[lbo-talk] Evolutionary advantage of idealism

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Tue Jun 6 19:35:14 PDT 2006


Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


> Our pre-historical ancestors spent most of their time on enduring the harsh
> reality - hunger, the elements, and dangerous animals, while the amount of
> time spent on the actual procurement of food or escaping imminent danger was
> only a fraction of the enduring time. Therefore, having greater biological
> capacity to delude oneself translated into a greater chance of survival and
> transmitting the genes responsible for delusional tendencies on the progeny.
> Hence the delusional thinking seems to be more prevalent than rational
> thinking today.

I've heard goofier just-so sociobiological tales, so this doesn't get my dander up (much). However, this Hobbesian "life is brutal and short" representation of our prehistorical ancestors is questionable. In temperate climates, adults in hunting and gathering tribes spend maybe 8-10 hours a week to gather the resources they need to subsist. To engage in the kind of wild speculation sociobiologists are famous for, let's say that the living conditions of humans 200,000 years ago was much like hunting and gathering tribes we know of. This means that there was far more leisure time for religious rituals, family interactions, and relaxation for humans back then than there is for the typical worker in an industrial society today. If anything, there should be more selection pressure for what Woj calls "delusional thinking" today than there was in human prehistory.

Miles



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