Differentia specifica of human species is symbolic communication and behavior - language and culture .

Differentia specifica of human species is symbolic communication and behavior - language and culture .

BY CHARLES BROWN

I write here a dialectical critique of Engels’ essay “The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” in part based on Marx’s claim that human labor is differentiated from all other species “ labor by the role of imagination “! ( (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm ) Otherwise , in his anthropological _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ , Engels is profoundly correct on the difference between the Stone Age and Civilization and other issues.

My critique of Engels on this point is informed by the current biological ( human evolution) and cultural anthropological facts on origin of tool use , stone tool use ; and the nature of language and culture as SYMBOLIC communication and behavior . Origin of tool use and origin of language and culture is the issue Engels speculates concerning in “The Role of Labour in the transition from Ape to Man“. My basic difference with him is that language and culture allowed the invention of labor with Stone tools created by imagination; not labor created language and culture ( symbolic communication and behavior ; see definition of symbolic signs below ) ; I plead not guilty to the charge of philosophical idealism -smiles .

The origin of humans is the origin of language and culture , NOT the origin of bipedalism and hands freed from walking on all fours . ( see pre-human , habitually bipedal primates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine) 

“Engels never finished Dialectics of Nature. Haldane, in his preface to the 1939 publication of Dialectics of Nature, regrets that it remained unpublished for a long time, and writes, “Had his remarks on Darwinism been generally known, I for one would have been saved a certain amount of muddled thinking.” One of its unfinished fragments is on the role of labor in human evolution, more specifically the evolution of the hand. It is the evolution of the hand through the process of labor—creating tools—that distinguishes humans from apes. Engels writes, “Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour.” It is not the evolution of the hand that led to our evolution as a species but the coevolution of the hand and labor as a historical process.”

The bottomline of my critique in the blog below is : Language and culture , symbolic communication and symbolically guided behavior, originate 2.5 million years ago and enable homo habilis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis) to make the first Stone tools . ( THE ORIGIN OF HUMANS IS IN THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE , SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION AND BEHAVIOR) It is NOT that the ancestral bipedal species (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine)

to homo habilis started using its hands ( freed by bipedalism ; standing on two feet instead of four freeing the hands ) and that caused them to start symbolic communication and behavior as Engels speculates . ( this is not idealist philosophical error on my part ; I will explain why not below)

Here is Engels’ essay

The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm

The following is my blog item critiquing Engels‘ essay.

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/02/more-leisure-is-homo-sapiens-species.html

More Leisure is Homo sapiens species essence ; May Day demand

More Leisure ( than our ancestral primate species had) is our species essence ( See "The Original Affluent Society" by my anthropological mentor and senior anthro major advisor ,Marshall Sahlins , in _Stone Age Economics_ ) . Foraging is a mode of direct appropriation from nature , not a mode of production; making a living by gigging smart not working hard. It was not that bi-pedalism and the origin of hands originated a new labor that caused the invention of tradition , names and words . The invention of culture and language in childcare by mothers ( I’m saying mothers invented names , words , symbolic communication to improve childcare, reproductive labor ) was extended to making a living ( the Darwinian struggle for existence) ; language and culture revolutionized the human struggle for existence by making it smarter, wiser, because of accumulation of knowledge over many generations . Language gives humans the capacity for dead generations to leave communications about their experiences to future living generations) . Also More leisure gives more time to think and thereby work even smarter.

Symbolic communication allows :

Ancestor veneration

The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors .

Engels is wrong in "The Role of Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man" when he says "First labour, after it and then with it speech ..." CB : First long childcare , then names and speech invented by mothers to do better childcare , and then a transition to LESS toil in the struggle for existence , to smarter struggle for existence informed by ancestral experience , and more leisure as compared with primate species ancestral to homo habilis and the origin of the Stone Age . Stone tools were invented to allow making a living less toilsome and more efficient .

Perhaps the topic would be better named the transition in the struggle for existence in the transition from ape to man : the origin of imagination.

Stone Age society is Societas ( anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s term in _Ancient Society_ ) beginning 2.5 million years ago ; to circa 6,000 years ago with the beginning of Civitas ( Morgan ) private property, greed , slavery and heavy labor ( as Engels teaches in _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ ) . Slavery is the origin of Hard work , work ethic. With so-called civilization, hard work ethic comes to dominate cultural ideas . So, hard labour is not our Stone Age, species-being , but civilization-being, which is a small fraction of the full time of our species history.

I think Engels anachronistically projects the determining role of labor on ideas ( the historical materialist principle ) back onto the Stone Age origins of language and culture . In fact the invention of language and culture revolutionized the bipedal primates’ struggle for existence by making it less of a struggle . Toilsome struggle was introduced with _slave_ labor in so-called civilization where historical materialist determination originates.

Nonetheless , Marx and Engels do propose transition from the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom . Freedom is Leisure and smart work through technology . Jobs lost to technological invention should be translated into more leisure time for the masses, a May Day demand.

[Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 05:54:49 -0700

What about the transition in labor in the transition from ape to man ? This essay uses "labor" in the sense that it is something that apes do; it is their struggle for existence , for survival in the Darwinian sense . So, it is not the same "labor" ( or is it work ?) that produces capitalist surplus value in _Capital_I, but the “labor “ more general to all animals that Marx describes in Chapter so and so , where he says the difference between the labor of spiders and bees and that of man is imagining the project as a plan first ( this implies that spiders and bees labor).

“en social conditions. Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm

So, Marx’s implication ( contra Engels in “The Role of Labor “ ) is that in the transition from ape to man, labor transitioned in part by taking on more mental labor, imagination and planning , as a component. Imagination is a form of symbolic thinking . Symbolic thinking defines humans , differentiates humans from all other species despite the false and exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some primatologists

[Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 13:32:42 -0700 Engels: “But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.”

^^^^^ CB: Ahhh but how ? How did the experience of repetition of use of _a_ hand by one individual get transferred to the brains of the next generation and the next , become the experience of _The_ hand ? If Patriarch uses his hands thousands of times his increasing dexterity is based on accumulated experience in that one individual's brain. The next generation's brains go back to "square one" at birth and childhood . The only way to accumulate the knowledge across generations is by mediating the learning experience with language, imagination, symbolic communication The only way to "stand on the shoulders of giants" is to receive messages from them through a system of symbols, words . ( as in those days there wasn't the technology to take enough pictures) "The" hand is not the hand of an individual, but The Hand, as a concept, an organ of the species.

( Symbolic signs - words being the best example - have an _arbitrary_ relation between the sign and the thing signified . They are using something to represent something that they are not.

In my class , I write my name on the board -Charles Brown . Then I point out that the marks on the board are not me; but they are used to represent me. So a name is using something to represent something it is not . There is an arbitrary relation between a name and the person named .

The opposite of a symbolic sign is an _indexical_ sign . There is a necessary ( not arbitrary ) relationship between the sign and the thing signified . A favorite example is smoke and fire . Smoke is an indexical sign of fire .

Only humans have symbolic signs . Humans and all other animals communicate or read indexical signs ; humans have both -despite the exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some animals rights primatologists.

