US has a Cult of Individuals.
Selfishness guides American masses' politics as it guides everything else.
Individualism, selfishness; mimicking the selfishness of the bourgeoisie , so the working class has petit bourgeois ideology and worldview. I, me , my.
US has a Cult of Individuals. Many people make a cult of themselves . They have to look after themselves majorly ; nobody else will.
(((((((
Why anthropological psychology ?
Anthropological psychology because psychology is study of the Individual , the Self, that idol of American culture and symbolic inheritance . So, learning about individuals is automatically more relevant to individual student's interests , which is of course , especially in themSELVES.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
in group fighting VERY rare as unfit in Darwinian sense
Someone says : "An animal group, including humans, will attack its own members for resources. In order to remain as members of the group the attacked must let themselves be attacked.
In modern society the members who are attacked often express adoration for their attackers. The reason is that their attackers protect them from attack by outside groups and societies."
Devon says : "
.Me against my brother
.Me and my brother against my cousin
.Me my brother, and my cousin against the village
.Me my brother, my cousin, and my village against another village"
CB SAYS: Rarely or else our species would have gone extinct long ago. These group suicidal assaults are extraordinarily rare, especially before 6,000 years ago for the vast majority of human species existence .
I was just speaking on the general in-group and out-group relationship
CB: Since 6,000 years ago there is a lot of what you are talking about, Devin Boyd, I must agree with you completely on that.
I'm trying to use science to get to how human society was 200,000 years ago when our 23 chromosome pairs were set : original human nature in our genes. I'm thinking it was super peaceful among everybody in the 25 to 50 person bands, and peaceful between bands . They were organized based on kinship , family relations connecting everybody. The kinship was organized based on ancestor worship , tradition to dead ancestors of family .
Monday, January 23, 2017
The questions anthropology dare not ask: why and how were language and culture invented ?!?
The questions anthropology dare not ask: why and how were language and culture invented ?!?
I'd say culture and language originate in childcare with mothers naming children to care for them and teach them: trans-generational communication.
Yes difference , unity of differences , identity of differences ; using something to represent something that it is not; like a Name; in the beginning was the Idea , the Word , the Name.
Robert says : "I believe they evolved from grunts and gestures made to indicate desires of primitive primates."
Yes evolved and revolutionized primitive primate communication. There is a qualitative leap from primitive primate communication to human language and culture. Humans use symbol systems; primitive primate species do not.
Symboling is using something to represent something that it is not as with words . Primitive Primates do not have true words .
Todd says : "Actually, anthropologists asks both of these questions all of the time. Here are some relevant citations. The first citation (Alexander 1974) is particularly influential.
Alexander, Richard D. "The evolution of social behavior." Annual review of ecology and systematics 5.1 (1974): 325-383.
Tomasello, Michael. Origins of human communication. MIT press, 2010.
Tomasello, Michael. The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Shennan, Stephen. "Demography and cultural innovation: a model and its implications for the emergence of modern human culture." Cambridge archaeological journal 11.1 (2001): 5.
Mithen, Steven J. "The Prehistory of the Mind a Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science." (1996).
Richerson, Peter J., and Robert Boyd. "The Pleistocene and the origins of human culture: built for speed." Perspectives in ethology 13 (2000): 1-45.
Stout, Dietrich. "Stone toolmaking and the evolution of human culture and cognition." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 366.1567 (2011): 1050-1059.
Animal individual organisms have two types of thoughts: Sensation-Perceptions and Memories. All are cell processes in the brain.
Sensations-Perception are immediate sights, sounds, smells, and feels.
Memories are records of past sensation-perceptions.
Humans have uniquely and majorly records of past sensations-perceptions in the form of symbols, words, language and culture.
Humans also have memories they have rearranged or modified : imaginings .
Since 6,000 years ago there is a lot of what you are talking about, Devin Boyd, I must agree with you completely on that.
I'm trying to use science to get to how human society was 200,000 years ago when our 23 chromosome pairs were set : original human nature in our genes. I'm thinking it was super peaceful among everybody in the 25 to 50 person bands, and peaceful between bands . They were organized based on kinship , family relations connecting everybody. The kinship was organized based on ancestor worship , tradition to dead ancestors of family .
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Symboling is identifying something with something that it is not
CB: Symboling is ,as I like to explain it , using something to represent something it is not. Imaginary beings are using something ( words or drawing or sculpture ) to represent something that doesn't exist or nothing. Math is all that. Numbers don't exist except in the imagination . Lines in geometry are infinitely long, but there are no infinitely long lines in reality , only in imagination.
Ancestor worship , original culture and language, are using things and words to represent people who no longer exist.
In other words , the gods are symbols of many generations from the past, mortal beings who attain some immortality by the living generation having so many recorded memories in living individual brains of the experiences of the dead while they were still alive . The living individual brains get this by learning language and culture, custom and tradition , religion .
Like the Sphinx rising from the Dead
Culture as material, not mystical, "soul" transcending generationally the mortality of all individual Selves; cultural immortality, eternity , symbolized as gods.
Kelly Smith: "Hmmmmmm I dig this concept. It reminds me of the a priori/a posteriori knowledge distinction, which I am a big fan of thinking about. In this vein, Stanford has a great philosophy site but this seems to be a pretty nice article too: http://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/".
Just for those who want more info cuz it's super fucking fascinating shit"
CB: Yes , I have an interest in a priori / a posteriori knowledge since my philosophy 101 teacher had us thinking about it ; Kantian issues .
Knowledge from ancestors is from experiences that are a priori to the living generation's experiences ; it is not spun out of thin air by the living individual.
As far as scientific knowledge, Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. The Giants were his dead scientist ancestors .
CB: For me , original human society (at least , 200,000 ya) is given qualitatively greater wisdom about the struggle for existence than any other species, even close species like chimps, because to a significant extent the living generation is able to share the experiences of many, many past dead generations. Instead of 50 living heads only , there are 1000 heads from the past inside the living 50 heads as language and culture.
YESS!!!!!! I think about this constantly!!! And the internet is such a fantastic bridge to the past and the future even, like whaaaattt
CB: Yes the Internet is a leap; as writing was a leap from the Stone Age.
Todd L. VanPool:
Relevant article talking about the universality of ancestor worship...
Steadman, Lyle B., Craig T. Palmer, and Christopher F. Tilley. "The universality of ancestor worship." Ethnology 35.1 (1996): 63-76.
Emotions don't exist except in the imagination, correct?
Well, they often correspond to physiological changes. Changes in breathing, hormonal changes, and so forth. If someone hits your system with a lot of adrenaline or suppresses your thyroid hormone production, it will have consistent impacts on emotions for example. "Love" likewise corresponds to certain physiological responses. So, emotions are not completely imaginary, even if something like "love" exists in the mind.
