Is Man the "Unnatural Animal?"

[wdmn]

Beautiful Soul Syndrome: how environmentalism gets stuck in Romanticism


"...the attitude of environmentalism, that there is a world that is separate from me; that nature exists apart from human society, is not only wrong, but dangerously part of the problem..."

In this lecture, Timothy Morton discusses the dualisms embedded in the concept of nature and the attitudes that come with it (the ways of seeing built into our ideas and presuppositions; the inherited aspect of thought which doesn't emerge from within the subject). Ironically, he argues, the "naturalisms" and "environmentalisms," which claim to overcome these idealistic dualisms,  conceal from themselves the very opposite attitude. Their nature speak repeats the attitude of Cartesian dualism between subject (mind) and object (external nature), that we have touched on in this thread.

This dualism sees consciousness as something fundamentally distinct from the rest of the universe, or material world, and tends to do so by privileging human consciousness. As we have seen in this thread, this privileging can be negative as well as positive. We can distinguish ourselves from other species (or races) by appeal to our consciousness, either by elevating ourselves, or by condemning ourselves, and we should recognize these as different sides of the same intellectual trap.

"thinking that you've exited consumerism might be the most quintessentially consumerist attitude of all. In large part this is because you see the world of consumerism as an evil world. You, having exited this world, are good. Over there is the evil object, which you shun or seek to eliminate. Over here is the good subject, who feels good precisely insofar as she or he is separated from the evil world. I am now describing Hegel's beautiful soul, who claims precisely to have exited the evil world."

"The problem is that the gaze that constitutes the world as a thing over there, is evil as such."

Part 1:


"The cold virus is a... twenty sided crystal. If you think the rhinovirus is alive, then you should probably admit that a computer virus is alive for all intents and purposes."

"A beaver's DNA doesn't stop at the end of its whiskers, but at the ends of its dam. A spider's DNA is expressed in its web"

"Dark ecology realizes that we are hopelessly entangled in the mesh of interconnectedness without any possibility of extricating ourselves. Dark ecology finds itself fully responsible for all lifeforms, because like a detective in a noir movie, it has realized that it's complicit in the crime."

[nanning]

Interesting wdmn, thanks.

The supremacy -> insanity of civilisation fantasy.
There is no dualism in living nature. Living nature is one and whole (difficult to put into human language).

Us and them (civilisation&living nature), outside and inside (the skull). Mind over body.

I disagree about the computer virus being live because it is completely abstract and therefore not real.

[wdmn]

Nanning,

Glad you found it of interest. I was not intending to present Morton's positions as my own, but there is a lot of overlap, and he offers another way to think about some of these questions.

It's very difficult to reply to your post, because you use a lot of words as though they have an unambiguous meaning, and I would like to get you to think about them some more to help the rest of us understand, but it's difficult to know exactly where to start, and I also don't want this thread to become tedious.

I guess I would first call your attention back to the beginning of the lecture I shared in the previous post.

In Morton's lecture he discusses ideas as being coupled with attitudes. Attitudes, are, in a sense "as of yet unthought ideas," the unconscious accompaniments of our conscious thought. Once attitudes become conscious then they can be thought as ideas. This is not unlike the process of making our presuppositions conscious (which I started this thread talking about). In other words ideas that appear to be simple and straight forward rarely are.

I'd like to get a better understanding of 'living nature,' which you described in a previous post as "life + ecosystems, and nature as everything; the universe."

Life is, like most concepts, fuzzy at the edges. Morton alludes to this in the first lecture, including in the quote on viruses that you refer to. He doesn't say that a computer virus is alive (as you interpreted the quote), but rather that if you think that a virus is alive -- viruses don't reproduce themselves, but tell other cells to make copies of them -- you should probably accept that computer virus is alive (as they are replicated in a similar way). (As for your comment about computer viruses being abstract and therefore not real, we'd have to start another thread to sort out what you mean by that).

But rather than trying to address all of the proverbs in your post, let's focus on living nature, because I would like to understand it so that I can be a better human being.

Are all humans part of living nature? If not, which humans are not part, and were they born that way?
Are viruses part of living nature? (Is rabies part of living nature?)
Are spider webs part of living nature?
Are rocks part of living nature? What about rocks created by being blown up by dynamite?
Is human shit part of living nature? Does it depend on what the human ate?
Is wine part of living nature?
Is a factory farmed chicken part of living nature?
Is a racehorse part of living nature?
Is oil part of living nature?
Is carbon dioxide part of living nature?
Are asteroids part of living nature?

I guess I'll start with those and see where we get.

[kassy]

Oh a quiz.

Deleted ones yes.

Are rocks part of living nature?
No, some came from nature but it is dead nature.

Is wine part of living nature?
I tried mating wines but that never worked so nope.

