[lbo-talk] Caroline Fourest: In Praise of Consent

Eubulides paraconsistent at comcast.net
Thu May 26 10:05:30 PDT 2011


-----Original Message----- From: c b

What behaviors have human beings displayed in the last 30,000 years that aren't human nature?

^^^^^ CB: Suicides, war, greed.

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Do you have an encyclopedia of unnatural human behaviors you can point me to regarding your claim? Does such an encyclopedia include entries on using anesthesia for childbirth and surgery? Does it discuss the creation of rockets to send people out into space or specify indeafsible criteria for making the natural/unnatural partition?

The noted authorities in the wonderful Dictionary of Marxist Thought [Bottomore] have no entries for suicide or greed and the entry on war by Kiernan skirts the issue of the claimed unnaturalness of war altogether. The entry on human nature is utterly unsatisfying to my tired brain.

I would note that suicide has been around a lot longer than the relatively recent proclivities to assert the immorality or unnaturalness of the act and that warfare is an ecological phenomena that can be about as destructive as large volcanic events or large objects smacking into the earth from outer space. That it is made by supposedly civilized animals by no means makes it unnatural in a human sense. And what would civilization be without so-called greed? :-)

Ian



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