[Apneaman]

The noble savage? Not so much

Big Kill, Not Big Chill, Finished Off Giant Kangaroos


Scientists have debated whether climate change or human activity wiped out the world’s megafauna. In Australia new evidence points to hunting–and only hunting

“Around 40,000 years ago, the giant kangaroo disappeared from Australia. So did Diprotodon (rhinoceros-size wombats) and Palorchestes (tapirlike marsupials) as well as supersize birds, reptiles and some 50 other so-called megafauna—big animals. And now a record of fungal spores pulled from the swamp at Lynch’s Crater in the northeastern corner of the continent reveals humans as the culprit.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... australia/

[Apneaman]

The Ecologically Noble Savage



The European Ideal

"The economic argument for the investigation of indigenous cultures has its roots in the myth of the noble savage. In its first incarnation, the noble savage was a shorthand term for the idealized European vision of the inhabitants of the New World. Early chroniclers noted that among the Indians "the land belonged to all, just like the sun and water. Mine and thine, the seeds of all evils, do not exist for those people... They live in a golden age,... in open gardens, without laws or books, without judges, and they naturally follow goodness." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas More, and others idealized the naked "savages" as innocent of sin. Another chronicler, continuing in this vein, observed that "all are equal in every respect, and so in harmony with their surroundings that they all live justly and in conformity with the laws of nature." For many Europeans, these Indians were dwellers in an earthly Garden of Eden."

"The recently accumulated evidence, however, refutes this concept of ecological nobility. Precontact Indians were not "ecosystem men"; they were not just another species of animal, largely incapable of altering the environment, who therefore lived within the "ecological limitations of their home area." Paleobiologists, archaeologists, and botanists are coming to believe that most tropical forests have been severely altered by human activities before European contact. Evidence of vast fires in the northern Amazonian forests and of the apparently anthropogenic origins of large areas of forest in eastern Amazonial suggests that before 1500, humans had tremendously affected the virgin forest, with ensuing impacts on plant and animal species. These people behaved as humans do now : they did whatever they had to to feed themselves and their families."


http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpubl ... ble-savage

[Apneaman]

If we want an answer to why the difference between Eurasians and other people, I think Jared Diamonds, Guns, Germs and Steel helps explain some of the variations in cultures and technological development.


"The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes."

The theory outlined

Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.

The first step towards civilization is the move from nomadic hunter-gatherer to rooted agrarian society. Several conditions are necessary for this transition to occur: access to high-protein vegetation that endures storage; a climate dry enough to allow storage; and access to animals docile enough for domestication and versatile enough to survive captivity. Control of crops and livestock leads to food surpluses. Surpluses free people to specialize in activities other than sustenance and support population growth. The combination of specialization and population growth leads to the accumulation of social and technologic innovations which build on each other. Large societies develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which in turn lead to the organization of nation-states and empires.[2]

"Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, Eurasia has barley, two varieties of wheat, and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; and goats, sheep, and cattle. Eurasian grains were richer in protein, easier to sow, and easier to store than American maize or tropical bananas."

more...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel


Guns Germs And Steel part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i885hopsw6E

Guns Germs And Steel Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBod2jFFyQ

Guns Germs And Steel part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ9espgY-Po

[Apneaman]

Louis CK - Indians, White People and God's Earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZkwuILn_s

[sparky]

.
I've read Diamonds book and was totally unimpressed
agriculture arose in the Middle East , so did metallurgy including steel
the Han Chinese were casting pig iron in the 12th century and had developed gunpowder
the last was transmitted to the Hindus and Persians well before Christian Europe got it
Arabs had encyclopedias at the time of the Baghdad caliphate ,
due to seven thousand years of animal husbandry , six thousand years of urbanization and contact with the rest of the world ,their exposure to germs and vectors was way more intensive and extensive than anything the Westerners had seen .
ancient records mention "plagues" regularly sweeping through the region for centuries

so technology , infection resistance and intellectual development were not a Western advantage
as for the "various positive feedback loops " they remain conjectural in the extreme

[Timo]

Good points evil.

I think the biggest threat to human persons are corporate persons with no responsibilities except profit, protecting investors and jiggering governments to do their bidding.

