Let's compare human happiness of hunter gatherers VS modern people

Bigbagofcans

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

He's not serious guys.. it's a "comedy" routine about how successful his life is etc that shows up in AH every so often.

A small part of me wants to believe he actually is a successful financier living the high life in Germany. But realistically he is an intelligent, fun-loving guy who, to quote Aonghus himself, " enjoys cans of the strongest cheapest Lidl beer and a few J's with the lads."

Wibbs

valoren wrote: »

OP also mentions money and property. I guess in a way modern day 'hunting' is acquiring money or as much of it as possible. The hunting hypothesis suggests that the formation of strong male coalitions was expressly to ensure that they literally brought home the bacon.

Maybe, though set against that is that in the hunting/gathering equation it's the gathering, that is what the women bring to the table, that brings in the majority of calories for the group. Hunting brings in the higher value calories. What it might come down to is because women get pregnant and have kids, this leaves them more vulnerable to potential food shortages so the man with more hunting skills as an asset, "money" as its were, makes him more attractive than the guy whose hunting skills are more mediocre. We even see that in the modern world. In cultures that are unstable or have fewer social supports "strong" men with money and/or power are more lauded and are seen as more attractive whereas in more stable cultures with more social support that's less in play.

In a sense a man's value is more earned over time, whereas a woman's value is more down to her fertility and health out of the box. Archetypal stories throughout history reflect this. The Hero's Journey for one. Where the young man goes on a long quest, suffers trials and tribulations, only to return or emerge fully grown and nearly always back to a woman character and his society who then accepts him as a Man™. There's no real female equivalent in such narratives. Their journeys tend to be more the undiscovered princess type tales. They're already fully realised to a great extent they just need to be noticed. The Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty type. The other one would be the coming of age from girl to adult woman, the Little Red Riding Hood type.

This might reflect our earliest days of being human in small familial groups. Women are the most precious "resource" of such groups. They give birth to the future. If a tribe loses all but a few men, the tribe can continue, if it loses all but a few of the women, they're on the road to extinction. Men are essentially more expendable. When tribal, even later war kicks off women are captured, men are inevitably killed on the spot or enslaved as worker drones until they die. The notion of "Women and children first" into the lifeboats makes good historical sense. It also explains why pretty much all of the premodern preagricultural religions are centred around women and fertility. The vast majority of the earliest figurative art showing people show women. Male representations are much rarer. It also helps explain why more female genetic lines have survived down to today.

robindch

badabing106 wrote: »

There was no anxiety over property, or money. They shared the physical exiliration of hunting together, the communal joy of providing and sharing food which was either hunted or gathered. The lived continously in the now and in one with nature. They were physically in the peak condition they were designed to be in. Ten times more capable and resilient than modern folk. They had everything that they needed to be content, food, shelter, sexy relations in abundance, sleep, community

Would you know that from first-hand experience, or are you just guessing?

FYI, murder rates in band-level societies was through the roof and most people had a life expectancy of around 25. A scratch could kill you via sepsis, and that's if you survived the endemic diseases - cholera, typhoid, polio and heaven knows what else. And you only got to catch them if you survived the violence, starvation, violence from neighbouring tribes and so on. Child mortality was insane and there's a reason why, for example, many cultures didn't bother naming their children until they'd reached, say, five years old, or used to say that one shouldn't count one's kids until they're twelve etc, etc.

Have a read of Stephen Pinkers The Better Angels of Our Nature which addresses at least some of your misapprehensions.

We've no idea whether people were happy back then, but we do know that they died of violence and easily-preventible diseases in vast numbers, at an early age.

Joe prim

yesto24 wrote: »

While this might have been a fulfilling adventure for you.
I would give a guess you didn't do it in Canada's winter and it was all set up for you.
You didn't do it naked, you had a few sets of modern durable clothing and waterproof boots.
You didn't make your tools they were provided.
You were never in any danger, either from wild animals or starvation, you were never going to die on this trip. It would have been bad for future sales.
Don't fool yourself, it might have been a taste of "wilderness living" but it was the Disney version.
Not a bad thing, you seem to have got something out of it, but no where near what you think you experienced.
And a million miles from the scenario the OP is talking about.

And on that, I remember watching on TV where they showed what food was available to such hunter gatherers in the north of England during winter. It wasn't much and it didn't look good.
If I recall correctly it was a drink made from the only available berries at that time of year. And there wasn't many of them around.
Thinking about this you can see why the seasons, day length and the celebrations we have with them came about. And it is no bad thing to remember them it gives an insight as to how our culture arose.
Our evolution has almost certainly been overtaken by technology but there is no way it would have been easier mentally and physically then compared to now

Oh, and you made it all up

jimgoose

I expect they were happy enough, not having any other way of living to compare with. Bear in mind that these people would not have been thinking "I'm so happy and content skipping along with my spear and my loincloth and my bits swinging free in the breeze, not having to worry about tax returns or property insurance or spending two hours stuck on the M50 on a piss-wet Tuesday evening with the wife howling down the phone because the baby has colic and her mother has shat herself again and the guy who fixes the washing-machine needs paying, like those poor yutzes in 21st-century Western Europe!!" :pac:

topper75

Wibbs wrote: »

... They also have more "leisure time" contrary to popular belief. They spend less time gathering resources. Moving to farming increased our workload, though it massively increased our technological and philosophical progress...

... There may have been some specialisation; artists. People who were given time off from hunting and gathering to create paintings and sculptures. Experiments have shown that carving something like a Venus statue in mammoth ivory with flint tools took many thousands of hours of work. Against that is that in the early days they decorated everything they could. It's a very rare spear thrower or wood or bone tool that wasn't decorated by the owner, often lavishly. [/SIZE]

Love reading your stuff on this theme.

But I see a small contradiction in the points above. My own guess is that ALL would have had a significant portion of time that was not directly spent on hunting and all would therefore have had capacity to produce elaborate artifacts (of varying quality perhaps yes) over long winter evenings. That is to say - there wouldn't have been a call for any people to be designated as specialists. The same people who went out on the hunt together were the same people who painted rocks, tanned hides, napped away at stones in an axe 'factory', or carved the tusks. Merely a guess though.

