[lbo-talk] Left-neoliberalism: a bold strategy for the year 1999

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 5 13:52:13 PDT 2011


THE extraordinary success of Homo sapiens is a result of four things: intelligence, language, an ability to manipulate objects dexterously in order to make tools, and co-operation. Over the decades the anthropological spotlight has shifted from one to another of these as the prime mover of the package, and thus the fundament of the human condition. At the moment co-operation is the most fashionable subject of investigation. In particular, why are humans so willing to collaborate with unrelated strangers, even to the point of risking being cheated by people whose characters they cannot possibly know?

^^^^^ CB; Yes, cooperation or sociality should be the number one. Our species name should be homo communis or socio, not homo sapiens ( intelligent). Language is fundamentally socially constituted and constituting. A critical thing to understand is that a major aspect of human sociality is social connects between living and dead generations. Lenguage is a major function in this cross generational connection. The prime human intelligence is social intelligence. The difference between human tool use and that of other species is that knowledge of tools is passed on and accumulated across generations as culture, language and custom. The wheel does not have to be reinvented.

Very interesting that this somewhat pro-cooperation hypothesis is spoken of favorably in "The Economist".



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