We can track "love" through chemical changes to different areas of the brain. As well as fear, anger, lust and a host of basic human emotions.
Part of the emotion is memory, memory of a past sensation and accompanying memory then, no ?
Emotions are not imaginary. They are sensations and memories , both of which exist in the brain; are material . Memories correspond to past sensations. They are "images", drawings , recordings of past sensations. They are semi-symbols of those past sensations, the way a drawing is semi-symbolling to represent what it depicts. A drawing is not what it represents , but it imitates, is not arbitrarily related to what it represents; not the way full symbols, like most words , do not imitate in anyway what they represent.
A major proportion of human memories are of symbols , especially words. Many memories of emotions are of words or concepts of emotions.
Ancestor worship , original culture and language, are using things and words to represent people who no longer exist.
In other words , the gods are symbols of many generations from the past, mortal beings who attain some immortality by the living generation having so many recorded memories in living individual brains of the experiences of the dead while they were still alive . The living individual brains get this by learning language and culture, custom and tradition , religion .
Like the Sphinx rising from the Dead
Culture as material, not mystical, "soul" transcending generationally the mortality of all individual Selves; cultural immortality, eternity , symbolized as gods.
Kelly Smith: "Hmmmmmm I dig this concept. It reminds me of the a priori/a posteriori knowledge distinction, which I am a big fan of thinking about. In this vein, Stanford has a great philosophy site but this seems to be a pretty nice article too: http://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/".
Just for those who want more info cuz it's super fucking fascinating shit"
CB: Yes , I have an interest in a priori / a posteriori knowledge since my philosophy 101 teacher had us thinking about it ; Kantian issues .
Knowledge from ancestors is from experiences that are a priori to the living generation's experiences ; it is not spun out of thin air by the living individual.
As far as scientific knowledge, Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. The Giants were his dead scientist ancestors .
CB: For me , original human society (at least , 200,000 ya) is given qualitatively greater wisdom about the struggle for existence than any other species, even close species like chimps, because to a significant extent the living generation is able to share the experiences of many, many past dead generations. Instead of 50 living heads only , there are 1000 heads from the past inside the living 50 heads as language and culture.
YESS!!!!!! I think about this constantly!!! And the internet is such a fantastic bridge to the past and the future even, like whaaaattt
CB: Yes the Internet is a leap; as writing was a leap from the Stone Age.
Todd L. VanPool:
Relevant article talking about the universality of ancestor worship...
Steadman, Lyle B., Craig T. Palmer, and Christopher F. Tilley. "The universality of ancestor worship." Ethnology 35.1 (1996): 63-76.
Emotions don't exist except in the imagination, correct?
Well, they often correspond to physiological changes. Changes in breathing, hormonal changes, and so forth. If someone hits your system with a lot of adrenaline or suppresses your thyroid hormone production, it will have consistent impacts on emotions for example. "Love" likewise corresponds to certain physiological responses. So, emotions are not completely imaginary, even if something like "love" exists in the mind.
We can track "love" through chemical changes to different areas of the brain. As well as fear, anger, lust and a host of basic human emotions.
Part of the emotion is memory, memory of a past sensation and accompanying memory then, no ?
Emotions are not imaginary. They are sensations and memories , both of which exist in the brain; are material . Memories correspond to past sensations. They are "images", drawings , recordings of past sensations. They are semi-symbols of those past sensations, the way a drawing is semi-symbolling to represent what it depicts. A drawing is not what it represents , but it imitates, is not arbitrarily related to what it represents; not the way full symbols, like most words , do not imitate in anyway what they represent.
A major proportion of human memories are of symbols , especially words. Many memories of emotions are of words or concepts of emotions.
Founding Anthropological Psychology: I'm criticizing Evolutionary Psychology as a social "darwinism ." Anthropological Psychology is a critique of Evolutionary Psychology based on Anthropology's long history of accumulating knowledge of human evolution , biological , anatomical, psychological and cultural , beginning with Darwin's Descent of Man and SELECTION BY SEX and Antoinette Blackwell's valid feminist critique of Darwin, right through all the fossil, genetic and ethnographic and physiological studies of the 20 and 21st Centuries.
Main point of the sub field would be human individual psyches are especially though not utterly shaped by language and culture.
All Animal individual's thoughts , including humans, are perception-sensations and memories ( imagination is recombined memories). Human individuals have especially memories of symbols and words language , as well as memories of direct sensations. Symbols are memories of especially dead generations , tradition . Other animal individuals have almost no memories of symbols or dead generations' experiences .
Other individual animals are rational . They pursue goals rationally as predators chasing prey or prey escaping predators; that's ultimately rational ! The difference between our thinking and theirs is we have such big symbol systems in our brains ; the difference is not rational cognition.
We share the experiences of many , many dead ancestors in our individual brains. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Isaac Newton said he did. Culture is elementary and original science in accumulating experience across generations.
Every individual being of all animal species has an instinct for Self-preservation. A main way it is expressed is hunger for enough food to eat .
For the human species, many different species of plants and animals can fulfill this fundamental physiological , life and death need. All human cultures select only part of the universe of possible food species to eat and taboo other species.
Marshall Sahlins , one of my mentors in anthropology, recently mentioned Tomasello favorably ( on a YouTube video ). So, I look at him favorable . However, I must say that I think chimps , monkeys , mammal individuals imitate each other's intentions . All animal individuals are rational , capable goal seekers , most especially as predators going after prey and prey escaping predators.
The difference ( viva la difference) is other species don't have a lot of projects dictated by tradition , history, custom , language and culture . Other species don't have utterly symbolic goals like becoming a football player or an actress. For humans symbolic projects dominate our individual lives and values.
That's anthropological psychology .
Why anthropological psychology ?
Anthropological psychology because psychology is study of the Individual , the Self, that idol of American culture and symbolic inheritance . So, learning about individuals is automatically more relevant to individual student's interests , which is of course , especially in themSELVES.
Main point of the sub field would be human individual psyches are especially though not utterly shaped by language and culture.
All Animal individual's thoughts , including humans, are perception-sensations and memories ( imagination is recombined memories). Human individuals have especially memories of symbols and words language , as well as memories of direct sensations. Symbols are memories of especially dead generations , tradition . Other animal individuals have almost no memories of symbols or dead generations' experiences .
Other individual animals are rational . They pursue goals rationally as predators chasing prey or prey escaping predators; that's ultimately rational ! The difference between our thinking and theirs is we have such big symbol systems in our brains ; the difference is not rational cognition.
We share the experiences of many , many dead ancestors in our individual brains. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Isaac Newton said he did. Culture is elementary and original science in accumulating experience across generations.
