Krimel, dmb, and Khaled,
This idea of small and large communities is
interesting especially as larger communities, well,
become larger and the old social system must evolve
into laws and extended eyes monitoring situations,
such as police, legislatures, and judges, etc... In
large communities we want to live on with our lives
and make a living, nothing wrong with this. Then one
day I got this job at a facility that closely monitors
children/teenagers, after working there for months I
slowly realized that many other facilities some even
more strict such as boot camp, do exist. It was
similar to when I was younger and lived in the city.
Then as our family slowly moved our way around and
settled in the country I saw deer and hawks, etc...
Now these animals didn't surprise me, but the
realization I had was 'yeah, I guess these animals do
live here, and the woods with all these trees.' I
mean people are starving in the city, and Pennsylvania
has this overpopulation of deer. So, there are these
bad people, and 'yeah, I guess these people are put
into placement facilities and eventually may end up in
jail.' But they didn't do it you know. We're the bad
guys. We can help them all we need to do is believe
them they want to wrong again, and then you say, "NO",
and they yell, scream, swear, and talk about how they
want to physically hurt you - well, I guess I
shouldn't have said No and let them have an extra
juice, how uncompassionate of me. Yes, this has
happened before, and yet, they're not really bad, we
make them bad, oh, then how did they get sent to
placement in the first place, well, that's not my
problem they say, oh, but it is... a judge sent you to
us, etc... In large communities these kinds of events
are sheltered from the larger community. As long as
it's not in our back yard, right? It's controlled,
right? We have police to stop these people, right?
Yes - we need police, judges, prison guards, placement
facility staff, etc..., and "How did this all start?",
as Platt asked.
Geography has much to do with this. Where we are, and
what is happening where we are tunes us into a certain
quality of life. Is the intellect in contact or
disconnected from the realities of the social order?
Yes, I would say something is a mess here.
woods,
SA
> dmb says:
> I'm not so sure that small scale communities enjoy
> any immunity to violence.
>
> If that were true there would be no such thing as
> domestic violence, crimes
> of passion, incest and the like. You always hurt the
> one you love and all
> that. I can see how the larger scale communities
> that come with civilization
>
> would precipitate a need for formal codes and laws
> but I'm a bit skeptical
> about the effects of scale on morality per se. Its
> much broader than that,
> no? It seems to me that there is an alienating and
> disturbing effect of
> large scale, complex societies. There is something
> stressful about having to
>
> manage one's own life in a context that is
> complicated to the point that
> nobody understands much beyond their own role as
> baker, warroir, midwife,
> Queen or whatever. Seems to me that there is a
> psychological advantage to
> living in small groups simply because social reality
> is within the
> individual's range of comprehension.
>
> [Krimel]
> Humans evolved by living in small groups of about
> 150. That is how we lived
> for about a million years. Laws are not needed
> because there are all kinds
> of social controls that function in groups of that
> size. You may get
> domestic violence but the community knows about it.
> You may have thieves but
> everyone knows who they are.
>
> Civilizations did not cause larger communities,
> larger communities caused
> civilizations. Larger communities resulted from
> technological innovations in
> agriculture. With larger group sizes the inherited
> systems of control broke
> down and other more formal types of control had to
> be put in place to
> maintain order.
>
> The rest of the stuff you mention specialization,
> social roles, codes of
> morality and law, etc. are the product of this
> change that occurred about
> 12,000 years ago. This is too short a period to have
> had evolutionary
> significance.
>
> But take your leap into theology for a second. We
> speak of the evil with
> reference to specific individuals and events. If
> evil were not somehow
> genetically selected against wouldn't you expect to
> see more of it? In fact
> much of the stress you mention comes from having to
> adapt to an environment
> that we are not particularly well adapted to.
>
>
>
>
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