328
full egoism
(quokk.au)
Seize the Memes of Production
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the “ML” influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Rules:
Be a decent person.
No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, zionism/nazism, and so on.
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If you’re a fifth of the way through, then you missed this part:
Pinker’s book doesn’t support your argument because it never attempted to do so. It’s answering a completely different question.
Talking about Hunter-gatherers when they were warring for survival against agriculturists (a 10,000+ year gradual annihilation of Hunter-gatherers leading to the present day, where they’re on the brink of extinction) doesn’t tell you anything about what they were like for the hundreds of thousands of years prior.
I didn't miss that part. The argument being made there is self-defeating considering that the attempt to dismiss Better Angels Of Our Nature based on a presentist bias is made immediately before using the exact same kinds of 'last 4% of human history' that BAOON used.
... have you read BAOON?
From this very paper, citing Pinker's work:
In which case I don't know why the fuck you think that this paper, using modern hunter-gatherers who are in almost all cases deeply intertwined with outside state societies, both in culture and material goods, to extrapolate rates of pre-agricultural violence is valid.
Jesus fucking Christ. In a paper about estimating typical hunter-gatherer rates of violence, they cite as a source "Estimated from typical hunter-gatherer mortality rates."
Jesus fucking Christ.
This can't be serious.
Fucking what.
Where the fuck do I begin?
Should I start with gift economies being widespread in sedentary societies?
That inter-group resource exchange is much lower in hunter-gatherer societies than in sedentary societies?
That the notion of property is a very late development in sedentary societies?
That transport of goods, and the requisite time and labor necessary, is a major bottleneck for resource exchange, so extending 'across large distances' means that it is not actually fucking economically advantageous compared to sedentary societies?
They live at low population densities because their form of gathering sustenance can't sustain larger groups. The idea that hunter-gatherers don't 'border with neighbouring groups' is... fuck me, all sorts of absurd.
Insofar as specialization is not chosen for, sure. But that successful warriors are in the vast majority of hunter-gatherer societies high status and influential by the cultural norms of their society, that doesn't seem like much more than nitpicking over the notion of a warrior caste.
Oh. Of course. Jesus fucking Christ.
...
... contradicting their prior assertion that hunter-gatherer societies mostly turn to violence over women.
This overwhelmingly reads like a desperate attempt to justify a preconcieved notion rather than explore data or a hypothesis. I'm not even halfway through, but I'm done with this. I can see why it was published on Substack and not an actual academic journal. I feel like I fucking wasted my night reading this.
All I said was that the data supporting your claim (hunter gatherers are more violent, period) was much less clear than you made it seem. You never successfully showed how Pinker’s book provided any evidence for that claim in the period prior to the agricultural revolution. The paper I linked pointed that out at the outset (that almost all the data is from post-agricultural H-G life). You then had to go off and drive yourself crazy tilting at windmills and attacking arguments I never made.
Anyway, some other points that make you look silly:
You took the term “resource-sharing” to mean “gift economy” which is ridiculous. For Hunter-gatherers, resource sharing is as simple as different groups passing through an area at different times, using the same food and tool resources that area provides, without entering into violent conflict over territories. When you don’t have a concept of “land as property”, you don’t have wars of conquest.
Then you go on to rant about carrying resources being more difficult (duh, Hunter-gatherers follow their resources, not carry them), hunter-gathering lifestyle being economically disadvantageous, and sedentary societies having big advantages here. This is arguing against a claim I never made (that H-Gs are economically superior). I said (at the outset) that the series of developments leading to modern society was actually a series of tradeoffs. That we’ve sacrificed everything H-Gs had (leisure, community, culture, and song) at the altar of economic growth.
I agree, and I'll even dig up some sources later to assist that point, as while it's no longer the dominant view, it's more than just fringe. But this paper definitely ain't it.
But also, you explicitly said:
Which is why I felt the need to critique your source so extensively.
And as I noted, immediately uses data from post-agricultural hunter-gatherers in an attempt to 'prove' their own point.
Man, I'm directly quoting and critiquing the paper, not you. Sorry if it came off as more personal.
... the statement and the point attempting to contrast it with supposed sedentary autarky is quite clearly implying economic relations or resource exchange, not the idea of passing through an area at 'different times'. Furthermore, as the paper itself noted, hunter-gatherers do occupy and effectively claim usage rights over wide swathes of land.
I don't really know that "War of conquest" and "War of predominanting resource rights" are really all that different, man.
The point was about economic exchange, which requires carrying the resources in order to be exchanged.
Like I said, I was critiquing the paper. Irritably. Not trying to ascribe its every argument to you, but to make it clear why I regarded it as a poor source. I apologize, again, that it came off as more directed towards you.
But key to my point is that we haven't actually sacrificed everything hunter-gatherers had, and that modernity has much more leisure, community, culture, and song than hunter-gatherers, pretty unambiguously. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle itself is a tradeoff, and not a particularly favorable one.