Every individual being of all animal species has an instinct for Self-preservation. A main way it is expressed is hunger for enough food to eat .
For the human species, many different species of plants and animals can fulfill this fundamental physiological , life and death need. All human cultures select only part of the universe of possible food species to eat and taboo other species.
Marshall Sahlins , one of my mentors in anthropology, recently mentioned Tomasello favorably ( on a YouTube video ). So, I look at him favorable . However, I must say that I think chimps , monkeys , mammal individuals imitate each other's intentions . All animal individuals are rational , capable goal seekers , most especially as predators going after prey and prey escaping predators.
The difference ( viva la difference) is other species don't have a lot of projects dictated by tradition , history, custom , language and culture . Other species don't have utterly symbolic goals like becoming a football player or an actress. For humans symbolic projects dominate our individual lives and values.
That's anthropological psychology .
Why anthropological psychology ?
Anthropological psychology because psychology is study of the Individual , the Self, that idol of American culture and symbolic inheritance . So, learning about individuals is automatically more relevant to individual student's interests , which is of course , especially in themSELVES.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Ancestor piety , original culture and language, is using things and words to represent people who no longer exist.
CB: Symboling is ,as I like to explain it , using something to represent something it is not. Imaginary beings are using something ( words or drawing or sculpture ) to represent something that doesn't exist or nothing. Math is all that. Numbers don't exist except in the imagination . Lines in geometry are infinitely long, but there are no infinitely long lines in reality , only in imagination.
Ancestor worship , original culture and language, are using things and words to represent people who no longer exist.
Kelly Smith: "Hmmmmmm I dig this concept. It reminds me of the a priori/a posteriori knowledge distinction, which I am a big fan of thinking about. In this vein, Stanford has a great philosophy site but this seems to be a pretty nice article too: http://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/".
Just for those who want more info cuz it's super fucking fascinating shit"
CB: Yes , I have an interest in a priori / a posteriori knowledge since my philosophy 101 teacher had us thinking about it ; Kantian issues .
Knowledge from ancestors is from experiences that are a priori to the living generation's experiences ; it is not spun out of thin air by the living individual.
As far as scientific knowledge, Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. The Giants were his dead scientist ancestors .
CB: For me , original human society (at least , 200,000 ya) is given qualitatively greater wisdom about the struggle for existence than any other species, even close species like chimps, because to a significant extent the living generation is able to share the experiences of many, many past dead generations. Instead of 50 living heads only , there are 1000 heads from the past inside the living 50 heads as language and culture.
YESS!!!!!! I think about this constantly!!! And the internet is such a fantastic bridge to the past and the future even, like whaaaattt
CB: Yes the Internet is a leap; as writing was a leap from the Stone Age.
Todd L. VanPool:
Relevant article talking about the universality of ancestor worship...
Steadman, Lyle B., Craig T. Palmer, and Christopher F. Tilley. "The universality of ancestor worship." Ethnology 35.1 (1996): 63-76.
Emotions don't exist except in the imagination, correct?
Well, they often correspond to physiological changes. Changes in breathing, hormonal changes, and so forth. If someone hits your system with a lot of adrenaline or suppresses your thyroid hormone production, it will have consistent impacts on emotions for example. "Love" likewise corresponds to certain physiological responses. So, emotions are not completely imaginary, even if something like "love" exists in the mind.
We can track "love" through chemical changes to different areas of the brain. As well as fear, anger, lust and a host of basic human emotions.
Part of the emotion is memory, memory of a past sensation and accompanying memory then, no ?
Emotions are not imaginary. They are sensations and memories , both of which exist in the brain; are material . Memories correspond to past sensations. They are "images", drawings , recordings of past sensations. They are semi-symbols of those past sensations, the way a drawing is semi-symbolling
to represent what it depicts. A drawing is not what it represents , but it imitates, is not arbitrarily related to what it represents; not the way full symbols, like most words , do not imitate in anyway what they represent.
A major proportion of human memories are of symbols , especially words. Many memories of Culture as material, not mystical, "soul" transcending generationally the mortality of all individual Selves; cultural immortality, eternity , symbolized as gods.emotions are of words or concepts of emotions.
Since 6,000 years ago there is a lot of what you are talking about, Devin Boyd, I must agree with you completely on that.
I'm trying to use science to get to how human society was 200,000 years ago when our 23 chromosome pairs were set : original human nature in our genes. I'm thinking it was super peaceful among everybody in the 25 to 50 person bands, and peaceful between bands . They were organized based on kinship , family relations connecting everybody. The kinship was organized based on ancestor worship , tradition to dead ancestors of family .
Ancestor worship , original culture and language, are using things and words to represent people who no longer exist.
Kelly Smith: "Hmmmmmm I dig this concept. It reminds me of the a priori/a posteriori knowledge distinction, which I am a big fan of thinking about. In this vein, Stanford has a great philosophy site but this seems to be a pretty nice article too: http://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/".
Just for those who want more info cuz it's super fucking fascinating shit"
CB: Yes , I have an interest in a priori / a posteriori knowledge since my philosophy 101 teacher had us thinking about it ; Kantian issues .
Knowledge from ancestors is from experiences that are a priori to the living generation's experiences ; it is not spun out of thin air by the living individual.
As far as scientific knowledge, Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. The Giants were his dead scientist ancestors .
CB: For me , original human society (at least , 200,000 ya) is given qualitatively greater wisdom about the struggle for existence than any other species, even close species like chimps, because to a significant extent the living generation is able to share the experiences of many, many past dead generations. Instead of 50 living heads only , there are 1000 heads from the past inside the living 50 heads as language and culture.
YESS!!!!!! I think about this constantly!!! And the internet is such a fantastic bridge to the past and the future even, like whaaaattt
CB: Yes the Internet is a leap; as writing was a leap from the Stone Age.
Todd L. VanPool:
Relevant article talking about the universality of ancestor worship...
Steadman, Lyle B., Craig T. Palmer, and Christopher F. Tilley. "The universality of ancestor worship." Ethnology 35.1 (1996): 63-76.
Emotions don't exist except in the imagination, correct?
Well, they often correspond to physiological changes. Changes in breathing, hormonal changes, and so forth. If someone hits your system with a lot of adrenaline or suppresses your thyroid hormone production, it will have consistent impacts on emotions for example. "Love" likewise corresponds to certain physiological responses. So, emotions are not completely imaginary, even if something like "love" exists in the mind.
We can track "love" through chemical changes to different areas of the brain. As well as fear, anger, lust and a host of basic human emotions.
Part of the emotion is memory, memory of a past sensation and accompanying memory then, no ?