Zubeneschamali

The modern plague of obesity comes about because in the "wild", gorging on sweet stuff, gorging on occasional food surpluses was a good thing. Storing some of the surplus as fat was a good thing.

Bodies that break down in odd ways like diabetes, heart disease, brittle bones without exercise or when too much food was around were not a bad thing, because exercise wasn't optional and food was scarce.

I am sure the same will prove to be true of mental illnesses - they come about because our brains are not in the environment they evolved for and not doing the things they evolved to do.

But none of this means we need to head back to the savanna and eat zebras.

qwerty ui op

badabing106 wrote: »

We are hunter gatherers. We are not happy in modern times. Get on a bus or a train and you will only see sad faces

We're not pursuing happiness, maybe we get round to that in a few hundred years time but for now we're just comparing and competing with each other and we can't do a single thing about it because we've been conditioned to be like this.

We're forever judging ourselves against others, on looks, intellect, money, house, car, being interesting , being less materialistic, being more spiritual, being more knowledgeable, being cooler, being tougher, being trendy, being nicer, the list is endless.
This is true for all people of all ages it goes on in the nurseries and all the way to the nursing homes

Ush1

I reckon the oul snowflakes would have been unhappy back then.

The lack of consent going on must have been appalling.

Wibbs

robindch wrote: »

FYI, murder rates in band-level societies was through the roof and most people had a life expectancy of around 25.

This again. Sheesh. Look, I dunno how many times this has to be repeated but they didn't die at 25. Life expectancy for the group would have been low. As you note child mortality was very high - a sad reflection of that in our nearest rellies, the Neandertals is that we have more (mostly partial because of delicate bones)remains of babies and toddlers than adults. However if one survived to adulthood getting to 50 was a near given. Take those Neandertals above, most of the "famous" ones were 50 or above at death. La Ferrasie, Gibraltar, La Chapelle and so forth. The type fossil of Cro-Magnon, IE Us, found in France was 40 odd at death. That's before the period about 40,000 years back where we modern humans people for some reason started living beyond that into what we'd see as old age now.

A scratch could kill you via sepsis, and that's if you survived the endemic diseases - cholera, typhoid, polio and heaven knows what else.

Not quite. Never mind that all of the above was the case in the 19th century in Europe. Indeed it was far worse. Those endemic diseases you mention were and remain rare among hunter gatherer populations. For a variety of reasons, chief among them population size and density. Increase those and you get the diseases of urbanisation and civilisation. That's what those diseases are partially known for. These were not the diseases of hunter gatherers to nearly the same extent. Your first two examples would be about the least likely candidates. Both cholera and typhus are transmitted through drinking water(or food) contaminated with human faeces. Hunter gatherer cultures tend to be very careful about water sources. There can be many cultural memes around sourcing the freshest ones, as they knew that contamination from dead animals and the like was a threat. Never mind that in such environments water is less likely to be contaminated anyway, or at least fresh water is more abundant(depending on the environment of course). Outbreaks of polio and the like could occur alright, they occur in Chimps for example, but because of low population densities and less contact across distance these would tend to stay "local". Actual epidemics over large geographical distance would be rare events. As for sepsis from cuts that could have done you in until a certain Alex Fleming left his sandwich go mouldy. So up until the 1940's. Never mind that hunter gatherer cultures had their own medicine and quite a bit of it was medically active. Trial and error would see to that. Going by remains found on teeth even Neandertals used and actively processed herbs that were antibiotic or analgesic in action.

And you only got to catch them if you survived the violence, starvation, violence from neighbouring tribes and so on.

Going on the bones violence among modern humans at least seems to have been quite low. Again population densities come into this. Wars and violence are nearly always fought over resources. Small bands occupying huge areas of productive lands have no real reason to go to war. It's too costly for the group and doubly so if the land is providing for all. Many were nomadic in nature anyway, so the notion of defensible boundaries would be out of the equation. Examples of modern living tribal cultures are only a partial model for Palaeolithic ones. Take the New Guinean cultures. They've actually quite a high population density going on, they're also rooted to a spot they consider theirs and have tribal boundaries. This is going to be a flashpoint for violence. Cultural differences can also be a flashpoint, but one notable thing about the earliest Modern Humans in Europe, in the roughly bounded corridor from Spain through France into Germany their art, their culture is the same, so there's another potential flashpoint removed. Low population densities and high infant mortality also tends to make people who are around more valuable and valued to the group. We again see this in the bones. There are plenty of examples of people who suffered pretty traumatic injuries - some may be from fighting, but most seem to be from forces higher than a fellow human could muster, so animals or falls etc - and they're cared for and survive these traumas, even those who ended up functionally pretty useless as hunters or gatherers.

topper75 wrote: »

Love reading your stuff on this theme.

But I see a small contradiction in the points above. My own guess is that ALL would have had a significant portion of time that was not directly spent on hunting and all would therefore have had capacity to produce elaborate artifacts (of varying quality perhaps yes) over long winter evenings. That is to say - there wouldn't have been a call for any people to be designated as specialists. The same people who went out on the hunt together were the same people who painted rocks, tanned hides, napped away at stones in an axe 'factory', or carved the tusks. Merely a guess though.

Oh no I agree. That's why I'm not so sold on the specialised artist individual as a trend. Now maybe one guy or gal stood out as a very good artist and they might have been "commissioned" by the group or individuals to ready up some art, but I suspect in general it was just a thing everybody did. We can see this in cave paintings done at the same time. There are often many hands at work. Some are crap, some are OK and every so often there's a Stone Age Raphael rocking up. A few can be recognised by their individual styles even across those tens of thousands of years. One guy - and it was very likely a guy, as the size of his handprints and height of them on the cave walls showed him to be six feet and more in height - can be recognised in the Chauvet cave complex because he had a broken or deformed little finger and his painted handprints can be seen throughout the cave. Which is very cool. In other sites going by their handprints it seems women and children were very much involved. So it appears to have been a community effort to some degree.

