Words are little communisms

By Charles Brown The following reminded me of one of the unique characteristics of language: meaningless things , individual sounds , letters-phonemes that are meaningless , refer to nothing , are combined to make words that have meaning .

“Hofstadter had previously expressed disappointment with how Gödel, Escher, Bach, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for general nonfiction, was received. In the preface to its 20th anniversary edition, Hofstadter laments that the book was perceived as a hodgepodge of neat things with no central theme. He states: "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"[1]”

//////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\ Charles : Duality of Patterning Distinctive sounds, called phonemes, are arbitrary and have no meaning. But humans can string these sounds in an infinite number of ways to create meaning via words and sentences.

Phonemes-letters ( meaningless things ) are to words-combination of phonemes ( meaningful) as individual humans-selves ( meaningless ) are to groups of humans ( meaningful ) . Meaning is inherently communication or communist . Words are little communisms .

Christian taboos on talking about sex

CB : The Christian taboos on even talking about sex in public or even in families are why there is such mass ignorance about basic biology of sex ; thus the insane laws regarding sex that have crept into our country Things like telling children “storks bring babies” https://www.livescience.com/62807-why-storks-baby-myth.html Someone says : “I thank my grandmother for exposure to alllll of that! I still remember recounting plot points and dialogue at dinner for her one night in front of my whole family which included a line about "you made love to my husband!" (paraphrasing.) I was approximately 8 years old. The table all put down forks and looked at me, in unison. My mom asked "what does that mean? Made love?" UGH. Top 3 most embarrassing moments of my childhood!

MR OnlineMR Online They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To! Why Even the Best Post-war Economist Ended Up a Tragic Figure