Emotions are not imaginary. They are sensations and memories , both of which exist in the brain; are material . Memories correspond to past sensations. They are "images", drawings , recordings of past sensations. They are semi-symbols of those past sensations, the way a drawing is semi-symbolling
to represent what it depicts. A drawing is not what it represents , but it imitates, is not arbitrarily related to what it represents; not the way full symbols, like most words , do not imitate in anyway what they represent.
A major proportion of human memories are of symbols , especially words. Many memories of Culture as material, not mystical, "soul" transcending generationally the mortality of all individual Selves; cultural immortality, eternity , symbolized as gods.emotions are of words or concepts of emotions.
Since 6,000 years ago there is a lot of what you are talking about, Devin Boyd, I must agree with you completely on that.
I'm trying to use science to get to how human society was 200,000 years ago when our 23 chromosome pairs were set : original human nature in our genes. I'm thinking it was super peaceful among everybody in the 25 to 50 person bands, and peaceful between bands . They were organized based on kinship , family relations connecting everybody. The kinship was organized based on ancestor worship , tradition to dead ancestors of family .
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Founding Anthropological Psychology
Founding Anthropological Psychology: I'm criticizing Evolutionary Psychology as a social "darwinism ." Anthropological Psychology is a critique of Evolutionary Psychology based on Anthropology's long history of accumulating knowledge of human evolution , biological , anatomical, psychological and cultural , beginning with Darwin's Descent of Man and SELECTION BY SEX and Antoinette Blackwell's valid feminist critique of Darwin, right through all the fossil, genetic and ethnographic and physiological studies of the 20 and 21st Centuries.
Every individual being of all animal species has an instinct for Self-preservation. A main way it is expressed is hunger for enough food to eat .
For the human species, many different species of plants and animals can fulfill this fundamental physiological , life and death need. All human cultures select only part of the universe of possible food species to eat and taboo other species.
Every individual being of all animal species has an instinct for Self-preservation. A main way it is expressed is hunger for enough food to eat .
For the human species, many different species of plants and animals can fulfill this fundamental physiological , life and death need. All human cultures select only part of the universe of possible food species to eat and taboo other species.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Locus and levels of material necessity in human society and written history
From: Charles Brown <cb31450@gmail.com>
Date: September 7, 2016 at 8:46:49 PM EDT
Subject: Locus of material necessity in human society and history
[Marxism-Thaxis] Locus of material necessity in human society and history
Charles Brown cdb1003 at prodigy.net
Sat Feb 14 13:01:27 MST 2009
Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] kingdoms of necessity and freedom
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
This is a reworking and expansion of a thesis I have been
developing on Thaxis
Charles
Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism
By the
_Manifesto of the Communist Party_ every
Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist
conception of
history. The history of hitherto existing society, since the breaking
up of the
ancient communes, is a history of class struggles between oppressor and
oppressed.
Classes are groups that associate in a division of labor to produce
their material
means of existence. Why are class struggles fundamental in determining
the whole of society's laws and rules, it's
history and culture, the
"super-structure" ?
Because exploited classes are coerced into producing
surpluses for
exploiting classes by making supply of the physiological necessities of
life to the exploited classes conditional upon
their producing those
surpluses. Not only do exploited classes produce the physiological and
derivative material necessities of life for
society , but they are
denied the fruits of their labor unless they supply the bosses, the
ruling classes with super fruits.
Ruling class coerce this exploitation by
control of the state power or special
repressive apparatus
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels implied this
elementary
anthropological or "human natural" rationale for this conception of
class relations determining substantially
the shape of society as a
whole. In a section titled
"History: Fundamental Conditions, they say:
"*life involves before everything else eating and
drinking,
a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first
historical
act is thus the production of material life itself. And
indeed this
is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all
history, which
today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly
be
fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life."
Production and economic classes are the starting point of
Marxist analysis
of human society because human life, like all plant and animal life
must fulfill
biological needs to exist as life at all. It is an appeal to biologic
(which I
support, all of the anti-vulgar materialist critiques to the contrary
notwithstanding,
but that's my other paper). Whatever humans do that is "higher" than
plants and
animals, we cannot do if we do not first fulfill or plant/animal like
needs, physiological necessities.
Marx and Engels define scientific analysis as
tracing the materially or objectively _necessary_ connections in a
phenomenon. Thus, the scientific understanding
of human society must be based in the materially
necessary connections of human society. Fulfillment
of physiological or biological requirments are
the materially necessary "connections" for
humans.
These biological necessary connections exist
in all human societies. But it is only in'
class divided society that , as said above,
surpluses are extorted from exploited classes
by ruling classes by employment and threat of
deployment of the
forces of destruction and violenced, standing bodies of armed
men , against the exploited
and ruled classes less
they disgorge the surplus fruits of their labor to
the ruling classes.
For not only is supply of food, shelter, air
etc. biologically and materially necessary
for living. The _absence_ of being killed or
bodily harmed by armed men is materially necessary
to live. Thus, the mode of destruction is as central
to the necessary connections of human society as
the mode of production. The mode of destruction as
critical in ruling class coercion and extortion
of the ruled classes is a mode of necessity in
human society and history.
Thus the mode of necessity in human society
consists in both the mode of production and
the mode of destruction.
On Materialism ( speaking of Mao),
there are two levels of
the relationship between
thought and being:
"economics" and "physics".
While society remains in
the Realm (or kingdom) of Necessity ,
society during its class divided history,
ruling classes control
masses by conditioning
fulfillment of the _material_
needs of the exploited
classes on the exploited
classes ' producing surpluses
for the ruling , exploiting
classes. The materialism
(determinism by the material)
at this level derives from
the coercive use of conditional
provision of material needs.
In all societies, including
those in the Realm (kingdom of Freedom
( socialist, communist future
and ancient) , all people
must , of course, "obey"
the laws of physics,
chemistry, biology,
physiology, objective
reality etc. "physics", in
the general sense.
The "higher" (cultural, semiotic. super-structrual, social
conditioning traditions, "super-natural,
aesthetic, artistic etc.) human
activities are limited or negatively determined ( See Marshall Sahlins'
_Culture and Practical Reason_ on
biological limits of culture) by the
productive and destructive activities, the activities that produce biological
necessities or deprive human biological necessities (Althougn, in human
IDEAS, SYMBOLS, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE,
because of the
arbitrary central definition of the symbol ("sign" in French)
there is non-necessary connection.
