CopyRight @ 1996
08/21/94 lots of good parts including chapter 9 intro
cooperation and the god of love
The population of the neolithic farmer expanded and
surpassed that of the tribal hunter and gatherers. The niche of
the city opened and the urbanites surpassed the farmers and to a
certain extent replaced them. For a tribal group to become an
urban group, they must be able to tolerate an increased
population density. Our cities are fairly comfortable for our
present nature, but even present population densities are
causing a great deal of stress. A new form of the human niche
that could open is humans adapted to greater population
density or else exploitation of living space that is not
presently useful. What comes to mind first is space. There is
no practical limit to the available living space off of earth.
It will take the development of some interesting techniques and
we will almost certainly require some gravity for both
development and survival, but it is very likely to be an option
that will be developed. There is much energy and resourse
available outside of the gravity wells. Another living space
niche that may get exploited would be underground. To many it
would not be comfortable, but if a population developed the
habits and techniques, the size of the niche would be incredible.
All of these would be called archologies.
A thought to think. Our survival is based on our social
habit. Our social ability, much of our intelligence, is based
around communication. What if we had telepathy? What would be
some of the effects of the ability to communicate mind to mind.
An important aspect of social interaction involves deception.
Especially in a competitive situation, deception can be
important. Perhaps psychic ability would cause problems. More
relevantly, what about our sense of smell. When talking about
communication, it must be considered that the sense of smell
can communicate a great deal of information. A good sense of
smell would give many clues about a persons emotional state,
amoung other things. Normally, evolution does not select against
an integral or functional traite, but is it posssible that
evolution has promoted limitations on some forms of human
communication. Perhaps this is to allow an individual to be
deceptive.... It may be something related to men and women.
It is notable that humans generally have a great deal more
religious fervor than nationalistic sense. It would be worth
examining these differences along tribal lines. locate PST.
In the mind, the statement that one loves God is the same as the
statement that one loves their family
A person that is selfish may be too self centered to
effectively act in any social situation including community,
family or child raising.
Does "ego" refer to ones self opinion or self opinion in relation
to others. Ego is a different thing for everyone, but when it leads
to anti-social behavior is when it is overdeveloped in relation to
others. A person with too high of a relative opinion of themself
cannot interact effectively socially.
An individual may choose not to use artificial selection for
their children. It does not really matter. The next generations may
choose to use it or the "family" will use it when it is obvious that
their genes need some cleaning up or the family may just die off.
Use or not of artificial selection would be a personal decision.
Ownership is an organizational system humans use to optimise
utilization of resourses. Free enterprise - distributed ownership
and management, creates distributed incentive and corosponding
efficiency. It creates a system related to supply and demand of
available resourses and who uses them. This describes some of an
equation that quantifies human resourse utilization characteristics
in relation to our social and genetic forms and limitations. Change
any part of the equation and consequential social, genetic and
resourse changes will be projected.
It seems likely that what we consider material wealth, actually
represents an ecological element as novel as wars of conquest were
8000 years ago. Before agriculture, there were very few things that
constituted wealth, especially durable wealth, other than territory.
A question must be asked about the meaning of wealth. Is it something
to be created or or is it to be amassed? Money has so much meaning
now. It can save a life or destroy a family. It can be part of
status and it can enhance mate selection. It can compete with the
critical values that constitute morality. Money is a critical part
of the organizational system, upon which our society is based.
Presently, ecomnomics is based mostly on the rules of supply and
demand. What would happen if something, perhaps technology, changed
the nature of the supply or the demand? What other factors would have
to be considered?
In a multi-tribal society, the most effective use of altruism,
would be to direct it towards family members.
Intelligence includes the ability to learn well and quickly.
It is easier to teach an intelligent person. In our technically and
socially complex world, a childs education must be very extensive and
complete. One of the greatest values of intelligence in evolution,
will be simplification of the education process. This would be
especially noticable if we ever again enter a niche that demands a
high birth rate.
Winning can be for the sake of winning or for what is to be won.