Symbolic and indexical signs are basic ideas of semiotics .( http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/)

The arbitrary relation between symbolic signs and thing signified gives humans a DISPLACEMENT capacity . Humans can communicate with each other about events that are not in their immediate sensory field , like things that happened a week ago , or things that are on the other side of town

See https://owlcation.com/stem/The-difference-between-animal-and-human-communication

I CLAIM TO HAVE DISCOVERED BY LOGICAL IMPLICATION THAT THE UNIQUE DISPLACEMENT CAPACITY OF HUMANS ALLOWS ACCUMULATION OF KNOWLEDGE OVER GENERATIONS BECAUSE A LIVING GENERATION CAN SHARE THE EXPERIENCE OF DEAD GENERATIONS , SHARE _DISPLACED_ EXPERIENCES .

Therefore , it was the ability to experience the displaced experiences of dead generations, symbolic thinking , that allowed the first humans to make Stone tools ( reverse of Engels’ idea)

Again , Symbolic communication allows :

Ancestor veneration

The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors .

Abolish the fascist Republican Party

Republican Party has cheated to  oligarchic or minority rule through gerrymandering , stealing Supreme Court appointments and minority Presidents . They follow Mussolini's fascist principle : 

"After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage...."

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp

We must focus on the class aspect in our most fundamental definition of fascism. Fascism is open terrorist rule by the most reactionary , racist and bellicose sections of finance capital . The Republican Party represents those sections of the bourgeoisie . It is threatening and executing policies with respect to social programs that will  _foreseeably_ result in premature deaths of 10,000's just as certainly as if they were machine gunned.  The Republican accelerated round up of immigrants , threats to expel Dreamers and others , racist threat against African and Latin immigrants equal the Nazis treatment of Jews in the early years of the regime before the holocaustic level of killing. There is no premature anti -fascism by name . The President has spoken in support of openly Nazi marchers. 

Furthermore, the American fascist tradition is the KKK. The KKK had fascist rule in sections of the US before Italy (!) . The KKK is a core constituency of the Republican base . David Duke regularly endorses Trump's actions. Republicans have leaders like Roy Moore, who says life for Black people was better in slavery. The Attorney General is a political twin of Moore. Statues of  Confederates litter the Southern landscape and rock star Kid Rock waves a Confederate flag in downtown , 85% Black Detroit.

The NRA is also a rightwing militant and armed core group of the Republican base. And another unique feature of American fascism, I'd say , is libertarian fascism. Unlike the European state centered "well ordered " police forces, America has individualist killers doing mass shootings. This is libertarian fascism para-military to the Republican Party. 

The Republican Party is a fascist party. However , even though it holds most government offices , we don't have a fascist government (yet; there is no premature anti-fascism) because of the historical luck that the Republican President is at war with our secret police and spy agencies , the FBI and CIA; and the President is a Russian agent, of sorts ; he stumbled into it. We can't rely on that not changing; we have to warn the people. There is no premature anti-fascism.

How could I forget. The Republicans are also mounting an effort to destroy the trade unions : work-for -less law iin traditional labor union stronghold Michigan, Supreme Court potential blow , Trump attacking.

President supported a Nazi march in which a woman was murdered !

"Fascism" must be used rhetorically , not based on the identity between the current situation in the Republican Party and the fascists in Europe in the 20's and 30's. If we had warned of "fascism" in the time when it actually arose, the term would not have aroused much alarm because fascism had not become what it became : fastest big murdering system of all times. Terms like tyranny, barbarism and savagery had to be used to get people's attention . Of course , technically it was not tyranny, a system in Ancient Greece. But because of the rhetorical need the term was used non-technically. Similarly with fascist today. History does not repeat itself , but it does rhyme sometimes. 

On the other hand , on the technical point, the Republican Presidential contenders all represent the most racist , bellicose, reactionary sections of finance capital. Trump threatens open terrorist rule against specially despised national and racial groups. Bush launched aggressive , unprovoked war against Iraq, a Crime Against Peace, which Hermann Goering was sentenced to death for at Nuremberg.So, Republicans are right on the edge with meeting the technical definition . There is no premature anti- fascism

Republican Party is a fully , openly fascist party now.

Someone says : "The republicans are planning to kill thousands more veterans by yanking life-support and healthcare out from under them. They have to know what they're planning will kill that many, but they just don't care.

The GOP core belief seems to be that if you can't work and pay taxes through working, you do not have a right to life -- even if you lost that ability fighting in one of the pointless wars they started. This is eerily similar to the "euthanasia program" the nazi's were operating in Germany right before the war. The elderly, the chronically ill and infirmed, the maimed (many of whom were veterans of WWI) were sent to "free" clinics to be treated. They were actually murdered, either with gas or an injection, and their survivors would receive a letter reporting about how they died from pneumonia or some other cause. Sometimes the remains were returned, sometimes they weren't."

June 2016 I said , Some like me call the Republican Party fascist, way past a whiff. "Populist"-fascist . Capable of open terrorist rule , especially targeting racial minorities , representing the most reactionary , chauvinist , bellicose sections of finance capital; there is no premature anti-fascism.

CB : Yea better to use "fascist." Fascism started and got its name in Italy. There was fascism in Spain , too. Republican Party has Italian Fascist characteristics like minority rule or oligarchy .

Joe : "I understand the word Nazi is overused, and used poorly, often. Until they kill so many innocents as Hitler did Jewish people, nobody will be in the league with Hitler.

But NOT using the word out of deference to extremist sensitivities, or out of political correctness, clearly benefits whatever group is MOST LIKE the fascists referred to. There's no doubt about that.

And if any group shares the methodology of fear-mongering, racist nationalism, and politically weaponized xenophobia, it is of the utmost importance that ordinary people recognize it.  That because the modern GOP seems to use a similar tool set, and they are very active right now.."

Bull: the Republicans are the liars , cheaters , thieves , unAmericans , not the Democrats. False equivalence of Dems and Reps helps the fascist Republicans.

AMERICANS FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

AMERICANS FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Republicans are a bunch of lying demagogues, tellers of half-lies, prevaricators.

We must get rid of the GOP ! We must get rid of the GOP 1

Like the old, old Whig Party, the ole, ole Republican Party has got to go, go, go onto the garbage heap of American history. It gets worse every day ! Every damn day , some stupid Republican says something fascist , just beyond the pale , unconscionable. There's a rightwing insanity epidemic in the tea Republican Party.

https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2015/03/americans-for-abolition-of-republican.html?m=1

No both parties do _not_ work for the same bosses ! Vote Democrat !

Republicans used to pretend that they hate tariffs , Russians , bailouts , budget deficits and debts: the Grand Ole Party of Liars only cares about getting more of the total amount of money in the system to the rich, the One Percent , the One capitalists , who already have most of it; and beating down the 99% economically and socially. This is socioeconomic fascism.

And budget deficits and debts: the Grand Ole Party of Liars only cares about getting more of the total amount of money in the system to the rich, the One Percent , the One capitalists , who already have most of it; and beating down the 99% economically and socially. This is socioeconomic fascism.