_Arbitrary_ connection
is the opposite of _necessary_ connection. This is the sense
in which superstructure is not
subject to scientific analysis the
way that infrastructure is. Idea systems do simulate
necessity as rules, such as
rules of grammar or
cultural rules, including state enforced laws
Also in formal logic, "necessary"
arises in
> _modus ponens_, modus tolens
or "if-then", if p, then q, q is a
necessary
> condition of p, i.e.
not q,not p. This is arbitrary
and abstract necessity. In the Realm
of Necessity, ( Marx and Engels
used the
> term "necessity" here precisely
to make the point I am making here)
> there is a science of human
conduct based on the things
that human must
> do, i.e. necessity. As Marx and Engels had
to explain to "the Germans" in
_The German
> Ideology_, humans have
physiological necessities. In
meeting these,
> there arise scientifically
discernable necessary patterns in their
behavior
To continue, This means that historical materialism starts with human
nature, our human natural species qualities, Feuerbach's "species-being
" This is Marx's point in the famous
passage in the Intro to the
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy concerning social being
determining social consciousness
"At a certain stage of their
development, the material productive
forces of society come in conflict
with the existing relations of
production, or - what is but a
legal expression for the same thing
- with the property relations
within which they have been at
work hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive
forces these relations turn into
their fetters.
Then begins an epoch of social
revolution. With the change of
the economic foundation the
entire immense superstructure
is more or less rapidly transformed.
In considering such transformations
a distinction should always be
made between the material
transformation of the economic
conditions of production, which
can be determined with the precision
of natural science, and the legal,
political, religious, aesthetic or
philosophic - in short, ideological
forms in which men become
conscious of this conflict and fight
it out. Just as our opinion of an
individual is not based on what he
thinks of himself, so can we not
judge such a period of transformation
by its own consciousness; on the
contrary, this consciousness must
be explained rather from the
contradictions of material life,
from the existing conflict between
the social productive forces and
the relations of production. "
Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/ critique-pol-economy/preface- abs
The economic conditions may be
articulated "with the precision
of a natural science"
because in that sector of society biological
necessities or needs are met, and
as discussed above, thereby necessary
connections reside. Necessary connections
are the business of science.
Being determines consciousness, but intermitently
However, being determines
consciousness discontinuously.
("primarily and ultimately").
Meanwhile, in between time,
being and consciousness are
reciprocally determiining.
Being , in the form of class struggle,
determines consciousness in history.
However, the revolutions
which are the points of
determination or change
by class struggle are
intermittent and rare.
Most of the time consciousness
or ideology is not changing,
is not in a revolutionary
state of transformation.
Most of the time society is
in a status quo, a relative
equilibrium , is not changing
fundamentally.
This is somewhat analogous
to the punctuated equilibrium
of Stephen Jay Gould in natural
history, with the punctuations
being the revolutions when being
determines, asserts itself, like the
roof falling in periodically asserts
the law of gravity, when
contradictions reach a crisis.
It is the long equilibria that
cause the confusion and make
people think that consciousness
has determined being in history's
revolutionary changes,
or the idealist error.
Also, there is a sense in which
consciousness as a system of
ideas does determine people's
conduct. When an idea grips
the masses , it becomes a material
force; and lots of ideas grip the
masses. In fact , the masses
only act based on ideas that
grip them. What revolutions do
is change the system of ideas
that determines peoples' conduct.
And only class struggles change
systems of ideas or ideologies.
This is the fundamental sense
of being determines consciousness
or part of the theory of historical materialism.
As Marx says
"...so can we not
judge such a period of transformation
by its own consciousness; on the
contrary, this consciousness must
be explained rather from the
contradictions of material life,
from the existing conflict between
the social productive forces and
the relations of production. " "
In big historical changes,
Necessity is the mother of invention.
, the mother of revolution. The
necessary connections in economy and
class structure periodically, though
rarely , break through to "invent" a new superstructure
revolutionary ideas. Necessity is the mother of
invention, new ideas.
Ideology is the stabilizer of convention.
Ideologies are formal logics, based
on the principle of identity as their
first principle. Formal
logics are not "self-changing", they
abdure contradictions ( non-identity)
tend to sustain convention, avoid
invention of new principles. This
is why we don't think our way to
revolution. This is why dialectical
logic , with contradiction as its
first principle, is rooted in class
struggle , reflecting real or
material contradictions.
The Second Thesis on Feuerbach -
the test of theory is practice
Thus, the most practically
reasonable and rational course
is for the working class of our
era to overthrow capitalism and
establish socialism. This would
be the optimum for the class
self-interest of the working class ,
collectively and individually
in its billions of people. Yet, we
are in a lag time, the long lag
time of the "equilibrium" before
the punctuation of revolution.
Irrational ideas, from the
standpoint of the working class,ideas of many types
compete with the rational idea
of revolutionary class struggle
for gripping the working masses.
False consciousness, capitalist ideology is
determining being, keeping it
stuck in capitalist relations of production.
Do any of the fancy Marxist theories
which interrogate the principle
of being determines consciousness
have solutions to the riddles of the
irrational, anti-class self-interest
ideologies, systems of ideas and
images which are gripping the
masses and blinding them to
their historic revolutionary mission ?
That is a question on c
onsciousness for today's challengers to materialism who also claim to
be Marxist in some sense.
An even more fundamental
understanding of consciousness
must come through an augmented
Marxist feminism. As the historically
constituted class of oppressed
and exploited reproductive or c
aring laborers, the creators of
subjects en masse, women have
been the uncredited makers of
consiousness in history. This is
not just in childrearing , although that is obviously important, but in all
caring labor which is critical in
shaping and repairing the self.
This includes housework, for the
house or the home is that shelter
where the adult self is itself away
from work in the capitalist daily
geography of the person.Thus,
women's liberation and recovery
of women's history is fundamental
to the science of consciousness.
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/m-fem/1998m07/ msg00006.htm
(Here is a reiteration of the above thesis)
Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism
A three act play with beginning,
middle and end, and non-dogmatic
improvisation. Several vulgar parts
Double materialist
determination; there are two
levels of
determination, in materialism
attitude toward
the relationship between
thought and being:
1)"economics" and 2) "physics".
1)"economics"
While society remains in
the Realm of Necessity ,
ruling classes control
masses by conditioning
fulfillment of the _material_
needs of the exploited
classes on the exploited
classes ' producing surpluses
for the ruling , exploiting
classes. The materialism
(determinism by the material)
at this level derives from
the coercive use of conditional
provision of material needs.
2) "physics"
In all societies, including
those in the Realm of Freedom
( socialist, communist future
and ancient) , all people
must , of course, "obey"
the laws of physics,
chemistry, biology,
physiology, objective
reality etc. "physics", in
the general sense.
The first level above is based
in the specific biological necessities
of the second level.