Now "artists" could well have been around and been lauded for their art. And for a long way back too. Like a million years back. Stone handaxes appear to show this. Among the quickly readied up for use ones you'll find the occasionally beautifully made ones, where a lot of work went into the making. Some of these show no evidence of edge wear, so they weren't used as tools. Others were extremely large and beautifully made, far too large to use as the intended tool. Some have theorised they might have been used as displays of prowess to attract a mate, or might have had a ceremonial role. The site of Atapuerca in Spain, the "cave of bones" has a load of hominid remains at the bottom of said cave and the only tool found was a handaxe made from a non local red quartzite material that appears to have been dropped into the cave as a possible offering and this was around 400,000 years back.

Electric Sheep

I suspect there were specialists like spear makers and othr weapon makers.

Wibbs

Electric Sheep wrote: »

I suspect there were specialists like spear makers and othr weapon makers.

Maybe, though they find a load of items like spear straighteners, which would suggest they were part of the average toolkit.

[IMG]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Bâton_perforé.JPG/220px-Bâton_perforé.JPG[/IMG]

Decorated of course. At this point they just couldn't leave a surface alone. Out with the whittling tools of a night around the fire. No telly or Facebook mind you. Plus other items like spear throwers which all seem to have been decorated by a different hand, so likely the owners.

Which is another thing that's pretty alien to us in the modern world. Sure, some of us make things by our own hand, but who among us also uses a tool we've made to make the tools to make the thing by hand?

Wibbs

robindch wrote: »

Have a read of Stephen Pinkers The Better Angels of Our Nature which addresses at least some of your misapprehensions.

By the by, Pinker's position is demonstrably chock full of holes, particularly regarding preagricultural societies. His evidence is extremely thin and he ignores evidence that doesn't fit his pre conclusions. Even his take on 20th century trends are slanted, tend to be local and western in nature and highly debatable. It's certainly a book worth reading but having a salt cellar standing by is a good bet, for pinches will be required.

Fourier

Very good info Wibbs, I must learn more on this stuff.

Pac1Man

Chimps have entered the stone age.

They seem happy.

riffmongous

While we're here, are there any good movies set in stone age times? Ones that are sort of realistic and not 10000bc bull**** or hammy Planet of the Apes/Journey to the Centre of the Earth style movies? Playing the game Far Cry Primal is the closest thing I've come across

Wibbs

Pac1Man wrote: »

Chimps have entered the stone age.

They seem happy.

The BBC going more than a bit tabloid there in my humble. Sadly all too often of late.

A few decades ago, biologists thought humans were the only species that made extensive use of tools. Not any more. We now know that many mammals, birds, fish and even insects use objects in their environment as tools to make their lives easier.

Yep, but there is one major distinction: humans made and make tools to make other tools. No other animal has done that.

Some of those stone artefacts have been worked with a level of precision possessed by humans alone.

No, they really haven't. I've seen the papers on the matter and that's just wishful thinking and populist clickbait, not science.

And that's all too common of late. Consider this thread. What we have is a general split between one side that sees the "noble savage" in his utopia(a particularly European notion), the other is that more recent reductive response that views the same "savage" as living a life that short, brutish, largely valueless and well.. savage. And human origins are a magnet for this kinda polarised thinking. Both positions are ideological rather than based in observable reality.

Wibbs

Fourier wrote: »

Very good info Wibbs, I must learn more on this stuff.

For me F it's a truly fascinating period of time. The time where we became what we think of as fully human. And it was by no means a foregone conclusion. With a little tinkering of the variables we could still be living quite happily as a funny looking ape and apex predator, small in numbers and never looking beyond that. Just like we'd been doing for over a million years. Indeed modern humans that were recognisably such show up around 200,000 years ago and yet we were pretty much just like all the other humans that had come before us and were still around. Something happened that changed all that after 100,000 plus thousand years of us being just another hominid into what we are today.

What's both amazing and fascinating to me (and somewhat troubling as far as explanations go) is how this event was so relatively sudden. Humans go from precious little evidence of art and culture and sophistication and enquiry and explanation of reality to a "sudden" explosion of innovation and clear thought about the external world and trying to explain it.

Funny enough F, you as a physicist are carrying that 40,000 odd year old torch of people trying to work out WTF is going on with reality. If you ever build a Delorean or Tardis - and I'd not put it past you buggers - and went back and talked with those first openly questioning people, they wouldn't understand your theories and you wouldn't understand theirs, but you'd both find you were asking the same basic question. What is the nature of reality and how can we measure and explain it? The oldest profession in the world isn't the usual trite notion, it's actually those who asked that question. That and carers and "doctors".

Our spiritual shamans have changed, but the questions remain the same. If you ever find yourself struggling over some theorem or hard question or other, you can take some succour from the idea that there are a million minds, over tens of thousands of years that went before you that were locked in a similar struggle, that are right behind you, egging you on. Which is a pretty cool thought.

riffmongous wrote: »

While we're here, are there any good movies set in stone age times? Ones that are sort of realistic and not 10000bc bull**** or hammy Planet of the Apes/Journey to the Centre of the Earth style movies? Playing the game Far Cry Primal is the closest thing I've come across

Not really RiffM. Pretty much all of them go Hollywood. AO, the last of the Neandertals, a French flic is kinda OK. Flics like Clan of the Cave Bear and Quest for fire go a bit off piste. Sometimes/mostly way off piste. For such a pivotal time in what made us us it's a little strange why it hasn't been more revisited in storytelling. Documentaries are often not much better, though I would recommend "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" by Werner Herzog as a very good introduction to that time of the early Modern peoples in Europe and the art they left in one site.

odyssey06

riffmongous wrote: »

While we're here, are there any good movies set in stone age times? Ones that are sort of realistic and not 10000bc bull**** or hammy Planet of the Apes/Journey to the Centre of the Earth style movies? Playing the game Far Cry Primal is the closest thing I've come across

Have you seen Quest For Fire?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484/

It's not perfect but definitely a notch up from those adventure films.

sbsquarepants

Wibbs wrote: »

The notion of "Women and children first" into the lifeboats makes good historical sense.

