Where were the other adults? Was the de-fleshing part of a cannibal ritual, or was it to hasten the skeletonisation of the exposed body before the bones were interred? What was the perceived qualitative difference between a dead child and a dead adult (assuming there was one)?

It can be a lot of fun, making up explanations to fit the few facts - just like it's fun making up larger planetary descriptions that expand on the one-line descriptions in Oolite. But it's just guesswork. At least once we get into historical times we can read the words that people wrote down - or at least the words that were written down about them at the time.