better chance of survival. This means that people by nature need rituals that create and confirm their belonging to a group. Those rituals may take many forms - from an orgy, to religious celebration, to going to a football game or a rock concert, and to voting to this or that celebrity."
> Jerry Monaco:
>
> If you think all people but a select few are stupid that is fine.
> Just tell me why you are part of the select few and what qualifies
> others to be exceptions. Can you answer this question?
>
> [WS:] I'll try, if you find the word "stupid" in what I posted on the
> subject.
[JM] I am disappointed in you, Woj. I credit you with not giving a damn who you insult. You have often in the past implied that the masses are stupid. Here, perhaps there is some lack of knowledge on your part about the connotations of what you say when you say that people are "like sheep". If you don't mean that they are "stupid" in the way they follow then you should not use such phrases. Perhaps you don't "get" such connotations in the way you use words. So let me quote you, "People are by nature like sheep - they follow the flock and keep up with the Joneses." Saying that people are like sheep implies that people are also about as stupid as sheep.. But with some amount of slipperiness you wiggle out of the question. Why?
So let us put it this way. If people are like sheep then why are you the shephard?
Now the question isn't whether homo sapiens show a high level of sociality but whether they show a high level of sociality in a way that is "like sheep." You contend that this "sheep-like" sociality comes from our evolutionary heritage. I see no "sheep-like" sociality among non-homo primates so it must be an attribute restricted to our particular clade. So show me. Or stop defaming those of us who are serious about applying evolutionary reasoning to human sociality and psychology. Stop projecting your uninformed prejudices onto evolutionary thinking and practice some truth in labeling.
>
> FYI, following the flock, stock knowledge and established patterns of
> thought and behavior has nothing to do with intelligence or lack thereof -
> and you seem to be jumping to conclusions prematurely here.
[JM[ For your information, "people" are not herd-like and neither do they "flock." I know of no evolutionary biologist or psychologist who believes that primates form "herd"-like or "flock"-like social groups.
Those who try to form hypotheses about how our biological evolution has helped to form our culture, society, psychology, would not think of humans as herd animals or part of a flock. They would talk of ultra-sociality and point out that all primates are social but that humans have a sociality to a degree that seems to match the social insects, but for different reasons and perhaps with denser complexity.
There is obvious connection between human ultra-sociality and the herd behavior of sheep. Perhaps they both have their origins in "group selection" or "kin selection" or in "reciprocal altruism", but if so we don't know which one of these and the opinions are simply not settled. E. O. Wilson has recently switched in this debate now favoring group selection over the kin selection hypothesis in many cases. The point is that no one who is worth their salt or even has a cursory knowledge of the debates in these areas would think that humans are a "flock" or a "herd". The other point is that if sheep evolved herd like behavior because of "kin selection" it is still possible that reciprocal altruism or some other as yet unknown explanation partially or mostly accounts for human ultra-sociality, a kind of sociality not exhibited in sheep.
I can reference dozens and dozens by evolutionary psychologists, sociobioligists, gene-culture coevolutionists, those who believe in a combination of meme-culture and biological evolution all debating the matter of cooperation, indoctrinability, altruism, heirarchy etc. and none of them are as flip and certain as you are. There is nothing wrong with expressing your prejudices. You may have good reasons and intuitions to hold your prejudices. But to clothe your prejudices in the certainty of evolutionary science is harmful both to your views and to scientific integrity.
I know you are using these notions of flock and herd as metaphors but it is part of your method to state your views in a manner that is contemptuous of the great unwashed and this is simply another example.
In the literature of evolutionary biology and ethology and studies of animal social groups such notions as colonies, flocks, herds, packs, troops etc. actually come to mean something among the entomologists, ornithologists, primatologists, etc. But for you it is all just a way to process what you feel about "the people".
AFIK, people
> Nor is following the flock and established path necessarily a bad thing. It
> often offers significant advantages in terms of saving transaction costs.
> FYI, Alexander Gershenkron, whom I highly respect, explicitly makes that
> argument about belated economic development - countries that come late to
> the process can benefit by following the already tested paths instead of
> reinventing the wheel.
I know next to nothing about Alexander Gerschenkron except that I think a friend of mine says that he once saw him walking against a traffic light while reading a book. If so I am some sympathy with him. But I feel to see what path dependency in economic development have to do with the separate kinds of biological constraints that are the equivalent of path dependency in evolution. All of your talk about "established paths" and analogies to economics only show that you have a very slight notion of what is at issue here.
> But as it is the case of human actions and
> capabilities, what is an advantage under one set circumstances can be a
> disadvantage under other. Jared Diamond argued that quite convincingly in
> _Collapse_.