I don't see anyone here complaining about the benefits of capitalism. No one piped up to brag how they've given over all their capitalistic possessions and joined a commune and forsaken the material world provided them by capitalism. Lots of tsk tsking and spechifying tho, LoL

Capitalism is just about inseparable from its components; free markets, personal property and laws to protect individual rights. So what parts will you all eliminate?
The market?
Personal property?
Laws protecting the individual?

If you eliminate markets then how do you allocate stuff?
If you are going to elect allocators, how do you draw the line at their power?
How do you keep their thumbs off the scales?


As you all know and verify by your continued participation; profit, markets, this or that currency, even whatever brand of politics is not the real problem. The problem is the unlimited power of corporations — increasingly supranational "states" really, and their single-minded purpose of profiting while shielding "investors" from any risk beyond their monetary investment. The increasing fraction of the economy represented by "finance" is the tell, human oriented goods and services are falling by the way, money itself is the "product".

The more corps become persons the less important persons become.


I've had the 2 links in my sig on and off for a while, MoveToAmend.org is for a constitutional ammendment to state corps aren't persons and only humans have rights protected by the constitution. I'd go further and make any investor personally responsible for the actions of the corporations they invest in.

And Lizzy.

No answers to your questions about what is currently aforded to me that i'd willingly give up. I'll have to do some thingking about that. That said, it's surprising what we now have and take for granted that, once gone, we really don't miss all that much. The dichotomy is probably much more along the lines of something being taken from you versus willingly giving something up. Psychologically, there is a huge difference. I remember Post WWII parents willingly sacrificing lots of things in order to ensure their children had a better life than they had. Their boomer children, in most cases, did grow up to have better living conditions than their parents. The problem started when the boomers equated that higher standard of living as an entitelment, and did not have that same midset with regards to their own children. Most boomers i know haven't sacrified too much for the sake of their kids. Then again, i'm an Xer with no kids of my own. My newphews and nieces are struggling much more than their parents did at their same age. As an Xer, it's just my nature to blame all our problems on my older brothers and sisters, aka Boomers. But i digress.

Regarding your larger point to any alternative system, though, well, i'll have to ask (request/beg) our Kiwi friends to explain, as detailed (yet sucinctly) as possible the merits and function of the RMA. As i understand it, the RMA requires all new development in NZ to be neutral in some capacity. What that capacity is, i'm not quite sure. However, about a decade ago, the RMA really got my atention, and i set out to find work in NZ to learn more about it, to use it, and bring parts of it back to the US as a model (in some form) on a local level here in the States. Pipe dream, i admit, but i still have a lot of respect for the RMA. Geaeme, Kiwichick, others care to chime in?

NZ readily recognizes that, as an island nation, their physical resources are immediately more finite than other continental nations. Thereore, what they have, they assume a much greater responsility to protect.The RMA is a huge component of that policy. I'm curious to learn more.

I'm not quite sure how that would/could relate to any alternative to capitalism, but maybe it would dovetail with capitalism to achive some of the same aims we all recognize are needed for our future.

[onlooker]

Yes sparky is right, I think where you can really delineate the real beginning of an advantage for the Western world is when Western Europe really started to take advantage of the resources provided by the American continent. This period roughly coincided also with the beginning of the Enlightment period. So these two factors were huge determinants in propelling the West ahead. I think what Jared Diamond is talking about in terms of guns and germs is that Western Conquistadores had the guns to subdue the native Indians as well as infecting them with their various germs to which the Indians had no immune resistance too.

[evilgenius]

Without the modern fiat debt based monetary system in existence today the world would be a dire place. The Federal Reserve, and, indeed, all similar central banks, arose as a counter to the extreme boom and bust cycles of the day. The mandate they were created under was to achieve some kind of control over those cycles. Under that mandate the Fed and other central bankers are charged with learning more all the time about how to alleviate the pain of the business cycle and provide a more stable economic environment for business to transact. In order to do this they have had to discover the importance of various aspects which make up the functioning components of the economies they have charge over, ranking their importance for attention. This is how interests, like those of labor or investors receive a voice, because the Fed has to act in their interest or the system will become unstable.