MR OnlineMR Online They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To! Why Even the Best Post-war Economist Ended Up a Tragic Figure Posted Jan 03, 2011 by Yanis Varoufakis Economic Theory , Financialization , War Japan , Vietnam News The Crash of 2008 and its ghastly aftermath was not just an economic crisis but also a crisis aided and abetted by economics. Previously I have written about the Econobubble (the handmaiden of the “real” Bubble) and the toxic theories of economists who were very recently rewarded with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Following those tirades, a number of colleagues (and students) put it to me that economics is not what it used to be. Once upon a time, they suggest, economists were giants whose intellect informed the public and who would have reined in the current crop of mindless hacks whose inane creed took over the great Economics Departments sometime in the 1970s. There is an element of truth in their suggestion. In every realm of economic analysis, and within each school of economic thinking, standards have slipped. Compare and contrast a John Maynard Keynes with the economists who carried the torch of Keynesianism in the 1980s and 1990s; a Piero Sraffa with the Sraffians; a Paul Sweezy or a Maurice Dobb with their successors;1 even a Milton Friedman with Robert Lucas and his New Classical clones. Undoubtedly, the economics discipline doesn’t make them like it used to. Having conceded that the economists of yesteryear were intellectual titans compared to the sorry lot that followed after 1970 or so, I shall not concede the main argument: namely, that economists of the previous generation were wise and vigilant enough to put the brakes on the slide into the economic superstition that provided intellectual reinforcements to the “dark side” — e.g. to the post-1980 financialization drive. To make my highly controversial case, I shall focus on Paul Samuelson, an economist endowed with all the qualities that seem to be missing today: not only extraordinary analytical skills, but also a feel for what makes capitalism tick, a deep understanding of the human costs of recessions, a keen interest in shaping public policy, a zeal for educating the young on the intricacies of economic life, etc. And what is my case? It is that economics has always been a source of obfuscation and an ally of the nasty side of politics, even when brilliant public intellectuals, like Paul Samuelson (whose heart was definitely not in the wrong place), were at the discipline’s helm. If I am right, the problem is not that in recent decades the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics has gone to the wrong people. It is, rather, that a Nobel Memorial Prize has been established for the wrong discipline: the discipline of economics, which, by design, subverts even the best intention to serve humanity. Paul Samuelson, like his contemporaries Paul Sweezy and John Kenneth Galbraith, was deeply marked by the Great Depression. In Chapter 1 of the first edition of his famous primer (Samuelson 1948, p. 3),2 he introduces his reader to the subject of “economics” with a warning which, in our post-2008 times, sounds exceedingly prophetic: When, and if, the next great depression comes along, any one of us may be completely unemployed — without income or prospects. . . . There is no vaccination or advance immunity from this modern-day plague. It is no respecter of class or rank. . . . From a purely selfish point of view, then, it is desirable to gain understanding of the first problem of modern economics: the causes on the one hand of unemployment, overcapacity, and depression; and on the other of prosperity, full employment, and high standards of living. But no less important is the fact . . . that the political health of democracy is tied up in a crucial way with the successful maintenance of stable high employment and living opportunities. It is not too much to say that the widespread creation of dictatorships and the resulting World War II stemmed in no small measure from the world’s failure to meet this basic economic problem adequately. These are words that prepare the reader for a head-on assault on real-world problems; for an approach whose purpose is to delve into the workings of capitalism, rather than a journey into some obscure mathematical universe. Nor did Samuelson change his mind when the Crash of 2008 hit us. In November 2008, a month after Lehman Brothers collapsed, unleashing the greatest crisis since 1929, Samuelson had this to say: “Deregulated capitalism is a fragile flower bound to commit suicide.”3 So, what caused the Crash of 2008? Here is Samuelson again: The whole history of capitalism has had up-bubbles in real estate and down-bubbles after something different. This time the new fiendish Frankenstein monsters of financial engineering blinded the eyes and the minds of everybody. . . . And what will it take to get us out of the mess that 2008 created? Samuelson sensibly replies that: Rome was not built in one day, and Franklin Roosevelt did not get full employment. It took about seven years. Now I don’t say it’ll take seven years this time, but it won’t be done with a balanced budget and it won’t be done with “inflation targeting.” In comparison to most of the establishment commentariat, the above strikes one as a paragon of common sense and humanism. So, why am I refuting the view that the trouble with contemporary economics is the loss of public intellectuals like Samuelson? Because it was precisely public intellectuals like Samuelson who paved the way for the intellectual desert that followed. Like all tragic figures, Paul Samuelson, inadvertently of course, created the circumstances that led to the demise of some of the virtues he dearly valued. Samuelson’s method for analyzing each and every economic phenomenon involved three basic steps: Identify all the endogenous variables connected to the phenomenon at hand. Minimize the number of exogenous variables that explain the endogenous variables. Model the determination of the endogenous variables in the context of some constrained optimization problem, which enables the analyst to perform comparative static analysis by means of the calculus of variations (in the manner of 1930s thermodynamics). In 1982, Samuelson “confessed” that mathematization was “. . . one of the mortal sins for which I shall have to do some explaining when I arrive at the heaven’s pearly gates.” Personally, I will happily absolve him of this sin. Working toward a mathematical depiction of reality is a legitimate pursuit. Without it, our understanding of the natural world would have been stuck in the Middle Ages. The question is: What hidden sacrifices is one prepared to make in order to claim that one’s mathematical modeling has yielded a useful tool for understanding capitalism and its haphazard ways? It is in this regard that Samuelson created a theoretical edifice which (in my estimation) humanity would have been better off without. But let me take things from the beginning. Samuelson’s research project can be traced all the way back to his doctoral dissertation (published in book form in 1947, a year before the aforementioned textbook’s first edition4). It is entitled Foundations of Economic Analysis and is nothing less than a masterpiece combining dazzling mathematics and a demonstration of his command over all of economics, from Adam Smith onwards. He explained what his intellectual project was all about as follows: We begin by writing down the equations and draw the geometry which define the macro economy. Then we prove, as theorems, a number of propositions regarding the importance of government intervention in maintaining a certain level of effective or aggregate demand. At first sight, it seems that Samuelson was simply trying to give Keynes a stronger analytical backbone, turning the art of government intervention, at a time of crisis, into a mathematical science. What could be wrong with that? The answer is: Everything! Keynes’ greatest contribution was to alert us to a disarmingly simple truth: in a complex, financialized capitalist economy, it is impossible (rather than just hard) to derive, by analytical reasoning, the well defined mathematical expectations which one needs to “close” a macroeconomic model. Drop this insight, and you have lost all that matters in Keynes’ analysis of the Great Depression in particular and, more generally, of capitalism’s tendency to stumble and fall on its face. By transcribing Keynes’ view of the macro economy into a closed optimization problem, Samuelson effectively poured down the drain everything of importance in Keynes’ General Theory: a striking example of honoring one’s inspiration mostly in the breach rather that in the observance. . . . A couple of years later, in 1950 to be precise, something unexpected happened to the house of economics. Following a presentation at the Cowles Commission in Chicago by John F. Nash, Jr., Gerard Debreu and Kenneth Arrow began a collaborative project (eventually turning into the so-called General Equilibrium literature) that altered the surface and substance of economic analysis for ever: economics turned toward pure formalism. This new economic formalism involved three moves not at all inconsistent with Samuelson’s approach: Set aside the engineering approach according to which mathematics is used in order to model some actually occurring dynamic. Focus instead on general theorems that prove the existence of states of rest (or equilibria) on the basis of given axioms. Treat the proven theorems as the uniquely legitimate source of economic wisdom. The pioneers of formalism (Nash, Debreu, and Arrow), however, had no great ambition to pass comment on real markets, let alone to offer a comprehensive theory of capitalism. They never dreamt of becoming President Kennedy’s advisors. In sharp contrast, Samuelson had precisely that ambition. And, moreover, he managed to pull it off. Put differently, formalism would not have made the move from the Cowles Commission and the RAND Corporation to the corridors of power in Washington if it had not been for Samuelson (and other economists of his ilk to a lesser degree). For he alone was capable of both engaging in the highest forms of formalism and teaching at the level of first-year undergraduates; of mesmerizing formalists like Gerard Debreu and bureaucrats like Dean Acheson with the same aplomb. Indeed, Samuelson carried formalism’s commandments from the highest peaks to the plains inhabited by fresh(wo)men, converting a sterile method into small appetizing bite-sized chunks of analysis. He educated politicians to think in terms of some simple diagrams that demonstrated the powers and limits of fiscal and monetary policy. But, above all else, he gave both relevance and respectability to a new creed which: echoed the new mantra of seeking truth in mathematics (as opposed to using mathematics as a mere tool); exuded the confidence that economics is reducible to “closed” mathematical models which leave nothing (except preferences) for history, philosophy, or the rest of social sciences to explain; and was sufficiently “liberal” to pass for a non-ideological, impartial manual successfully incorporating (something resembling) Keynes’ thought within its mathematics. In this sense, the greatest publically revered economist of the post-war era built his personal success on a triumphant blending of a distinct Keynesian New Deal disposition and an apocryphal mathematical formalism. Thus he became the man who brought Keynes to America by subsuming him under a formalist logic which effaced everything that Keynes had actually said. That this blend did not work out, scientifically, was due to the simple truth that it never could have. Just as bad money chases out of the marketplace all good money, formalism chases out of economics all useful economic thinking. Tragically, and surely against his own intentions, Samuelson helped formalism establish a beachhead from which, soon after, the final assault on logical, humanist political economics would be launched with deadly precision. Let’s see why Samuelson’s intervention could have had no other outcome: Any formalist makeover of Keynes’ thinking required the conversion of his basic proposition into a provable theorem; an axiomatization of the hypothesis that, at a time of crisis, falling wages and interest rates do not lead to a recovery led by employment and investment upticks. However, such an axiomatic proof can only result through a Debreu-like General Equilibrium model. Ironically, the latter comes with a sine qua non hidden axiom: that both investment and employment will rise, ceteris paribus, if wages and interest rates fall. Which is precisely the opposite of what Keynes said. So, how does Samuelson reconcile the irreconcilable? By twisting Keynes beyond recognition, explaining unemployment (under-investment) as a consequence of downwardly sticky wages (interest rates). Whereas Keynes’ point was that, in a recessionary environment, a fall in the wage (interest rate) will not boost employment (investment), Samuelson said that unemployment (under-investment) is due to wages (interest rates) which stubbornly refuse to fall. This gross distortion of Keynes’ simple point did not, in the slightest, harm Samuelson’s campaign to pose as a “scientific Keynesian” (nb the fact that his readers almost never read Keynes from the original helped, too). In fact, this grand distortion helped massively in building up the image of Samuelson as a Keynesian macro engineer. Alas, as Christopher Marlowe taught us a long time ago, and Goethe confirmed later, in dramatically asymmetrical deals with Mephistopheles it is not the human who has the last word. In Samuelson’s case, it was formalism who laughed last: the moment the post-war miracle hit a bump (caused by falling profitability and by the USA’s slide into threatening twin deficits, courtesy of the Vietnam War and LBJ’s Great Society), economic formalism shook off all remaining Keynesian relics and fashioned a new neoliberal guise that was more in keeping with the new politics.5 Once formalism found a brave new — and more lucrative — home in neoliberal political economics, the brilliant Samuelson, like a proverbial useful idiot, was cast by the wayside. The road to the Econobubble was thus paved with the remains of Samuelson’s grand project. From that moment onwards, economics was dominated by the unbearable lightness of the euphemistically named “rational expectations” hypothesis, the risible “efficient market” hypothesis, and all their derivative drivel. What was remarkable, and exquisitely saddening, was how quickly Samuelson’s former disciples discarded the great man’s single most searing memory of his youth: that unfettered capitalism produces crises that economists must tame, rather than assume away. In summary, without Samuelson, formalism would have found it hard to achieve authority during the 1950s and 1960s. And if formalism had not dominated then, neoliberalism would have had a harder time establishing its dominion in the 1970s and 1980s. While it is imprudent to put too much faith in the power of ideas, it is impossible not to wonder what 2008 would have been like had neoliberalism not found such a valuable accomplice in Samuelsonian economics. However, the most fruitful way of looking at the talented Mr. Samuelson and his life’s work is in terms of ancient Greek tragedy. His genuine intent was to formulate a theory that helps government avert, or at least deal with, crises of low effective demand. But the gods had another end in store for him: against his powerful will, his efforts played a central role in the triumphant return of the type of mindless economic creed which he had rejected as a student in 1935 and from which he thought he had helped the economics profession escape permanently. Samuelson once said that economic science progresses from one funeral to the next. Regrettably there is no such guarantee. Economics, just like revolutions, has a bad habit of devouring its best and brightest. Analytical economics could not have wished for a better servant than Paul Samuelson. That it reserved this hideous fate for him simply proves how harsh, ungrateful, and dangerous economics can be. And how impossible it is to do good on the basis of any attempt, even in the most accomplished hands, to tease the truth about capitalism from its mathematical depictions. 1 And I would like to include myself in this lot! 2 See Paul Samuelson (1948), Economics: An Introductory Analysis, New York: McGraw-Hill. 3 This and the next quotation are from an interview Paul Samuelson gaveKiyoshi Okonogi in November 2008 at his MIT office, where he was working almost until the end of his life in December 2009. The interview was published in Japanese newspaper Asahi Simbun under the title “Financial Crisis: Work of ‘Fiendish Monsters’.” 4 See Paul Samuelson (1947), Foundations of Economic Analysis, New York: McGraw-Hill. The thesis was submitted in 1941 and in the same year it won Harvard’s David A. Wells Prize for best publishable thesis. But publication came six years later. 