>>> gcf at panix.com 04/24/01 11:10AM >>>
Gordon Fitch wrote:
> > ...My impression -- intuition again -- is that all primates live
in complex societies, as do most mammals (as far as I know)
-- cats, dogs, rats, deer, and so on.
((((((((
CB: I think the qualitative uniqueness of human sociality/sociability compared to that of other species is that our social goes back through many generations of our species. We are connected in many ways with many dead members of our species in a non-genetic/extra-somatic inheritance ways. When we are being wise, we even consider and connect to future generations. Our sociality does this through the medium of culture or the sociohistorical. So, the power of the human symbolic realm is that it is part of the system of the expansion of our sociality. Our social also is , in general, quantitatively greater in terms of the network of living members of the species through the division of labor, today globalized , i.e. species wide, socialization of production, et al.