This is outright nonsense. The Fed and other Central banks did not arise to counter boom bust cycles they create them. For it is they who profit most from them. Ever since the first one arose the Bank of England they are in the business of loaning out money with interest in a practically unlimited manner. They have been catalysts and instrumental in igniting wars for the sake of profit and to entrench the central bank system upon countries. They were directly involved in creating the Great Depression. They have never acted for the benefit of ordinary individuals or even countries. Their sole purpose is profit and gain which by the way they share with corporations who also act in such a despicable way for the most part. This whole debt based system is in fact the worst outgrowth of capitalism and the perhaps the main reason we have so disregarded protecting the interests of the Earth and it's citizens. It has enslaved countries, companies and private individuals to debt. Banks like Corporations now have NO allegiance to anybody but to their insatiable desire for money and power. I think you have read too much the orthodox books that try and highlight the good of this system and ignore the bad.

I think you have a very one sided viewpoint. I might call you a conspiracy theorist. I hope that's not a slander. Some of my best friends are conspiracy theorists.

The fact is that is the story, more or less. The Fed is certainly not a 'Creature from Jekyl Island'. The trouble is the Fed, very much like management as it has evolved, is subject to schools of thought and human prejudice as much as any person is. Alan Greenspan, for instance, could not bring himself to see the importance of the worker. He failed to see that real wages needed to increase. In place of that he was happy to see the complex creation he helped make(in the form of an out of control housing market and a derivative covering that he thought could handle the capital flows, keeping them out of the street level economy) thrive. He was blinded by schools of thought.

Now we face a new challenge for the worker, and all others who earn for a living rather than purely invest. Artificial intelligence is coming. You don't need human looking robots that can think and act like humans to achieve human replacement. All you need are purpose built machines that can perform the functions that humans as workers now do at every level, and can problem solve like people in the process. And they don't need to contain the power to do that within themselves, they have the net. We shouldn't be afraid of AI taking over in some kind of revolution over power. We should be worried that we haven't got an economic system that can spread wealth under such an order, when no one is working anymore.

The thing I've devised is an answer to this. It creates a class of stock that has a potentially steady return, but too low for pure investors to remain interested in. Built correctly, it would likely achieve about as much share of the wealth as the 99% has right now. And it would appeal to that group as a means to earn at the level they would have under the working for a living paradigm, which is what you want. It maintains incentive because it does not destroy investment. The same allocation of resources, with the caveat that the philosophy directing those decisions would be hugely influenced by this new group, would take place.

[onlooker]

That is okay EG, I have been called worse hehe. Seriously, I do think that it is not people per say that makes the system bad, it is the system. People as far back as Thomas Jefferson warned of banks and the prospect of them attaining undue power. What makes the Reserve banks particularly pernicious is they are private entities not beholden to anyone or anything. Yes I have strong ideas about this topic because I have already read enough to convince me of the true nature of elite banking as embodied in the Rothchild family. The tentacles are vast in fact I read recently a statistic that stated that the Rothchild family controlled half yes halt the world's wealth. Anyway I will not belabor the point. Your idea about stocks is interesting. Lets just agree to disagree.

[Oneaboveall]

...Alan Greenspan, for instance, could not bring himself to see the importance of the worker. He failed to see that real wages needed to increase. In place of that he was happy to see the complex creation he helped make(in the form of an out of control housing market and a derivative covering that he thought could handle the capital flows, keeping them out of the street level economy) thrive. He was blinded by schools of thought...

Greenspan somehow figured that it was worker's wages that caused the inflation of the 1970s, but completely ignored the fact that Nixon abandoned the Bretton Woods' Agreement (which meant that the dollar could be exchanged for gold) in order to pay for Vietnam.

[Pops]

I think you have a very one sided viewpoint. I might call you a conspiracy theorist.

Once people pick their viewpoint it is pretty hard to change, especially when they decide they have discovered the Big Plot That Explains Everything.

Personally I lost the plot years ago...

[Timo]

I wasn't aware there was a plot. To me, everything going on was all background noise.

Did i miss something while i was blissfully unaware?

[onlooker]

No Timo, you did not miss much just that maybe the Methane Burp so dreaded looks like it has gone off or will this summer. See the Runaway Global Warming thread. Looks like what humans do or don't do now is irrelevant. But I think I am also dozing off not much to see haha.

