On Saturday 2 June 2007 1:58:19 PM Krimel writes to SA [Krimel] The book I have been referring to spells this all out. But essentially Shermer is saying that we as animals on this planet evolved under very different conditions than the ones we live in today. Primates are for the most part social creatures. Our close relatives today bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and even most monkey species live together in social groups of various sizes. But there is a great deal of similarity in the way they live and interact. He makes a correlation between brain size and the size of their social groups.
He is saying that our distant ancestors living about a million years ago lived in social groups of about 150. This is about the size of social groups that we find among modern hunter gatherers. We have evolved with the capacity to live and interacted effectively with groups this size. BUT about 10,000 years ago the average size of our social groups began to increase. Instead of 150 we began to cluster into bigger and bigger cities of 1000, 10,000 up to millions. In original 150 person villages they had no laws, no religion. They did not need them. We you personally know everyone around you there is no need for formal codes of conduct. You know that if you go messing around in aunt Sally's berry basket she will smack you unless you are sneaky. She knows that if berries are missing from her basket she can read who is guilty from the look on their faces. If Billy is prone to stealing things everybody knows it and if something comes up missing Billy is the first one they look for. If Tom beats his wife Jane the whole village knows and if it happens a lot nobody is going to get too upset if Tom's bed happens to catch on fire on night. When we started living in larger and larger group we can not know everyone around us. We do not know the personal habits of strangers. We don't know how they act and so social codes, religious practices, laws emerged. I may not know who that guy over there is but I know he is not acting right. Or I can tell be the way he acts that he is one of us. The point is that over the past 10,000 years we have gained the ability to change our environment. We don't seek out caves or high ground, we build houses and roads and we accommodate more and more citizens and we developmore complex rule for how to act and how to treat strangers. We evolved to live among 150 family and friend and we come out of the womb surrounded by millions of strangers. Instead of being able to interact in a way that we are genetically equipped to act we must rely on rules. We become rule based in our thinking and our actions. Rules help us adjust and compensate for the fact that this is not what we are genetically equipped to do naturally. Hi Krimmel and SA, Esoteric literature describes two different forms of behavior, mechanical(unconscious) behavior and conscious behavior. There is no evil, only mechanical behavior. If I see no need for conscious evolution, I only follow mechanical rules and drop big bombs on my enemy. I must survive morphs to I must win, a mechanical rule, and I deprive myself of my freedom (conscious behavior). Joe [SA] Krimel, I'm wondering, do you suggest that people are morally hard-wired bad due to babies not going around trying to kill people? Where does your suggestion/basis come from? I really am interested in knowing. [Krimel] The book I have been referring to spells this all out. But essentially Shermer is saying that we as animals on this planet evolved under very different conditions than the ones we live in today. Primates are for the most part social creatures. Our close relatives today bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and even most monkey species live together in social groups of various sizes. But there is a great deal of similarity in the way they live and interact. He makes a correlation between brain size and the size of their social groups. He is saying that our distant ancestors living about a million years ago lived in social groups of about 150. This is about the size of social groups that we find among modern hunter gatherers. We have evolved with the capacity to live and interacted effectively with groups this size. BUT about 10,000 years ago the average size of our social groups began to increase. Instead of 150 we began to cluster into bigger and bigger cities of 1000, 10,000 up to millions. In original 150 person villages they had no laws, no religion. They did not need them. We you personally know everyone around you there is no need for formal codes of conduct. You know that if you go messing around in aunt Sally's berry basket she will smack you unless you are sneaky. She knows that if berries are missing from her basket she can read who is guilty from the look on their faces. If Billy is prone to stealing things everybody knows it and if something comes up missing Billy is the first one they look for. If Tom beats his wife Jane the whole village knows and if it happens a lot nobody is going to get too upset if Tom's bed happens to catch on fire on night. When we started living in larger and larger group we can not know everyone around us. We do not know the personal habits of strangers. We don't know how they act and so social codes, religious practices, laws emerged. I may not know who that guy over there is but I know he is not acting right. Or I can tell be the way he acts that he is one of us. The point is that over the past 10,000 years we have gained the ability to change our environment. We don't seek out caves or high ground, we build houses and roads and we accommodate more and more citizens and we develop more complex rule for how to act and how to treat strangers. We evolved to live among 150 family and friend and we come out of the womb surrounded by millions of strangers. Instead of being able to interact in a way that we are genetically equipped to act we must rely on rules. We become rule based in our thinking and our actions. Rules help us adjust and compensate for the fact that this is not what we are genetically equipped to do naturally. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