CB: Republicans' war on Women is its central fascist plank.

Jim says : "I’ve been somewhat amused to listen as both old and young progressives argue about whether Trump is a “real” fascist. I love reading about the history of antifascist resistance during the 30’s and 40’s, and have enjoyed greatly my associations with antifascist fighters from that period. But this discussion is pointless and gets us nowhere.

The facts are the Republican Party has waged an unceasing campaign against American democratic institutions for the last eight years, since the election of Obama, who they tried to delegitimize with their birther movement.  You don’t think they have become a fascist movement? Fine! Call it what you want, put whatever label you want on it.

Now days the Republicans don’t even try to hide their nihilism. 

They have tried to shut the government down, destroy Social Security and Medicare and shred the safety net. They have fought tooth and nail against any effort to hold Wall Street and the financial industry accountable for their deprivations against the American people. 

Their scapegoats extend to Muslims, undocumented immigrants, feminists and people of color who they blame for all of America’s woes. They also attack and harass scientists who try to warn us about the dangers and consequences of climate change.

They tried and are still attempting to undermine the Iranian nuclear agreement, going so far as to use the Israeli prime minister as a weapon against our president.

They have had some success in sabotaging health care reform, suppressing voting rights, gerrymandering voting districts, destroying workers’ ability to collectively bargain, and restricting women’s rights to control their bodies.  They continue to vilify gay and transgender people. They have sought to obstruct and undermine the entire federal judiciary, not just the Supreme Court.

They have encouraged their followers to consider violence and taking up arms if they are unable to win at the ballot box. State Republican leaders have threatened succession.

The modern Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln. Nor is it the party of Eisenhower. It’s not even the party of Nixon. It represents the greatest threat to America since the Confederate states succession. 

Let us not be distracted by the Bundy’s, the play-soldier militias, the Klan or the other assorted pathetic pawns. They have no power beyond a few guns and bullets that give their empty lives some purpose. It’s the Republican Party that is the greatest threat to our society, and the sooner we understand that the sooner we will be able to unite to counter their threat.

Is the Left going to discuss the  fact that we are in fascism ? No because the Republicans are the fascist party and the Democrats are NOT a fascist party nor are the Democrats enablers , or fake opponents of the Republicans. So, the Left ( all of it almost , so ultra-left is redundant) can't call out the fascism because that would violate their number one dogmatic principle that there is no difference between the parties.

You both are right on !  Trumpist Republican Party is the Reaganite Republican Party in the nude , revealing it's essence, at its logical conclusion : anti-working class, white supremacist and male supremacist

Thomas : "The  Republican Party is turning into a fascist party much like  Le Pen's National Front in France. The GOP is now so far to the the right from even the GOP of even Barry Goldwater's and dare I say, Ron Reagan."

George : "Goldwater, Nixon and Ronnie Raygun laid the foundation for the current mess. They hid behind lofty slogans, but they were fundamentally saying the same crap!"

Bruce : "We are not allowed to compared the Nazi-like behavior of the Republican Party to Nazis because it upsets them. So here's a question. In the 1930s, who did people refer the actual Nazis to earlier in history? What was the most evil group people would have heard of to call the Nazis?"

CB: Exactly: use of "Nazis" or "fascist" now is rhetorical , even if the Republicans are not just like Hitler or Mussolini's parties. Calling Hitler a Nazi then wouldn't inform people because the Nazis hadn't murdered tens of millions yet. You'd have to say tyrants or barbarians . Rosa Luxembourg said "Socialism or Barbarism " before the Nazis.

Got to call Republicans fascists to alarm people, though Americans are generally very ignorant of history , even World War II history.

CB: US is under a fascist Republican Troika - Congress , President and Supreme Court ; evolved fascism since Reagan  

It continues...

-The Supreme Court just upheld the Trump anti-Muslim travel ban.

-The Supreme Court also just upheld the right of pro-life centers to prevent abortions by deceiving women about their true purposes. To do otherwise, the "Court" claims, would infringe on the centers' First Amendment rights...

Sent from my iPhone

For unity of song and dance

By Leo He Zhao

Zizek and his kind of Western academic leftists have a lot of good things to offer, but when they talk about dance music or dancing they are on a Creationist Museum level of utter stupidity.

They talk of collectivity, conviviality, connection, and empathy, but tragically are hermetically sealed from entire horizons of meaning which is rooted in such things, in social dancing cultures where sisterhood, brotherhood, and solidarity have a physical basis in the creative movement and mingling of bodies.

And this is of course the result of emerging from European cultural traditions entirely dominated by the proto-bourgeois aristocracy, with their "classical" cannon which demonises rhythm-focused musics and suppresses social dancing; and intellectual traditions which proceed from a divorce of mind from body.

And of course these sad, myopic, provincial, ignorant, and arrogant Euro-centrics think dancing is simply not that important a topic, like men born without testicles claiming, as if it's a universal truth, that sex is only a "set of obscene gestures".

https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-western-philosophical-canon-is-xenophobic-and-racist

Western philosophy is racist

Academic philosophy in ‘the West’ ignores and disdains the thought traditions of China, India and Africa. This must change

Bryan W Van Norden

is Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, professor of philosophy at Vassar College in New York, and chair professor at Wuhan University in China. His latest book is Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017), with a foreword by Jay L Garfield. 

2,800 words

Edited by Nigel Warburton

REPUBLISHING NOT PERMITTED

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Mainstream philosophy in the so-called West is narrow-minded, unimaginative, and even xenophobic. I know I am levelling a serious charge. But how else can we explain the fact that the rich philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are completely ignored by almost all philosophy departments in both Europe and the English-speaking world?

Western philosophy used to be more open-minded and cosmopolitan. The first major translation into a European language of the Analects, the saying of Confucius (551-479 BCE), was done by Jesuits, who had extensive exposure to the Aristotelian tradition as part of their rigorous training. They titled their translation Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, or Confucius, the Chinese Philosopher (1687).

One of the major Western philosophers who read with fascination Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). He was stunned by the apparent correspondence between binary arithmetic (which he invented, and which became the mathematical basis for all computers) and the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the Chinese classic that symbolically represents the structure of the Universe via sets of broken and unbroken lines, essentially 0s and 1s. (In the 20th century, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung was so impressed with the I Ching that he wrote a philosophical foreword to a translation of it.) Leibniz also said that, while the West has the advantage of having received Christian revelation, and is superior to China in the natural sciences, ‘certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of mortals’.

The German philosopher Christian Wolff echoed Leibniz in the title of his public lecture Oratio de Sinarum Philosophia Practica, or Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese (1721). Wolff argued that Confucius showed that it was possible to have a system of morality without basing it on either divine revelation or natural religion. Because it proposed that ethics can be completely separated from belief in God, the lecture caused a scandal among conservative Christians, who had Wolff relieved of his duties and exiled from Prussia. However, his lecture made him a hero of the German Enlightenment, and he immediately obtained a prestigious position elsewhere. In 1730, he delivered a second public lecture, De Rege Philosophante et Philosopho Regnante, or On the Philosopher King and the Ruling Philosopher, which praised the Chinese for consulting ‘philosophers’ such as Confucius and his later follower Mengzi (fourth century BCE) about important matters of state.