5 Technically, this was as easy as pie: all that was necessary was to take the so-called Phillips curve, straighten it out, and place it vertically on some point of the GDP axis that corresponds to the economy’s so-called “natural” rate of unemployment. Yanis Varoufakis is Professor of Economic Theory and Director of the Department of Political Economy in the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Athens. Varoufakis’ books include: The Global Minotaur: The True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy (forthcoming); (with S. Hargreaves-Heap) Game Theory: A Critical Text (Routledge, 2004); Foundations of Economics: A Beginner’s Companion (Routledge, 1998); and Rational Conflict (Blackwell Publishers, 1991). They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To! Why Even the Best Post-war Economist Ended Up a Tragic Figure Posted Jan 03, 2011 by Yanis Varoufakis Economic Theory , Financialization , War Japan , Vietnam News The Crash of 2008 and its ghastly aftermath was not just an economic crisis but also a crisis aided and abetted by economics. Previously I have written about the Econobubble (the handmaiden of the “real” Bubble) and the toxic theories of economists who were very recently rewarded with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Following those tirades, a number of colleagues (and students) put it to me that economics is not what it used to be. Once upon a time, they suggest, economists were giants whose intellect informed the public and who would have reined in the current crop of mindless hacks whose inane creed took over the great Economics Departments sometime in the 1970s. There is an element of truth in their suggestion. In every realm of economic analysis, and within each school of economic thinking, standards have slipped. Compare and contrast a John Maynard Keynes with the economists who carried the torch of Keynesianism in the 1980s and 1990s; a Piero Sraffa with the Sraffians; a Paul Sweezy or a Maurice Dobb with their successors;1 even a Milton Friedman with Robert Lucas and his New Classical clones. Undoubtedly, the economics discipline doesn’t make them like it used to. Having conceded that the economists of yesteryear were intellectual titans compared to the sorry lot that followed after 1970 or so, I shall not concede the main argument: namely, that economists of the previous generation were wise and vigilant enough to put the brakes on the slide into the economic superstition that provided intellectual reinforcements to the “dark side” — e.g. to the post-1980 financialization drive. To make my highly controversial case, I shall focus on Paul Samuelson, an economist endowed with all the qualities that seem to be missing today: not only extraordinary analytical skills, but also a feel for what makes capitalism tick, a deep understanding of the human costs of recessions, a keen interest in shaping public policy, a zeal for educating the young on the intricacies of economic life, etc. And what is my case? It is that economics has always been a source of obfuscation and an ally of the nasty side of politics, even when brilliant public intellectuals, like Paul Samuelson (whose heart was definitely not in the wrong place), were at the discipline’s helm. If I am right, the problem is not that in recent decades the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics has gone to the wrong people. It is, rather, that a Nobel Memorial Prize has been established for the wrong discipline: the discipline of economics, which, by design, subverts even the best intention to serve humanity. Paul Samuelson, like his contemporaries Paul Sweezy and John Kenneth Galbraith, was deeply marked by the Great Depression. In Chapter 1 of the first edition of his famous primer (Samuelson 1948, p. 3),2 he introduces his reader to the subject of “economics” with a warning which, in our post-2008 times, sounds exceedingly prophetic: When, and if, the next great depression comes along, any one of us may be completely unemployed — without income or prospects. . . . There is no vaccination or advance immunity from this modern-day plague. It is no respecter of class or rank. . . . From a purely selfish point of view, then, it is desirable to gain understanding of the first problem of modern economics: the causes on the one hand of unemployment, overcapacity, and depression; and on the other of prosperity, full employment, and high standards of living. But no less important is the fact . . . that the political health of democracy is tied up in a crucial way with the successful maintenance of stable high employment and living opportunities. It is not too much to say that the widespread creation of dictatorships and the resulting World War II stemmed in no small measure from the world’s failure to meet this basic economic problem adequately. These are words that prepare the reader for a head-on assault on real-world problems; for an approach whose purpose is to delve into the workings of capitalism, rather than a journey into some obscure mathematical universe. Nor did Samuelson change his mind when the Crash of 2008 hit us. In November 2008, a month after Lehman Brothers collapsed, unleashing the greatest crisis since 1929, Samuelson had this to say: “Deregulated capitalism is a fragile flower bound to commit suicide.”3 So, what caused the Crash of 2008? Here is Samuelson again: The whole history of capitalism has had up-bubbles in real estate and down-bubbles after something different. This time the new fiendish Frankenstein monsters of financial engineering blinded the eyes and the minds of everybody. . . . And what will it take to get us out of the mess that 2008 created? Samuelson sensibly replies that: Rome was not built in one day, and Franklin Roosevelt did not get full employment. It took about seven years. Now I don’t say it’ll take seven years this time, but it won’t be done with a balanced budget and it won’t be done with “inflation targeting.” In comparison to most of the establishment commentariat, the above strikes one as a paragon of common sense and humanism. So, why am I refuting the view that the trouble with contemporary economics is the loss of public intellectuals like Samuelson? Because it was precisely public intellectuals like Samuelson who paved the way for the intellectual desert that followed. Like all tragic figures, Paul Samuelson, inadvertently of course, created the circumstances that led to the demise of some of the virtues he dearly valued. Samuelson’s method for analyzing each and every economic phenomenon involved three basic steps: Identify all the endogenous variables connected to the phenomenon at hand. Minimize the number of exogenous variables that explain the endogenous variables. Model the determination of the endogenous variables in the context of some constrained optimization problem, which enables the analyst to perform comparative static analysis by means of the calculus of variations (in the manner of 1930s thermodynamics). In 1982, Samuelson “confessed” that mathematization was “. . . one of the mortal sins for which I shall have to do some explaining when I arrive at the heaven’s pearly gates.” Personally, I will happily absolve him of this sin. Working toward a mathematical depiction of reality is a legitimate pursuit. Without it, our understanding of the natural world would have been stuck in the Middle Ages. The question is: What hidden sacrifices is one prepared to make in order to claim that one’s mathematical modeling has yielded a useful tool for understanding capitalism and its haphazard ways? It is in this regard that Samuelson created a theoretical edifice which (in my estimation) humanity would have been better off without. But let me take things from the beginning. Samuelson’s research project can be traced all the way back to his doctoral dissertation (published in book form in 1947, a year before the aforementioned textbook’s first edition4). It is entitled Foundations of Economic Analysis and is nothing less than a masterpiece combining dazzling mathematics and a demonstration of his command over all of economics, from Adam Smith onwards. He explained what his intellectual project was all about as follows: We begin by writing down the equations and draw the geometry which define the macro economy. Then we prove, as theorems, a number of propositions regarding the importance of government intervention in maintaining a certain level of effective or aggregate demand. At first sight, it seems that Samuelson was simply trying to give Keynes a stronger analytical backbone, turning the art of government intervention, at a time of crisis, into a mathematical science. What could be wrong with that? The answer is: Everything! Keynes’ greatest contribution was to alert us to a disarmingly simple truth: in a complex, financialized capitalist economy, it is impossible (rather than just hard) to derive, by analytical reasoning, the well defined mathematical expectations which one needs to “close” a macroeconomic model. Drop this insight, and you have lost all that matters in Keynes’ analysis of the Great Depression in particular and, more generally, of capitalism’s tendency to stumble and fall on its face. By transcribing Keynes’ view of the macro economy into a closed optimization problem, Samuelson effectively poured down the drain everything of importance in Keynes’ General Theory: a striking example of honoring one’s inspiration mostly in the breach rather that in the observance. . . . A couple of years later, in 1950 to be precise, something unexpected happened to the house of economics. Following a presentation at the Cowles Commission in Chicago by John F. Nash, Jr., Gerard Debreu and Kenneth Arrow began a collaborative project (eventually turning into the so-called General Equilibrium literature) that altered the surface and substance of economic analysis for ever: economics turned toward pure formalism. This new economic formalism involved three moves not at all inconsistent with Samuelson’s approach: Set aside the engineering approach according to which mathematics is used in order to model some actually occurring dynamic. Focus instead on general theorems that prove the existence of states of rest (or equilibria) on the basis of given axioms. Treat the proven theorems as the uniquely legitimate source of economic wisdom. The pioneers of formalism (Nash, Debreu, and Arrow), however, had no great ambition to pass comment on real markets, let alone to offer a comprehensive theory of capitalism. They never dreamt of becoming President Kennedy’s advisors. In sharp contrast, Samuelson had precisely that ambition. And, moreover, he managed to pull it off. Put differently, formalism would not have made the move from the Cowles Commission and the RAND Corporation to the corridors of power in Washington if it had not been for Samuelson (and other economists of his ilk to a lesser degree). For he alone was capable of both engaging in the highest forms of formalism and teaching at the level of first-year undergraduates; of mesmerizing formalists like Gerard Debreu and bureaucrats like Dean Acheson with the same aplomb. Indeed, Samuelson carried formalism’s commandments from the highest peaks to the plains inhabited by fresh(wo)men, converting a sterile method into small appetizing bite-sized chunks of analysis. He educated politicians to think in terms of some simple diagrams that demonstrated the powers and limits of fiscal and monetary policy. But, above all else, he gave both relevance and respectability to a new creed which: echoed the new mantra of seeking truth in mathematics (as opposed to using mathematics as a mere tool); exuded the confidence that economics is reducible to “closed” mathematical models which leave nothing (except preferences) for history, philosophy, or the rest of social sciences to explain; and was sufficiently “liberal” to pass for a non-ideological, impartial manual successfully incorporating (something resembling) Keynes’ thought within its mathematics. In this sense, the greatest publically revered economist of the post-war era built his personal success on a triumphant blending of a distinct Keynesian New Deal disposition and an apocryphal mathematical formalism. Thus he became the man who brought Keynes to America by subsuming him under a formalist logic which effaced everything that Keynes had actually said. That this blend did not work out, scientifically, was due to the simple truth that it never could have. Just as bad money chases out of the marketplace all good money, formalism chases out of economics all useful economic thinking. Tragically, and surely against his own intentions, Samuelson helped formalism establish a beachhead from which, soon after, the final assault on logical, humanist political economics would be launched with deadly precision. Let’s see why Samuelson’s intervention could have had no other outcome: Any formalist makeover of Keynes’ thinking required the conversion of his basic proposition into a provable theorem; an axiomatization of the hypothesis that, at a time of crisis, falling wages and interest rates do not lead to a recovery led by employment and investment upticks. However, such an axiomatic proof can only result through a Debreu-like General Equilibrium model. Ironically, the latter comes with a sine qua non hidden axiom: that both investment and employment will rise, ceteris paribus, if wages and interest rates fall. Which is precisely the opposite of what Keynes said. So, how does Samuelson reconcile the irreconcilable? By twisting Keynes beyond recognition, explaining unemployment (under-investment) as a consequence of downwardly sticky wages (interest rates). Whereas Keynes’ point was that, in a recessionary environment, a fall in the wage (interest rate) will not boost employment (investment), Samuelson said that unemployment (under-investment) is due to wages (interest rates) which stubbornly refuse to fall. This gross distortion of Keynes’ simple point did not, in the slightest, harm Samuelson’s campaign to pose as a “scientific Keynesian” (nb the fact that his readers almost never read Keynes from the original helped, too). In fact, this grand distortion helped massively in building up the image of Samuelson as a Keynesian macro engineer. Alas, as Christopher Marlowe taught us a long time ago, and Goethe confirmed later, in dramatically asymmetrical deals with Mephistopheles it is not the human who has the last word. In Samuelson’s case, it was formalism who laughed last: the moment the post-war miracle hit a bump (caused by falling profitability and by the USA’s slide into threatening twin deficits, courtesy of the Vietnam War and LBJ’s Great Society), economic formalism shook off all remaining Keynesian relics and fashioned a new neoliberal guise that was more in keeping with the new politics.5 Once formalism found a brave new — and more lucrative — home in neoliberal political economics, the brilliant Samuelson, like a proverbial useful idiot, was cast by the wayside. The road to the Econobubble was thus paved with the remains of Samuelson’s grand project. From that moment onwards, economics was dominated by the unbearable lightness of the euphemistically named “rational expectations” hypothesis, the risible “efficient market” hypothesis, and all their derivative drivel. What was remarkable, and exquisitely saddening, was how quickly Samuelson’s former disciples discarded the great man’s single most searing memory of his youth: that unfettered capitalism produces crises that economists must tame, rather than assume away. In summary, without Samuelson, formalism would have found it hard to achieve authority during the 1950s and 1960s. And if formalism had not dominated then, neoliberalism would have had a harder time establishing its dominion in the 1970s and 1980s. While it is imprudent to put too much faith in the power of ideas, it is impossible not to wonder what 2008 would have been like had neoliberalism not found such a valuable accomplice in Samuelsonian economics. However, the most fruitful way of looking at the talented Mr. Samuelson and his life’s work is in terms of ancient Greek tragedy. His genuine intent was to formulate a theory that helps government avert, or at least deal with, crises of low effective demand. But the gods had another end in store for him: against his powerful will, his efforts played a central role in the triumphant return of the type of mindless economic creed which he had rejected as a student in 1935 and from which he thought he had helped the economics profession escape permanently. Samuelson once said that economic science progresses from one funeral to the next. Regrettably there is no such guarantee. Economics, just like revolutions, has a bad habit of devouring its best and brightest. Analytical economics could not have wished for a better servant than Paul Samuelson. That it reserved this hideous fate for him simply proves how harsh, ungrateful, and dangerous economics can be. And how impossible it is to do good on the basis of any attempt, even in the most accomplished hands, to tease the truth about capitalism from its mathematical depictions. 1 And I would like to include myself in this lot! 2 See Paul Samuelson (1948), Economics: An Introductory Analysis, New York: McGraw-Hill. 3 This and the next quotation are from an interview Paul Samuelson gaveKiyoshi Okonogi in November 2008 at his MIT office, where he was working almost until the end of his life in December 2009. The interview was published in Japanese newspaper Asahi Simbun under the title “Financial Crisis: Work of ‘Fiendish Monsters’.” 4 See Paul Samuelson (1947), Foundations of Economic Analysis, New York: McGraw-Hill. The thesis was submitted in 1941 and in the same year it won Harvard’s David A. Wells Prize for best publishable thesis. But publication came six years later. 5 Technically, this was as easy as pie: all that was necessary was to take the so-called Phillips curve, straighten it out, and place it vertically on some point of the GDP axis that corresponds to the economy’s so-called “natural” rate of unemployment. Yanis Varoufakis is Professor of Economic Theory and Director of the Department of Political Economy in the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Athens. Varoufakis’ books include: The Global Minotaur: The True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy (forthcoming); (with S. Hargreaves-Heap) Game Theory: A Critical Text (Routledge, 2004); Foundations of Economics: A Beginner’s Companion (Routledge, 1998); and Rational Conflict (Blackwell Publishers, 1991).

