328
full egoism
(quokk.au)
Seize the Memes of Production
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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.