British Liberalism - The Grand Tour

[vinteuil]

It could be that to settle, is the same as being territorial and acquisitive. Hardwired in the human species, rather than evolutionary?

... I'm sure Richd: Tarleton will be able to advise us as to whether the territorial and acquisitive characteristics of birds are hardwired

[french frank]

It could be that to settle, is the same as being territorial and acquisitive. Hardwired in the human species, rather than evolutionary?

I was coming back earlier to say that that is what I might have demonstrated , but jean had posted in the meantime so I responded to her instead

But both would be suppositions anyway: all sorts of developments make is possible to settle and may be the larger contributions than hardwiring.

[Beef Oven!]

I'll remember to put "they" in inverted commas in future for literal mindeds such as yourself, then. In the meantime, you might just consider the fact that all the pessimism that constantly spews forth from sources from the church to the Daily Wail is right wing and supports carrying on as we are. No coincidence then that they want us to blame one another for all the problems in the world and be at each other's throats, because it diverts attention from those really responsible, who dish out the blame. Like me, you too were probably raised on photo shots of "savages" illustrated in the National Geographical Magazine - myths of far distant lands, thankfully, where people ate one another. Having disabused myself of this aspect of post-colonial conditioning by my mid twenties, I remember a TV series in which a number of western anthropologists went to either Borneo or the Amazon rainforest to live for a year among so-called primitive people with no previous contact whatsoever with so-called Western Civilisation who lived at the hunter-gatherer stage outlined as the "primitive communist" stage of human social organisation when all means of sustenance were shared out. What was immediately obvious was that these tribespeople were in many ways more civilised than the people who bay at speeches in the Commons or Western children spoilt on the obsolescent ephemera of today's market economy. It seems generally to have been the case that when scarcity of resources forced tribes to defend bits of territory, rather than conducting mutually eliminating wars they tended to put the best fighter from one side up against his equivalent in order to determine outcomes of disputes, which may seem cruel but was at least preferable to developing the means of mutually assured destruction Corbyn and likeminded sensible people would like us to rid ourselves of so the money we would have at our disposal can be spent on vital necessities.

It is only ideological disinformation, lazy thinking and attitudes of cow-towing to privilege that leads to the idea that our present dysfunctional approaches to human relationships and the planet were always thus - and we use religions to cloak the paucity of our dishonesty in these matters. The sooner we all wake up and throw off these mental shackles the better for everyone; and a good starting point is to question the idea that our very nature bogs us down in the lower stages of evolution. For one thing, that very evolution has produced our expanded brains and with them the capacity to think up practical ways out of problems. Language and the ability to symbolise have their uses! One way is to recognise that every group, with its protocols and agreements regarding acceptable behaviour, defines itself in relation to those external to it, who then become a sort of sounding board for our dissatisfactions. One consequence is in the modern term groupthink. But a moment's pondering on this makes it clear that dependence on ones insider status is itself dependent on the existence of those excluded for sustaining its coherence - otherwise we'd presumably have to fall back on all mistrusting one another inside the group. After all, didn't Adam Smith, godfather of modern economics and the contract theory of society, state that only trading obligations (or some such idea) can keep us along the narrow proscribed path for civilised living? And isn't all this enshrined in the idea of commercial secrecy that stops ideas benefitting society as a whole unless they are first sequestered to profitable use and the monetarised gains gambled away on pain of scarcity? Meanwhile millions are spent on maintaining the armed wing of the state with its secret subsections to prevent the consequences from getting out of hand!

If the Donald Trumps of this world who make up a good proportion of the intelligence quota that natural selection has devised can justify the ruling class and separate out the leaders from the led, then really it is high time this model of the best of all possible worlds was rendered obsolete and people got together to decide in what ways the present technologies that could make for more time for people to evolve themselves out of dependence on experts paid not to ask too many awkward questions and media pundits to stop discussions because they might come up with real practicable solutions before the attention span has to be attended to and the latest celebrity wheeled on for interview. We might make public meetings and discussions the norm rather than the last resort when the local hospital or library is threatened.

Just imagine that - and stop being so pessimistic about human capabilities, which are forever being wasted through unemployment, and the consequences in terms of mental distress, addiction and crime, all of which would be unnecessary in an inclusive society that recognised that everybody has something to contribute of themselves. For if we mistrust our human nature, how can we trust our mistrust - unless we somehow believe the mistrusting and mistrusted parts of ourselves to be separate, for which no physiological or mental functions have been discovered as far as I know? And before you retort that we are all in need of salvation, how can you even know that for certain, given the presumed defectiveness of the organ charged with believing this?

It's time for a big re-think all around, then positive actions to follow.

What's this business about 'mistrusting' our human nature?

[Richard Tarleton]

... ah, but we didn't have foie gras and château d' yquem then. Nor Bach, nor the late quartets of Beethoven.