Is oil part of living nature?
Nope, it´s dead nature.

Is carbon dioxide part of living nature?
Is hydrogen? No they are just building blocks.

Are asteroids part of living nature?
No.

Basically it is the biosphere including all things small and large. I included the viruses because they are all around. Also with our much better sampling techniques we are discovering things we did not even thing of. Recent discoveries included bacteriophages that include bacterial DNA and use it to manipulate the bacteria with it.

The computer virus can only live in our systems so that is not a good analogy. Also there is no proper virus...one that maintains itself. It is all tricks to get some data. 

[wdmn]

Thanks Kassy.

It was not a quiz (since I don't know the answers), but an attempt to make sure I understand Nanning. I hope he will also respond, because I'm not so sure he would agree with you.

But since you answered...

Are fossils part of living nature?
Is a skeleton part of living nature?
Is a simple, human hut part of living nature? What about a condominium?

In any case, since you allow that all humans are part of living nature, then there's no problem as you'll grasp that human consciousness is also part of living nature.

Finally, you say: "a computer virus is not a good analogy because it can only live in our system..." Strange choice of words (live). Also, there are host specific viruses that can't "survive" outside of the host organism (system?).

[kassy]

You can read exist for live in the last part. If we were to disappear of the planet the computer web would soon degrade and no computer virus would go anywhere. Rabies would be fine ofc.

The fossils are a record of the past (as was the oil).

Basically i resent the hair splitting.

You can look at the edges just like you can measure the UK costs with a better ruler but that does not mean anything in the real world.

There are real simple measures.

Amazon. Keep it or trash it?

Great Barrier Reef keep it or trash it?

Sibererian permafrost as a sink keep it or trash it?

There are many more examples but we should at least preserve most of them just so next generations can enjoy them too.

And then we are not even getting down to depressing stuff like soil erosion, aquifer depletion and all that.

General essay question: where is the line for what?

[nanning]

wdmn, I've read your post with interest. Thank you for your questions and stating my definitions.
I have to say I'm sorry for not reading the lecture. These days I spend less time on the asif because I have more other interests to attend to.

I filtered these points from your post:
- 'living nature'
- computer virus abstract but alive
- The list of questions at the bottom

Very interesting questions. Some are about the definition of life. I will give my view. I have no 100% definition. Viri are what I struggled with but now I think they are part of life. Why divide life into just lifeforms. If it's able to multiply and interact with ecosystems it is alive because it is part of an ecosystem.

I sincerely wish that I'm able to steer your view and understanding. Very good feeling for me to have someone interested. I may fail in explaining my view and understanding but I value your curiosity.

You are welcome wdmn. Do you think this thread is the appropriate one?


P.S. I do agree with kassy's first post.

[wdmn]

Kassy,

It's not hair splitting. I directed my post at nanning to get a better sense of what he's talking about. My follow up to you was similarly an attempt to understand your logic. Ideas matter.

Of course we agree on what should be kept. The point is that so far we've not been effective at getting the required changes, and many, many people still see environmentalism as something unattractive. So what's wrong? Is it partially due to the way we're thinking about our problems?

As for your virus claim, are you suggesting that nothing goes extinct in "living nature"? Of course not, your hypothetical rests on humans disappearing from the planet. But if we disappeared so would cows, and chickens, and racehorses. And beaver dams would stop existing if beavers disappeared, and Taenia pisiformis would disappear if canids disappeared. Realizing the severity of our situation is accepting that "living nature" is not something balanced and harmonious, but that many landscapes are literally built on the skeletons of extinguished life forms (coral reefs, for example), and our cars fuelled by organic remains. There is and never has been any guarantee of our survival. Even if we were to give up the sort of civilization nanning has problems with and all live like the tribes of the Amazon.


Nanning,

I'm wondering whether you consider human cities -- for example -- as a kind of ecosystem? And if they emerge out of living nature, (the work of humans), how can you exclude them? Is it simply, as kassy has suggested, that they would not exist without humans? Yet you accepted spider webs as part of living nature, even though they would not exist if spiders went extinct.

It's the appropriate thread as long as you keep in mind how what your saying relates back to the topic.

As for you not having a 100% definition, that is to be expected. Perhaps that points to the fact that "living nature" is not a thing (it doesn't actually have a referent), but rather a concept that we use, and we can use it in various ways, just as the definition of "person" has changed over time to include women (see "the persons case"). We could also call it an idea, and we can examine the attitudes we have that go with it, such as whether we still take it as something "holistic" if we are unable to identify with certainty what is part of it and what is not!

[nanning]

Are you comparing computer viri with cities with "they would not exist without humans?". I don't understand that comparison because cities are not abstract.