Human the Hunted_: 'Human the Hunter' theory is debunked

Professor RW Sussman MAN THE PEACE-LOVING HIPPIE? The blood-bespattered, slaughter-gutted archives of human history from the earliest Egyptians and Sumerian records to the most recent atrocities of the Second World War accord with early universal cannibalism . . . and with worldwide scalping, headhunting, body-mutilating and necrophilic practices of mankind in proclaiming this common bloodlust differentiator, this predaceous habit.79 Ouch! Given the above scenario laid out by Raymond Dart, one can only blush at the legacy we've allegedly inherited. The trail seems to lead from meat-eating to hunting, meander into cannibalism, and ultimately dive inexorably into a whole slew of repulsive activities. But, as we keep returning to after every misanthropic description, are views taken from a Man the Hunter tableau supported by any scientific evidence? When the 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting convened in St. Louis, Missouri, we participated in a symposium bringing together researchers from diverse fields (primatology, sociocultural anthropology, zoology, paleontology, psychiatry, psychology ,neurobiology, and genetics) to consider substantive evidence about violence versus cooperation as hard-wired human behaviors. Along with other scientists, we synthesized current research supporting the behavioral, hormonal, and neuropsychiatric evolution of human cooperation. To assess human behavior, researchers look at our primate roots where sociality may have its origin in the general benefits of mutual cooperation, strong mother-infant bonds, and the evolution of an extended juvenile period in which developing young are dependent on other group members. Naturally occurring opiates in the brain that have effects not unlike the restfulness and lessening of unease attained through opium-based narcotics (but without highs, withdrawals, or addiction) may be at the core of innate cooperative social responses.80 These could finally explain the evolution not only of cooperation among non-related humans and non-human primates but also of true altruistic behavior. Going one step further, Marc Hauser, professor of psychology, organismic and evolutionary biology, and biological anthropology at Harvard, believes there is evidence of a true moral toolkit in the human brain, a genetic mechanism for acquisition of moral rules.81 Researchers have, in fact, identified a set of neuroendocrine mechanisms that might lead to cooperative behavior among related and non-related individuals. In experiments using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI (a technique that employs radio waves rather than radiation to elucidate deep structure), mutual cooperation has been associated with consistent activation in two areas of the brain that have been linked with reward processing--specifically, the anteroventral striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex. James Rilling, a neurobiologist at Emory University, has proposed that activation of this neural network positively reinforces cooperative social interactions.82 Even more compelling, the strength of the neural response increases with the persistence of mutual cooperation over successive trials; it is cumulative and self-reinforcing. Activation of the brain's reward center may account for why we tend to feel good when we cooperate. Both locations in the brain linked with reward processing are rich in neurons that respond to dopamine, the neurotransmitter known for its role in addictive behaviors. The dopamine system evaluates rewards--both those that flow from the environment and those conjured up within the brain. When the stimulus is positive, dopamine is released. In experiments with rats in which electrodes are placed in the anteroventral striatum, the animals continue to press a bar to stimulate the electrodes, apparently receiving such pleasurable feedback that they will starve to death rather than stop pressing the bar.83 As Dr. Gregory Berns, an Emory University professor and one of the authors of a 2002 report in the psychiatric journal Neuron puts it: "In some ways . . . we're wired to cooperate with each other."84 Another physiological mechanism related to friendly affiliation and nurturing is the neuroendocrine circuitry associated with mothering in mammals. Orchestrating the broad suite of these bio-behavioral feedback responses is the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin has been related to every type of animal bonding imaginable--parental, fraternal, sexual, and even the capacity to soothe one's self. Researchers have suggested that although oxytocin's primary role may have been in forging the mother-infant bond, its ability to influence brain circuitry may have been co-opted to serve other affiliative purposes that allowed the formation of alliances and partnerships, thus facilitating the evolution of cooperative behaviors.85 Results from both behavioral endocrinology and functional MRI studies by University of Wisconsin psychologist Charles Snowdon and colleagues on cotton-top tamarin monkeys reveal other hormonal mechanisms critical to cooperation and affiliative behavior.86 Among these small South American monkeys, males and other helpers, such as older siblings, provide essential infant care. Elevated levels of the hormone prolactin, usually associated with lactation, may be the impetus behind maternal caregiving exhibited by males and siblings. Snowdon has also found correlations of oxytocin and prolactin levels with amounts of friendly social behavior between one adult and another. His experiments indicate that high levels of affiliative hormones could result in good-quality social interactions that suggest a reward system for positive behavior.87 Many cooperative behaviors observed in primates can be explained by individual behaviors that benefit several group members.88 Coordinated behaviors such as resource or range defense, cooperative foraging and food harvesting, alliance formation, and predator vigilance and defense can be explained in terms of immediate benefits to both the individual and other group members. Even if the rewards for these behaviors are low level, we should expect cooperation to be common. Thus, many types of social interactions may be best understood in terms of a nonzero- sum game, with multiple winners. Low-risk coalitions in which all participants make immediate gains are widespread among primates89 and may explain why nonhuman primates live in relatively stable, cohesive social groups and solve the problems of everyday life in a generally cooperative fashion. Charles Darwin had this idea long before scientific studies of animal behavior, primatology, or cooperation when he noted that natural selection would opt for "the feeling of pleasure from society."90 Even though most nonhuman primates are highly social, investigations into the evolution of primate sociality have tended to focus on aggression and competition instead of cooperation. However, many results from behavioral, hormonal, and brain imaging studies offer a new perspective about primates and their proclivities toward cooperation, sociality, and peace. For example, after 16 years of research on the behavior and ecology of wild savanna baboons, well-known primatologists Joan Silk, Susan Alberts, and Jeanne Altmann concluded that social integration even enhances reproductive capabilities in female baboons: "Females who had more social contact with other adult group members and were more fully socially integrated into their groups were more likely than other females to rear infants successfully."91 Frans de Waal, a chimpanzee researcher at Emory University, contends in his book Primates and Philosophers92 that chimp societies emphasize reconciliation and consolation after conflict; his 40 years of primate behavior observations have documented that concern for others is just natural conduct for our closest primate relatives. In a nutshell social animals appear to be wired to cooperate and to reduce stress by seeking each other's company.93 If cooperation and physical proximity among group-living animals are rewarding in a variety of environmental and social circumstances and if physiological and neurological feedback systems reinforce social tolerance and cooperative behavior, then social living can persist in the absence of any conscious recognition that material gains might also flow from mutual cooperation. Based on the latest research, friendly and cooperative behaviors provide psychological, physiological, and ecological benefits to social primates which are positively reinforced by hormonal and neurological systems. But, what about violence and war? Why is there an acceptance that humans are innately aggressive and that we characterize our aggressive feelings through violent actions? The general primate physiology does not support this view and leads instead to a belief that cooperation is innate to humans. Why the disconnect? Sometimes putting things in perspective helps. There are more than six billion humans alive today-- all are social animals having constant hour-by-hour interactions with other humans. And we're willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of our six billion conspecifics are having days, weeks, even entire lives devoid of violent interpersonal conflicts. This is not to naively underplay crimes, wars, and state-level aggression found in modern times, but it puts them in the domain of the anomalous. Who reads a news report of an outbreak of terrible ethnic violence or genocide and thinks "What's so unusual about that?--perfectly normal, happens every day to everyone." War happens . . . crime happens, but what is the context in which they happen? Why do murder rates vary so greatly from country to country, from culture to culture? Are war, crimes, and violence the genetic, unalterable norm . . . or are they specific to stresses that occur when too many people want too few resources? Following his exhaustive examination of ethnographic research on modern societies ranging from nomadic foragers to urban industrialized societies, Douglas Fry, an anthropologist at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and the University of Arizona, documented the human potential for cooperation and conflict resolution in a groundbreaking volume entitled The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Violence.94 Fry stresses that virtually all early studies defining man (only men were defined!) by his capacity for killing appear to be flawed. Sit down and prepare to be shocked with welcome relief when you read Fry's statement: "War is either lacking or mild in the majority of cultures!"95 Counter to assumptions of hostility between groups and among individuals and recurring warfare over resources, the typical pattern is for humans to get along rather well, relying on resources within their own areas and respecting the resources of their neighbors. After an examination of the actual ethnographic information on nomadic foragers, Fry found the proposition that human groups are pervasively hostile toward one another is simply not based on facts but rather on "a plethora of faulty assumptions and overzealous speculation."96 He points out that "[c]onflict is an inevitable feature of social life, but clearly physical aggression is not the only option for dealing with conflict" (author's emphasis).97 Behaviors for conflict management catalogued in major cross-cultural studies include (1) avoidance (disputants cease to interact), (2) toleration (the disputed issue is not acknowledged by the concerned parties), (3) negotiation (mutually acceptable compromises are created), and (4) settlement (a third party deals with the problem, as in mediation, arbitration, or adjudication-- approaches very common in the U.S. and other industrialized nations). Individuals and whole societies deal with conflicts in non-violent ways. But these commonly used approaches are not very high profile or noticeable on the media radar. "PEACE BREAKS OUT BETWEEN TWO VILLAGES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA BECAUSE DISPUTANTS DECIDE TO TOLERATE EACH OTHER!" or "AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK RIFE WITH AVOIDANCE AFTER PERCEIVED INSULT" are not the typical headlines we read. Fry found that only one approach to conflict--unilateral self-redress (defined as one disputant taking unilateral action in an attempt to prevail or punish another)-- might (our emphasis) involve physical aggression. He summarized his findings by acknowledging the human propensity to behave assertively and aggressively, but adamantly stating that just as inherent is the human propensity to behave prosocially and cooperatively, with kindness and consideration for others. Indeed, Fry's work has convinced him that the very existence of human societies is dependent on the preponderance of prosocial tendencies over assertive and aggressive ones. We aren't trying to ignore the role of aggression and competition in understanding primate and human social interactions. Our perspective, however, is that affiliation, cooperation, and social tolerance associated with long-term mutual benefits form the core of social group living. Our earliest ancestors lived in a world populated by large, fearsome predators. Strong indications from the fossil record and living primate species lead to the conclusion that hominids were regularly hunted and required social organization that promoted inconspicuous behaviors, minimal internal conflicts, and coordinated vigilance.98 Ask yourself, in this prehistoric world of predators what would have been the best strategy to avoid being eaten: Conspicuous, violent interpersonal conflicts? Or high levels of cooperation and reciprocity to facilitate as inconspicuous a presence as possible? Now, what about chimps, warfare, and the demonic male theory? How do they stand up in relation to all this new evidence on cooperative behavior? As we said in opening this chapter we're finding that Man the Hunter as a paradigm does not die easily. Well, the same can be said for its first cousin, the demonic male theory. Richard Wrangham has attempted to address some criticisms of the theories he proposes in his book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, coauthored with Dale Peterson.99 In striving to support the demonic male theory Wrangham and his students cite a growing number of observed or suspected cases of lethal attacks by chimps on chimps at a number of different research sites,100 although the context of these attacks is rarely described and the fact that each of the study sites suffers intense interference from habitat encroachment, introduced diseases, hunting and poaching pressure, food provisioning, and/or constant surveillance by primatologists is not addressed. 