Chinese philosophy was also taken very seriously in France. One of the leading reformers at the court of Louis XV was François Quesnay (1694-1774). He praised Chinese governmental institutions and philosophy so lavishly in his work Despotisme de la China (1767) that he became known as ‘the Confucius of Europe’. Quesnay was one of the originators of the concept of laissez-faire economics, and he saw a model for this in the sage-king Shun, who was known for governing by wúwéi (non-interference in natural processes). The connection between the ideology of laissez-faire economics and wúwéi continues to the present day. In his State of the Union address in 1988, the US president Ronald Reagan quoted a line describing wúwéi from the Daodejing, which he interpreted as a warning against government regulation of business. (Well, I didn’t say that every Chinese philosophical 

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM BY ABOLISHING THE REAGANITE REPUBLICAN PARTY !

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM BY ABOLISHING THE REAGANITE REPUBLICAN PARTY !

Reagan started anti-Liberalism with that “tax-and-spend “ lie ; he exploded the military budget .

He cut LBJ Great Society programs .

Busted the PATCO Union

Came up with Star Wars Monstrosity

401-K’s making people dependent on stock market for pension while stealing money from Social Security

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM!

Reaganism is all about destroying yes they did ! Reaganism is all about destroying the New Deal , the War on Poverty and Civil Rights Acts .

Reagan turned New Deal Liberal into a dirty word -“tax and spend Liberals,” “ the government is not your friend, “ , cut welfare , bust PATCO u  ion , anti-Warren Court appointments, tax cuts for the rich  the New Deal , the War on Poverty and Civil Rights Acts .

Reagan turned New Deal Liberal into a dirty word -“tax and spend Liberals,” “ the government is not your friend, “ , cut welfare , bust PATCO u  ion , anti-Warren Court appointments, tax cuts for the rich

Obama was the beginning of the change left with the first reversals of Reaganism. Left in America in the 21st Century is Reversing Reaganism   . The initial reversal change came with Obama.

Sanders proposes to advance further left.

It’s Reaganism being reversed . It started with Obama’s actions . The reversal of Reaganism is the revival of the Great Society and the New Deal and the beginning of a New New Deal.

Reaganism: cut social programs that protect the People; seriously , no exaggeration . Government for Profiteers instead of People .

An important part of the Reaganite assault on FDR's New Deal IS reducing taxes on the Bourgeoisie. The top rate was 90% under the New Deal.

Here Reagan did a one two punch on the New Deal reduce taxes on the One Percent , and tax social security of the 99%

Reaganism is a 40 year Republican assault on trade unions initiated by Reagan’s firing the Air Traffic Controllers .

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-241252

What is Reaganism in 2016 ? It is rightwing government continuing the War on the Poor, neo-White Supremacy, escalation of the  arms race and warmongering, union busting. It was initiated by Reagan's Presidential leadership , but politically metastasized among millions of Americans , and was continued after Reagan's Presidency in the Gingrich Gang in Congress with its Contract on America; Bill Clinton's ending welfare as we know it, even, sadly; Bush's Crimes Against Peace in Iraq and Afghanistan and tax cuts for the rich;the tea Republicans and all current Republican Party Presidential nominees, and most Republican politicians with power , and Blue Dog Democrats for 35 years .

One of Obama's greatest political achievements is halting and reversing the federal War on the Poor with the first War on Poverty program since LBJ: Obamacare and opposing tax cuts for the rich. Obama has UNstayed the Reaganite course in the Presidency; Reagan's action was only in the Presidency at first; there were Democratic majorities in Congress for all his term. Reaganism spread to Congress and the states later.

Reaganism is all around anti-99% policies of government fraudulently presented as pro-working class; it is tragically successful demagogy.

.


WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM BY ABOLISHING THE REAGANITE REPUBLICAN PARTY !

Reagan started anti-Liberalism with that “tax-and-spend “ lie ; he exploded the military budget .

He cut LBJ Great Society programs .

Busted the PATCO Union

Came up with Star Wars Monstrosity

401-K’s making people dependent on stock market for pension while stealing money from Social Security

WE MUST REVERSE REAGANISM!

Reverse Reaganism has been the task of the 99% since 1980.

Not the Obama administration

Sam : "The "Better Business Climate" political/economic model for every presidential administration

 ( not the Obama administration )

since 1980 has pursued these three policies:

(1) Cut taxes, especially on the wealthy and large corporations,

(2) Cut government regulation, especially on high finance, and

(3) Cut government social spending.

To learn more about how that happened and what we need to do to undo the damage done, register for one of the "Reversing Runaway Inequality," 1/2 day, free workshops sponsored by Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice, Communications Workers of America and Metro Detroit A. Philip Randolph Institute at semjwj2@gmail.com

Neo-liberalism is better termed Reaganism.  "Liberal" in the US since FDR represents proletarian victories in the contested state power . So, it is confusing and academically sectarianism terminology, counter-intuitive politically for the great mass of American voters to label Reaganism , neo- "New Dealism"/Liberalism.  The proletariat's main political task for 30 years has been to reverse Reaganism, Reaganonmics. Bring back LIBERALISM . That's why neo-liberal for Reaganism is academic disconnect to mass consciousness. It is also academic ultra-leftism , taking a sneaky swipe at the Democratic Party. Of course, Bill Clinton was significantly Reaganite; that's how bad Reaganism got to be. The worse is at the state level in many cases , as in Michigan , Englerites, now Snake Snyder.

With Obama , change has come; the Reaganite direction in the Presidency has been halted , and its reversal begun; the Tea Party struck back; but the All Peoples front and anti -Monopoly Coalition majority persists ; Obama , despite many Pickett's charges by the Neo-Confederates, has accelerated reversal of Reaganism at the Presidential level. So, Obama is a Neo-Rooseveltian.

We must reverse Reaganism !
 
To reverse Reaganism , we must elect overwhelming majorities of Democrats at state and federal levels . Much of Reaganism is at the state level.


“We have to undo the attack on the middle class that started with Reagan if we want democracy back
The destruction of the middle class is destroying democracies and paving the way for authoritarian rule

https://www.salon.com/2019/10/04/we-have-to-undo-the-attack-on-the-middle-class-that-started-with-reagan-if-we-want-democracy-back_partner/

.