I don't consider cities (with humans living in it) as part of living nature ecosystems i.e. as a lifeform because a city-system doesn't give anything back, it only takes and is not based on DNA. Modern cities have waste i.e. something outside of living nature that can't be broken down by life.
Cities are an unnatural form of human organisation because nobody in the group knows everybody else and it is based on farming with technology which means exercizing supremacy over living nature which makes insane, is destructive and means outside of living nature. Humans should be nomadic in places where it's too cold in the winter. Just like the rest of living nature.

Termite hills are also a construction by lifeforms but is not part of living nature because it can't be eaten. Spider webs can be eaten. Many lifeforms manipulate non-living nature.

The definition of life I gave in my previous post is pretty much 100%.
"Why divide life into just lifeforms. If it's able to multiply and interact with ecosystems it is alive because it is part of an ecosystem."
Human language is inefficient, incomplete and ambiguous so the above definition is dependend on the interpretation of words like "multiply" and "interacting".


I don't understand wdmn, what's the difference between "a thing", "a concept" and "an idea" in this context?

Quote of your last sentence:
"examine the attitudes we have that go with it, such as whether we still take it as something "holistic" if we are unable to identify with certainty what is part of it and what is not!"

It becomes completely clear once you go back to paleolithic technology in a small nomadic group. It is about not having supremacy and not using technology to overrule living nature's constraints. i.e. humans cannot fell a tree or kill a mammoth. It is also about not killing other animals for anything other than food. Humans are not predators and the current insane fantasy culture of civilisation is the believe that we are 'technological' predators. That fantasy has been extremely destructive to all ecosystems and to human psyche.

I wish you'll find it interesting what I have written and that it fuels your curiosity. Please don't have the form of the answer in your head. Ideas from civilisation cultural bias generally do not reach outside of this bias and that is where the answers lie. First one has to strip the bias away .
If you want to understand the culture building you're in, you have to step outside and investigate from the outside. The 'alien' perspective (alien to civilisations cultures). 'Step outside' is really very difficult.

[wdmn]

Nanning,

Limits of living nature: can be eaten by some organism. So spider webs and human faeces yes, but buildings and termite mounds no.
And what about steel structures, don't they rust away? Or wooden structures?
Even plastics break down with enough time, so that seems like a bad criterion.
Cities are part of our DNA in the sense that we are able to build them because of the creatures that we are.

I don't need to know what you mean by multiply or interact, because those are commonly used terms, whereas "living nature" is something you understand but I don't.

However, spider webs don't multiply without spiders, just as termite mounds don't multiply without termites. So it seems that your definition is not 100%... since you've also been forced to add the criterion that the thing can be eaten if it is to be considered part of living nature.

Not all animals leave areas during winter. Some animals hibernate. Others stay active throughout the winter, even in the coldest locations (penguins, caribou, arctic foxes, snowshoe hare, wolverine...).

So cities are unnatural because no one knows everyone else. And yet this "unnatural" phenomenon has been multiplied repeatedly throughout human history, and is interacted with not only by humans but by a bunch of other animals too (raccoons, squirrels, hawks, pigeons, rats, butterflies, plants, etc etc.); and it has been built by something which is part of living nature. So living nature "gives birth" to unnatural things?

I used "thing" to mean a materially existing, distinguishable object (so I pointed out that it has no "referent"). I used concept and idea interchangeably in the context.

It seems strange that you should privilege one baseline in the history of a species. Doesn't living nature change? (But of course it does, since we have changed and we are part of living nature).

If the technology humans use to "overrule living nature's constraints" were made by members of living nature, then it seems that living nature itself has provided the means to "overrule its constraints." And so maybe those aren't really "living nature's" constraints, but your own? Maybe "living nature" is itself "unnatural"? Maybe it includes in it the vary things that you want to separate off as evil?

As far as my ability to strip away my bias, I wish you would help me with it. But since language is insufficient, can you recommend some other ways? Should I move out of a city and live in a forest? (I've already done that). Should I do a bunch of hallucinogens? (I've already done that). Should I spend time with indigenous peoples? (I've already done that). Should I smoke a shit ton of weed? (I've already done that). Should I plant a garden? (I've already done that). Should I practice meditation? (I've already done that)... Am I lost cause?

[nanning]

Thanks for replying. Alas, I have not been succesful in transferring meaning. I observe wild divergence. I need some time to respond to the above. In the meantime here is an interesting article and appropriate here.
FYI. From a different context than this thread, but the underlying mechanism is the same.

Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don't fit their worldview

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-humans-hardwired-dismiss-facts-dont.html

"A human being's very sense of self is intimately tied up with his or her identity group's status and beliefs. Unsurprisingly, then, people respond automatically and defensively to information that threatens their ideological worldview. We respond with rationalization and selective assessment of evidence—that is, we engage in "confirmation bias," giving credit to expert testimony we like and find reasons to reject the rest."