101 More evident, however, in the follow-up to Demonic Males is a development of the theoretical argument purporting to explain chimp and human violence in three ways. First, a belief that warfare in humans and violent, deathly attacks in chimpanzees are examples of a phenomenon Wrangham labels "coalitionary killing." According to his explanation, adult male chimps and humans collaborate to kill or brutally wound other adults: "The ancient origin of warfare is supported by . . . evidence that . . . chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor around 5-6 mya."102 Secondly, Wrangham believes the principal adaptive explanation linking coalitionary killing in chimpanzees and humans is the "imbalanceof- power" hypothesis. Accordingly, chimpanzee males will attack other groups if they outnumber them and have a low risk of injury to themselves. Because of the complexity of modern warfare, these types of lethal raids can be seen more readily in humans in "primitive" warfare among "pre-state" societies.103 Finally, the long-term evolutionary explanation of coalitionary killing is a "dominance drive" that favors unprovoked aggression by the opportunity to attack at low personal risk. The dominance drive is related to increased genetic fitness, allowing the killers to leave more of their dominant-killer genes to the next generation.104 Wrangham assumes certain behaviors resulting in conspecific killing among ants, wolves, chimpanzees, and humans (especially those in "primitive, pre-state" societies) are similar phenomena. Presumably they have the same biological bases and motivations, and are driven by the same underlying natural causes. He gives these behaviors the label "coalitionary killing" and, in creating a name, he creates a phenomenon. When comparisons are made between human and animal behavior, and it is assumed that behaviors that are similar in appearance have similar functions and evolutionary histories, a basic principle of biology is being violated. Form alone does not provide information about function nor shared genetic or evolutionary history. Referring to "rape" in dragonflies, "slavery" in ants, or "coalitionary killing" in chimpanzees and humans may sound like science but, to paraphrase Jonathan Marks's reprimand, science is concerned with biological connections, not metaphorical descriptions.105 Another aspect of the demonic male theory is the argument that an imbalance of power must be an incentive to coalitionary killing. Are we to suspect that whenever a group of chimpanzees or humans perceives weakness in an individual or another group, they will attack and kill? In fact, neither chimpanzees nor humans attack in all circumstances of imbalance-of-power, and coalitionary killing is extremely rare in both species. (Remember Douglas Fry's findings that there are many ways to handle conflict--avoidance, toleration, negotiation, settlement?) One major set of questions pervades all of the observations of lethal chimpanzee attacks: What is the underlying motivation and what types of stressors prompt lethal attacks to occur in some cases and not in others? Also, in chimpanzees, how much does severe habitat encroachment, harassment, provisioning, crowding, hunting, and even constant surveillance affect the lives of these highly intelligent animals who are now in danger of extinction in almost every forest in which they occur? And, how do many of these same stressors in the modern world affect humans? The third part of the demonic male theory--that dominance drives are present--needs clarification. Robert Hinde, one of the most respected animal behaviorists of our time, has considered the concept of psychological and behavioral "drives" at length. He emphasizes that the word itself can make for difficulties because it has been used in so many different ways. Where measures of behavior can be directly correlated, such as drinking leading to a cessation of thirst, the proposition of an intervening drive variable may be a valuable tool for research. However, when correlations between behaviors are not perfect, Hinde cautions, "such a concept is misleading and can be a positive hindrance."106 The use of the concept of drive in relation to the extremely complex set of behavioral and contextual phenomena involved in dominance seems to us to be entirely inappropriate. CONVENTIONAL WISDOM AS SCIENCE How do theories or new paradigms in science get accepted or, on the other hand, ignored? Unfortunately, the answers to this question may turn out to be much more political than scientific. In 1962 a philosopher of science named Thomas Kuhn wrote a classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution. In it he argued that scientists examine the evidence related to their questions and come up with the most parsimonious explanation (or theory, or paradigm) that fits the data and techniques currently available at the time. However, the evidence is also filtered through a scientist's own background and theoretical orientation, by his or her world view and cultural milieu. Changing currently popular, engrained paradigms, those that have become "conventional wisdom" like the Man the Hunter theory, is very difficult especially if the theory also fits conventional cultural views of the world. Scientists, like most people, are generally conservative in their ability to adopt new paradigms. Once a paradigm becomes established within a scientific community, most practitioners become technicians working within the parameters of the theory but rarely questioning the validity of the theory itself. In fact even questioning the theory is often thought of as unscientific because the new theory and the old are incompatible and the internal logic of each paradigm differs. Proponents of each paradigm are often talking past one another--speaking a different language. As expressed by Shirley Strum in her landmark book Almost Human, in a passage describing her efforts to get primatologists to accept her observations that aggression was not as pervasive or important an influence on the evolution of baboon behavior as had previously been thought: "In science, according to Kuhn, ideas do not change simply because new facts win out over outmoded ones. Many more social, cultural and historical variables make up the complete picture. Since the facts can't speak for themselves, it is their human advocates who win or lose the day."107 So, yes, science is a matter of accumulating better and better evidence to fit a theory . . . or of finding that both old evidence and new evidence are better accommodated by a completely new theory. And, in the end, even with new evidence and a better way of explaining it, ultimately, the politics of science must take its course. It is up to the audience to weigh the evidence. Discrepancies among the theories and the evidence must be evaluated. Once these discrepancies are seen to be overwhelming, the new paradigm will be accepted in favor of the old. Kuhn was not without a sense of humor, for as his friend, the renowned social anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes, Kuhn had an embroidered motto hanging in his house which stated "God Save This Paradigm."108 Science is not always truth. Science is just the best way to answer a particular question given the available evidence and technology at a particular time and place. At this time and place, we believe Man the Hunted as a paradigm of early human evolution best fits the currently available evidence. Future evidence, nonetheless, could prove us wrong; we can only wait to see what unfolds. REALLY OUR LAST WORDS There's little doubt that modern humans, particularly those of us in Western cultures, think of ourselves as the dominant form of life on earth. And we seldom question whether that view also held true for our species' distant past (or even for the present, outside of urban areas). We swagger like the toughest kids on the block as we spread our technology over the landscape and irrevocably change it for other cultures and species, aware in a cursory way that we may cause our own demise in somewhat record time but unwilling to stop. Current reality does appear to perch humans atop a planetary food chain. The vision of our utter superiority may even hold true for the last 500 years, but that's just the proverbial blink of an eye when compared to the seven million years that our hominid ancestors have wandered the planet. We like to envision a less-powerful inauguration of our species. Consider this image: smallish beings (adult females weighing maybe 60 pounds, males heavier) with a rather unimpressive brain-to-body ratio, possessing the ability to stand and move upright. Basically, beings who spent millions of years as a primate meal walking around on two legs. (Rather than Man the Hunter, we may need to see ourselves as more like Bipedal Protein Pops.) Our species began as just one of many that had to be cautious and resourceful, depending on other group members when danger reared its head. We were quite simply small beasts within a large and complex ecosystem. Is Man the Hunter a cultural construction of the West? Belief in a sinful, violent ancestor does fit nicely with Christian views of original sin and the necessity to be saved from our own awful, yet natural, desires. Other religions don't necessarily emphasize the ancient savage in the human past; indeed, many modern-day hunter-gatherers, who have to live as part of nature, hold supernatural beliefs in which humans are a part of the web of life, not superior creatures who dominate or ravage nature and each other. Think of Man the Hunted, and you put a different face on our past. The shift forces us to see that for most of our evolutionary existence, instead of being the toughest kids on the block, we needed to live in groups (like most other primates) and work together to avoid predators. Thus an urge to cooperate can clearly be seen as a functional tool rather than a Pollyanna-ish nicety, and deadly competition among individuals or nations may be highly aberrant behavior, not hard-wired survival techniques. The same aberrance is true of our destructive domination of the earth by technological toys gone mad. Raymond Dart declared "the loathsome cruelty of mankind to man is explicable only in terms of man's carnivorous and cannibalistic origin."109 While Dart may have equated predators and their carnivorous eating habits with cruelty, predation is just a way of getting food, not a cruel thirst for blood. But, forgetting Dart's unscientific subjectivity, if our origin was neither carnivorous nor cannibalistic, we have no excuse for our loathsome behavior. Our earliest evolutionary history is not pushing us to be awful bullies. Instead, our millions of years as prey suggest that we should be able to take our ancestral tool kit of sociality, cooperation, interdependency, and mutual protection and use it to make a brighter future for ourselves and our planet. We evolved as a mainly plant-eating species that also ate some animal protein collected opportunistically. But this latter activity did not make us a predator or a scavenger. We hunted but were not hunters, and we scavenged but were not scavengers. We are neither naturally aggressive hunters and killers nor are we always kind and loving. Humans have the capacity to be both. It is what we learn and our life experiences, our world view, and our culture that have the greatest influence on our behavior, even how we react to stress. That is exactly why it is necessary to comprehend that we have not inherited a "propensity" to kill derived from our hunting past. We are no more born to be hunters than to be gardeners. We are no more inherent killers than we are angels. Humans are what they learn to be. We're making the statements above with the intention they will be our last words on the subject of Man the Hunter versus Man the Hunted. (Nevertheless, like an '80s rock band who vow there'll be no more tours, but find the lure of going on the road too great to resist . . . we might be persuaded to sing again!) 286