Women should lead the world

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/03/antoinette-blackwell-quotes.html Kastonivich :

“As the Ignorance Clears
'
I’ve said it again and again
That women should lead the world
Many make leaders with feelings
Against men their insults hurled

While the males had thousands or years
Making females second-class
We’ll think as the ignorance clears
Must give it a second glance

They have organizational skills
And will listen with their hearts
Know when baby’s suffering chills
Intuition off the charts

But mostly because they can talk
While walking at the same time
Fully function even in shock
Right on track with rhythm and rhyme
'
written by Kastinovich
'
Women have a multifaceted array of abilities, especially multitasking; they are, generally speaking, better listeners, communicators (a hearing-speaking connection in the brain), quite forgiving, more willing to put ego aside (for a cause), organizers, caretakers, nurturers, who will always find a way to take care of her people, and will even become mama bear when necessary. Sounds like ideal leaders to me. There’s a place for the men, too; they might focus more on fishing, hunting, cooking, cleaning the house, and tinkering in the garage, while the women focus on running local, state, and federal governments.
'
These posts are more than happy to be shared. Kas🌏💙✍️ http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/03/antoinette-blackwell-quotes.html

The Origin of Society by Marshall Sahlins

http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/sites/default/files/pdf/class_text_036.pdf

Marshall D Sahlins, 1960, The Origin of Society.
In (ed) Peter B Hammond, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (1964), The Macmillan Company, New York, USA. pp 59-65
Despite apparent superficial similarities between animal and human societies, the difference between them is profound: “Human social life is culturally, not biologically, determined.” The triumph of intellect over instinct — of altruism over individualism — was demonstrably basic to our evolution.
5. The Origin of Society1
This discussion of the early phases of human society considers events that occurred a million years ago, in places not specifically determined, under circumstances known only by informed speculation. It will therefore be an exercise in inference, not in observation. This means juxtaposing the social life of man’s closest relations — monkeys and apes — on the one side, with the organization of known primitive societies on the other. The gap that remains is then bridged by the mind. No living primate can be directly equated with man’s actual simian ancestor, and no contemporary primitive people is identical with our cultural ancestors. In both instances only generalized social traits — not particular, specialized ones — can be selected for historical comparison. On the primate side one must rely primarily on the few field reports of free-ranging groups and on certain pioneer studies of captive animals. These have covered the anthropoid apes, especially the gibbon and the chimpanzee (which are more closely related to man) as well as the New and Old World monkeys. On the human side the nearest contemporary approximations to the original cultural condition are societies of hunters and gatherers, pre-agricultural peoples exacting a meager livelihood from wild food resources. This cultural order dominated the Old Stone Age (one million to 10,000 or 15,000 years ago). Confidence
in the comparative procedure which equates modern hunters and gatherers with the actual protagonists of the Stone Age is fortified by the remarkable social congruence observed among these peoples, even though they are historically as separated from one another as the Stone Age is distant from modern times. They include the Australian aborigines, the Bushmen of South Africa, the Andaman Islanders, the Shoshoni of the American Great Basin, the Eskimo, and Pygmy groups in Africa, Malaya and the Philip pines. Comparison of primate sociology with the findings of anthropological research immediately suggests a startling conclusion: The way people act, and probably have always acted, is not the expression of inherent human nature. There is a quantum difference, at points a complete opposition, between even the most rudimentary human society and the most advanced subhuman primate one. The discontinuity implies that the emergence of human society required some suppression, rather than a direct expression, of man’s primate nature. Human social life is culturally, not biologically, determined.
This is not to slander the poor apes, to suggest that their social behavior is necessarily innate and unlearned. Yet it is clearly the product of their nature, of animal needs and reactions, physiological processes and psychological responses.
1 MARSHALL D. SAHLINS, “The Origin of Society,” in Scientific American, 203, No. 3 (1960), pp. 76-86. Reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher. Copyright © 1960 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.
Dr. Sahlins is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.
59

Marshall D Sahlins, 1960, The Origin of Society.
In (ed) Peter B Hammond, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (1964), The Macmillan Company, New York, USA. pp 59-65
Their social life therefore varies directly with the organic constitution of the individual and the horde. In an unchanging environment the social characteristics of a given subhuman primate species are unchanging, unless or until the species is organically transformed. The same cannot be said about human social arrangements. We are all one species, but our social orders grow and diversify, even within a constant environment, and they do so quite apart from the minor biological (racial) differences that develop among different peoples.
This liberation of human society from direct biological control was its great evolutionary strength. Culture saved man in his earliest days, clothed him, fed him and comforted him. In these times it has become possible to pile form on form in great social edifices that undertake to secure the survival of millions of people. Yet the remarkable aspect of culture’s usurpation of the evolutionary task from biology was that in so doing it was forced to oppose man’s primate nature on many fronts and to subdue it. It is an extraordinary fact that primate urges often become not the secure foundation of human social life, but a source of weakness in it.
The decisive battle between early culture and human nature must have been waged on the field of primate sexuality. The powerful social magnet of sex was the major impetus to subhuman primate sociability. This has long been recognized. But it was the British anatomist Sir Solly Zuckerman — whose attention to the matter developed from observation of the almost depraved behavior of baboons in zoos — who made sexuality the key issue of primate sociology. Subhuman primates are prepared to mate at all seasons, and although females show heightened receptivity midway through the menstrual cycle, they are often capable of sexual activity at other times.
Most significantly for the assessment of its historic role, year-round sex in higher primates is associated with year-round heterosexual social life. Among other mammals sexual activity, and likewise heterosexual society, is frequently confined to a comparatively brief breeding season.
Of course other important social activities go on in the subhuman primate horde. Group existence confers advantages, such as defense against predation, which transcend the gratification of erotic urges. In the evolutionary perspective the intense, long-term sexuality of the primate individual is the historic complement of the advantages of horde life. Nor, in considering subhuman primate sexuality, should attention be confined to coitus. The evidence grows that certain Old World monkeys—the closely related baboon, rhesus monkey and Japanese monkey — do have seasonal declines in breeding without cessation of horde life. But sex enters into subhuman primate social relations in a variety of forms, and heterosexual copulation is only one of them. Sexual mounting is involved in the establishment of dominance, which grows out of chronic competition for food, mates, and other desirable objects. It is a common element of youthful play; indeed, the female higher primate is unique among female mammals in displaying the adult sexual pattern prior to puberty. The familiar primate trait of mutual grooming — the pulling and licking out of parasites and other objects from the coat of another animal — often appears to be a secondary sexual activity. Sex is more than a force of attraction between adult males and females; it also operates among the young and between individuals of the same sex. Promiscuity is not an accurate term for it; it is indiscriminate. And while we might deem some of the forms perversions, to a monkey or an ape they are all just sociable.
60

