We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Eh, I actually disagree. The US did a social democratic turn after the Great Depression, I think it was one of the eras where the US was furthest from fascism. It ultimately still created and maintained the conditions of fascist tendencies later on and only very partially did the work analysing their own history of imperialism, but I really dislike overuse of the word fascist, because it blunts the analytical edge. The implicit neoliberal social contract was different than the implicit fascist one (which was different than the more social democratic one solidified under FDR, etc.) - and the system no longer having to wear the mask of humanity has real life consequences and creates its own dynamics.
World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.
Indeed, but I think it is a fallacy to use that as an ideological framing of inevitability (unsure if that was your aim here). Ingroup-Outgroup thinking is one of the few things, that I think is indeed fundamental to the human condition, but the way it materialises is dependent on the interaction of that tendency with material and historical conditions. Without colonialism, the specific framing of race, for example, would not have existed in the same way. And universalism as a current within modernity is not just a fluke or illusion, but a proper potential tendency within human behaviour as well, one that relies on cultural and material conditions of its own.
Cynicism is in its own right an ideological distortion, where it leaves analysis and tries to impose its interpretation on reality.
Well you do sound like a pretty smart person. I don’t think I can get on the intellectual playing field with you, but I think there was plenty of Nazi sympathizers prior to World war II in America. Here’s just one example from NPR.
As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode. Sort of like entropy, it asserts itself unless we actively act against it.
That, I can agree with. There needs to be active work and conscious moulding of material dynamics, in order to allow for it to be overcome.
As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode
Funnily enough, there are huge parts of pre-historic mankind, where they were the exception instead of the rule (although, when it did happen, we have evidence it was often very genocidal and total).
Organised warfare can be traced to the beginnings of class society, where societies started to have the surplus necessary, so that risking a large part of their population could be “worth it” to acquire labour power (slaves) and surplus (property) of other societies. At least, that is my current understanding of archaeological and anthropological evidence (e.g. tracing when weapons of war, explicitly not just as tools, or palisades around settlements appear in the archaeological record).
Not necessarily disagreeing, just adding that, to highlight that defining a “default” is basically impossible. Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.
I was tracking pretty well with you until the last line
Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. People have an aspect that is dictated by historical and material context. But there are also natural abilities, like speech, and propensities, like social organization, that are part of being human itself.
Surely, to my way a thinking, it’s the whole nature/nurture thing, and your last sentence seems to leave nature out of it.
Even if you view man as a machine it doesn’t change that. A windshield wiper doesn’t cook eggs.
Some things do what they do because of what they are, not their material and historical context.
Ah, I can see how that reads. So, short answer: I agree, but with the caveat that that simple truth can be misrepresented.
Of course, there are things that are inherent in “our nature”. You mention speech, which is a great example - the ability of language and being adapted to being born into a complex system of language is one of the main reasons why I think humanity is acting so much within a material and historical context - more so than more intuitively acting animals adapted to a biome.
It is indeed my thesis, that besides some smaller things, “human nature” is being adapted to “culture”, adapted to dialectically interacting with reality around us, and creating a new context that then influences us again. We aren’t specialised to one biome any more, for example, or one circumstance in climate, but naturally inclined to change ourselves and our surroundings. And I agree, that we are indeed specialised for complex social organisation, too.
My issue comes there, where very specific behaviours or systems are presented as human nature, where I would claim, they are better explained as “how something within human nature is filtered through its historical context.” Think of how people may say “private property” is human nature. Or “racism” is human nature. No, both are dynamics of something within human nature in a very specific context.
A windshield wiper doesn’t cook eggs.
True, but for humanity specifically, it can be damn hard to clearly define if we are a windshield wiper, an egg-cooker, or whatever. Because everything we study about our nature, will always appear to us filtered through the surrounding context. So it is only through hard work and building up theories to ever be falsified again, that we come closer to the essentials. (Like language, social organisation of high complexity, etc.)
This study, and others like it, would be to my mind the right way to go about finding out what the baseline is for humans.
Look to the great apes, see what great apes do - because we are great apes. Old World monkeys would provide clues as well. We’re absolutely going to be somewhat different, but that’s where research comes in.
We don’t have to guess.
PS. I know I was way out of my depth here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. It’s always nice to talk to somebody brainy.