Humans have heterosexual instinct

The claims by trans ideologists below , give no argument for heterosexual instinct-genotype to be selected against ! Even they impliedly admit that heterosexual instinct/ genotype existed “before”. _ They give no reason that it would be selected against ever ! _

Early genus homo females would have had the intelligence to discover that heterosexual intercourse made them pregnant. But there is no reason that discovery would lead to selection against the heterosexual instinct genotype or for homosexual genotype ( as asserted below ) . There’s no reason that would cause any individuals with very rare mutations for homosexual genotype to start having heterosex; so the very few existing homosexual genotypes would be selected against relative to heterosexual genotypes in every generation . An individual with heterosexual genotype would likely have more heterosexual matings than homosexual or bisexual genotypes, and be selected for relative to them . Heterosexual instinct would be selected for not against ( obviously !) . It wouldn’t go away !

The notion that heterosexual intercourse would only be preserved non-instinctively because of “higher intelligence “ people wanting children to take care of them in old age is not sound . Stone Age societies were highly mobile ; younger people were not carrying the old with them on their constant movements. This is one reason for shorter life expectancy. There wasn’t much old age .

But even with the rise of cities , beginning circa 6,000 years ago , and some increase in older people , care in old age by children, did not replace heterosexual instinct ; nor , importantly in this argument, would it cause heterosexual instinct / genotype to be selected against , as heterosexual instinct would still be motivating people to have fertile intercourse and pass on heterosexual instinct genes ! Whereas any genetic mutations for non-heterosexual instinct would have fewer fertile matings than instinctive heterosexuals and be selected against in every generation !

The species wide human population has grown since the beginning ( the Darwinian measure of species fitness ) relative to other mammals and primates , expanding out of Africa and around the globe because of human species’ overwhelmingly predominant heterosexual instinct, as in all fit sexually reproducing species. Any sexually reproducing species that somehow loses heterosexual instinct will lose population and become unfit / go extinct. Human population has been expanding since the beginning because it has heterosexual instinct _reinforced_ by cultural principles - high intelligence! - culture which only humans have . Humans have even more heterosexual inclination than non-human species. That’s why the human species population has expanded much greater than other primates , mammals, vertebrates


On Apr 26, 2021, Maure Briggs wrote  "Yep, trans-ideology supports and reinforces gender stereotypes... totally conservative and right wing ! "

CB: It is also male supremcist , sociopathic

Maure Briggs www.facebook.com/maureen.cbriggsc www.flickr.com/photos/7279921@N03/page3/ www.pinterest.com/maureclaire/ https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8476178?shelf=read

-----Original Message----- From: Charles Brown To: marxism-thaxis@lists.riseup.net; a-list Sent: Mon, Apr 26, 2021 8:30 am Subject: [marxism-thaxis] Marx as Essentialist ; contra Foucault; Trans ideology is right wing

[lbo-talk] Marx as Essentialist; contra Foucault; Trans ideology is rightwing Charles Brown cb31450 at gmail.com Mon May 23 12:45:38 PDT 2016 Previous message: [lbo-talk] A Skeptical look at capital-S Skepticism -- GREAT speech (John Horgan - Scientific American) Next message: [lbo-talk] Jack Shalom, dialectical mMagician, at the Left Forum (don't miss this video!) Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Search LBO-Talk Archives Limit search to: Subject & Body Subject Author Sort by: Reverse Sort You are a slanderer ,lying that I'm a bigot or this critique of rightwing , male supremacist ideology . Bruce Jenner is a rightwinger and male supremacist , and you're a pig for supporting him. > > > > ---------- Original Message ---------- > From: "Lenin's Tomb" > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Marx as Essentialist; contra Foucault > Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 15:29:02 +0100 > > Really, I unsubscribed from LBO Talk some time ago, but I’m still getting Charles Brown’s bigoted bullshit. Please take it away. > >> On 28 Apr 2016, at 14:53, Charles Brown wrote: >> >> >> >> For our species to continue surviving, the human line could not lose its sexual instinct until it was possible for reproduction to be relatively assured without it. And this was only possible after humans had first found a benefit in producing offspring (realizing that children could provide care and protection in old age), and then discovered what caused reproduction (linking heterosexual intercourse to it). The tremendous insight required for both discoveries was only made possible by a sufficiently high intelligence level. >> /// >> >> Human species never lost its Herero-sexual instinct. >> >> Nothing in either discovery the article mentions would cause selection against hetero-sexual instinct (!). Lack of hetero-sexual instinct would continue to have a much lower Darwinian fitness than having heterosexual-sexual instinct , because those with Hetero-sexual instinct would have a much greater number of fertile sexual acts than those lacking it. It is patent that Differential fertility between having and lacking heterosexual instinct would be enormous . >>

>>> On Apr 13, 2016, >>> >>> Dear All: >>> >>>> . . .Marx : " for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct and natural species-relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. "

>>> >>> Some trans ideologist : "Philosophy, poetry and (you forgot to add Charles) transphobic nonsense (except to the new breed of toilet monitors who are emerging below the Mason-Dixon line). >>> >>>> . . . humanity is essentially non-essential." >>> >>> Buddhist thinkers arrived at the same conclusion a few hundred years prior. Correct then; correct now. " >>> CB : Buddhists are not scientists -materialists ; they’re philosophical idealists.

>>>>CB : So, Foucault took license to erase the scientific fact of heterosexual instinct from anthropology and the philosophy of human nature. Foul deed ! Anti-Marxist big lie ! >>> >>> This article from the Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association “explains” about the lack of sexual instinct. The author does note that "the instinct requiring the largest compensating intelligence level before it can be lost is the sexual instinct." I hope other list members will join me in wishing Charles swift attainment of just such a compensating intelligence level. CB : You and the Gay and Lesbian Homosexual) Medical Journal are ignoramuses on biological anthropology . There was no end to human heterosexual instinct . You all are engaged in self-serving pseudoscience. >>> http://www.humansexualevolution.com/index.htm >>> >>> Brian http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/05/culturally-inherited-adaptations-give.html

Stone toolmaking and the evolution of human culture and cognition

Stone toolmaking and the evolution of human culture and cognition On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 3:56 PM, Charles Brown wrote: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049103/ " ABSTRACT Although many species display behavioural traditions, human culture is unique in the complexity of its technological, symbolic and social contents. Is this extraordinary complexity a product of cognitive evolution, cultural evolution or some interaction of the two? Answering this question will require a much better understanding of patterns of increasing cultural diversity, complexity and rates of change in human evolution. Palaeolithic stone tools provide a relatively abundant and continuous record of such change, but a systematic method for describing the complexity and diversity of these early technologies has yet to be developed. Here, an initial attempt at such a system is presented. Results suggest that rates of Palaeolithic culture change may have been underestimated and that there is a direct relationship between increasing technological complexity and diversity. Cognitive evolution and the greater latitude for cultural variation afforded by increasingly complex technologies may play complementary roles in explaining this pattern. Keywords: Palaeolithic, technology, hierarchical behaviour, cumulative culture, Oldowan, Acheulean 1. INTRODUCTION Humans display evolved capacities for complex technological, symbolic and social action that are unique among extant species. But what exactly has evolved to produce these capacities? A prime candidate is the human brain, long viewed as the source of our distinctive ‘mental powers’ and the sine qua non of human uniqueness [1]. However, early evolutionary theorists also recognized the importance of culture [2,3] in accounting for the complexity of modern human behaviour. More recently, it has been suggested that the full range of modern human behaviour may be explicable as a product of cumulative cultural evolution [4], and that key behavioural transitions in human prehistory reflect the dynamics of cultural, rather than biological, evolution [5]. To further dissect the complex interaction of human cognitive and cultural evolution, it will be necessary to better understand these patterns of prehistoric culture change. There is general agreement that human and animal ‘cultures’ are distinguished by the much greater diversity and complexity of the former. What remains unclear is whether this difference arises from the increased fidelity of human cultural transmission [4,6], from the greater cognitive capacity of individual humans [7] or from some complex interaction of the two [8]. This is a difficult question to address because modern humans differ from even our closest living relatives on a wide array of interdependent somatic, cognitive and cultural dimensions. The question of which trait(s) may have had evolutionary/causal priority in human evolution is a historical one regarding developments that appear simultaneous from a comparative perspective. Archaeological evidence provides a complementary data source that is better positioned to answer questions about developments since the last common ancestor with Pan. Palaeolithic stone tools offer a relatively abundant and continuous record of technological change over the past 2.5 Myr, documenting the gradual expression of new behavioural capabilities. Exploitation of this evidence will depend on the development of increasingly robust inferential links between archaeological remains, past behaviours, and the necessary cognitive and cultural mechanisms supporting these behaviours. High on the list of tools needing to be developed is a systematic method for describing the complexity and diversity of Palaeolithic technologies. It might be supposed that 150 years of Palaeolithic archaeology had already solved this problem, and that the wealth of named cultures, ‘industries’ and ‘modes’ in the literature would be sufficient for comparison. Indeed, it has been argued that the longevity of the Oldowan and Acheulean Industries reflects an absence of cumulative cultural evolution in the Lower Palaeolithic [7,9]. However, the nature of cultural variation in the Oldowan is a matter of ongoing debate [10,11] and many researchers do see evidence of progressive technological change within the Acheulean (e.g. [12–14]). One difficulty with classical archaeological approaches to technological variation has been a tendency to focus on the form of artefacts rather than on the processes that produced them. This is problematic because it conflates many potential sources of variation [15] and because it is biological capacities and cultural ‘recipes’ [16] that evolve, not artefact morphologies. Analysis of the hierarchical organization of toolmaking action sequences may provide a better foundation for inferences about culture and cognition. 2. STONE TOOLMAKING ACTION HIERARCHIES Analysis of toolmaking action sequences is not new in archaeology. For over 30 years, the châine opértoire approach has focused on describing the processes of Palaeolithic tool production, based on insights gained from the experimental replication and the ‘reading’ of production scars left on tools (e.g. [12,17]). However, this approach has yet to be fully integrated with theoretical and methodological insights from other disciplines. As the name implies, the châine opértoire approach involves the reconstruction of action ‘chains’ or sequences, commonly represented as flow charts. This sequential approach has been useful in reconstructing the details of particular past technologies, but is less suitable for generalizing comparisons or cognitive analyses. The presence of hierarchical as well as sequential structure in human action has been a cornerstone of cognitive science since the demise of behaviourism [18–20], and is especially relevant to understanding the goal-oriented flexibility [18] of behaviours like stone toolmaking, in which consistent products are generated from inherently variable raw materials and action outcomes [17]. Elements of hierarchical analysis are implicit in many technological descriptions produced by the châine opértoire approach, but the formal description of Palaeolithic technologies in these terms should help provide a more uniform framework for comparison and promote better integration with research on the hierarchical structure in motor control [21], functional neuroanatomy [22,23] and social transmission [16,24–26]. In a hierarchy, individual elements are grouped into increasingly inclusive nested categories. This is commonly depicted using tree diagrams, with multiple nodes at lower (subordinate) levels being linked to single nodes at the next higher (superordinate) level, culminating in a single node at the top of the diagram. In action hierarchies, superordinate levels correspond to more abstract goals and/or temporally extended processes, from the overall objective (e.g. ‘make coffee’) down through more particular sub-goals and operations (‘add sugar’) to highly specific motor acts (‘grasp spoon’). This multi-level organization provides flexibility by allowing context-specific adaptive variation at subordinate levels to be combined with more global stability at superordinate levels. For example, ‘turn on light’ is a coherent goal that might be accomplished by flipping a switch, twisting a knob or pulling a cord [23]. Critically, information can flow both up and down within hierarchies so that superordinate goals determine subordinate action selection (‘top-down’ influence) but are themselves driven by subordinate action outcomes (‘bottom-up’ influence). This bi-directional interaction is an important mechanism supporting the learning and adaptability of complex behaviours [21] like stone toolmaking. Hierarchical structure is interesting from a cognitive perspective because it implies the existence of superordinate representations abstracted from, and maintained over, the course of multiple subordinate events [23]. As such, it implicates processes of stimulus generalization, relational integration, temporal abstraction and goal abstraction associated with the distinctive response properties and anatomical connections of prefrontal cortex [22]. Hierarchical structure is also interesting with respect to cultural evolution because it relates to questions about the ‘level’ of copying [6] and potential biases in transmission [25]. Early hierarchical analyses of stone toolmaking action sequences were developed by Holloway [27] and Gowlett [28]. More recently, the hierarchical structure of toolmaking has been described in relation to models from cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology [29–31]. Moore [30] presented a tree structure notation, adapted from Greenfield [32], which is further modified here to describe the organization of major Lower Palaeolithic toolmaking methods as inferred from modern experiments and the analysis of archaeological materials. Sent from my iPhone --- To unsubscribe: List help:

“The end of American exceptionalism - Wolff

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/102-102/4659-the-myth-of-american-exceptionalism-implod The myth of 'American exceptionalism' implodes Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers. But since 2008, it has made them pay for its failures A homeless encampment known as Tent City in Sacramento, California A homeless encampment known as Tent City, in Sacramento, California, in 2009. Since the 1970s, real wages stopped growing and the gap between rich and poor expanded as the US economy slowed down after decades of growth. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the middle and poor, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt "middle class". A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labour supply. So, it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, across the 19th century until the 1970s. Then everything changed. Real wages stopped rising, as US capitalists redirected their investments to produce and employ abroad, while replacing millions of workers in the US with computers. The US women's liberation moved millions of US adult women to seek paid employment. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labour. US employers took advantage of the changed situation: they stopped raising wages. When basic labour scarcity became labour excess, not only real wages, but eventually benefits, too, would stop rising. Over the last 30 years, the vast majority of US workers have, in fact, gotten poorer, when you sum up flat real wages, reduced benefits (pensions, medical insurance, etc), reduced public services and raised tax burdens. In economic terms, American "exceptionalism" began to die in the 1970s. The rich, however, have got much richer since the 1970s, as every measure of US income and wealth inequality attests. The explanation is simple: while workers' average real wages stayed flat, their productivity rose (the goods and services that an average hour's labour provided to employers). More and better machines (including computers), better education, and harder and faster labour effort raised productivity since the 1970s. While workers delivered more and more value to employers, those employers paid workers no more. The employers reaped all the benefits of rising productivity: rising profits, rising salaries and bonuses to managers, rising dividends to shareholders, and rising payments to the professionals who serve employers (lawyers, architects, consultants, etc). Since the 1970s, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labour, and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and by taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism – until the global crisis hit in 2007. By then, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, no more hours of work, nor more borrowing, were possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation. The richest 10-15% – those cashing in on employers' good fortune from no longer-rising wages – helped bring on the crisis by speculating wildly and unsuccessfully in all sorts of new financial instruments (asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, etc). The richest also contributed to the crisis by using their money to shift US politics to the right, rendering government regulation and oversight inadequate to anticipate or moderate the crisis or even to react properly once it hit. Indeed, the rich have so far been able to use the crisis to widen still further the gulf separating themselves from the rest, to finally bury American exceptionalism. First, they utilised both parties' dependence on their financial support to make sure there would be no mass federal hiring programme for the unemployed (as FDR used between 1934 and 1940). The absence of such a programme guaranteed that real wages would not rise and, with job benefits, would likely fall – as they indeed have done. Second, the rich made sure that the prime focus of government response to the crisis would benefit banks, large corporations and the stock markets. These have more or less "recovered". Third, the current drive for government budget austerity – especially focused on the 50 states and the thousands of municipalities – forces the mass of people to pick up the costs for the government's unjustly imbalanced response to the crisis. The trillions spent to save the banks and selected other corporations (AIG, GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc) were mostly borrowed because the government dared not tax the corporations and the richest citizens to raise the needed rescue funds. Indeed, a good part of what the government borrowed came precisely from those funds left in the hands of corporations and the rich, because they had not been taxed to overcome the crisis. With sharply enlarged debts, all levels of government face the pressure of needing to take too much from current tax revenues to pay interest on debts, leaving too little to sustain public services. So, they demand the people pay more taxes and suffer reduced public services, so that government can reduce its debt burden. For example, California's new governor proposes to continue for five more years the massive, broad-based tax increases begun during the crisis and also to cut state services for the poor (reduced Medicaid funding) and the middle class(reduced budgets for community colleges, state colleges, and the university system). The governor admits that California's budget faces sky-high interest costs and reduced federal government assistance just when the crisis increases demands for public services. The governor does not admit his fear to tax the state's huge corporate and private individual wealth. So, he announces an "austerity programme", as if no alternative existed. Indeed, a major support for austerity comes from the large corporations and wealthiest Californians, who hold the state's bonds and want reassurances that the interest on those bonds will be paid. California's austerity programme parallels similar programmes in many other states, in thousands of municipalities, and at the federal level (for example, social security). Together, they reinforce falling real wages, falling benefits, falling government services and rising taxes. In the US, capitalism has stopped "delivering the goods", as it so long boasted. The reality of ever-deeper economic division clashes with expectations built up when wages rose over the century before the 1970s. US capitalism now brings long-term painful decline for its working class, the end of "American exceptionalism" and rising social, cultural and political tensions. • Richard Wolff gives his monthly talk on global capitalism at the Brecht Forum in New York on 18 January; for more information about Professor Wolff's lectures, podcasts and media appearance, visit his website

Ruled classes’ resistance to oppression/exploitation is instinctive

Karl : "This is an idealist formulation. Resistance to oppression is not hardwired into the human psyche; it would not have existed in pre-class society.

CB: Resistance to oppression didn't exist in pre-class society , because there was no oppression in pre-class society ! Class oppression originates with class society , of course.

And since the central thesis of the Manifesto is that Resistence to class oppression was in _every_ class society ( history is a history of class struggles), Resistence is not historically specific; Resistence is trans-historical , and therefore is inborn , not learned. Humans have an inborn , hard wired sense of equality to other humans, that's why they resist in every historical period.

This is a materialist formulation: biology is materialism ; species being.

////// Resistance is engendered dialectically by oppression, which as Marx and Engels revealed, creates its own gravediggers.

(((( CB : How would oppression "engender" Resistence ? It doesn't engender Resistence in beasts of burden; only Homo sapiens . It's instinctive for Homo sapiens.

On 22 Apr 2015 22:41, "Charles Brown" wrote: The ruled classes' struggle is instinctive struggle is instinctive

An unstated premise of the Manifesto is that humans instinctively struggle against exploitation and oppression; there is an instinct of equality. Otherwise, history wouldn't be a history of class struggles , because the ruling classes certainly don't teach the ruled classes to resist . So, the ruled classes' motivation to struggle is instinctive, not learned, nature , not nurture.