"Unwelcome information can also threaten in other ways. "System justification" theorists like psychologist John Jost have shown how situations that represent a threat to established systems trigger inflexible thinking and a desire for closure."


Edit: civilisation humans are not part of living nature and you are not a 'lost cause'.

[Aporia_filia]

I feel closer to wdmn. Nanning sounds more like classic math, where definitions and results are clearly defined. But today we know limits are not that clear, the main advances are through statistics and reducing uncertainties like in AI. We cannot account for every possible flip of butterflies' wings.
Took me a while to recover the article I'm linking. I find it very wise, but as usual not a perfect Truth.
We feel self fullness when our genes and our mind are happy, both of them. Our genes are used to live within small groups of people, used to being active, used to be surrounded by natural stimulus... Then there are constraints like tending for the less energy demanding solutions (like using stereotypes, or donkeys, or confirmation bias).
Something as complex as a human can radically change in his/her behavior depending on the size of the group. We tend to create a Civilization as soon as the conditions are favorable for a population boom (can anybody find an example where this hasn't happened?). It is what happens when rolling a chaotic equation.
Enjoy the article, a lot of 'Paradise' world.

"In order to respond to questions about hunter-gatherer life in general, which were raised by my last post. As regular readers of this blog know, I have in previous posts commented on hunter-gatherers' playfulness; their playful religious practices; their playful approach toward productive work; their non-directive childrearing methods; and their children's playful ways of educating themselves.

In all of those posts, I emphasized the egalitarian, non-hierarchical nature of hunter-gatherer society. In today's post, I present three theories as to how hunter-gatherers maintained the egalitarian ethos for which they are justly famous. I think all three of the theories are correct. They are complementary theories, not competing ones; and they are all theories about culture, not about genes."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways

[wili]

I find these discussions a bit tiresome, circular, self-serving, and more sophistry than philosophy.

Western (and now world) industrial society pretty much defined itself by being not just non-natural, but avidly anti-natural. And nature in turn was pretty much defined as everything that wasn't a direct part or product of industrial society.

For members of said society to suddenly turn around and say...bbbbut...every thing is natural, so industrial society is natural, so all is well and good in the world. It's just semantic whiplash.

Kinda like someone who has been an avid and active racist for decades who reads an article about the non-existence of race in genetics, and then declares, 'See, I can't be a racist, 'cause there IS no such thing as race,' as he then goes back to his same old racist ways...

But very intelligent people do tend to find very clever ways to rationalized their ingrained thoughts and behaviors, and I don't expect that I will alter that trajectory here, so probably won't engage on this topic again for a while.

[nanning]

Good post in general wili, but.. tiresome? Then why do you read it. And why comment?

I am trying to convey my research results (theories and understanding) from 10hrs/day 4 years of hermitage for some time now and wdmn shows interest in part of it, and I am thankful for that. Sorry if you are not entertained. You would expect ME to find it tiresome after all this time in not succeeding, and again and again observing the same confirmation biases, wild divergences and other effects from civilisation bubbles and its insane culture (wetiko).
I'm the expert in this Aporia_filia, so 'feeling closer' to whomever means you aren't getting 'it'. I have the alien perspective, you're welcome to ask questions. I am a scientist.


link to my first post:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2688.msg199280.html#msg199280

[wdmn]

@Aporia_filia

Thank you for the interesting link. Just to make myself clear, nowhere did I suggest that nothing could be learned from hunter gather societies. Unfortunately nanning's solution -- a "natural" world where we don't live in communities unless we know everyone else in that community -- means the death of ~7.5 billion people.

@ nanning
"Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don't fit their worldview" is a biological way of stating what I've been stating in various ways through this thread, and which you somehow are unable to see might also apply to you. I.e. there are unconscious attitudes that accompany our ideas, and unconscious presuppositions that our conscious ideas rest on. I have been asking people to consider their own, including you and make them fully conscious by answering questions and thinking about the logical problems that arise...

Are you also hardwired in this way nanning?

As for me, please tell me which facts you think that I am dismissing? So far our conversation has been conceptual. I've used a few empirical facts (about how virus' replicate, etc) but which facts have you presented that you feel I have dismissed due to a hardwired bias?


@wili
Interesting that you say that, as I've linked to works from two well known and influential philosophers, while referring to the work of one of the most important philosophers in the western tradition. I have also drawn on arguments from a book of philosophy on the subject, and these are topics that you will find in any philosophy of ecology text.