True as this statement undoubtedly is, it's also a little bit depressing. For all our lofty ideals about our humanity or our rightful place as nobles amongst savages, it seems fairly clear (at least it does to me) that altruism is very much the exception rather than the rule. We're just at the mercy of our "programming". Even seemingly selfless or chivalrous acts when you look closely at them tend to be, maybe not self serving, but to serve a different purpose - the chivalrous act is merely a consequence of our true desire, not the goal in itself. If it served us to throw the women and kids overboard, we'd do that instead!

It's basically the same argument as giving to charity - do you do it just to help others, or do you do it to feel good about helping others. The effect is the same, but the cause speaks to our true nature.

I personally believe we aren't nearly as noble as we like to think (or maybe it's just me, I'm possibly just a cúnt:D)

Wanderer78

How does one measure happiness, accurately?

Wibbs

Quest for fire was a decent attempt at it alright. Showed the new modern humans coming into Europe as more African for a start.

Hollywood and the arts in general tend to ham it up a lot and popular and actual science isn't always so far behind either. We've not really gone much beyond the standard image of the caveman with lots of grunting, squatting with hunched backs, banging rocks together and dirty faces. You see similar when the Medieval is represented. Throw on sackcloth and filthy faces and mud everywhere. I suppose that's what audiences have come to expect too.

The Flintstones of all things is in some ways more accurate as the running gag in that cartoon is that they were just like us as people and they were.

weemcd

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28119237-tribe

Sebastian Junger reckons we are all better off in a Hunter gatherer Tribe, or a small circle of a society. Says as we are social creatures the modern world isolates us and reduces our self worth as we try to find meaning.

Very good read whether you agree with him or not.

odyssey06

Wanderer78 wrote: »

How does one measure happiness, accurately?

Said in 1950s BBC radio announcer voice:
We did send a questionnaire on happiness to the various hunter gatherer tribes still in existence, complete with HB pencils and sharpener and a return free post envelope. Sadly we still haven't heard back. Dashed impolite especially as we had already paid for first class post.

(sorry couldn't resist...)

Wibbs

sbsquarepants wrote: »

True as this statement undoubtedly is, it's also a little bit depressing. For all our lofty ideals about our humanity or our rightful place as nobles amongst savages, it seems fairly clear (at least it does to me) that altruism is very much the exception rather than the rule. We're just at the mercy of our "programming". Even seemingly selfless or chivalrous acts when you look closely at them tend to be, maybe not self serving, but to serve a different purpose - the chivalrous act is merely a consequence of our true desire, not the goal in itself. If it served us to throw the women and kids overboard, we'd do that instead!

yeah SB, but my takeaway is that the end result of this programming is more often than not a drive towards altruism. PLus in one very fundamental way we're the most unique animal that has ever lived on this planet; we know all this. We try to understand ourselves and our place in reality and because of that can improve ourselves. We externalised our evolution well over a million years ago.

Zubeneschamali

riffmongous wrote: »

While we're here, are there any good movies set in stone age times? Ones that are sort of realistic and not 10000bc bull**** or hammy Planet of the Apes/Journey to the Centre of the Earth style movies? Playing the game Far Cry Primal is the closest thing I've come across

Apocalypto is not bad - stone age tribesman vs. the Mayans - no Europeans involved.

Fourier

sbsquarepants wrote: »

True as this statement undoubtedly is, it's also a little bit depressing. For all our lofty ideals about our humanity or our rightful place as nobles amongst savages, it seems fairly clear (at least it does to me) that altruism is very much the exception rather than the rule. We're just at the mercy of our "programming".

I think a more accurate way to see it is in terms of neuroscience and what evolution actually is.

What would have happened is that at some point there was a mutation that produced individuals who genuinely feel for others. It then turned out that being like that means children in your genetic lineage are more likely to survive to child bearing age (an often overlooked fact about evolution is that it's not about having children, but grandchildren) and hence became more common.

Nothing programmed us in that sense, just individuals with altruistic intentions fare better.

mariaalice

The goal of existence is not to be happy, a very modern notion, contentment is a better word.

In the relative modern times, the most contented probably are non isolated rural dwellers who are rooted in their communities have a supportive family network, enough money to live a modest but comfortable lifestyle. They lived pre the outside side world coming in too much so before the internet but post the invention of modern antibiotics and other modern medication.

There is a folklorist who posts I follow and he very much describes that lifestyle in the Ireland of the relatively recent past.

Or consider this.

You live in rural Spain/Italy/middle Europe somewhere ruining a small business/farm both sets of in-laws live nearby and work with you and mind the grandchildren your are very much rooted in your community and have very little interest in the outside world so the outside world does not really come in. Living like this you can provide for your self and your family you never have the stress of working for someone else or having to put children in a creche they sill raise a pig and make Jamon and grow a lot of fruit and vegetables, wine from the local coop is 50 cents a liter.

I'm not romanticising it has its downside like everything else, nor playing down the hard work involved and anyway, as a lifestyle, it is on the way out the grandchildren will all move to the city.

Drumpot

_Brian wrote: »

Think they had a life Expectancy of about 25-28, probably die horrific painful death from some sort of infection from a thorn or mauled by a wolf.

Modern life expectancy must be 75, in general we suffer very little, very few of us get eaten when on our daily commute and if you ignore the moaning pansies we have quite a cushie lifestyle.

The OP is not wrong in that we are instinctually designed to be at one with nature and yet the society we have nurtured is geared towards the exact opposite. I know a few people that no matter what you say regarding the state of society they always revert to "Humans have never had it so good". Well I imagine the same thing was said in the 1920s and will prob be said in 2120.


The bigger question for me is asking if we can achieve greater life expectancy and living conditions that also maintains our connectivity with nature and communities ? That was what I took as the essence of the OPs comments.