There is a third level of
materialist determination in
the Marxist thesis. It is also
economic. Marx and Engels
(Engels and Marx) claim that
history is a history of
class struggles. The
answer to the question
"Why is history a history of
class struggles ?" is the
philosophy of historical
materialism. Why is it that
economic material relationship
of exploiting and exploited
classes causes the changes
which are called "history" ? The
alternatives at the time Marx wrote
the
thesis were especially Great Men in
state and economic power
and Big Ideas as in Philosophies
of Great Men.
Marx in wanting to take a scientific
approach to the question, looked to
necessity upon the theory that science
details necessary connections between
things. There is no necessity as strict in
the realms of ideas or Great Men as
the necessity of biology, and by extension
the area of economics of material
production of minimal life sustaining
necessities or Being or Existence
There still must be made an
argument as to why and what
changes by class struggle
determination in the sense that
history is a history of class
struggles. What changes through
the course of history ?
If it were the structure of
the relationship between
classes, then what about
tautology ?
So, Big Ideas (or Consciousness)
and Great
Men _types_
change as the change
that is history.
However, Being determines
consciousness
intermittently, rarely in terms
of the total time of the many
generations of people. Most
generations don't experience
a fundamental or revolutionary
change.
And so on the rare, intermittent
determinism of the structure of
ideas by the Realm proper of
Necessity:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1998- March/007351.html
Although biology only limits
us human beings because
we have
culture (super-natures and natures )
this contradiction between biology
and culture is still where it
is at in generating universals
or big
generals.
Being determines consciousness
is still a focal rule of thumb (guide
to action) for building a universal,
real common interests among huge
numbers of people, the masses.
My first post-Marx development
of species-being is to derive women's
liberation organically from
historical materialism's premises,
as Marx and
Engels derive workers' liberation
from those species-being historical
premises. It is a correction of
classical Marxism, but based on Marxsim's
own premises. In ways its
too vulgar for pomos and fancy marxists.
However, the pomos and
their old cousins, Frankfurt
school, Gramsci,
exitentialists, et al. all the fancy
marxists have taught us something:
being determines consciousness
discontinuously, intermittmently, rarely.
Through most of the actual
time of history ( day-to-day life; quotidien), consciousness
and being are
reciprocally determining.
Only rarely, in revolutions,
primarily and
ultimately does being
utterly determine consciousness.
Today, that means that the
direct naked appeal to the working class'
class self-interest is inadequate
in itself-necessary but not sufficient
in the formal logical sense -to
inspire revolution. That appeal
cannot be
dropped - the vast majority
are working class, wage
laborers - but must be
complemented with appeals to other consciousness, other consciousness =
determined by being
(gender, for example) and
consciousness that is
determined more by consciousness.
Overall one wants to change
the world based on interpreting it,
changing
it through practical-critical activity,
a unity of theory and practice
still.
(to be continued)
Sent from my iPhone
Let the Beauties beautify you, you beast
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, sonny . You'll be a lot happier in life , if you surrender in the Battle of the Sexes. Be a Ladies' gentleman , and I do mean gentle. There's an angel deep down inside all women, but she's not necessarily going to share it with you if you play rough boy.
Friday, January 6, 2017
Remix of Blackwell; concrete / abstract symbolling
A large portion of human thinking is about "things" we cannot see, hear, touch or feel, but only contemplate through symbols-words. Almost all animal thinking is about things they can sense or memories of things they've sensed as individuals in the past.
Through our knowledge of words individual's knowledge is knowledge of what others have sensed. Human individual knowledge is mostly social knowledge; "I" knowledge is "We" knowledge . Most animal knowledge is "I" knowledge.
////
Someone said : "We have two kinds of knowledge: 1)Knowledge of matters of fact 2)Knowledge of relations of ideas as in the formal,abstract statements of math and logic."
CB:Human's have sense data knowledge of objective reality and knowledge of symbols/metaphor/high abstraction; we know trees and we know forests. Other species only know trees, concrete abstractions.
Someone else: "Greetings to the group. A new member. Give me latest. Are we still monkeys?"
We have culture/language/metaphor/algebra/ high abstract thinking ; monkeys , chimps nor gorillas do not, can't have it.
Homo Erectus had high abstract thinking 1. 7 million years ago.
By the way , we also have a common ancestor with bananas ; it's just further back on the "tree of life" in time than the one with chimps.
Darwin's less mentioned big principle is that _all_ life is related through the original life forms.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126553081
Neanderthals were early humans , otherwise they couldn't have mated with the other early humans.
Bet the Neanderthals dug the other early humans more than they dug other Neanderthals. How else would the Neanderthals fade into the masses ?
Had you heard of Antoinette Blackwell's critique of Darwin ?! It is of Descent of Man, which really is the founding text of biological anthropology , though never really labelled such in classes or texts of my memory. Blackwell founds theoretical biological anthropology, in my opinion. And today's bio-anthro is still not where she is theoretically, because it remains masculinist. Always looking for "environmental changes" to explain human evolution. It is sexual selection, by females , not survival selection by the environment , food and predators , that is the main driver of human evolution ! Eve founded eugenics .
On Dec 17, 2016, at 4:32 PM, Rowe, Bruce M. wrote:
Dear Charles,
These are all fascinating ideas! Unfortunately, they are very complex and would need analysis and research on multiply levels. I have actually been interested in concepts like this for a long time. Bipedalism certainly did change sexual communication. Some researchers have suggested that the large gluteus maximus of human is a permanent estrus display. There is the Gestural Hypothesis of the origin of language, which as the name of the hypothesis suggests, postulates that signing evolved in to oral language.
. I have listed a few links below that might of interest to you (you might already know of these articles and sites). I have not read all of them but some seem to reinforce what you are saying, some may not. You might want to also look at the current literature on epigenetics and there are a large number of papers on epigenetics and Lamarckism and epigenetics that you might be interested in looking at.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-006-9037-7
http://on-memetics.blogspot.com/2013/11/on-lamarckism-in-cultural-evolution.htmlhttp://on-memetics.blogspot.com/2013/11/on-lamarckism-in-cultural-evolution.html
I Gadjev - Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015 - Wiley Online Library
... The Dubliner is quite selective about 'Lamarckism' and has a very particular reading and
understanding of it ... According to him, Lamarck held 'that living organisms changed because they
wanted to ... He also elaborated on the 'classical' Lamarckian example of the giraffe: 'If you like ...
Cited by 2 Related articles All 2 versions Cite Save
[PDF] airccse.com
[PDF] Light will be thrown: The emerging science of cultural evolution
C Buskes - 2016 - airccse.com
... Darwinism, Cultural evolution, Cumulative selection, Cultural transmission, Lamarckism ... Yet despite
these Lamarckian labels, Boyd and Richerson, as well as many other ... Yet although culture is quite
common, even among animals, cultural evolution is remarkably rare. ...