So, on the whole, I think there's been some progress.

Indeed - Yuval Noah Harari explores this in his section on "The Luxury Trap" It wasn't of course, progress for those who actually had (have) to do the producing, who have to contend with higher child mortality, poorer (monotonous) diet, the consequences of no sanitation (as opposed to just moving on, which is what hunter-gatherers do), infectious diseases (caught in the first place from domesticated animals), worn-down teeth through grinding grain, etc. etc. - nowadays of course we outsource this misery to other parts of the world, but it has been thus ever since the agricultural revolution.

I really can't recommend this book too highly, nor readily summarise his ideas in message-board sized bites. It was a Radio 4 book of the week when it was published in 2011.

Originally Posted by jean
If that's the only way of avoiding conflict, then Trump and Farage and their like have got it right...

Looking at the spread of humanity across the globe from 1 million years BC (Diamond, Guns Germs and Steel, Chapter 1), it's hard to avoid the notion that this sort of conflict is inherent to the human condition. I was fortunate to have a great history teacher at A level, 50 years ago. He startled us by saying that anthropology had much more to teach us about mankind than the history we were having to learn to pass our exams, .....

[Richard Tarleton]

... I'm sure Richd: Tarleton will be able to advise us as to whether the territorial and acquisitive characteristics of birds are hardwired

...and animals...yes of course, many species are territorial, their behaviour genetic, Darwin etc....we're the only species able to study it, rationalise it etc....

Posted by Beef Oven!
It could be that to settle, is the same as being territorial and acquisitive. Hardwired in the human species, rather than evolutionary?

Again, Harari discusses this. The agricultural revolution (the driver behind settling) took place in a million tiny steps, and by the time society had transformed people had forgotten how they ever lived any differently. Once you take the decision to hoe the ground rather than scattering seed on the surface, you're committing to staying put, working longer hours....Ultimately grass (grain) becomes your main diet instead of part of the mixed diet you had evolved to eat, meat and honey become luxuries for the mass....

[french frank]

Once you take the decision to hoe the ground rather than scattering seed on the surface, you're committing to staying put, working longer hours....

That's what I was thinking of when I used the word 'evolutionary' - I didn't mean it in a genetic sense. But a 'decision' (if there was ever any such definite point) to change has to be based on some notion of 'improvement' to life. But such improvements as you outline don't seem to originate in the hardwiring of greed/envy/territorialism: rather such characteristics are the consequences of change.

[Serial_Apologist]

...and animals...yes of course, many species are territorial, their behaviour genetic, Darwin etc....we're the only species able to study it, rationalise it etc....

...thus allowing us to learn from our mistakes; hence "the lessons of history, etc. But to set this against some hardwired tendency for collective self-destruction is dualistic and flatly in self-contradiction, given that both sides - the capacity for reflection and the organism's need for self-defence - flow from the same source that chooses to see its nature as defective but does not thus question that questioning, which for consistency would logically be the follow through position. Thus ultimately one has no alternative but to trust in a deeper source of wisdom than the codes through which we seek to understand ourselves; and I think this answers Beef Oven's question. If (as I believe) we are a part of, as opposed to apart from, our environment and its messed up balances, we start from respecting the interconnections that science has caught up in evidence-based understanding, which is the big back-up which cannot be trumped (sic) by holding fervently to belief systems, and acting in ways that don't make the situation worse than it already is but at best start to redress some of the imbalances. What I remember of the principles of forestry management, which I know you know much more about than I, might provide a useful model.

[Serial_Apologist]

That's what I was thinking of when I used the word 'evolutionary' - I didn't mean it in a genetic sense. But a 'decision' (if there was ever any such definite point) to change has to be based on some notion of 'improvement' to life. But such improvements as you outline don't seem to originate in the hardwiring of greed/envy/territorialism: rather such characteristics are the consequences of change.

Yes - that would be my position. The development of language as our main (superseding "body language") means of communication was also an important factor insfar as language in innately predisposed to posit in terms of opposites: up/down, subject/object, good/bad etc, and is less good at dealing with the greys that make up the biggest part.

[Beef Oven!]

That's what I was thinking of when I used the word 'evolutionary' - I didn't mean it in a genetic sense. But a 'decision' (if there was ever any such definite point) to change has to be based on some notion of 'improvement' to life. But such improvements as you outline don't seem to originate in the hardwiring of greed/envy/territorialism: rather such characteristics are the consequences of change.

But we weren't talking about envy and greed. Acquisitiveness does not have to lead to greed and envy.

[Serial_Apologist]

But we weren't talking about envy and greed. Acquisitiveness does not have to lead to greed and envy.

The word has acquired that connotation, though.

[Beef Oven!]

The word has acquired that connotation, though.