[Timo]

Who wrote that plot?!?!

That SUCKS! I'm surprised anyone even bought that pile of horse sh*t!

I hope that writer has been blacklisted.

[americandream]

I think you have a very one sided viewpoint. I might call you a conspiracy theorist.

Once people pick their viewpoint it is pretty hard to change, especially when they decide they have discovered the Big Plot That Explains Everything.

Personally I lost the plot years ago...

You cannot individually sit on the fence for the rest of your life dithering. One digests the facts and makes and informed choice based on reason.

As a moderator you are obliged to be impersonal, subject of course to the forces of reasonableness in arriving at decisions.

Consequently, I respect your impartiality in your neutral moderators hat but I disagree with your personal observation that reasonably founded views are akin to subjective neuroses.

[onlooker]

Yes and my conclusion that we have been led by a bunch of "crazies" I think fits the definition of reasonably founded. I mean look at the world what a mess it is and the actions of the political and financial sectors as well as the fossil fuel companies that have contributed to making the world what it is now. Also, look at the solutions or lack thereof which the political and financial institutions and those who sit atop them have offered. I rest my case.

[americandream]

Yes and my conclusion that we have been led by a bunch of "crazies" I think fits the definition of reasonably founded. I mean look at the world what a mess it is and the actions of the political and financial sectors as well as the fossil fuel companies that have contributed to making the world what it is now. Also, look at the solutions or lack thereof which the political and financial institutions and those who sit atop them have offered. I rest my case.

That is the paradox that confronts analysts who fully grasp material dialecticism....which came first, the chicken or the egg.

To understand our predicament, I will borrow a quote from the bible without any religious intent...it aptly captures the character of the capitalist class: Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Basically, the majority of the capitalist class do not know what their actions will effect. Many are good people as that word is ordinarily understood. A few have physiological issues and are basically mad but the majority are of sound mind and living the good life.

Which is why any real solution to our predicament will have to involve the raising of consciousness. Otherwise we will simply be delaying the very close at hand crisis to no real extent. Climate trend shift will occur as soon as the planets atmosphere reaches its chemistry threshold.....and the further this toxic way of life spreads, the quicker that margin approaches

[Ibon]

Which is why any real solution to our predicament will have to involve the raising of consciousness. Otherwise we will simply be delaying the very close at hand crisis to no real extent. Climate trend shift will occur as soon as the planets atmosphere reaches its chemistry threshold.....and the further this toxic way of life spreads, the quicker that margin approaches

I am assuming that the general public has the lowest level of confidence at the moment in the very macro institutions that would have to be engaged to raise consciousness toward a cultural shift that would move us from toxic consumerism. I see those who have this intelligence making choices of withdrawing more than engaging. Finding their own little niche on a local level in an attempt to reduce exposure to instabilities. Probably futile but so be it.

Every time I try to envision the pathway toward a more evolved global civilization I fail to see step by step evolution of how this can take place. I am biased or perhaps enlightened in this regard by my ecology background. You always have to be careful when you draw an analogy from ecology and try to apply it to human culture. But here goes.

Biological evolution shows a punctuated equilibrium instead of a linear step by step slow process. In other words, ecosystems experience relatively long periods of stasis with high resilience and lower extinction rates and lower rates of new species being formed. Events happen that punctuate this stasis and then you see an accelerated rate of extinctions and new species formed. Events can be land bridges, climate change like ice ages, meteors falling on the planet, mega volcanoes, etc. In other words, disruption to the stable equilibrium is a catalyst in evolution.

I recognize that I apply this biological principal to the question of human cultural evolution. Without the catalyst of consequences coming home to roost what will drive our global civilization to abandon this path of excessive consumption? The current paradigm requires destabilization through the consequences of human overshoot to shift priorities toward a more "evolved" set of values that would raise consciousness.

It is classic question of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, or putting the cart before the horse. I believe there is no shift of consciousness without destabilization. I understand the rebuttal that climate change events and other consequences can be so severe that the result will be to destabilizing to hold together civilization. This is perhaps true.