You seem to have completely misunderstood the ideas I've presented (both my own and those of others). No one is saying that "all is well and good in the world." Where did I say that? In fact, all it does is repeat your own attitude back to you: you've conflated "natural" as the non-human with "natural" as a moral concept. You're then assuming that the move of renaturalizing humans also means assigning a moral status (that of "good") to humans and our practices. No where have I done that, nor have the philosophers who I have referred to. Those are your own attitudes showing through. You're not reading carefully enough.

From my first post in this thread I've pointed out that there are different uses/meanings of 'natural,' including the standard one that means everything not created/made by humans and external to us. That is obvious. To see how I problematized this concept refer to pretty much any of my posts in this thread. Or to put it in a different way, as the post on Morton's lecture above discusses, ideas come bundled with attitudes, which are like unconscious ideas that we haven't thought clearly yet. So what are some of the attitudes that come with seeing nature in the standard usage? Are the problematic? Do they contradict what we've learned from the sciences since Darwin? If so what does that mean for the way we've been thinking about our problems? What are the consequences for environmentalism?

If you don't find those questions interesting then avoid the thread.

[nanning]

Great post wdmn.

"Are you also hardwired in this way nanning?"

I was. I've changed my wiring. Neuroplasticity.
I've hunted down the errors and inconsistencies of my brain and of the programmed culture's effects in my brain.
I've peeled away the bias layers of civilisation culture and have found the fundamental erroneous unnatural choices of its traditions. The 'outside'.

I don't have many hard facts wdmn. I bet other philosophers didn't have hard facts as well. Many things I have written have subsequently been ignored. Heedless.
What's different from other philosophers throughout (pre)history is that I have calibration! i.e. I don't reason from within the civilisation cultural bubble. I have found reality.
That took A LOT of effort. Please don't underestimate the amount of effort. It is impossible for others to just 'see' what I mean because they can't see through the civilisation bubble. It really is like safety-glass: You don't see it and can't step outside it.
The views of civilisation culture have hardwired humans' brains since early childhood. All that is seen as normal is hard wired.
This can be changed via neuroplasticity but needs a lot of courage, effort, intelligence and curiosity.
Note: I'm not an academic scientist and am not good with that specific language. It is easy to dismiss my texts because they don't 'sound' proper academically scientific.

Example:

Fact: humans are not monogamous by nature so should not bond for a long time.
Consequences:
- Fathers are unnatural.
- Family and houses are unnatural.
- Men don't have a natural purpose in this culture.
- Women, mothers and children (who are young vulnerable humans) have to put up with a men who's the boss over them.
- Inheritance is unnatural.
- Empire is unnatural.
- Private material accumulation is unnatural.
- Every family behaves like a separate secretive tribe.
The consequences go much further than the above.

These are just the effects of 1 wrong turn very long ago.


We have been discussing a definition of life which is not my research.

You write to wili: "You're not reading carefully enough". That's true for many people. My texts are very condensed with much information. Single words can have a lot of meaning. When you have read my sentences, can you say to yourself "yes, I have understood all these words"?

Dear wdmn, I have problems with too many subjects simultaneously. In real and natural human communication i.e. talking to each other face to face, only one subject is under discussion at a time.

May I suggest we continue with just 1 clear subject so it's easier to stay focussed on a small part and build from there. I think it's the only way this can work.

[Aporia_filia]

You seem to have completely misunderstood the ideas I've presented (both my own and those of others). No one is saying that "all is well and good in the world." Where did I say that? In fact, all it does is repeat your own attitude back to you: you've conflated "natural" as the non-human with "natural" as a moral concept. You're then assuming that the move of renaturalizing humans also means assigning a moral status (that of "good") to humans and our practices. No where have I done that, nor have the philosophers who I have referred to. Those are your own attitudes showing through. You're not reading carefully enough.

Agree, wdmn. Wili is suffering from his own bored way of "rationalizing his ingrained thoughts and behaviors". When using that racist example he is projecting his own hate and contempt. Very common with religious people.
But he's still a good fella.

nanning, I feel myself more away from civilization than you. That's probably why I sound harsh. And yep, there are some understanding problems.

[oren]

Fact: humans are not monogamous by nature so should not bond for a long time.

Let's agree to disagree.

[wili]

"When using that racist example he is projecting his own hate and contempt. Very common with religious people."

 

Thanks for the laugh.

At least I'm still a 'good fella'! 

And, yes, if you all want to keep going around in your lovely little circles here, be my guests. I will try to butt out. I have not read every single word in the thread, so my apologies if missed a subtlety or two. But, having taught related material at the college level, I find much of the conversation a bit sophomoric, and some of of the tropes seem tiresome because I have heard them so often from others.

