[lbo-talk] Dewey on intelligence, co-operation, and class

[Miles Jackson]

ravi wrote:
> First the quote:
>
>      To say that all past historic social progress has been the
>      result of co-operation and not of conflict would be ... an
>      exaggeration. But exaggeration against exaggeration, it is
>      the more reasonable of the two. And it is no exaggeration
>      to say that the measure of civilisation is the degree in
>      which the method of co-operative intelligence replaces the
>      method of brute conflict.
>
> Most who consider themselves leftists will probably neither disagree  
> not find anything particularly novel in the above. 
I disagree wholeheartedly.  The assumption that civilisation is 
characterized by "co-operative intelligence" in contradistinction to the 
brutal conflict in "noncivilized" societies is ethnocentric through and 
through.  Comparing social relations in hunting and gathering societies 
and our "civilized" society, I'd flip the binary above: brutal conflict 
is more prevalent in our "civilized" society and "cooperative 
intelligence" is more prevalent in the hunting and gathering society.  
Just to shoot fish in a barrel, no hunting and gathering society in the 
history of the planet has accomplished as much carnage, destruction, and 
human suffering as the U. S. military has in Iraq.

Miles