We have the boy who cried wolf phenomenon to deal with as well. Since Malthus we have had forecasts of collapse that have never happened and this has created a global insensitivity to threats alone. No one takes threats seriously because we have a couple hundred years of overcoming every forecast of collapse. This also explains the resiliency of consumerism in the face of obvious environmental consequences. Acid rain didn't happen, the ozone hole didn't fry us with UV radiation, starvation didn't happen post WWII due to the agro revolution, we didn't blow ourselves up in the cold war, ebola didn't spread, etc. In that same vein we already hear misinformed folks already saying peak oil didn't happen because of fracking technology etc.

So, no cultural change without the catalyst of consequences. No consciousness evolution without the catalyst of consequences.

I welcome an alternative to my thesis with a credible argument on how you take these steps toward consciousness raising without consequences.

[americandream]

Ibon

Dialectic analysis of the material kind identifies trends and propensities and likely outcomes, all things being equal. In other words we have a species with an evolutionary bias towards consciousness, a historic cultural trend which pathways an incremental shift to full consciousness (man only uses about 10% of his brain which is more a function of material dialecticism than biology) and the first inklings of the consciousness profile in this thing we call humanitarianism....a sort of potted cause and effect machine which is superior to religious ethics being founded on articulated notions of equitable government as opposed to mystical compulsions founded in the unknown.

So we have the makings of the rational man, what is of course yet to be perfected are the social relations to embed these early shoots and of course, the mechanisms for nurturing these relations. Ideally, this should be an organic time driven process as opposed to a contrived one. Our rapid speed at tooling however has not kept pace with our consciousness and we are thus left with the risk of climate trend shift which increases each year our tooling civilisation spreads the globe without any dramatic rise in consciousness to accompany that development.

Thus we are left with helping the dialectic process along a little, although what that should look like hasnt quite gelled, and skipping some of the clock a little. This probably needs to start yesterday unfortunately but its a big project to kick off and it needs to be right for swift results.

[Ibon]

Ibon

Dialectic analysis of the material kind identifies trends and propensities and likely outcomes, all things being equal. In other words we have a species with an evolutionary bias towards consciousness, a historic cultural trend which pathways an incremental shift to full consciousness (man only uses about 10% of his brain which is more a function of material dialecticism than biology) and the first inklings of the consciousness profile in this thing we call humanitarianism....a sort of potted cause and effect machine which is superior to religious ethics being founded on articulated notions of equitable government as opposed to mystical compulsions founded in the unknown.

So we have the makings of the rational man, what is of course yet to be perfected are the social relations to embed these early shoots and of course, the mechanisms for nurturing these relations. Ideally, this should be an organic time driven process as opposed to a contrived one. Our rapid speed at tooling however has not kept pace with our consciousness and we are thus left with the risk of climate trend shift which increases each year our tooling civilisation spreads the globe without any dramatic rise in consciousness to accompany that development.

Thus we are left with helping the dialectic process along a little, although what that should look like hasnt quite gelled, and skipping some of the clock a little. This probably needs to start yesterday unfortunately but its a big project to kick off and it needs to be right for swift results.

That's all fine AD but you did not address anything specific to my thesis that without a catalyst we will not see this shift of consciousness and that this process may have some analogy to biological evolution that requires the disruption of events that destabilize the resilient stasis inherently found in eco systems before we see a punctuated rise in evolution (extinctions and new species being formed) . I am saying there is a collective cultural analogy here that is perhaps valid.

Specifically, do you see this process of helping collective consciousness possible without the catalyst of severe consequences. And if you do how?

Regarding religions the dogmatic institutions that surround most major religions and the devices of hocus pocus mysticism is something truly distinct from holding your mother earth as something sacred. This reverence is a key component to consciousness raising in my opinion and you seem to be challenged in separating this sense of reverence and sense of the sacred from what you see as religious hocus pocus mysticism. In that sense I go back to my previous comment to you that you need to spend more time in the woods from where this sense of the sacred can be found and less time contemplating the purely intellectual components of this process toward consciousness raising

Many people who have immersed themselves deep into nature, whether native or scientists, are acutely aware of this sense of the sacred. To not use this as one of the tools to develop a pathway out of material consumerism towards a more reasoned consciousness is discarding one of the most valuable tools in the shed toward this process IMHO.