(And for what it's worth, I don't happen to be particularly religious, not in any conventional way, anyway. And I would characterize myself more as an obnoxious anti-racist than a 'good fella,' but that would really take the conversation in a different direction)

And I agree with oren...there is very little that we can say about 'human nature' that can be defined as 'fact.' Being preconditioned to living within human society with societal constraints of various sorts, including generally against sleeping with just anyone, is, I would say, one of the few things we can say with some certainty about 'human nature.'

[Aporia_filia]

Thanks god you laughed, Wili !!! 
And I agree with you and Oren about human facts. There are lots of physical and social constraints, but every single person is different, so let anybody be their own (without damaging others).

[nanning]

Fact: humans are not monogamous by nature so should not bond for a long time.

Let's agree to disagree.

Of course not. This is not a matter of opinion.

[oren]

Your opinion as fact, mine as baseless opinion. Fine by me.

[wdmn]

Wili,

Since you have taught this at college, please enrich the discussion by raising it above the sophomoric rather than calling the arguments sophistic.


Nanning,

You seem to have a very low opinion of the ability of other people to think.

"Science: enrichment and impoverishment. One particular method elbows all the others aside. They all seem paltry by comparison, preliminary stages at best. You must go right down to the original sources so as to see them all side by side, both the neglected and the preferred (CV 61)."

That is a quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, and someone who has influenced me tremendously. Do you really think that the great philosophers are idiots? Philosophers have been undermining the "normal" and the "standard" for 2.5 thousand years!

A fundamental part of this thread is the point that our reasoning relies on unconscious presuppositions, and that they could be thought of as a kind of mythology that is inherited; i.e. we always reason within a system. As Hegel says, the unconscious attitudes that are part of these "normals" come to consciousness over time. That is the work of philosophy!

Calling fathers "unnatural" is clearly a moral judgment. Monogamous fathers are part of "living nature;" we find them in all sorts of animal species, including cranes, which are ancient. Do you now see how you've slid between using 'natural' in one way, and 'natural' as a moral category? You could probably present a compelling argument that monogamy is immoral through a consequentialist ethics. Similarly you could do the same with many of the practices of our current civilization. But you have not even made an attempt to present your reasons in this form. All you do is insult your interlocutors, assuming that they are unable to grasp something that you yourself are unable to articulate. When pressed to make yourself more clear, you lash out, calling us wetiko, and saying we just don't get it (without addressing the arguments that we've presented). It's tiresome. I will respect your views and accept that I am likely wrong in a million ways, but I will not grant you correctness before you've even been able to state clearly what you mean.

[Ranman99]

And just by comparison there is an interesting little read -- I preferred the audio about 5 hours in length. Jed's - Theory of Everything. Good for a Sunday afternoon hammock ride!!! 

Made me laugh out load. The dead guys are cool too of course.

https://www.wisefoolpress.com/toe/

[wdmn]

I recently recorded a talk that I gave on this subject called "The Naturalness of Being Unnatural: On the Conservation of the Lake Superior Caribou."

Not my best performance, but if you can make it through the first few minutes it gets interesting.

Part 1:


Part 2:

[Freegrass]

We humans became who we are today by living in tribes of around 100 to 150 people. It's engrained in our instincts...

In every tribe there was one leader. The Alpha male.

There are 7,876,203,975 people in the world today. Lets start rounding that off to 8 billion people in the world.

Divide this by the number of tribes in this world.
(The Dunbar's number is 150 people that each individual on average knows)

So 8 billion divided by 150 = 53,3 million alpha leaders

According to estimates, in the middle of 2021 there were 56 million people worldwide whose assets exceeded one million USD, of which nearly 40% lived in the United States. The total net worth of all millionaires stood at US$158,261 trillion.

Coincidence?

The real question is; Why aren't those alpha males taking care of their tribes anymore? Why has greed taken over in a world where the majority adores Jesus or some other deity with a message of love and sharing?

[Aluminium]

According to estimates, in the middle of 2021 there were 56 million people worldwide whose assets exceeded one million USD, of which nearly 40% lived in the United States. The total net worth of all millionaires stood at US$158,261 trillion.

Coincidence?

Pseudoscience. You can get any number depending on minimum assets. One million USD means nothing.

[kassy]

Ah pareidolia but with numbers.

We humans became who we are today by living in tribes of around 100 to 150 people. It's engrained in our instincts...

In every tribe there was one leader. The Alpha male.

The first claim has some problems. Quite a bit happened that which hugely influenced humanity after that. A lot of changes are related to agricultural society for example.

The one alpha male is sort of a Hollywood interpretation.

And no you cannot equate the ´tribal alfa male´ to people owning over 1 million of assets (which is not that much in some areas).

If you lived in a tribe you were related to them, and you travelled and lived together the year round which is totally different from the modern experience.

[Freegrass]

I think you're missing the point of the message by focusing on the details... 

[jens]

Biologically humans are "natural animals".

