[Debate] Your past was someone's future; your present will be someone's past Catch-All

A lot of our topics are about current events, so the background to the discussion doesn't need to exhaust the depth of the topic to get to the point most people are interested in. So here's a catch-all thread for deeper dives, specifically the grand sweep of events and how our attachment to our own time can lead us to a distorted perspective.

This thread is a spin-off from another where the conversation turned to the male gender, but went beyond the scope of that thread. This piece was in the back of my head during that discussion:

A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves: A leading anthropologist suggests that protohumans became domesticated by killing off violent males.

You can skip the rest of the bloat of that article and read the last couple of paragraphs if you want the info suggested by the grabby headline.

Yeah, I couldn't figure out a good pull paragraph to sum up what's in there--sorry 'bout that.

It caught my eye for the gender angle, and for the angle that we think of humans living in civilizations as the norm, but I dunno--more and more these days, it looks like a state of change. Something in between what was original, and what is inevitable. We can't go back to some per-civilization 'utopia', but we don't have to look at what's around us as normal and stable, either. Like once we become sedentary enough that it becomes worth conquering another human being, if that's a painful-but-inevitable stage we should look to get through as painlessly as possible.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

This thread is a spin-off from another where the conversation turned to the male gender, but went beyond the scope of that thread. This piece was in the back of my head during that discussion:

A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves: A leading anthropologist suggests that protohumans became domesticated by killing off violent males.

This seems to be what the first several seasons of The Walking Dead were about. It was a whole lot of killing people that just aren't the right kind of people to settle down and start a civilization. The struggle is when to stop with all the murder, and to start a justice system. But that only works if you eliminate those that won't bend to justice.

One of the discussion m wife and I always had about TWD was that, to her, she didn't buy into the utter bleakness of humanity it portrays. It made sense to me, because when people get scared and transition into survival mode, there is an us vs them feeling that sets in that destroys trust and encourages a more war-like mindset. Not that there was murder, but the Fyre Festival attendees were the latest example of just how quickly people will turn on everyone if the conditions are right.

Both the Governor and Negan were prime examples of toxic masculinity. In this setting, you are not going to just kill off every problematic dude, but getting rid of the leaders that capitalize on this was essential for setting up new communities. At the same time, so was keeping some like Negan alive, as a standard that murder is not the primary way to deal with criminals anymore, even if that was a pretty critical mistake.

This theory reminds me of a story Robert Sapolsky often talks about regarding a baboon troop he studies.

Jayhawker wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

This thread is a spin-off from another where the conversation turned to the male gender, but went beyond the scope of that thread. This piece was in the back of my head during that discussion:

A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves: A leading anthropologist suggests that protohumans became domesticated by killing off violent males.

This seems to be what the first several seasons of The Walking Dead were about. It was a whole lot of killing people that just aren't the right kind of people to settle down and start a civilization. The struggle is when to stop with all the murder, and to start a justice system. But that only works if you eliminate those that won't bend to justice.

One of the discussion m wife and I always had about TWD was that, to her, she didn't buy into the utter bleakness of humanity it portrays. It made sense to me, because when people get scared and transition into survival mode, there is an us vs them feeling that sets in that destroys trust and encourages a more war-like mindset. Not that there was murder, but the Fyre Festival attendees were the latest example of just how quickly people will turn on everyone if the conditions are right.

Both the Governor and Negan were prime examples of toxic masculinity. In this setting, you are not going to just kill off every problematic dude, but getting rid of the leaders that capitalize on this was essential for setting up new communities. At the same time, so was keeping some like Negan alive, as a standard that murder is not the primary way to deal with criminals anymore, even if that was a pretty critical mistake.

Fortunately, the Fyre festival is not typical of how many communities respond in disasters. One, it was filled with rich assholes who aren’t used to hardship in any shape or form. Two, everyone had spent so much money that they felt entitled to whatever they could scrounge. And three, the festival organizers who could have provided some semblance of leadership and stability completely abdicated their responsibility. If you want a glimpse of the best that humanity has to offer, go listen to the Come From Away soundtrack. In that real story, a small and remote Newfoundland fishing town fed and housed thousands of stranded passengers who had to land there when all transatlantic flights were grounded after 911.

Fyre Festival = now we know what happens when the rich disappear to Galt Gulch.

If you could harness the power of entitlement, Fyrefest could have powered the U.S. for decades. For examples, search youtube for fyrefest and you can see just about every "significant" "creator" pretty much live streamed it.

Generally speaking, when disaster strikes humans mostly tend to band together. A state of dog-eat-dog anarchy is unusual and due to specific pressures, like in-group/out-group conflicts, not the default state of humanity. You need civilization to be excessively cruel.

I think our view of humanity was skewed because British Victorians didn't want to give up the option to become cannibals when their boat sank.