Related articles All 2 versions Cite Save More
[PDF] arxiv.org
Toward an evolutionary-predictive foundation for creativity
L Gabora, S Kauffman - Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2016 - Springer
... We know of no writing on Lamarckism (eg, Burkhardt, 2013; Mayr, 1972) that is consistent with
the idea that there is no place for ... Lamarckian evolution explains human brain evolution and
psychiatric disorders. ... Lamarck, evolution, and the inheritance of acquired characters. ...
Cited by 4 Related articles All 11 versions Cite Save
[PDF] researchgate.net
[PDF] … and cultural evolution can be seamlessly integrated using the principles of communication and problem-solving: the foundations for an extended evolutionary …
A De Loof - Functional Genomics, 2015 - researchgate.net
... This is a typical feature of Lamarckian evolution (Solbrig and Solbrig 1979). ... 262 How does “Life”
evolve? Mega-evolution It is self-evident that an all-round theory of evolution [the long-sought
New Synthesis or Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES)] of biological systems ...Ideas on culture as Lamarckian-like process , and thus a Darwinian neo-teleology; Mother selection in human evolution.
I am teaching anthropology at Wayne County Community College in Detroit, Michigan , and we use your book Physical Anthropology . I would like to run a couple of ideas by you.
1) I'm thinking of our culture bearing species as having a LaMarckian-LIKE adaptive ability in that culture allows inheritance of acquired adaptive characteristics by one generation from parent , grandparent and dead generations of the species; acquired by human invention.
2) This creates a Darwinian neo-teleology for Natural History ( replacing the theological teleology with "Man" as the direction toward which natural history tends that Darwin's theory negated); because culture as a LaMarckian-like adaptive process does not depend on a random and coincidental fit between the survival problem posed by the environment and the genetic solution to the problem . What is inherited , extrasomatically, is designed to solve a survival problem posed by the environment .
///
On the origin of culture and humanity: Perhaps upright-bipedalism/ ORIGIN OF HANDS was selected for because , NOT BECAUSE HANDS ALLOWED THE INVENTION OF TOOLS FOR HUNTING OR PROCESSING MEAT BUT AS THE FIRST INSTRUMENTS OF LANGUAGE, SOUND MAKERS -MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. So,Homo Habilis had language as music. Also, dancing or body language . Culture ! Culture as communicating symbolically with music was one selective advantage of hands. No stone tools until Homo Habilis because no use for production . But culture originates with hands as sound communication-music.
More importantly music conferred mating -courting advantage on the musician . Especially music and dancing. In general , culture bestows all around superior courting skills, manners. They are the original manners.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly , erect posture exposes genitalia of both sexes to sight more than on all fours. It is sexier . So, erect posture gives the ultimate selective advantage compared to on all fours: superior differential fertility !
Beautifying the Beast theory of prettifying trend in morphology among hominins ( hominids with hands):
Why this trend of reduction of sexual dimorphism , rough and big and protruding faces ? Because human females were the first scientists of genealogical and reproductive physiology ; noticing a correlation between appearance of their children and which male they let fertilize them . Mother Nature selection or Mother as natural selector .
This derives theoretically from Antoinette Blackwell's feminist critique of Darwin's masculinism, validated by modern Darwinisms recognition that differential fertility is more important than differential mortality in determining fitness
There are a couple of other "lemmas," .
Do you have any criticisms ?
Sent from my iPhone
Blackwellian critique; abstract , not individually sensed , symboling
Dear Prof. Rowe,
I
1) I'm thinking of our culture bearing species as having a LaMarckian-LIKE adaptive ability in that culture allows inheritance of acquired adaptive characteristics by one generation from parent , grandparent and dead generations of the species; acquired by human invention.
2) This creates a Darwinian neo-teleology for Natural History ( replacing the theological teleology with "Man" as the direction toward which natural history tends that Darwin's theory negated); because culture as a LaMarckian-like adaptive process does not depend on a random and coincidental fit between the survival problem posed by the environment and the genetic solution to the problem . What is inherited , extrasomatically, is designed to solve a survival problem posed by the environment .
///
On the origin of culture and humanity: Perhaps upright-bipedalism/ ORIGIN OF HANDS was selected for because , NOT BECAUSE HANDS ALLOWED THE INVENTION OF TOOLS FOR HUNTING OR PROCESSING MEAT BUT AS THE FIRST INSTRUMENTS OF LANGUAGE, SOUND MAKERS -MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. So, Ardipithecus , Australopethecus and Paranthropus had language as music. Also, dancing or body language . Culture ! Culture as communicating symbolically with music was one selective advantage of hands. No stone tools until Homo Habilis because no use for production . But culture originates with hands as sound communication-music.
More importantly music conferred mating -courting advantage on the musician . Especially music and dancing. In general , culture bestows all around superior courting skills, manners. They are the original manners.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly , erect posture exposes genitalia of both sexes to sight more than on all fours. It is sexier . So, erect posture gives the ultimate selective advantage compared to on all fours: superior differential fertility !
Beautifying the Beast theory of prettifying trend in morphology among hominins ( hominids with hands):
Why this trend of reduction of sexual dimorphism , rough and big and protruding faces ? Because human females were the first scientists of genealogical and reproductive physiology ; noticing a correlation between appearance of their children and which male they let fertilize them . Mother Nature selection or Mother as natural selector .
This derives theoretically from Antoinette Blackwell's feminist critique of Darwin's masculinism, validated by modern Darwinisms recognition that differential fertility is more important than differential mortality in determining fitness
There are a couple of other "lemmas," .
Do you have any criticisms ?
Charles Brown
Rudi
Thanks for sharing. I am also dealing with lamarkian adaptation, but mostly in social evolution, even social behaviour as a cause of biological changes. Lamarkian prosesses probably exist in biological adaptations as well, but valid confirmation is needed. Different use of terms is a problem in biology, like the almost random use of epigenetics instead of genetic plasticity or lamarkian changes. Additionally, conclusions by male researchers only, must be triple checked in as much detail as possible. Anthropologisers had to learn it the hard way, other social sciences are still behind
Thank you, Rudi Sherban
I'd say social evolution or cultural evolution is definitely LaMarckian in that institutions acquired by invention are inherited.
Since these inherited acquired characteristics are adaptive in the Darwinian sense they are a LaMarckian-like process . Just not in the cells or DNA mutation .
Subject: Sexes throughout nature
http://biosex.univ-paris1.fr/fileadmin/Axe_de_recherche_BIOSEX/Blackwell-1.pdf
We have two kinds of knowledge: 1)Knowledge of matters of fact 2)Knowledge of relations of ideas as in the formal,abstract statements of math and logic.