I have found great comfort in philosophy and Buddhist teachings that the ways of our modern culture has discarded. The medication riddled solutions (that also help extend our lives) are not all good or healthy.

odyssey06

mariaalice wrote: »

The goal of existence is not to be happy, a very modern notion, contentment is a better word....You live in rural Spain/Italy/middle Europe somewhere ruining a small business/farm...
I'm not romanticising it has its downside like everything else, nor playing down the hard work involved and anyway, as a lifestyle, it is on the way out the grandchildren will all move to the city.

A very insightful post.

Reflecting on it, I wonder if, thousands of years ago, the same 'grandchildren' angle was the reason for the move from hunter gatherer life to agriculture.

Franz Von Peppercorn

What most people are talking about here is alienation from paid work. A small business and a small farm are not the hunter gatherer lifestyle.

Wanderer78

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote:

What most people are talking about here is alienation from paid work. A small business and a small farm are not the hunter gatherer lifestyle.

It's a very good point. I've been listening to a lot of Marxist Economist, Richard Wolff lately, he speaks highly of co ops, and how it helps connect workers to the means of production. Even though I've never worked in a co op, I suspect it would be very positive experience in such matters

Franz Von Peppercorn

Wanderer78 wrote: »

It's a very good point. I've been listening to a lot of Marxist Economist, Richard Wolff lately, he speaks highly of co ops, and how it helps connect workers to the means of production. Even though I've never worked in a co op, I suspect it would be very positive experience in such matters

Just to be clear I’m not a Marxist but very few philosophies have totally no merit. There is some truth in there somewhere.

Wanderer78

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote:

Just to be clear I’m not a Marxist but very few philosophies have totally no merit. There is some truth in there somewhere.

It's worrying to see the relative decline in happiness and well being in society, all relative of course, and highly subjective. I am convinced our connection to such matters is key, I do think the encouragement of such industries would help, Wolff believing, it would help to democratise the work place, thus help democratise society as a whole.

sbsquarepants

Wibbs wrote: »

We try to understand ourselves and our place in reality and because of that can improve ourselves. We externalised our evolution well over a million years ago.

Good way of putting it, plus in recent times we've gained the means of drastically upping the pace of this, genetic engineering + cyborg style technologies that are undoubtedly approaching at pace.
It's conceivable that pretty soon we could be seeing as much change in us as a species within 1 generation, than we normally would have in the previous 1000. God knows what the hell we'll be in a hundred / thousand / hundred thousand years - we probably can't even imagine it yet!
I'm not at all convinced it will be for the better (or for the worse mind - I just don't know!)

Fourier wrote: »

Nothing programmed us in that sense, just individuals with altruistic intentions fare better.

Can you class it as altruism when you've something to gain though? ie when you're following a primal urge to propagate your genes?

It's easy to sacrifice for your kids, or your grandkids because it's become hardwired into us through natural selection, as you suggest -but I would argue that's not really altruistic - in fact it's almost just a benign side effect of selfishness.

We tend to not make the same sacrifices for strangers - that would be altruism. There are of course examples of people who do, but they are the (very rare) exceptions, rather than the rule - the rule is to screw others to suit ourselves.
Most people will argue that they don't do this and in fact wouldn't do this, but a quick introspective glance at the clothes you're wearing, the food you're eating, the gadgets in your house or the phone in your pocket soon reveals that to be a complete falsehood.
We're all happy enough to exploit others when there's something in it for us. We're just not as noble as we like to pretend.

OldNotWIse

There does seem to be a lot of pent up anger among people nowadays, and it seems sometimes there is only a thin veneer between us and savagery (look at what happened with the bulldozer in Lidl during the snow). Even look at the amount of seriously angry people on boards - bashing vegans, "dole scroungers", cyclists, parents, non-parents etc. Where does the anger come from?? There's so much drink induced violence, road rage...

Fourier

Wibbs wrote: »

yeah SB, but my takeaway is that the end result of this programming is more often than not a drive towards altruism.

This is a better way of saying what I mentioned above.

MRI scans of the brain, decision theory studies and experiments on the belief management area of the brain show that in general we do in fact value and care about other people, there isn't a secret alterior motive going on in the brain.

It just happens that being like that makes you more likely to have grandchildren. However an individual brain in no way "secretly" recognises long term evolutionary advantages and is not doing things for self-serving evolutionary reasons.

Wibbs

OldNotWIse wrote: »

Where does the anger come from??

In the online world I would say it's coming from an odd isolationism. We're connected, but not in a way our minds are used to being. So we're more likely to show our inner thoughts, thoughts normally kept in check in normal everyday interactions, but absent in this extremely new medium. Wild thoughts shouting at other wild thoughts in the dark. The notion of "keyboard warrior, you wouldn't say that to someone's face" a well known one, but it's not just that. The extremes of our personalities get more freedom to show themselves so you get quite a bit of nastiness. Though if anything even that gives me hope, as the majority of people, the majority of the time aren't dicks, even online.

Everyday anger(outside of actually nutters) I would say comes again from a sense of personal isolation even though the world seems and is more connected, a sense of frustration, a sense of being shackled to a clock counting out your days, a sense of increasing complexity that you're always just behind and can never hope to catch up to and get ahead of. I can't think of a time when people in the west have been under such constant low level pressure coming from so many angles

There have been periods like this before or at least somewhat analogous. Indeed such periods have a few things in common, one of which is an interest in some more simple past, some utopia of ease and ignorance as a bliss. EG the late 19th century in the west. Where industrialisation and the rapid pace of change, where the future was coming hard and fast and caught the culture on the hop. They looked back and hankered for an imagined better past.

The various movements looking to Celtic/Teutonic/Saxon/Zion/etc pasts as a reaction to a future and present that was getting a little overwhelming. Even political movements reacted and we got the whole communism/fascism going on. Art really reacted. On the one hand we had the comfort of something like impressionism, on the other the new wave of modernism in art, literature, architecture and design. QV the Art Nouveau, "new art" that was actually a longing for the sinuous forms of nature in the face of the mechanical(the English version, Arts and Crafts made that connection more obviously).
.