Facebook comments Spring 2021

Unity of opposite sexes is the most fundamental unity in difference /diversity we celebrate; this is the most fundamental unity in diversity, e pluribus unum : vive la différence French phrase vive la dif·​fé·​rence | \ vēv-lä-dē-fā-räⁿs , vē-və- \ Definition of vive la différence : long live the difference (as between the sexes) Woman’s History Month : Revolutionary Feminism Pankhurst correctly refers to the human race impliedly as a sexually reproducing animal species with binary complementary opposite sexes , yin / yang , viva la difference . Race here = Rainbow Coalition, of the human species . All “races” are part of the human race . Pankhurst comradely presumes that the whole human race , or 99.99 % of it , is in need of freeing itself from the .001 %. Practical-Critical Pankhurst proposes a strategy for working class and women’s self-emancipation-revolutionary feminism . “Birth of a Radical Feminist by Jamae Hawkins I reached my peak “trans” moment at the same time I was done being a Liberal. It occurred several days after I marched in the Woman's March January 21, 2017, shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration. Being a dedicated Democratic Liberal, I wanted to bask in the glow of being inclusive to everyone's issue and to object Donald J. Trump being president. Women wore pink pussy hats and vagina costumes, I thought it was clever and expressive. I was participating in the march because I was just damn pissed that we elected a wanna be dictator and wanted to physically be in front of the White House to express displeasure. The march was peaceful and well attended by all people representing all different issues. I no longer saw it as just a women’s march but a solidarity of citizens disturbed about what is to come. Days after the march, social media was flooded with trans activists complaining that they were violently excluded. Huh? They said that by women wearing pussy hats and wearing vagina costumes they were excluded because not all women have vaginas and by that exclusion those women were committing violence against them. WTF? What the hell does that even mean? From what I saw of the march, no one was excluded because everyone is pissed. I discovered that women describing their own existence is offensive to transgender women and their activists. In making the very statement of “Trans women aren't women, Trans men aren’t men”, women were slammed and labeled a “TERF” in comment sections of social media articles regarding trans issues. A “TERF” is an acronym that stands for “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist”. I FIRMLY believed that left wing politics did not deny science. I only subscribed to casual feminism at best, I didn’t even know what a Radical Feminist was until I was called that name. That by describing basic concepts as: Male is Male and Female is Female. The definition of WOMAN is an ADULT HUMAN FEMALE and a MAN is a ADULT HUMAN MALE. I have been labeled a bigot just making that statement. Then it hit me how much it bothered me to be called a bigot and in that instant I didn’t give a care in the world. Who cares? I can be called any and every name in the book but I will not deny reality for the likes of anyone. That was the moment when I realized that I that my political ideology as a liberal was dead. Males trying to transition to female or females trying to transition to males are not a race or cultural group. They are a small number of men or women who for a range of reasons, usually some kind of mental illness or sexual fetish, who wish to be of the opposite biological sex. The delusion of “being in the wrong body” is a symptom of underlying and untreated mental illness. My former views on transgender ideology were basic, I figured that people who wanted to be of the opposite sex would want to take on the issues of their desired sex. That has not been the case. I have seen enough on social media to see a pattern of behavior in large number of those who identify as male transitioning to female. What I have seen involves threats of violence if you don't subscribe to their way of thinking that biological males can be made female or biological females can be made male. I have witnessed liberal feminists immediately shutting down any immoderate opinions. As soon as someone makes a slightly critical comment or question, they are called a TERF, bigot, told to fuck off, die, be raped, and then immediately blocked, inhibiting any conversation at all. Another dismissive tactic is to minimize the issue as “just toilets”, particularly with the disingenuous refrain “let them pee”. This ignores that the push to substitute sex with gender identity affects everything from changing rooms, to women’s sports, midwifery, lesbian spaces, media reporting on male violence, parenting practices, government policy, reporting, data collection, and women’s rights to protest. Trans women seem very detached from the true reality of women’s lives, which is shocking in the sense they want to be female so bad. A lot of trans women seem to have an obsession with being “validated” by getting catcalled on the street by other dudes (even if they themselves aren’t sexually attracted to other males) or being called derogatory terms associated with women. If trans rights were about being treated equally, I would reconsider showing my support, but these days trans rights is simply about women pretending trans women and women are the same. In the past few years trans women have campaigned to close women's domestic violence shelters for not accepting them, for trans girls to be able to harass girls in their own changing rooms, to allow trans women with male anatomies to go into women's changing rooms and make us uncomfortable, to co-opt every single women's cause for their own. Trans women are attempting to steal women's identities and be "better women than women" and then tell us that we're bigots for saying ENOUGH. This is no different than a white “trans racial” person who believes they are black telling black people who are born black to stop talking about their experiences because it's racist. That is exactly the same thing. Trans women seek to move women out of the way, to dilute what it means to be a woman; they are the neo-wave misogyny. Trans people make up an incredibly minute percentage of the population, so why must women erase their identities to satisfy trans women? Why can't trans women claim their own identity instead of appropriating the issues of women? Stop trying to erase the female experience. There is no way to change BIOLOGICAL sex, GENDER is a societal construct that assigns characteristics and behavior in response to BIOLOGICAL sex. Sex reassignment surgery (SRS) is real and it involves sterilization and mutilation. For males, the full reassignment is a horror story of a wound that constantly needs tending for the rest of their lives. Many men who have gone through this are now feeling devastated but many are also in denial which is why they are so angry. Sorry the truth hurts and life ain’t fair. I do actually feel for some of these men and women but at the end of the day gender is not biological sex. They feel they were "born" the wrong gender when in fact our society has such rigid performance roles for males and females (gender = the performance of sex roles) that they will go to extreme lengths to become what they believe is the opposite gender. What they don't realize is that these gender roles are not real they are social constructs and you can change your gender any time you like without mutilating yourself. It will not make you biologically the opposite sex however. No one perfectly performs masculinity or femininity. People who feel that they cannot act/dress the way they want to because of their sex are not shrugging off the standard gender roles – they are buying into it. They are accepting the argument that a man cannot be feminine. So they change their bodies in some cases in order to ‘be women’ and therefore be allowed to be feminine. In other cases, they do not change their bodies but demand to be called women, deny their male biology, etc. In both situations the person has changed their identity or body in order to conform to the expectation that women are feminine and men are masculine. Becoming ‘a woman’ in order to be feminine in a socially-acceptable way is doing nothing to challenge gender stereotypes for males or females. It is literally buying into them. Shrugging off the standard gender roles would be to say, I am a man. I am male. I will dress femininely, so suck it up and vice-versa. There’s my armchair analysis of what I’ve observed in these men and women. This is why I am a Radical Feminist." Thomas : “You may not like the Democrats you may not even like politics, but Joe Biden is an across the board, take charge leader.. True Story!” Thomas : “JOE BIDEN SAYS HE'S GIVING UP $1,400.00 Period!” https://www.facebook.com/groups/232417175017343/?ref=share Trumpys are zombie cancer metastasized throughout American culture. The Republican Party is a political cancer on American Democracy - Doc Rabbit Republicans are so critically and desperately reliant on cheating to win , they are cheating at high noon in broad daylight in “Times Square. “ I’m voluntarily remaining under all strictures I’ve been under for myself , others and the Governor . It’s critical to understand that the white officers are demonstrating their SUPERIORITY , slavemaster life and death authority, over their Black victims. SUPREMACISM is the essence of RACISM . Owen : “...Btw, we're now as far from the '60's as the 60's were from the 1910's Nolan : “Happy Confederate Surrender Day! Thinking of all the losers flying loser flags. 😂” The “middle” class needs to learn that it’s in the same class as the “lower “ class as far as the “upper “ class is concerned. The upper class, the Bourgeoisie, the 1%, know they are in a class war with the whole Proletariat, the Working Class , “middle” and “lower .” The 99% largely are unclassconscious , competing with each other , rat racing , dog eats dog , war of all against all The Bourgeoisie is doubly fractured: Trumpy Rightwing Bourgeoisie vs Leftwing Bourgeoisie; Trumpy right wing vs MCConnell right wing 2013: “Removing the powers of the officials elected by the Black majority is an attack on the Black majority Electorate itself.To quote Mayor Coleman A. Young, "Racism do exist". We are oppressed by white supremacy. In Michigan, we are a minority under the tyranny of the racist majority, still ; in a system of majority rule. It has fluctuations through time. We win victories and reduce the oppression to some degree. _In_Detroit , of course, historically, we became the electoral majority. Now they have gone so far as to tyrannically and illegally impose a State majority rule overriding the Black majority IN Detroit. All this , even going back to attacks on Coleman Young as Mayor elected and re-elected by the original Black urban majorities , are political and financial attacks on the Black majority (minority) in Detroit through the officials they elect. The struggle continues; victory is certain.” Hasta la victoria siempre. Howard : “So Biden has the nerve to include caring for the elderly as part of infrastructure? ❤❤❤ Build Back Better, Mr. President! ✊✊✊🏻✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽” Thomas : “You may not like the Democrats you may not even like politics, but Joe Biden is an across the board, take charge leader.. True Story!” Become an advocate for the Democratic Party ; help win Democratic majorities. Georgia: so desperate to maintain white power , it prohibits giving food or water to waiting voters in line : Wearing their kkk hoods while passing laws . https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article136803208.html?fbclid=IwAR29AxNyXUrmcpi4LfE4CBIqDsTb4OYT4mFcEjnt4G_cGVSFujOlcMwaSxE . I’ve lived 55 years in the South, and I grew up liking the Confederate flag. I haven’t flown one for many decades, but for a reason that might surprise you. I know the South well. We lived wherever the Marine Corps stationed my father: Georgia, Virginia, the Carolinas. As a child, my favorite uncle wasn’t in the military, but he did pack a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun in his trunk. He was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. Despite my role models, as a kid I was an inept racist. I got in trouble once in the first grade for calling a classmate the N-word. But he was Hispanic. As I grew up and acquired the strange sensation called empathy (strange for boys anyway), I learned that for black folks the flutter of that flag felt like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And for the most prideful flag waivers, clearly that response was the point. I mean, come on. It’s a battle flag. What the flag symbolizes for blacks is enough reason to take it down. But there’s another reason that white southerners shouldn’t fly it. Or sport it on our state-issued license plates as some do here in North Carolina. The Confederacy – and the slavery that spawned it – was also one big con job on the Southern, white, working class. A con job funded by some of the ante-bellum one-per-centers, that continues today in a similar form. You don’t have to be an economist to see that forcing blacks – a third of the South’s laborers – to work without pay drove down wages for everyone else. And not just in agriculture. A quarter of enslaved blacks worked in the construction, manufacturing and lumbering trades; cutting wages even for skilled white workers. Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article136803208.html?fbclid=IwAR29AxNyXUrmcpi4LfE4CBIqDsTb4OYT4mFcEjnt4G_cGVSFujOlcMwaSxE#storylink=cpy With the DC Republican seditious insurrection and the Georgia kkk-fascist voter suppression, the US can never again chastise another nation for undemocracy. It’s critical to understand that the white officers are demonstrating their SUPERIORITY , slavemaster life and death authority, over their Black victims. SUPREMACISM is the essence of RACISM . Unity of opposite sexes is the most fundamental unity in difference /diversity we celebrate; this is the most fundamental unity in diversity, e pluribus unum : vive la différence French phrase vive la dif·​fé·​rence | \ vēv-lä-dē-fā-räⁿs , vē-və- \ Definition of vive la différence : long live the difference (as between the sexes) A big advantage for Democrats in ‘24 will be the big increase of the youth ( recent generations) voters as a fraction of the voting population who are being won over to Democrats because Republicans are stinkin the place up so bad .