///
Human's have sense data knowledge of objective reality and knowledge of symbols/metaphor/high abstraction; we know trees and we know forests. Other species only know trees, concrete abstractions.
Sean Sorrell monkeys have group styles in washing sand off of fruit in Japan. I finally figured out how to distinguish this from full human culture in a very essential way
First , you have to focus on the communication between the monkeys not the fact that it's a "tool." Hell birds' nests are a pretty nifty tool, niftier than digging up bugs with twig. Birds aren't even mammals !
Monkeys and apes can only symbol very concretely , about what they can apprehend by their individual senses . Human language/culture symbols abstractly about things that _an individual _ cannot apprehend through her senses alone , but only through words witness through the senses of many other human beings including many from dead generations of our species. Chimps, monkeys can symbolize a few individual trees; humans can symbolize individual trees and forests of trees , whole species of trees.
Iris : "
Yeah but I think that the textbooks eould say that the issue of culture is more how the tool came to be made (instinct or learned and shared experience).
CB: Yes, that's why I said focus on the communication between the monkeys, not on the "tool."
I'm not even sure the monkeys learn to clean the fruit or the chimp learns to use the stick through symbols . They could just imitate : monkey see , monkey do. In that case , the fruit cleaning or stick for digging bugs wouldn't be culture. It would be learned , but not culturally learned, not learned from communicating through symbols. I'm one who does not think chimps have culture, contra some of the anthropologists . I'm just assuming the other sides example of the monkeys washing fruit is culture for the sake of argument. I then distinguish monkey "culture " from human culture by the above trees-forest logic. Human individuals can symbolize more than what they can sense because through words they can symbolize what thousands of individuals have sensed; chimps can only symbolize something an individual can sense.
Iris : So what we need is a different (more sophisticated) definition of culture.
CB: Yes, though I'm getting the symboling and imitating symboling from the standard anthropology . I think maybe I can take credit for my emphasis on what an individual can sense; and my emphasis on sharing other individual's sensing or experience through words ; I can especially take credit for my emphasis on sharing the experience of dead generations.
Sent f
On your point, Tom Tom Edminster:
Here's where Engels goes wrong. He thinks humans have been "productivists", not "appropriationists" for most of our species existence. By productivists I mean planting seeds, plowing, husbandring animals , heavy creative labor as opposed to hand-to-mouth appropriation of what Nature produces , gathering. Since Engels's day it has been discovered we have been productivists only for 6,000 out of 2.5 million years ( Stone Age begins 2.5 million years ago with Homo Habilis ). We were appropriationists for most of our existence:
(4) The essential difference between human and animal society is that animals are at most gatherers whilst men are producers. This single but cardinal distinction alone makes it impossible simply to transfer the laws of animal societies to human societies. It makes it possible that, as you justly remark, “Man waged a struggle not only for existence but for enjoyment and for the increase of his enjoyments ... he was ready to renounce the lower enjoyments for the sake of the higher.” Without contesting your further deductions from this, the further conclusions I should draw from my premises would be the following: – At a certain stage, therefore, human production reaches a level where not only essential necessities but also luxuries are produced, even if, for the time being, they are only produced for a minority. Hence the struggle for existence – if we allow this category as valid here for a moment – transforms itself into a struggle for enjoyments, a struggle no longer for the mere means of existence but for the means of development, socially produced means of development, and at this stage the categories of the animal kingdom are no longer applicable. But if, as has now come about, production in its capitalist form produces a far greater abundance of the means of existence and development than capitalist society can consume, because capitalist society keeps the great mass of the real producers artificially removed from the means of existence and development; if this society is forced, by the law of its own existence, continually to increase production already too great for it, and, therefore, periodically every ten years, reaches a point where it itself destroys a mass not only of products but of productive forces, what sense is there still left in the talk about the “struggle for existence?” The struggle for existence can then only consist in the producing class taking away the control of production and distribution from the class hitherto entrusted with it but now no longer capable of it; that, however, is the Socialist revolution."6
This is an important point . I teach it the first thing to my anthro class :
"(6) On the other hand I cannot agree with you that the war of every man against every man was the first phase of human development. In my opinion the social instinct was one of the most essential levers in the development of man from the ape. The first men must have lived gregariously and so far back as we can see we find that this was the case."
* * *
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
From: Charles Brown <cb31450@gmail.com>
Date: December 14, 2016 at 6:42:35 PM EST
To: ParkM@ccsu.edu
Subject: Few ideas I have
Dear Prof. Park,
I am teaching anthropology at Wayne County Community College in Detroit, Michigan
1) I'm thinking of our culture bearing species as having a LaMarckian-LIKE adaptive ability in that culture allows inheritance of acquired adaptive characteristics by one generation from parent , grandparent and dead generations of the species; acquired by human invention.
2) This creates a Darwinian, neo-teleology for Natural History ( replacing the theological teleology with "Man" as the direction toward which natural history tends that Darwin's theory negated); because culture as a LaMarckian-like adaptive process does not depend on random and coincidental fit between the survival problem posed by the environment and the genetic solution to the problem . What is inherited , extrasomatically, is designed to solve a survival problem posed by the environment .
///
On the origin of culture and humanity: Perhaps upright-bipedalism/ ORIGIN OF HANDS was selected for because , NOT BECAUSE HANDS ALLOWED THE INVENTION OF TOOLS FOR HUNTING OR PROCESSING MEET BUT AS THE FIRST INSTRUMENTS OF LANGUAGE, SOUND MAKERS -MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. So, Ardipithecus , Australopethecus and Paranthropus had language as music. Also, dancing or body language . Culture ! Culture as communicating symbolically with music was one selective advantage of hands. No stone tools until Homo Habilis because no use for production . But culture originates with hands.
More importantly music preferred mating courting advantage on the musician . Especially music and dancing. In general , culture bestows all around superior courting skills, manners. They are the original manners.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly , erect posture exposes genitalia of both sexes to sight more than on all fours. It is sexier . So, erect posture gives the ultimate selective advantage compared to on all fours: superior differential fertility !
Beautifying the Beast theory of prettifying trend in morphology among hominins ( hominids with hands):
Why this trend of reduction of sexual dimorphism , rough and big and protruding faces ? Because human females were the first scientists of genealogical and reproductive physiology ; noticing a correlation between appearance of their children and which male they let fertilize them . Mother Nature selection or Mother as natural selector .
This derives theoretically from Antoinette Blackwell's feminist critique of Darwin's masculinism, validated by modern Darwinisms recognition that differential fertility is more important than differential mortality in determining fitness
There are a couple of other "lemmas," .
Do you have any criticisms ?
Charles Brown
313-205-9086
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