Marshall D Sahlins, 1960, The Origin of Society.
In (ed) Peter B Hammond, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (1964), The Macmillan Company, New York, USA. pp 59-65
Sex is not an unmitigated social blessing for primates. Competition over partners, for example, can lead to vicious, even fatal, strife. It was this side of primate sexuality that forced early culture to curb and repress it. The emerging human primate, in a life-and-death economic struggle with nature, could not afford the luxury of a social struggle. Co-operation, not competition, was essential. Culture thus brought primate sexuality under control. More than that, sex was made subject to regulations, such as the incest tabu, which effectively enlisted it in the service of co-operative kin relations. Among subhuman primates sex had organized society; the customs of hunters and gatherers testify eloquently that now society was to organize sex — in the interest of the economic adaptation of the group.
The evolution of the physiology of sex itself provided a basis for the cultural reorganization of social life. As Frank Beach of Yale University has pointed out, a progressive emancipation of sexuality from hormonal control runs through the primate order. This trend culminates in mankind, among whom sex is controlled more by the intellect — the cerebral cortex — than by glands. Thus it becomes possible to regulate sex by moral rules; to subordinate it to higher, collective ends. The consequent repression of primate sexuality in primitive as well as more developed societies has taken striking forms. In every human society sex is hedged by tabus: on time, place (the human animal alone demands privacy), on the sex and age of possible partners, on reference to sex in certain social contexts, on exposing the genitalia (particularly for females), on cohabitation during culturally important activities which range in different societies from war and ceremony to brewing beer. By way of an aside, it is notable that the repression of sex in favor of other ends is a battle which, while won for the spe-
-cies, is still joined in every individual to this day. In Sigmund Freud’s famous allegory, the conflict between the self-seeking, sexually inclined id and the socially conscious superego re-enacts the development of culture that occurred in the remote past.
The design of many of these tabus is obvious: the disconcerting fascination of sex and its potentially disruptive consequences had to be eliminated from vital social activities. Thus the incest tabu is a guardian of harmony and solidarity within the family — a critical matter for hunters and gatherers, for among them the family is the fundamental economic as well as social group. At the same time, the injunction on sexual relations and marriage among close relatives necessarily forces different families into alliance and thus extends kinship and mutual aid.
It has been said that kinship, with its economic aspect of co-operation, became the plan for primitive human society. “Kinship” here means a cultural form, not a biological fact. Apes are of course genetically related to each other. But apes do not and cannot name and distinguish kinsmen, and they do not use kinship as a symbolic organization of behavior. On the other hand, cultural kinship has virtually nothing to do with biological connection. No one, for example, can be absolutely certain who his father is in a genetic sense, but in all human societies fatherhood is a fundamental social status. Almost all societies adhere, implicitly or explicitly, to the dictum of the Napoleonic code in this respect: the father of the child is the husband of the mother.
Many hunters and gatherers carry kinship to an extreme that is curious to us. By a device technically known as classificatory kinship they ignore genealogical differences between collateral and lineal kin at certain points, lumping them terminologically and in social be-
61

Marshall D Sahlins, 1960, The Origin of Society.
In (ed) Peter B Hammond, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (1964), The Macmillan Company, New York, USA. pp 59-65
-havior. Thus my father’s brother may be “father” to me, and I act accordingly. Close kinship may be extended indefinitely by the same logic: My father’s brother’s son is my “brother,” my grand father’s brother is my “grandfather,” his son is my “father,” his son my “brother,” and so on. As one observer remarked of the Australian aborigines: “It is impossible for an Australian native to have anything whatever to do with anyone who is not his relative, of one kind or another, near or distant.”
The subhuman primate horde varies in size among different species, ranging from groups in the hundreds among certain Old World monkeys to the much smaller groups, often smaller than 10, characteristic of anthropoid apes. The horde may stay together all the time, or it may scatter during daytime feeding into packs of various sorts — mate groups of males and females, females with young, males alone — and come together again at night resting places. Monkeys seem inclined to scatter in this way more than apes.
There are typically more adult females than adult males within the hordes sometimes, as in the case of the howler monkey, three times as many. This may be in part due to a faster maturation rate for females. It may also reflect the elimination of some males in the course of competition for mates. These males are not necessarily killed. They may lead a solitary life outside or on the fringes of the horde, attempting all the while to attach themselves to some group and acquire sexual partners.
The progressive emancipation of sex from hormonal control in the primate order that was noted by Beach seems to be paralleled by a progressive development from promiscuous mating to the formation of exclusive, permanent heterosexual partnerships between specific animals. Among certain New World monkeys, females with their young corn-
-prise a separate pack within the horde, and only when a female is in heat does she forsake this group for males. She does not become attached to a specific male, but, wearing them out in turn. goes from one to another. The Old World rhesus horde and mate relations are similar except that a receptive female is taken over primarily by dominant males, a step in the direction of exclusiveness. In the anthropoid gibbon the trend toward exclusiveness is fully developed: the entire horde is typically composed of an adult male, a permanent female consort and their young. As yet it is not safe to state unequivocally that such progressive change runs through the entire primate order. It does appear that the higher subhuman primates presage the human family more than do the lower.
The primate horde is practically a closed social group. Each horde has a territory, and local groups of most species defend their ground (or trees) against encroachment by others of their kind. The typical relation between adjacent hordes is that of enmity, especially, it seems, if food is short. Their borders are points of social deflection, and contact between neighbors is often marked by belligerent vocal cries, if it does not erupt into fatal violence.
Territorial relations among neighboring human hunting-and-gathering bands (a term used technically to refer to the cohesive local group) offer an instructive contrast. The band territory is never exclusive. Individuals and families may shift from group to group, especially in those habitats where food resources fluctuate from year to year and from place to place. In addition, a great deal of interband hospitality and visiting is undertaken for purely social and ceremonial reasons. Although bands remain autonomous politically, a general notion of tribalism, based on similarity in lan-
62

Marshall D Sahlins, 1960, The Origin of Society.
In (ed) Peter B Hammond, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (1964), The Macmillan Company, New York, USA. pp 59-65
-guage and custom and on social collaboration, develops among neighboring groups. These tendencies are powerfully reinforced by kinship and the cultural regulation of sex and marriage. Among all modern survivors of the Stone Age, marriage with close relatives is forbidden, while marriage outside the band is at least preferred and sometimes morally prescribed. The kin ties thereby created become social pathways of mutual aid and solidarity connecting band to band. It does not seem unwarranted to assert that the human capacity to extend kinship was a necessary social condition for the deployment of early man over the great expanses of the planet.
Another implication of interband kinship deserves emphasis: Warfare is limited among hunters and gatherers. Indeed, many are reported to find the idea of war incomprehensible. A massive military effort would be difficult to sustain for technical and logistic reasons. But war is even further inhibited by the spread of a social relation — kinship — which in primitive society is often a synonym for “peace.” Thomas Hobbes’s famous fantasy of a war of “all against all” in the natural state could not be further from the truth. War increases in intensity, bloodiness, duration and significance for social survival through the evolution of culture, reaching its culmination in modern civilization. Paradoxically the cruel belligerence that is popularly considered the epitome of human nature reaches its zenith in the human condition most removed from the pristine. By contrast, it has been remarked of the Bushmen that “it is not in their nature to fight.”
The only permanent organization within the band is the family, and the band is a grouping of related families, on the average 20 to 50 people altogether. Bands lack true government and law; the rules of good order are synonymous with customs of proper behavior
toward kinsmen. In certain ways this system of etiquette is even more effective than law. A breach of etiquette cannot go undetected, and punishment in the form of avoidance, gossip and ridicule follows hard upon offense.
The primitive human family, unlike the subhuman primate mate group, is not based simply on sexual attraction. Sex is easily available in many band societies, both before and outside marriage, but this alone does not necessarily create or destroy the family. The incest tabu itself implies that the human family cannot be the social outcome of erotic urges. Moreover, sexual rights to a wife may even be waived in the interest of securing friendly relations with other men, as in the famous Eskimo custom of wife lending. This, incidentally, is only one cultural device among many for enlisting marriage and sex in the creation of wide social alliance. In remarkable contrast to subhuman primate unions, often created and maintained in violence, marriage is in band society a means of securing peace. Adultery and quarrels over women are not unknown among primitive peoples. But such actions are explicitly considered antisocial. Among monkeys and apes, on the other hand, comparable events create the social order.
Marriage and the family are institutions too important in primitive life to be built on the fragile, shifting foundations of “love.” The family is the decisive economic institution of society. It is to the hunter and gatherer what the manor was to feudal Europe, or the corporate factory system is to capitalism: it is the productive organization. The primary division of labor in band economy is that between men and women. The men typically hunt and make weapons; the women gather wild plants and take care of the home and children. Marriage then is an alliance between the two essential social elements of production. These fac-
63