Gremlin wrote:

You need civilization to be excessively cruel.

That's a line I was looking for while fumbling around in those early posts! : D

Gremlin wrote:

I think our view of humanity was skewed because British Victorians didn't want to give up the option to become cannibals when their boat sank.

That made me laugh, I did a mock trial on that case in secondary, was selected as prosecution and got the bu##ers executed.

Well it was a catholic school after all.

Jeem wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

I think our view of humanity was skewed because British Victorians didn't want to give up the option to become cannibals when their boat sank.

That made me laugh, I did a mock trial on that case in secondary, was selected as prosecution and got the bu##ers executed.

Well it was a catholic school after all.

butters?

Buzzers. Or buffers.

EDIT: Or maybe butlers. Instructions unclear.

Buckfutters?

My guess would be g's replacing the #'s.

A discussion of touch happened in the 2020 election thread (thanks, Biden!), just happened to run across this article on the importance of touch, which led to this one on touch, which the video comes from.

Figured it belonged here because it reminded me of something I said when this discussion was back in the Men Feminism thread, and it's one theme of the thread, the question of how rapidly and profoundly our lives have changed from the lives the bulk of historical humans have lived, and especially humans before history.

Wow, that was.....interesting.

I do find this discussion about touch intriguing and like most things it feels like we run the risk of taking it to extremes. I went to a birthday party tonight for a good friend and there were a number of people there who I new well, some I new but not well and some I didn’t know at all. Thinking back to my interactions, my close female friends (total of 2) were greeted with a hug, my male friends a handshake. Acquaintances or people I didn’t know (either gender) were greeted with a handshake or a wave. It was a very upper middle class, white, cis hetero gathering in the burbs with pretty standard gender roles. Most of the men were the primary earners, most of the women stayed home or worked part-time and there was much discussion of where people had traveled for spring break and plans to travel abroad this summer. Now that I think about it, many here would probably view it as what is wrong with America today. =)

Getting back to touch, I think it would have felt strange to not have greeted my friends with any kind of touch - in fact they would have probably wondered if Inwete upset with them. I do still think physical contact is important to us. It would have also been strange/creepy for me to go up to women I don’t know or don’t know well and greet them with a hug.

I guess the risk would have been that one of my friends didn’t want a hug. I do think most of us are able to read social cues to tell when that is the case but I will grant this is still a risk. But I don’t think the reaction should be that we become a touchless society to make sure that doesn’t happen. At least I hope that isn’t where we are headed.

Docjoe wrote:

Now that I think about it, many here would probably view it as what is wrong with America today. =)

Nah, the bit I object to is when the American civil religion makes the lifestyle mandatory for everyone regardless of personal circumstances, uses social and economic oppression to deny everyone else the stability to either participate or the space to establish an alternate stability, and then retaliates against those who can't or won't participate in the invisible assumptions of the religion.

That, and people who do have that upper-middle-class lifestyle should recognize that it's a pretty sweet deal that lets them do that and make room for those who don't have those resources.

As for touch--it's tricky. Because physical contact is important for humans. And different cultures incorporate it differently. Different families, even.

But this cultural moment is happening because, as it turns out, a disturbingly large number of people can't be trusted to be that close to other humans. A male supervisor putting his hand on the thigh of a rape survivor as she's telling the group about recently being sexually assaulted, for example. (Actual example.) A married supervisor preventing a much younger mentee from getting a promotion, and then telling her completely out of the blue that he wanted to leave his wife for her. (Actual example.) A high percentage of male college students will admit to criminal sexual assault when they take a survey that describes coercive sexual behavior without labeling it "sexual assault" or "rape". (Actual example.)

There's ways of addressing this--for example, humans tend to assume everyone else thinks like them if they don't speak up, so merely disagreeing when someone jokes about sexual assault can reduce the cover of acceptability that rapists rely on.

But I've drifted off topic. We've got a conflict: many people don't want to be touched except on their own terms, and their own terms are frequently violated. Many people do want to be touched. Many people will not stop even when explicitly asked to stop, and many people are uncomfortable without being able to voice their discomfort.

A big component of this is a breakdown in communication, where different cultures--here different ways of communicating about and through touch--make different assumptions, and many people have trouble respecting boundaries or recognizing that boundaries have been set. Culture clash leads to communication breakdown, where the social negotiation needs to be explicitly talked through, but at the same time many people don't realize that they're out of step with the room or become hurt, scared, or angry when they realize that they are no longer in the culture they thought they were operating in.

I mean, I hug a lot of people I barely know in the appropriate settings when hugging and greeting and shaking hands is called for (church comes to mind), but I have NEVER stood closely behind anyone who I wasn't dating or married to and breathed into and/or kissed their hair. That whole idea is just so completely icky that I have no idea how anyone could interpret NOT wanting that as suddenly becoming a cold, touchless society.