Today we're more self describing as "post modernist"(which we're not really), which is more self doubting about whatever future is coming and a lot less comforting.

sbsquarepants

Fourier wrote: »

MRI scans of the brain, decision theory studies and experiments on the belief management area of the brain show that in general we do in fact value and care about other people, there isn't a secret alterior motive going on in the brain.
.

I'm not so sure.

https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/december/altruism-triggers-innate-121814.html

We seem to expect (or at least hope for) some form of reciprocity. Maybe I'm arguing semantics (I do seem to have a tendency towards doing just that:D) But to my mind - altruism is kindness for kindnesses sake - if you want something back there's an element of self interest involved. It may well have a similar appearance and even end result - but is it really the same thing? I don't think it is.

valoren

Interestingly, to consume the equivalent of 2000 calories of red meaty goodness would have required some exertion. There had to be something to provide motivation by way of a chemical reward system in our brains.

The ghrelin hunger hormone triggered a motivation to get food.
During the hunt itself, adrenaline was released.
During the exertion, endocannabinoids were released to reward our brains for keeping up the long, low intensity aerobic exertion of a hunt e.g. the runners high.
There would have been a major dopamine hit and an endorphine release of utter satisfaction from actually making a successful kill.
Remember the last time you won something, accomplished something? Quite a feeling.
And then after gorging on the feast you had that leptin "i've had enough" hormone released from a feast.

Today?

Go to boards and create a thread asking "Best Burger in Dublin?"

So the same hunting 'process' remains but in a very different guise.

We just go from the ghrelin to the leptin today completely foregoing the adrenaline, dopamine and endorphin part. You get the calories with minimal effort.

The missing parts of the hormone equation remain, they are still there part of our wiring and so we do things such as jumping out of planes, play knock-knock run away, run marathon distances, smoke weed, completing exams, start fights in public streets etc. In essence, to have a sense of "well being" we need that in a way for good and for bad.

Zubeneschamali

Wibbs wrote: »

In the online world I would say it's coming from an odd isolationism.

Another older example of this effect is driving - people will do all sorts of things behind the wheel that they would never do as a pedestrian. Cut in front of a queue of people, charge at people to make them get out of your way, yell at people who hold you up for more than a moment - these are behaviours that would get you punched in the face as a pedestrian.

But being behind the wheel of a car makes people feel insulated from these social reactions and their worse nature comes out.

The Internet and social media add even more insulation, and people behave even more offensively.

mariaalice

valoren wrote: »

Interestingly, to consume the equivalent of 2000 calories of red meaty goodness would have required some exertion. There had to be something to provide motivation by way of a chemical reward system in our brains.

The ghrelin hunger hormone triggered a motivation to get food.
During the hunt itself, adrenaline was released.
During the exertion, endocannabinoids were released to reward our brains for keeping up the long, low intensity aerobic exertion of a hunt e.g. the runners high.
There would have been a major dopamine hit and an endorphine release of utter satisfaction from actually making a successful kill.
Remember the last time you won something, accomplished something? Quite a feeling.
And then after gorging on the feast you had that leptin "i've had enough" hormone released from a feast.

Today?

Go to boards and create a thread asking "Best Burger in Dublin?"

So the same hunting 'process' remains but in a very different guise.

We just go from the ghrelin to the leptin today completely foregoing the adrenaline, dopamine and endorphin part. You get the calories with minimal effort.

The missing parts of the hormone equation remain, they are still their part of our wiring and so we do things such as jumping out of planes, play knock-knock run away, run marathon distances, smoke weed, completing exams, start fights in public streets etc. In essence, to have a sense of "well being" we need that in a way for good and for bad.

Only vaguely related, one of my brothers has this theory about being a teenager in Irish society today and what is missing: when the points race was real and you had to do the metric to get to college etc, it gave a teenager a goal, a sense of purpose, confidence in their own ability and the satisfaction of getting that coveted place in college.

Fourier

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I'm not so sure.

https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/december/altruism-triggers-innate-121814.html

We seem to expect (or at least hope for) some form of reciprocity. Maybe I'm arguing semantics (I do seem to have a tendency towards doing just that:D) But to my mind - altruism is kindness for kindnesses sake - if you want something back there's an element of self interest involved. It may well have a similar appearance and even end result - but is it really the same thing? I don't think it is.

This will take some time to fully comment on, I'm just saying I have noticed it. There is a bit to say here in terms of experimentation with children and data extraction from same, inference of the brain from behavioural data, definition of terms and placing a paper in the correct context of current findings in its field.

Let me ask a question first though to frame my reponse, probably later this evening, what lead you to that paper?

sbsquarepants

Fourier wrote: »

Let me ask a question first though to frame my reponse, probably later this evening, what lead you to that paper?

Honestly - I'm just talking of the top of my head, I haven't researched or read up on it in any real fashion, just snippits here and there over the years.
It's basically just my take on humanity, my gut feeling (as I've already said it's entirely possible that I'm just a bit of a cúnt!)
When you mentioned MRI scans and so on it lead me to think that you may well know a bit more about this than I do and I could well have already been proved wrong.
I try not to cling to "beliefs" if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, i'll try think differently. So with that in mind I typed "altruism research studies" in to google and on the first page this was the headline which grabbed my attention!

Thus far it remains the sum of my research, but I do hope to find the time to read up a bit more.

riffmongous

Wibbs wrote: »

Not really RiffM. Pretty much all of them go Hollywood. AO, the last of the Neandertals, a French flic is kinda OK. Flics like Clan of the Cave Bear and Quest for fire go a bit off piste. Sometimes/mostly way off piste. For such a pivotal time in what made us us it's a little strange why it hasn't been more revisited in storytelling. Documentaries are often not much better, though I would recommend "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" by Werner Herzog as a very good introduction to that time of the early Modern peoples in Europe and the art they left in one site.

odyssey06 wrote: »

Have you seen Quest For Fire?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484/

It's not perfect but definitely a notch up from those adventure films.

I actually watched this last night, it was ok as a movie, but by far the best stone age movie I've seen (which of course isn't saying much) in that they at least tried to play it straight, it wasn't a cartoon or comedy.