Marshall D Sahlins, 1960, The Origin of Society.
In (ed) Peter B Hammond, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (1964), The Macmillan Company, New York, USA. pp 59-65
-tors complement each other — the Eskimos say: “A man is the hunter his wife makes him” — and they lock their possessors in enduring marital and familial relations. Many anthropologists have testified that in the minds of the natives the ability to cook and sew or to hunt are much more important than is beauty in a prospective spouse.
The economic aspect of primitive marriage is responsible for many of its specific characteristics. For one thing, it is the normal adult state; one cannot economically afford to remain single. Hence the solitary subhuman primate male has no counterpart in the primitive band. The number of spouses is, however, limited by economic considerations among primitives. A male ape has as many mates as it can get and defend for itself; a man, no more than he can support. In fact, marriage is usually monogamous among hunters and gatherers, although there are normally no rules against polygamy. Culture, reflecting the compulsions of economics, thus dramatically altered human mating and differentiated the human family from its nearest primate analogues.
“Peck orders” of dominance and sub ordination are characteristic of sub human primate social relations. Chronic competition for mates and perhaps food or other desirable objects establishes and maintains such hierarchies in every grouping of monkeys and apes. Repeated victory secures future privileges for a dominant animal; subordinates, by conditioned response, withdraw from or yield access to anything worth having. As Henry W. Nissen of the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology has observed, “the bigger animal gets most of the food; the stronger male, most of the females.” In most species males tend to dominate over females, although in certain anthropoid apes, notably the chimpanzee and the gibbon, the reverse can occur. A difference in what has been called
dominance quality seems to arise between primate suborders: in New World monkeys, dominance is “tenuous”; in Old World monkeys it may become “rough” and “brutal”; in apes, while clearly apparent, it is not so violently established or sustained. In all species, however, dominance affects a variety of social activities, including play, grooming and interhorde relations as well as sex and feeding. Compared both to subhuman primate antecedents and to subsequent cultural developments, dominance is at its nadir among primitive hunters and gatherers. Culture is the oldest “equalizer.” Among animals capable of symbolic communication, the weak can always collectively connive to overthrow the strong. On the other side, political and economic means of tyranny remain underdeveloped among hunters and gatherers.
There is some evolutionary continuity in dominance behavior from primate to primitive; among hunters and gatherers leadership, such as it is, falls to men. Yet the supremacy of men in the band as a whole does not necessarily mean the abject subordination of women in the home. Once more the weapon of articulate speech must be reckoned with; the Danish anthropologist Kaj Birket-Smith observes: “A census would certainly show a higher percentage of henpecked husbands among the Eskimos than in a civilized country (except, perhaps, the U. S.!); most Eskimos have a deeply rooted respect for their wives’ tongues.” The men who lead the band are the wiser and older. They are not, however, respected for their ability to commandeer limited supplies of desired goods. On the contrary, generosity is a necessary qualification for prestige; the man who does most for the band, who sacrifices most, will be the one most loved and heeded by the rest. The test of status among hunters and gatherers is usually the reverse of that among monkeys and apes;
64

Marshall D Sahlins, 1960, The Origin of Society.
In (ed) Peter B Hammond, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (1964), The Macmillan Company, New York, USA. pp 59-65
it is a matter of who gives away, not who takes away. A second qualification for leadership is knowledge — knowledge of ritual, tradition, game movements, terrain and the other things that control social life. This is why older men are respected. In a stable society they know more than the others, and to be “old-fashioned” is a great virtue.
Knowledge of itself breeds little power. The headmen of a band can rule only by advice, not by fiat. As a Congo Pygmy leader bluntly remarked to an anthropologist, there is just no point in giving orders, “as nobody would heed them.” The titles of reference given leaders of hunting and gathering bands speak eloquently of their powers: the Shoshoni leader is “the talker,” and his Eskimo counterpart is “he who thinks.” In a primitive band each family is a more cohesive, stronger polity than the band as a whole, and each is free to manage its own affairs. Birket-Smith said: “There is no rank or class among the Eskimos, who must therefore renounce that satisfaction, which Thackeray calls the true pleasure of life, of associating with one’s inferiors.” The same may be said of other primitive societies.
The leveling of the social order that accompanied the development of culture is related to the fundamental economic change from the selfish — literally rugged — individualism of the primate to co operative kin dealings. Monkeys and apes do not co-operate economically; monkeys cannot even be taught by humans to work together, although apes can. Nor is food ever shared except in the sense that a subordinate animal may be intimidated into handing it over to a dominant one. Among primitives, on the other hand, food sharing follows automatically from the division of labor by sex. More than that, the family economy is a pooling of goods and services — “communism in living” as a famous 19th-century anthropologist called it. Mutual aid is extended
far beyond the family. It is a demand of group survival that the successful hunter be prepared to share his spoils with the unsuccessful. “The hunter kills, other people have,” say the Yukaghir of Siberia.
In a band economy goods commonly pass from hand to hand, and the circulation gains momentum in proportion to the degree of kinship among households and the importance of the goods for survival. Food, the basic resource, must always be made available to others on pain of ostracism; the scarcer it becomes, the more readily it must be given away, and for nothing. In addition, food and other things are often shared to promote friendly relations, utilitarian considerations notwithstanding. There was a time in human affairs when the only right of property that brought honor was that of giving it away.
The economic behavior of primitives obviously does not conform to the stereotype of “economic man” by which we organize and analyze our own economy. But it does conform to a realm of economics familiar to us, so familiar that no one bothers to talk about it and it lacks an economic science: kinship-friendship economics. There is much to be learned about primitive economics here, and it would not be a mere exercise in analogy, for our kin life is the evolutionary survival of relations that once encompassed society itself.
In selective adaptation to the perils of the Stone Age, human society overcame or subordinated such primate propensities as selfishness, indiscriminate sexuality, dominance and brute competition. It substituted kinship and co- operation for conflict, placed solidarity over sex, morality over might. In its earliest days it accomplished the greatest reform in history, the overthrow of human primate nature, and thereby secured the evolutionary future of the species.
65

Anthropological Psychology

THIS IS ANTHROPOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Survival Of The Nicest? A Theory Of Our Origins Says Cooperation-Not Competition-Is Instinctive

CB: Darwin’s principle is actually survival of the _fertile_ in the first place ; the fit may be more fertile .