Sometimes, therefore, losing can be a way to win. Winning for the
sake of winning is a self perpetuating habit, common to various
value systems. Priorities must be remembered.
One interesting thing about genetic theories, as they stand now,
is that they are based on degree of relatedness. An individual has
half of the genetics of each parent. The only question is how
genetically related are the parents. The genetics of any two humans
only differs in minute ways, but apparently these small differences
are significant. Present theory suggests that we act as if the
genetics of our parents was totally different.
###
Both the Indo-Europeans and the Celtics contributed important
aggressive potentials to the civil populations. Though they both
contributed behavioral potentials that serve similar purposes, they
developed under very different conditions and so should be different
in many ways.
## Humans are very responsive to ceremony. Our development is long
and complex. Rites of passage, ceremonies of development and
maturity, are important to the organization of the society and to the
way the individual matures. We are developing a promiscuous ecology.
Humans widely consider "easy living" to be a desirable goal. We are
also stimulus and responce systems. Humans respond to their
enviornment. For a human to fully develop, it takes a lot of stimulus
or education, as we call it. Humans rised to challenge. What
challenges will humans find to raise themselves? What stimulus,
education or challenge will develop and release individual human
potential and maturity? One possibility is concious internal
reconciliation of the conflicts of a hybrid psychology.
## Humans are highly social. To be mature, a human must have their
social behaviors highly developed. A person must know communication,
cooperation, respect, love, reliance and other complex behaviors that
are learned during our long childhood. As with other behaviors, there
is a genetic basis for the potential of the behavior. Then the
behavior must be learned by education or discovery. For humans, the
normal way to develop social behaviors, is by education and example of
family and community. Behaviors with a strong genetic base develop
easily with a little appropriate education. In the absence of
adequate education, the individual still requires the behavior. It is
not just the communities push for conformity, it is also the
individuals need to function in the society that pushes the
development of social behaviors. A person will work to develop a
social behavior that they were not taught, so that they can function
in the society. If a person does not learn the more complex social
behaviors as a child, they will only learn them as an adult if the
need is there. The genes alone are not enough to teach complex
behaviors. A person must eventually learn these behaviors or they
will not function properly or be happy. This all leads to a point
about wealth. A feature of wealth, refering to affluence rather than
wealth as a tool, is that it can give a great deal of independence to
its user. If a family has wealth and fails to carefully teach its
children the important social behaviors, the independence of the
children will prevent them from ever learning to be social or mature.
## Human psychology operates in strange and mysterious ways. One
point of it that seems reasaonable is role models. Children and
adults both will imitate an individual that they respect. This is
something that is going to be impacted by media. In a smaller world,
human idols were parents or relatives. Media presents superstars and
larger than life archetypes. That is mostly a quantitative change,
but the portrayal of family forms, amoung other things, is going to be
significant. Back to psychology, people often imagine themselves as
their role model. Interesting and hopefully quite healthy, but the
reason this is mentioned is to illustrate something about our social
form. Society, as well as individuals, models itself after media. At
expensive resorts, this can easily be observed, but it extends further.
## Feudalism is as discrete a social form as the stratified society.
It was another form of organization based on a social contract of
classes. The contracts were oaths of loyalty and obligation.
Feudalism and its niche were quite transitory, but significant, as it
led to much of the modern organization of nations. Will those
organizational techniques have their use in the developing ecologies.
#### Institutions
Humans have always had laws. Over time, the laws have been
developed. It is interesting to note that as the laws have been
improved and expanded, they have not always functioned that well. A
method widely used to improve the functionality of the law is to
balance the legal process with human evaluation of whether the law
worked properly. That process may be judicial, executive or jury
There is a balance between the advantages of cooperation and self
service. the problem is recognizing the advantage. In a persons
personal analysis of a situation, it may take some thought, but the
individual should calculate an increace in efficiency of at least
33%. This becomes more pertinent in situations of limited
resources
Law is to offset human failings. Humans must offset the
inadaquacies of law.
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