The unnatural part comes in with human ego. It has to do with the way human brain has evolved over time. Ego means human is an "animal in denial", meaning that human creates illusions and fake worlds, being disconnected from the "natural world". Look how hard humans are coping by trying to avoid confonting their true being and mortality, and try to believe they are somehow "special". That's ego.

Of course an interesting question is how and why did ego develop. It's also part of natural evolutionary process. So you could call ego "natural". But the thing is it creates unnatural reflection of the world inside human brain. And my belief is that the (call it) spiritual goal of human life is to deal with and overcome ego.

[Aluminium]

The real question is; Why aren't those alpha males taking care of their tribes anymore? Why has greed taken over in a world where the majority adores Jesus or some other deity with a message of love and sharing?

Do rich people recognize poor ones as their "tribe"? If population of "tribe" is limited, they should make a choice. People are used to help others. However, what is actual reason for it? Natural selection works against those who spend resources for nothing. Can relationship with poor one be as useful as with rich?

[johnm33]

"We humans became who we are today by living in tribes of around 100 to 150 people. It's engrained in our instincts..."
My understanding is that our brains are wired for about 150 relationships, the growing/ageing process will 'filter' our perspective to our cohort/generation so it implies a loose clan/tribal network of more like 6-700 individuals.
The 150 number is important, how does an animal capable of that number of relationships cope with living among thousands/millions of unknowable 'strangers'? 

[jens]

Example:

Fact: humans are not monogamous by nature so should not bond for a long time.
Consequences:
- Fathers are unnatural.
- Family and houses are unnatural.
- Men don't have a natural purpose in this culture.
- Women, mothers and children (who are young vulnerable humans) have to put up with a men who's the boss over them.
- Inheritance is unnatural.
- Empire is unnatural.
- Private material accumulation is unnatural.
- Every family behaves like a separate secretive tribe.
The consequences go much further than the above.

I do feel like we have a potentially interesting discussion hidden in here. It can be argued that the monogamy that arose with civilization and religion has been somewhat unnatural. Then again everything in male-female relationships has been an adaptation due to different instincts and arising natural tension.

If we imagine a tribe, then purely going by instincts all men would be attracted to women, particularly the ones, who are young and fertile. Whereas  women would pick the fittest men for reproduction (call them alphas of the tribe). So the question is - what would be the natural balance here that would make everyone in the tribe happy?

[Ranman99]

Man is a self fertilising animal. We believe our own BS and then act accordingly. But hey do the evolution baby!!!



Happy Canada Day !!!

[trm1958]

jens, nature doesn’t care that everyone be happy.

[kassy]

If we imagine a tribe, then purely going by instincts all men would be attracted to women, particularly the ones, who are young and fertile. Whereas  women would pick the fittest men for reproduction (call them alphas of the tribe). So the question is - what would be the natural balance here that would make everyone in the tribe happy?

Using Johnm33s a lose clan/tribal network of more like 6-700 individuals. we have to decide how big our tribe is. 700 seems a bit much so maybe 233,33 individuals, or lets go with the more convenient 100. Every year we all get together for a festival where to young ones who have come of age from the different subtribes get to pick partners which ensures variety in the gene pool. The smaller subtribes are extended families and there is very little privacy. They also spend more time with each other then we do now. They would work together, eat together, sing songs of knowledge at night together.

[nanning]

Amazon Indians
tribe size < 40
no walls
no houses
no fathers
no families

no visible hierarchy

and these are not even nomadic (which requires a small number of people on the move, not hundreds)

[kassy]

It is more like you are all one big family. The Tribes under 40 are part of a bigger network of many of these units.

I can see the appeal... how many of us get that much quality time?

[johnm33]

It may seem Idyllic it may even be so but I suspect they're under severe reproductive stress from inbreeding. Consanguinity leeds to a drop in fertility, any child from any father is better than no children, both for the individuals and for the community, plus many of the offspring will not be viable and as many as one in four could be handicapped to some degree. A similar social structure evolved in many isolated island communities, and many of them welcomed strangers with more than open arms, for the increased fertility they bestowed.
Consanguinity also leads to a drop in average IQ, about 15% in the first generation between 1^st cousins then maybe another 10-15% if the process continues over generations, some isolated communities in Nepal, for instance, have an unbelievable IQ average of around 60, the most likely cause being prolonged inbreeding.
Perhaps the size of a clan in 50's Papua New Guinea where afaik there was no population collapse due to introduced disease with isolated groups of juveniles left to pick up the pieces, and they were still 'farming' the 'jungle' as a permaculture garden, as least according to my source who grew up near Garoka in the 50-60's, might be a better place to look for examples.

[gerontocrat]

Random thoughts....