Being nice , cooperative is a better way to be fertile .

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/is-human-nature-social-or-selfish-i.html

" The decisive battle between early culture and human nature must have been waged on the field of primate sexuality…. Among subhuman primates sex had organized society; the customs of hunters and gatherers testify eloquently that now society was to organize sex…. In selective adaptation to the perils of the Stone Age, human society overcame or subordinated such primate propensities as selfishness, indiscriminate sexuality, dominance and brute competition. It substituted kinship and co-operation for conflict, placed solidarity over sex, morality over might. In its earliest days it accomplished the greatest reform in history, the overthrow of human primate nature, and thereby secured the evolutionary future of the species."

— Sahlins, M. D. 1960 The origin of society. Scientific American 203(3): 76–87.

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/our-mother-nature-antoinette-blackwell.html

Blackwell chose to highlight balance and cooperation rather than
struggle and savage rivalry. She criticized Darwin for basing his
theory of evolution on "time-honored assumption that the male is the
normal type of his species".[7] She wrote that Spencer scientifically
subtracts from the female and Darwin as scientifically adds to the
male.[6]


 FIT in the sense of bodily fit for success in the struggle for existence ( the Darwinian term of art for longevity in an individual organism ) surviving , getting enough to eat , not getting eaten , not falling out of a tree or off a cliff , not freezing to death , not overheating to death BEFORE REPRODUCING   , BEFORE BEING FERTILE, passing on one’s genes to next generations .

In Darwin's theory of natural selection concerning living beings, the

"struggle" in the struggle for existence, to live, is not between

Individual Selves of the same species to the point of Individual Bodies, somebodies,of the same species killing each other except very rarely. Most of the deaths before passing on genes to the next generation, are due to

failures in struggles with some Individual Body of _another_ species.,

plant and animal, as predator and prey; or struggle against bad

weather, heat exhaustion, sunburn

It is easy to see how some people get a misconception of Darwinian

natural selection because it _is_ posed in most of it prime

formulations with a sort of emphasis on the fact of indirect

"competition" in the sense that for the typical bodily form of a

species to change under Darwin's theory, some members with genes that

change species typical traits must more successfully pass them on than

members with species typical traits over successive generations until

the new trait is universal and the old typical trait is extinct. But

this does not necessarily or even conventionally imply direct physical

conflict between Individuals of the two types but the same species in the day-to-day struggle for existence to survive as Individual Bodies.

This is demonstrated by the famous anthropological micro-evolutionary

study of sickle cell genes on pages 44 to 46 of _The Essence of

Anthropology_.  There is no direct physical competition between the people of

the various genotypes with different fitnesses in the different

environments in the study.

It is not an Individual , but a species, a group of the same type who

"evolve", "adapt" or "survive". Individuals must live their individual

life long enough to reproduce for the species to survive.  However,

every individual eventually dies. "Survival" of the individual means

living long enough to pass on genes or a geno-type to the future

generations. If mutated genes, changed geno-type, are passed on, there

is a potential unit of evolution between the parent and the offspring.

That is evolution occurs between Individuals of different generations, not in one Individual Self.  If the

mutated genotype results in a phenol-typical  trait that is adaptive

in some significant way, it may become an evolutionary change by the

species through several individuals.

https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2018/04/male-supremacy-greed-and-war-are-not-in.html?m=1

day, April 30, 2018
Male supremacy, greed and war are not in our genes
The male supremacist family, private property (classes; greed), and the state ( special repressive apparatus ) arises as a complex together circa 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.  They are still together in a complex that dominates the human species in 2018. Before that for the about 2.5 million years of the Stone Age ( true Civilization) there was gender equivalence, sharing and peace in the species; that's when we were substantially "hardwired " genetically . So, Male supremacy and class divided society and war are not in our genes.


Sacha : “"In particular, the immunocompetence handicap hypothesis proposes that sexual dimorphism indicates good immune function during development because the sex hormones, particularly testosterone in men, required for the development of sexually dimorphic facial features also taxes the immune system. Therefore, only healthy males can afford the high level of testosterone for the development of sexually dimorphic traits without compromising their survival. Researchers have suggested that a similar mechanism via the effects of oestrogen might also explain male preferences for female femininity."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513820300350”



Sacha Quatre Pattes Beautifying the beast hypothesis of female sexual selection of human face :

Smaller teeth make more room in the skull for brain   . So beautified face with smaller teeth allowed bigger brain . And a smaller face is not as rough a kisser.

Thus Genus homo beauties beautified the male "beasts ." We have a historical memory of this in the "Beauty and the Beast " myth, parable , story , in codes form of course, metaphor .

Importantly , this is the positive feedback loop causing brain to evolve bigger from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens .
Bigger brained individuals are more adapt at culture , especially courting culture . This is the main cause of selection for bigger and bigger brains. Bigger brains get more mating .

Thus Blackwell's critique of Darwin and Spencer is correct.  Cooperation ( especially between females and males ) and balance drive human evolution , not savage rivalry and competition .

Already in Darwin's founding text of physical or biological anthropology , _The Descent of Man_, Darwin steers us away subtitle from "adaption to the environment" to "Sexual Selection !" For with culture, human select their environment rather than their environment selecting them. So, the predominant force in human selection is sexual selection.

But Darwin still has a masculinist focus on competition between males for mates; rough and toughness .

Antoinette Blackwell's revolutionary critique of Darwin ( in correspondence with Darwin) is that it is the gentlemen who are selected for mating by females, not the rough tough guys ! Human evolution is predominantly Beautifying of the Beast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sexes_Throughout_Nature
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Dear Maria,

Preparing for class to  discuss the conflict between the theory of inheritance of characteristics and the theory of random genetic mutation I thought :

1) Darwin had a) no theory of the cause of variety in a species b) no theory of _how_ characteristics are inherited,

2) Darwin had no conflict with LaMarck on inheritance because Darwin didn't have one . Actually, I don't know that LaMarck had much of one either.
3) Darwin had no variety theory either so no conflict with LaMarck's explanation of variety.

4) Furthermore, LaMarck's was a natural selection theory !  In his famous giraffe example, the giraffes that stretch their necks are selected for by their environment ; stretching the neck is an adaptation .

Inheritance of acquired characteristics conflicts with random genetic mutation , discovered post Darwin.

Culture as inheritance ( in brain cells, language and memory, instead of gamete cells) of acquired characteristics (not body cells , but extra-somatically , in objective reality) is more efficient adaptive process than genetic mutations that occur randomly relative to the adaptive problem they solve. Because, cultural inventions (acquired by one generation and passed on to the next) are caused by the adaptive problem they solve and do not arise randomly relative to the adaptive problem they solve.

Thus, there is the population expansion of homo erectus and then Homo sapiens out of Africa with the origin of culture in the Stone Age.

Maybe ?

Charles


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 .

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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 .

With the invention of culture, symbols , naming, phylogenetic kinship (totemism) , humans select their environment; their environment doesn't elect them. With culture , Human evolution in the tool age is sexual selection a la Blackwell (and Darwin in part)

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