Thanks for the study, I only glossed over it, but it does indeed fit with the view I fundamentally have there as well. My own personal, more philosophical speculation added on top being, that the observed guilt and resentment, for example, are - again, in my own opinion, not stated as fact - intertwined with the foundation of language and being born into language. Interesting here, I think, is that children from traumatic upbringings without language acquisition, so-called “feral” children, do lack this aspect of mutual/joint commitment, as far as I know. But I am now starting to get out of my field of obsessive interest/expertise, myself.
Looking at behaviour of children in early childhood especially, can be very useful for some fundamentals, and using other Great Apes as a reference, can help a lot, too. But the older the observed humans get, the harder I think it is to use the observation, and studies have to be very carefully crafted. But I would agree, that it is part of the toolbox, as well as anthropological studies that can then be cross-referenced, and just because everything is always within a context, does not mean absolutely no things can be deduced from observations. (I realise now I made a mistake when I think I earlier said “basically impossible”, when really it’s just amazingly hard, and possible only for very general things).
PS. I know I was way out of my depth here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. It’s always nice to talk to somebody brainy.
Thank you, and you’re welcome. In the end, I am also just another ND person on the internet, currently hyper-talkative about a special interest. So I don’t know how much “brainy” is really fitting, I always think it might be too positive of a description - but I guess I can’t escape that I am indeed prone to geeking out about the Humanities at times without a proper filter. That has definitely caused me to make mistakes before, too, so you shouldn’t take my word where what I say is in clear contradiction with facts.
As a categorical answer: Where it conflicts with reality more generally.
As a more specific answer: Good ways to double check are - how does my perspective gel with historians, anthropologists and philosophers, that study that field? Do they also agree on a cynical view there? When they dissent, what are the ways they do so?
Where did I get that cynical view? Is the cynical interpretation one, that benefits the status quo, so it has a higher likelihood of being ideological instead of a proper analysis? Is it backed up not only in contemporary empirical social sciences, but also when processing that data through interpretation. (e.g.: A group committing more crimes can be fact in studies, but racists will interpret that completely differently, than communists for example, concerning causes and solutions.)
In addition to that - personal experience is always valid, take for example someone with PTSD, it would be ludicrous to claim, their outlook on things concerning their trauma is “wrong”. However, when applied to larger reality, it may not describe it properly in the whole context. That does not take away the validity of their experience and how it shapes them, specifically.
Eh, I actually disagree. The US did a social democratic turn after the Great Depression, I think it was one of the eras where the US was furthest from fascism. It ultimately still created and maintained the conditions of fascist tendencies later on and only very partially did the work analysing their own history of imperialism, but I really dislike overuse of the word fascist, because it blunts the analytical edge. The implicit neoliberal social contract was different than the implicit fascist one (which was different than the more social democratic one solidified under FDR, etc.) - and the system no longer having to wear the mask of humanity has real life consequences and creates its own dynamics.
Indeed, but I think it is a fallacy to use that as an ideological framing of inevitability (unsure if that was your aim here). Ingroup-Outgroup thinking is one of the few things, that I think is indeed fundamental to the human condition, but the way it materialises is dependent on the interaction of that tendency with material and historical conditions. Without colonialism, the specific framing of race, for example, would not have existed in the same way. And universalism as a current within modernity is not just a fluke or illusion, but a proper potential tendency within human behaviour as well, one that relies on cultural and material conditions of its own.
Cynicism is in its own right an ideological distortion, where it leaves analysis and tries to impose its interpretation on reality.
Well you do sound like a pretty smart person. I don’t think I can get on the intellectual playing field with you, but I think there was plenty of Nazi sympathizers prior to World war II in America. Here’s just one example from NPR.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan
As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode. Sort of like entropy, it asserts itself unless we actively act against it.
That, I can agree with. There needs to be active work and conscious moulding of material dynamics, in order to allow for it to be overcome.
Funnily enough, there are huge parts of pre-historic mankind, where they were the exception instead of the rule (although, when it did happen, we have evidence it was often very genocidal and total).
Organised warfare can be traced to the beginnings of class society, where societies started to have the surplus necessary, so that risking a large part of their population could be “worth it” to acquire labour power (slaves) and surplus (property) of other societies. At least, that is my current understanding of archaeological and anthropological evidence (e.g. tracing when weapons of war, explicitly not just as tools, or palisades around settlements appear in the archaeological record).
Not necessarily disagreeing, just adding that, to highlight that defining a “default” is basically impossible. Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.
