The Worst Mistake in Human History

[Apech]

I think it goes further than simple health or territory. It is about culture, language, identity. Agriculture allowed humans to allocate and divide work, thus letting some people do other things... like be poets or painters or scientists. While a hunter-gatherer society may sound ideal on paper, it would mean going without far more than just laptops. Humans work best as a hive mind, our greatest strength is in sharing ideas and passing them on to be developed by future generations. In a sense humanity is one big brain, but that brain needs some continuity, and I doubt a hunter-gatherer society, despite the nostalgia inherent in such an idea, would allow that, seeing as we would all be, well, hunting and gathering.

 

 

Seriously? A hive mind. Leave me out.

[iain]

Hello closrapexa,

... In a sense humanity is one big brain, but that brain needs some continuity, and I doubt a hunter-gatherer society, despite the nostalgia inherent in such an idea, would allow that, seeing as we would all be, well, hunting and gathering.

With all due respect, you might find that you are somewhat outdated in your model of the functioning of the human brain; We can no longer make any such comparison between a beehive and the brain as there is no center of reasoning; recent research pointing to a different model. That of a neural network,resembling modern internet computer functionality; without anyone center for cognition. All the different cell groups in the neurological network communicate independently, and memory is stored upon a code that runs, quite arguably interdimensionally, between all of the cells. Thus consciousness is emerging from rather more than any central cpu; as such there is no Queenbee.

The Queenbee of the old cerebral model could be equated rather well though to a parasite of intelligence, the ego; the host of which is the underlying self. Thus it is paradoxically the parasitic ego that fools the self into believing that it is the doer that it is the person or a central cognative unit or place.

 

It is interesting that occidental society is structured upon this outdated rather primitive model; the idea or image of that which represents a hunter gatherer, negates entirely the obvious social complexity of the stone age, circumnavigates some rather large gaps in our temporal scientific records, and as such is itself a rather primitive albeit somewhat aggressive projection of occidental thought; This is obvious when it is compared with other existing models or bodies of knowledge from other successful societies. We must therefore also consider the forceful and projective nature required to be an occidental researcher; when examining any models created in and by such a tradition or by such anthropological and Historical practices.

 

History I will state; is written by the most dominant psychological phenotypes; that does not make them the norm.

Edited January 9, 2015 by iain

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

Have i not been saying this (angrily and sometimes violently) for years?!?

[shunka]

Going back to the OP, here is another long time human foible often bred by fundamentalism: The world is going to end.

 

It seems as though every time I turn around, someone else is proclaiming the end times. At every turn-of-the-century for what the last 5 or so? multiple times in the US during the mid 1800's . At every really bad war, plague, or famine. Ultimately I have to wonder if some people are suffering so much they simply want the world to end ?

 

And that's why I find Budhhist studies more appropo

 

yhs

shunka

[Taomeow]

Oh, that's just a case of collective anosognosia. The world has already ended, but due to the damage sustained, humanity can't assimilate the knowledge. "Prophecies" are actually memories, defensively misplaced into the future -- much like an anosognosia sufferer may say something like, "I hope I never get a stroke, even though my doctor keeps warning me about my high blood pressure." This is said after the stroke has taken place and destroyed the very areas of the brain that could provide evidence of it having happened.

 

A more superficial condition, known as denial, usually can't be remedied with information about the real state of affairs either, but anosognosiacs take this ability to ignore reality to its defensive limits -- e.g. they can deny the absence of legs which have been amputated. If the doctor tries to bring evidence to their attention, they say something like, "well, it's pretty common for some people to be afraid of losing their legs, but their fears have no basis in reality."

[Cookie Monster]

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Edited May 4, 2021 by Ocean Form

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

civility enforces the hive mentality though.

[Taomeow]

There used to be an interactive exhibit at the Museum of Science and Technology in LA, an optical device that replicated the eyesight of a bee for a human looking through it. I looked. I can tell you with certainty that we are not physically equipped to have a hive mentality.

 

Unfortunately, we are fully equipped to have a herd mentality.

 

Happy Year of the Sheep everyone! (coming to the theaters near you February 19th).

[closrapexa]

The specifics of my metaphor may be flawed, I'll grant that, but the essence is sound. If you want to construct, say, a microwave, you don't need to study several lifetimes worth of metalworking, glass making, materials design, electricity as well as what makes a microwave "go." Others have done the work before you and that knowledge is part of the shared legacy of the entire human race. You need only add to it and develop it. Humans exel at sharing ideas, our brains are our biggest evolutionary advantage. It could be argued that the allocation of work and resources was not only necessary, it was unavoidable.