In the remoter parts of Vanuatu (and I believe ditto in PNG) it is forbidden to take as a wife someone from your own village. Staged thefts of women from neighbouring villages happen - all according to "custom" - by which these villages ruled themselves. Urbanisation breaks it.

Somehow or other these communities learnt that keeping the gene pool a bit wider is a necessity.
_____________________________________
In the UK the Aristocracy (and Royalty) were known to occasionally have children on the wrong side of the blanket. Helped to stop the development of receding chins from marrying cousins for too many generations.
__________________________________________
Most species exploit their environment to the maximum and beyond. Overpopulation in good years then leads to large population decrease in bad years. Man is the only animal with enough neurons to know better. But education is less and less about how to reason, and mostly reduced to training in skills that will be largely redundant when the child joins the workforce (e.g. IT).

We have the capability to be an unnatural animal but as a species seem to prefer otherwise. Hence we career at an ever-increasing speed towards the Holocene Extinction.

OK, a gross over-simplification, but there you are.

[morganism]

The Ironclad Argument Against Racism
   
Bryan Caplan

Being labelled a “racist” is scary. If you scour the Internet, you will find a few confessed racists. For the most part, though, “racism” is a doctrine we ascribe to others in order to damn and ostracize them. The strange result: While we hear endless debates about whether a person, idea, or practice is “racist,” we rarely hear arguments against racism itself. Arguments of the form, “Racism is wrong because…”

So suppose you wanted to construct such arguments. What would they be? Many people would start with something like, “Racism is wrong because it has been used to justify mass murder and slavery.” True enough. But you could just as easily say, “Equality is wrong because it has been used to justify mass murder and slavery.” See any episode of revolutionary communism.

Alternately, you could declare, “Racism is wrong because all races have equal intrinsic ability. All observed performance gaps in achievement and behavior stem from oppression.” The obvious weakness in this argument: How could anyone possibly know this? We’re never seen a world of zero oppression, so we can’t verify this by direct observation. The best we can do is apply standard social science, where we measure performance, then try to statistically control for oppression. Alternately, we could measure performance, then try to statistically control for ability, and call the residual “oppression.”

Yet either social science route is clearly risky. Maybe you won’t find that all races have equal intrinsic ability. Maybe you’ll find that some performance gaps stem from something other than oppression. And what happens to the researcher who makes such discoveries? Can testing hypotheses with an open mind transform you into a “racist” against your will?

Fortunately, an ironclad argument against racism does exist. An argument simple enough for a child to understand, yet compelling enough for an adult to embrace. Namely:

Racism is wrong because collective guilt is wrong.

The intuition has been around for a long time: If a man commits murder, you shouldn’t punish his son. Why not? Because it’s not the son’s fault; he’s a different person than his father. And if that’s wrong, it’s even more wrong to punish someone because he lives on the same street, resides in the same city, practices the same religion, or is a citizen of the same country. Collective guilt may be emotionally tempting, but it is intellectually absurd.

The one exception is when you voluntarily join a group of wrong-doers, such as the Mafia. But that’s not really collective guilt; it’s individual guilt for belonging to a criminal conspiracy.

The belabor the obvious, belonging to a race is nothing like belonging to the Mafia. You’re born into a race, you can’t control what other members of your race do, so you should bear no liability for their actions. No matter how awfully other members of your race have behaved, you should be judged as an individual. To hold you responsible for anything they did is a grave injustice.

What makes this argument so ironclad? Because it rests on rock-solid microethical foundations. Meaning: Almost everyone can see that collective guilt is wrong in simple hypotheticals. Such as: John murdered Sally. Is it morally permissible for Sally’s family to murder John’s infant son in retaliation? No? Then it can’t be morally permissible to blame other people who share John’s race, either.

In my childhood, I heard the ironclad argument against racism frequently. But I sense that it’s no longer popular. Why not? Because once you reject collective guilt, you have to abandon any notion of collectively punishing racism itself! And that is largely what the fashionable creed of “Anti-Racism” is all about.

In the past, most whites were racist. Even today, many are. Without collective guilt, however, you have no basis for punishing whites in general. You couldn’t tell a white college applicant, “We’re going to discriminate against you, because white people in the past discriminated against blacks.” Or even, “We’re going to discriminate against you, because modern whites continue to discriminate against blacks.” Instead, you would have to tailor any punishment for specific misdeeds - ever mindful of the danger that if you stray into collective guilt, the punisher himself deserves punishment.

So while the ironclad argument against racism unequivocally condemns racism, it also bars the way to a no-holds-barred, by-any-means-necessary War Against Racism. Which, on reflection, is a feature, not a bug. If your road to a just society requires constant injustice, you’re headed in the wrong direction."

https://betonit.substack.com/p/the-ironclad-argument-against-racism?s=r