Yes, that's true, it has evolved

[vinteuil]

The key stage in human development which ultimately gave rise to most of our miseries was not capitalism, or colonialism, or anything like that, and took place up to 10,000 years ago. It was the agricultural revolution, "History's biggest fraud" as Yuval Noah Harari puts it in his brilliant book "Sapiens". For 2.5 million years humans fed themselves by gathering plants and hunting animals that lived and bred without their intervention. .

... but is it seriously your - or YN Harari's - conclusion that things wd have been 'better' for humanity had we never discovered agriculture - settlements - civilization - Bach cantatas?

[Richard Tarleton]

... but is it seriously your - or YN Harari's - conclusion that things wd have been 'better' for humanity had we never discovered agriculture - settlements - civilization - Bach cantatas?

No...again, I'm reluctant to summarise a long and complex book, but he does point out some of the ironies and paradoxes surrounding how we've got to where we are now (later chapters look at science, culture, economics.....). The agricultural and later industrial revolutions did indeed give rise to the surpluses which enabled culture and organised religion to happen, but at great cost to many of our species (see above). From a Darwinian perspective, one could argue that a few species of grain and tuber, and of animal evolved in domesticated forms, have harnessed us to their ends, becoming among the most successful species on the planet. Mind you with increased resistance to antibiotics things could be about to change...

[Demetrius]

No...again, I'm reluctant to summarise a long and complex book, but he does point out some of the ironies and paradoxes surrounding how we've got to where we are now (later chapters look at science, culture, economics.....). The agricultural and later industrial revolutions did indeed give rise to the surpluses which enabled culture and organised religion to happen, but at great cost to many of our species (see above). From a Darwinian perspective, one could argue that a few species of grain and tuber, and of animal evolved in domesticated forms, have harnessed us to their ends, becoming among the most successful species on the planet. Mind you with increased resistance to antibiotics things could be about to change...

Thing is, one could argue a lot of things ... Pastafarians argue that the decline of Pirate culture has led to global warming.

Most Studies/Constructs that look back into the good old days (in this case, pre-agriculture) point out the negative sides of developments since then and try to play down things that could be considered improvements, while at the same time playing down the negative sides of the good old days.

Quite possibly I misunderstood the points made, but as I understood it, the assumption is that pre-agricultural hunters/gatherers lived, as a general population, more peaceful, healthy, happy lives with less strive, less conflict, and a lower child mortality rate, and lives not harmed by infectious diseases.

I would love to know a scientific basis for that which extents beyond make-believe.

There is, as far as I remember (my main area of expertise as a Historian is the early modern period), considerable evidence for diseases ravaging stone age populances at several times.

Historic evidence as to the warmaking of stone age societies as well as nomadic societies is in existence.

Healthy opens quite another can of worms, but we certainly tend to stay alive far longer than we would in hunting societies. (World average, not only our few rich countries)

Not so sure about child mortality rates, haven't come across data for that.




Back to Liberalism and Socialism:

The rethoric of "ruling classes" and "proletariat" and the focus of seeing society and history in terms of class struggle precludes any concept of liberalism that is based on individualism. "Diktatur des Proletariats", even in its broader and less authoritarian interpretation, means a class which is likely the majority of the populance ruling over the other classes. This is as far removed from individualism and individual freedoms as you can get.

While you can, in my view, combine Liberalism and the believe in individual freedoms with concepts of social security, wellfare and to some extend even the German "Sozialstaat", you can't bring individual liberties and concepts of Socialism that endorse the sentiments above together. The Socialism as envisioned by Marx and Engels in its nature sacrifices individual freedoms to the greater good.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Socialism as envisioned by Marx and Engels in its nature sacrifices individual freedoms to the greater good.

I'm not so sure about that. Remember that in Lenin's formulation the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was seen as a temporary necessity while the institutions of the bourgeois state were being dismantled and a watchful eye needed to be kept for counterrevolutionary subterfuge undermining the new order. But in ascribing similar requirements to the situations of western democracies as those pertaining in Russia, both he and Trotsky (and their latter-day followers such as me, once) underestimated (indeed undervalued) the hold in the West of long-established parliamentary institutions, and the need to reform these by bottom-up accountability, in other words employees assuming freedom to appoint/elect those to be running their institutions, as opposed to smashing what would have been seen, not as blockages, but as agencies of advance by most people. Such agencies as mediators of justice for all regardless of income or property, and as part of the state machinery, did not exist in Russia prior to 1917, (there were charities of course), where the state was experienced, full-on, as the sharp end of the ruling class's means of oppression.

As with any other system individual freedom is relative to the contributions capable of being made by any member of society, and anti-social behaviour would be no more or less anti-social under socialism than it is now. One might be so bold as to assume that having acclimatised themselves to being more involved, and actually having their views taken into account, people would be less motivated to act anti-socially!