I was tracking pretty well with you until the last line
I’m not sure what you mean by that. People have an aspect that is dictated by historical and material context. But there are also natural abilities, like speech, and propensities, like social organization, that are part of being human itself.
Surely, to my way a thinking, it’s the whole nature/nurture thing, and your last sentence seems to leave nature out of it.
Even if you view man as a machine it doesn’t change that. A windshield wiper doesn’t cook eggs.
Some things do what they do because of what they are, not their material and historical context.
Ah, I can see how that reads. So, short answer: I agree, but with the caveat that that simple truth can be misrepresented.
Of course, there are things that are inherent in “our nature”. You mention speech, which is a great example - the ability of language and being adapted to being born into a complex system of language is one of the main reasons why I think humanity is acting so much within a material and historical context - more so than more intuitively acting animals adapted to a biome.
It is indeed my thesis, that besides some smaller things, “human nature” is being adapted to “culture”, adapted to dialectically interacting with reality around us, and creating a new context that then influences us again. We aren’t specialised to one biome any more, for example, or one circumstance in climate, but naturally inclined to change ourselves and our surroundings. And I agree, that we are indeed specialised for complex social organisation, too.
My issue comes there, where very specific behaviours or systems are presented as human nature, where I would claim, they are better explained as “how something within human nature is filtered through its historical context.” Think of how people may say “private property” is human nature. Or “racism” is human nature. No, both are dynamics of something within human nature in a very specific context.
True, but for humanity specifically, it can be damn hard to clearly define if we are a windshield wiper, an egg-cooker, or whatever. Because everything we study about our nature, will always appear to us filtered through the surrounding context. So it is only through hard work and building up theories to ever be falsified again, that we come closer to the essentials. (Like language, social organisation of high complexity, etc.)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-023-09464-0
This study, and others like it, would be to my mind the right way to go about finding out what the baseline is for humans.
Look to the great apes, see what great apes do - because we are great apes. Old World monkeys would provide clues as well. We’re absolutely going to be somewhat different, but that’s where research comes in.
We don’t have to guess.
PS. I know I was way out of my depth here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. It’s always nice to talk to somebody brainy.
Thanks for the study, I only glossed over it, but it does indeed fit with the view I fundamentally have there as well. My own personal, more philosophical speculation added on top being, that the observed guilt and resentment, for example, are - again, in my own opinion, not stated as fact - intertwined with the foundation of language and being born into language. Interesting here, I think, is that children from traumatic upbringings without language acquisition, so-called “feral” children, do lack this aspect of mutual/joint commitment, as far as I know. But I am now starting to get out of my field of obsessive interest/expertise, myself.
Looking at behaviour of children in early childhood especially, can be very useful for some fundamentals, and using other Great Apes as a reference, can help a lot, too. But the older the observed humans get, the harder I think it is to use the observation, and studies have to be very carefully crafted. But I would agree, that it is part of the toolbox, as well as anthropological studies that can then be cross-referenced, and just because everything is always within a context, does not mean absolutely no things can be deduced from observations. (I realise now I made a mistake when I think I earlier said “basically impossible”, when really it’s just amazingly hard, and possible only for very general things).
Thank you, and you’re welcome. In the end, I am also just another ND person on the internet, currently hyper-talkative about a special interest. So I don’t know how much “brainy” is really fitting, I always think it might be too positive of a description - but I guess I can’t escape that I am indeed prone to geeking out about the Humanities at times without a proper filter. That has definitely caused me to make mistakes before, too, so you shouldn’t take my word where what I say is in clear contradiction with facts.
Where does one draw the line between cynicism and experience?
As a categorical answer: Where it conflicts with reality more generally.
As a more specific answer: Good ways to double check are - how does my perspective gel with historians, anthropologists and philosophers, that study that field? Do they also agree on a cynical view there? When they dissent, what are the ways they do so?
Where did I get that cynical view? Is the cynical interpretation one, that benefits the status quo, so it has a higher likelihood of being ideological instead of a proper analysis? Is it backed up not only in contemporary empirical social sciences, but also when processing that data through interpretation. (e.g.: A group committing more crimes can be fact in studies, but racists will interpret that completely differently, than communists for example, concerning causes and solutions.)
In addition to that - personal experience is always valid, take for example someone with PTSD, it would be ludicrous to claim, their outlook on things concerning their trauma is “wrong”. However, when applied to larger reality, it may not describe it properly in the whole context. That does not take away the validity of their experience and how it shapes them, specifically.