I remember now that here in Austria there was a movie released about Ötzi very recently, I'm going to see if I can find it

Here we go, should be worth a look

gozunda

OldNotWIse wrote: »

There does seem to be a lot of pent up anger among people nowadays, and it seems sometimes there is only a thin veneer between us and savagery (look at what happened with the bulldozer in Lidl during the snow). Even look at the amount of seriously angry people on boards - bashing vegans, "dole scroungers", cyclists, parents, non-parents etc. Where does the anger come from?? There's so much drink induced violence, road rage...

:rolleyes: do you really need to bring veganism into every argument lol. Many humans appear attracted to a type of 'tribe' membership often in opposition to other 'tribes'. For example being a regular and passionate cyclist provides for identity and status often vested in a dedicated activity. The use of shared resources and conflicting needs may bring some cyclists into conflict with some motorists. In an increasingly populated world and without excusing such behaviour - it's not hard to see how such conflict may arise.

Such group type behaviour may even mirror ancient tribal human societies where diversity was less common and common beliefs and interests aided survival and cohesion. Bizarrely people may group together for both altruistic and selfish reasons

Aside from the issues of intra group conflict there has always been the issue of criminality and especially opportunistic criminality - such as that witnessed in the Lidl/ bulldozer incident earlier this year. That does not change.

It remains that many humans like to to share common lifestyles and beliefs. Unfortunately as in the case of groups with overt beliefs and especially whose members choose to deride or attack the lifestyles of others - the normal response by many will be scrutiny and criticism of such beliefs. Issues such as welfare and taxation will remain deeply divisive where many of those receiving benefits and those who do not - perceive or are subject to finacial and / or social inequality .

However I would not equate observed conflict between interest groups such as cyclists and motorists (whether right or wrong) with the normal scrutiny of self declared belief systems whether ideological or otherwise. The national socialists belief system was quite correctly subject to 'bashing' at the time of its first popularity - though unfortunately not enough.

The one big change imo is that social media now provides a conduit through which diverse interest groups can voice their concerns, where social issues can be aired and where overt belief systems can be held up to scrutiny if need be. How much social media requires legislation and policing is something that is still under consideration and development - though I'm not sure whether general hand wringing on the ills of modern society is generally of any great help tbh.

Fourier

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Thus far it remains the sum of my research, but I do hope to find the time to read up a bit more.

No worries! I was just seeing if it came from a book or article discussing the topic in general, as I might have framed the response around that.

Okay so first let's look at the paper itself. The intro states:

By doing so, it calls into question the current, dominant claim that young humans are naturally and spontaneously altruistic and that socialization cannot account for their altruistic actions

Note the underlined phrase. It is acknowledging that the overall consensus is that altruism is innate. So first to keep in mind is that this paper is an attempt at challenging that claim to some degree. Generally one needs more than a single paper to challenge that dominant claim. Also the sample size is quite low.

Note Barragan and Dweck say this themself in the paper acknowledging the limits of the study. A far cry from:

Stanford psychologists show that altruism is not simply innate

in the Standford press release.

Also the study itself has met with criticism. Felix Warneken, an expert in the psychology of altruism, states:

The premise of their argument is that behaviors that are based upon biological predispositions are not malleable or open to
social influence. However, the natural altruism hypothesis that they aim to refute makes no such claim (2). Rather, this hypothesis states that socialization practices and cultural norms are not foundational for early helping behaviors, even though they nonetheless shape children's altruism over development

For their main conclusion he writes:

The issue is that Cortes Barragan and Dweck use a very broad notion of reciprocity, such that it is difficult to disentangle traditional definitions of reciprocity (exchanging costs and benefits) from social engagement more broadly (passing a toy back and forth). Thus, a more parsimonious account of their finding is that children respond more positively when individuals actually engage with them socially and let them play with the same toys than when the adults have children play by themselves. This result may not reflect "far subtler forms of reciprocity"; indeed, it may not be reciprocity at all.

This is only one of a few papers where the authors challenge what Barragan and Dweck have actually measured. So to set the paper in context, it is a single, low sample, study that has ambiguous implications for what is currently the dominant theory of natural altruism. The other papers have a more technical critique, which is why I chose Warneken.

Also the authors are more claiming that reciprocity may help in allowing the children to know which acts are altruistic rather than being the origin of being altruistic.

Now onto the major part. Why is altruism thought to be natural?

So let's imagine a few objections one could raise to natural altruism, terms in quotation marks are meant to be loose to include a broad range of things one could bring under that heading:

1. Children are only doing it to improve their "reputation" or social standing, a form of social signalling
2. They are only doing it for some kind of "reward"
3. They are only doing it because it is the "group norm" of their surrounding culture

Below I list the foundational studies, other groups have repeated each of these.

Refutation of objection 1:
Children have been shown to help in the absence of parents or of adult cues and praise in general:

Svetlova M, Nichols SR, Brownell CA: Toddlers’ prosocial behavior: from instrumental to empathic to altruistic helping.
Child Dev 2009, 81:1814-1827

Warneken F: Young children proactively remedy unnoticed accidents. Cognition 2013, 126:101-108.

Children younger than five have been seen to be unconcerned as to whether anybody notices what they do when they help, even the beneficiary of the altruism. Further more they show clear signs of physical relief when they somebody in trouble helped:

Aloise-Young PA: The development of self-presentation: selfpromotion in 6- to 10-year-old children. Soc Cogn 1993, 11:201-222.

Banerjee R: Children’s understanding of self-presentational behavior: links with mental-state reasoning and the attribution of embarrassment.
Merrill-Palmer Quart 2002, 48:378-404.

Banerjee R: Children’s understanding of self-presentational behavior: links with mental-state reasoning and the attribution of embarrassment.
Merrill-Palmer Quart 2002, 48:378-404.

Hepach R, Vaish A, Tomasello M: Young children are intrinsically motivated to see others helped.
Psychol Sci 2012, 23:967-972.

About the last study it is said:

This study for the first time introduced a measure of pupil dilation to
assess children’s level of sympathetic arousal in helping situations.
Findings suggest that children are motivated by a concern for another
person’s success rather than receiving credit for their own helping.