I do know a bit about Jared Diamond's views and he certainly would not agree with your statements about people being sheep. His arguments can at times be simplistic but they are often on to something and they have very little to do with your statement that people are "like sheep". He presents an argument about ecological impact and degradation and unintended consequences not unlike his argument about the increased impact of malaria in Africa after European settlement. (see "Guns, Germs, and Steel"). Note that he gives an argument that combines both biological anthropoloby and behavioral ecology to explain why Africans in areas of high level of malaria lived in small villages, and on relatively high ground. It is argument presented with evidence and it is about a certain type of human social structure. Such arguments do not fit your expressions about human nature in any particular. (Also note that some of his arguments fit into notions of behavioral ecology quite well but it is not the kind of evidence that most evolutionary psychologist would agree with. This is only to say that the workers in the subfields in this area are trying hard to find ways to organize and present evidence that conforms with evolutionary reasoning, but they don't even agree fully on what constitutes a good model, or theoretical explanation. Only you seem to have the answers to the questions in this area.)
It doesn't seem to me that you even have a notion of what the issues are in this area. "Herd instinct" indeed! If you wish to talk about the evolutionary and biological context of social cooperation, cooperative breeding, cheating detection, gossip, social networks, and human sociality in general I am willing to go forward. It may help me in my own work, and you are a smart guy in your field so I might get some good ideas on the further problem with deciding how in the world human institutions can be integrated into evolutionary reasoning But please don't talk about this as if you have only yesterday discovered "The Naked Ape" and "The Territorial Imperative" and other such nonsense.
>
> As to your request for a "proof" of my evolutionary claims, - which btw are
> quite tangential to my main argument that people are by nature social and
> thus engage in behavior that is social ( i.e. follow the group) - you know
> darn well that the whole field is in a large part a conjecture.
This is another piece of backtracking on your part. If you were being provocative simply because you wish to be provocative then admit it, but don't backtrack in the middle of the discussion simply because you can't defend what you originally said. With great certainty you said that homo sapiens are herd-like because of our evolutionary history. You didn't say that they are "social" because of their evolutionary history -- a statement that everyone who actually believes in evolution should agree with. You said that "people" are "like sheep" because of our evolutionary history. This is the statement I am holding you to, until you decide to say that it was simply some kind of misstatement, overstatement, statement of contempt for the masses, prejudice or otherwise. Have more respect for your argument than simply to change the terms.
Instead you offer diversions about the nature of science and of the problems of evidence and explanation in evolutionary theory. Well, it is problem that I am well aware with and it is the reason why I am pounding the keyboard with the evidence of your own words.
> But let me reverse your question and ask - how do you think we as a species
> became a "social animal" if not by evolutionary process - by the fiat of a
> god?
>
> Wojtek
Finally, I have argued on this list over and over again that human sociality and cooperation is in some way (we don't know in what way) has emerged from our evolutionary and biological history. Where do you get off implying otherwise? Even in our original exchange I stated that one of my purposes was to defend the fields and subfields that surround sociobiology from the kinds of uninformed and prejudicial statements that people like you insist upon making. If there is a reason I am so heated in this discussion it is that science and the potential sciences surrounding sociobiological reasoning must be defended from ideological statements such as yours if the general intellectual public (especially sociologists and anthropologists) are to accept this potential science as a research field.
For political reasons slanders against evolutionary thinking about human psychology and sociality must be defended against statements like yours among leftists. For too long, too many leftists and Marxists have rejected the materialist and historical way of thinking that evolutionary biology can contribute to the study of human society, psychology and behavior. They have missed a rich and useful literature that deserves sympathetic marxian and anarchist criticism and thought.
The question isn't whether human beings are social animals or not, and the question isn't whether such sociality emerged in the course of our biological evolution. This simply must be true. The quesion is what kind of sociality emerged in the course of human evolution and how it emerged and what are the underlying cognitive and emotional "mechanisms" that are involved with human sociality, etc.
But apparently the question for you is whether people are as stupid as sheep in their sociality. That is the question that you set for us in one of your usual tirades. You assume the nature and function of rituals without any reference to the literature either among traditional anthropoligists or those in the various traditions inspired by sociobiology. You assume that they make humans "herd like" and not attuned to high level of social interaction (ultra sociality) that has no precedence among any other mammal. You assume the "herd-like" nature of human sociality and seem to have no notion of the more interesting quesions about human sociality that are being asked by evolutionists. You assume that your "herd-like" notion of sociality is absolute and unproblematic and must lead to comparative reproductive advantage, etc, etc.
These are all of the assumptions you make either because you don't know what you are talking about or you simply grab on to anything to show your contempt for "people."
We can only
> observe cases of evolutionary changes in modern times, and apply patterns
> established from these observations to the past. That does not make it
> unscientific - many sciences make conjectures about things that they cannot
> directly observe based on patterns they can observe - it is just that you
> cannot provide an empirical proof in the way you typically do in science -
> by stating the antecedent and determining if the hypothesized consequent
> obtains.
>
> But let me reverse your question and ask - how do you think we as a species
> became a "social animal" if not by evolutionary process - by the fiat of a
> god?
>
> Wojtek
>
> ___________________________________
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>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/