[Taomeow]

Our brains didn't get any bigger since we were hunters-gatherers. However, we used to use them to capacity -- precisely because there was no allocation of work, in fact no work, only life. I read "The Indian How" that describes the lifestyle of Native American tribes before the white man came. Nobody was a specialist. Everybody hunted in season, gathered in season, fished in season, mended the equipment in season, tanned leather in season, made moccasins and clothes, pitched dwellings, took turns telling stories, danced, played sports, taught children... should I go on? The author (who got a double education, tribal first and then the white man's) describes everything everybody did (including him) -- there were no specialists, and everybody was a specialist. And there was no boredom, no burnout, no "hate my job" feelings -- if you hated hunting (very unlikely), you had to wait a bit and you'd be sewing instead... And vice versa.

 

Technologically, our ancestors matched their environment way better than we do. With all our "scientific advances," in the whole of our civilized history we were unable to add even one edible from any area to the menu of the people inhabiting it based on any "scientific knowledge" -- they knew them all and were not pining for it for lack of technology to get it -- they got it. They didn't suffer from exposure in any climates that kill a modern person when he or she is left one on one with nature sometimes within hours. They didn't lack technology to stay warm when it's cold or cool when it's hot -- they had it, and it was neither better nor worse than some nonexistent "standard" we may envision today -- it was a one on one match, whatever the task was, the technology to accomplish it was there. No literacy? But their shortest memory was longer than our longest pencil. Oral transmissions did the job for hundreds of thousands of years. People learned history nonstop, every day -- they still did in Africa as recently as before colonial times, a 6-year-old recited his or her family history seventy generations back. Do you know yours?

 

So, bigger brains we don't have, that's a scientific fact, but we use ours differently now, that's also a scientific fact. To wit, they used their brains to full capacity, and we use 70% of our brains to repress and hold down the remaining 30%. Cognitive neuroscientists know it's not normal -- the same happens to animals only when they are abused from an early age. They become tame, but the price to pay for being tame is being dumb... And these animals, raised in captivity, don't survive in the wild if they are let out later. Neither could we. We are not just not strong enough. We are not smart enough.

[iain]

... Humankind does not have a "hive mind" because it's not a hive organism.

Unless being a host to an insect like hive organism.

But then that is not human-mind anymore.

I couldn't agree with you more, and that is exactly what I have said; at least I thought is was.

Is there no central unit around which all other activities are orchestrated in a hive? Is there not a epigenetic phenomenon that works as a web or field binding them all together, as one organisme?

This is how many see human culture/society and in reflection the cells, neurons, in the brain.

 

I am saying that this is not a good analogy; I am not certain what you have understood by my post. I was inferring that the ego is a parasite organism and is not our natural state of being; You seem to have said the same in a different way.

 

Beekeeping; you are blessed to live so close to nature.

[iain]

civility enforces the hive mentality though.

I think that it is a natural state that emerges from city life and agriculture; and is exactly that which we try to take a step back from in meditation. It is a state of being that suits some more than others, as natural selection does its thing. The question to my mind is "do we want to nurture the traits in ourselves that this lifestyle demands"; it is happening anyway.

[iain]

The specifics of my metaphor may be flawed, I'll grant that, but the essence is sound. If you want to construct, say, a microwave, you don't need to study several lifetimes worth of metalworking, glass making, materials design, electricity as well as what makes a microwave "go." Others have done the work before you and that knowledge is part of the shared legacy of the entire human race. You need only add to it and develop it. Humans exel at sharing ideas, our brains are our biggest evolutionary advantage. It could be argued that the allocation of work and resources was not only necessary, it was unavoidable.

The result of which is that eventually no one understands how what they are building works; when it breaks they just throw it away. The real crux of knowledge is in harnessing creativity, to my mind this model destroys the creative process, actively.

[Cookie Monster]

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Edited May 4, 2021 by Ocean Form

[iain]

It is a model that has been used extensively in the past; and is reflected in the way the scientific mind has perceives the working of the brain and consciousness.

Yes humans in "civil" groups sometimes turn and kill their kings and Queens too. So the model can be applied to a social groups in that respect, but not to the mind nor to any notion of the norm.

 

I correlate the city with an anthill; I don't think Bees go to war in the same way that ants and humans do.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

I think that it is a natural state that emerges from city life and agriculture; and is exactly that which we try to take a step back from in meditation. It is a state of being that suits some more than others, as natural selection does its thing. The question to my mind is "do we want to nurture the traits in ourselves that this lifestyle demands"; it is happening anyway.

 

It is merely the natural response to heavily unnatural/fabricated environments.