In fact it has been shown in a range of studies that helping others to get noticed only emerges weakly at age five:
Engelmann JM, Herrmann E, Tomasello M: Five-year-olds, but not chimpanzees, attempt to manage their reputations.
PLoS ONE 2012, 7:e48433.

Refutation of objection 2:
Several studies have shown that young children help when no reward is offered:

Warneken F, Tomasello M: Helping cooperation at 14 months of age.
Infancy 2007, 11:271-294.

Cirelli LK, Einarson KM, Trainor LJ: Interpersonal synchrony increases prosocial behavior in infants. Dev Sci 2014, 17:1003-1011.

Cirelli LK, Wan SJ, Trainor LJ: Fourteen-month-old infants use interpersonal synchrony as a cue to direct helpfulness.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B: Biol Sci 2014, 369:20130400.

Dunfield KA, Kuhlmeier VA: Classifying prosocial behavior: children’s responses to instrumental need, emotional distress, and material desire.
Child Dev 2013, 84:1766-1776.

Dunfield KA, Kuhlmeier VA, O’Connell L, Kelley E: Examining the diversity of prosocial behaviour: helping, sharing, and comforting in infancy.
Infancy 2011, 16:227-247.

Warneken F, Tomasello M: Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees.
Science 2006, 311:1301-1303.

Knudsen B, Liszkowski U: 18-Month-olds predict specific action mistakes through attribution of false belief, not ignorance, and intervene accordingly.
Infancy 2012, 17:672-691.

Knudsen B, Liszkowski U: One-year-olds warn others about negative action outcomes.
J Cogn Dev 2013, 14:424-436.

Warneken F: Young children proactively remedy unnoticed accidents.
Cognition 2013, 126:101-108.

Warneken F, Tomasello M: Parental presence and encouragement do not influence helping in young children.
Infancy 2013, 18:345-368.

Warneken F, Hare B, Melis AP, Hanus D, Tomasello M: Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children.
PLoS Biol 2007, 5:1414-1420.

Warneken F, Tomasello M: Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds. Dev Psychol 2008,44:1785-1788.

Warneken F, Tomasello M: The emergence of contingent reciprocity in young children.
J Exp Child Psychol 2013,116:338-350.

Dunfield KA, Kuhlmeier VA: Intention-mediated selective helping in infancy.
Psychol Sci 2010, 21:523-527.

Svetlova M, Nichols SR, Brownell CA: Toddlers’ prosocial behavior: from instrumental to empathic to altruistic helping.
Child Dev 2010, 81:1814-1827.

Note that two studies appear in both objections, so they simultaneously demonstrated the children not looking for approval and not expecting a reward.

One study (Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children) shows that offering rewards didn't even improve helping.

In fact, some studies have shown that children actively dislike being reward for helping (Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds), it being theorised that they feel it's something you should do and not expect a reward. Regardless of whether that is true, it is a fact that they don't like being rewarded for helping.

Refutation of objection 3:
Studies have shown that young children are not aware of social norms, or resultant guilt for breaking them, or have standards for the behaviour of others.

Tomasello M, Vaish A: Origins of human cooperation and morality.
Annu Rev Psychol 2013, 64:231-255.

Kochanska G: Committed compliance, moral self, and internalization: a mediational model.
Dev Psychol 2002, 38:339-351.

Smith CE, Blake PR, Harris PL: I should but I won’t: why young children endorse norms of fair sharing but do not follow them.
PLOS ONE 2013, 8:e59510.

Blake PR, McAuliffe K, Warneken F: The developmental origins of fairness: the knowledge-behavior gap.
Trends Cogn Sci 2014, 18:559-561.

Hence, young children seem to help with no expectation of reward, both material or social, even when unseen and the recipient is not aware of it and this does not seem to stem from some sort of internalised behaviour about what one should do in terms of social norms or group shame.
Rather the emergent picture of infant and early child psychology is that they simply care for others innately

Capt'n Midnight

Nevermind the Hunter Gatherers , even a century ago the first few years of life were quite dangerous.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-1916/1916irl/introduction/

The infant mortality rate was 81.3 in Ireland in 1916, i.e., for every 1,000 babies born during 1916, 81 died before they reached twelve months of age. The highest rate was in Dublin city at 153.5 and the lowest rate was in Roscommon at 34.6. By 2014 the infant mortality rate in Ireland was very low at 3.7 per 1,000 births.
...
one in five deaths in 1916 occurred to a child under 15 years of age.

The child mortality rate wasn't much better until the start of the 1960's when better sanitation , food , medicine and vaccination became available.

J Mysterio

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Oh no! Antibiotic resistant viruses!!

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jun/26/another-outbreak-is-certain-are-cities-ready-for-the-next-superbug-epidemic-

Graces7

mariaalice wrote: »

The goal of existence is not to be happy, a very modern notion, contentment is a better word.

In the relative modern times, the most contented probably are non isolated rural dwellers who are rooted in their communities have a supportive family network, enough money to live a modest but comfortable lifestyle. They lived pre the outside side world coming in too much so before the internet but post the invention of modern antibiotics and other modern medication.

There is a folklorist who posts I follow and he very much describes that lifestyle in the Ireland of the relatively recent past.

Or consider this.

You live in rural Spain/Italy/middle Europe somewhere ruining a small business/farm both sets of in-laws live nearby and work with you and mind the grandchildren your are very much rooted in your community and have very little interest in the outside world so the outside world does not really come in. Living like this you can provide for your self and your family you never have the stress of working for someone else or having to put children in a creche they sill raise a pig and make Jamon and grow a lot of fruit and vegetables, wine from the local coop is 50 cents a liter.

I'm not romanticising it has its downside like everything else, nor playing down the hard work involved and anyway, as a lifestyle, it is on the way out the grandchildren will all move to the city.

There are many in Ireland who choose this simplicity and I live as simply as is safe now. More so as I age and values change. The North Sea island years taught me different and very fulfilling values and ways .

Planning more growing next year....

Some lovely films on youtube on families who live alone away from the world .