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CallaFirestormBW -> RE: Human Nature (8/7/2008 11:37:13 AM)
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I'm sure you meant philosophized.
I concur that many of our responses, even this far into our evolution, are residual of our paleolithic selves. While there are generic paths that humanity, as a whole, has tended to follow, in every culture (even in paleolithic culture) there were a substantial number of individuals who strayed from the set path. If one watches other animal cultures that may mirror, in some ways, our own paleolithic development, in the context of their world, we discover that, even in pre-human communal situations, there are always set of individuals who step out of the communal pattern. These variations have been systematically ignored until recently (the past decade or so), because establishment of a genetic imperative that compelled certain societally sanctioned ways of behaving were considered 'beneficial', and also because scientists have a unique blind-spot... if something defies their pre-conceived theories, there is a good chance the the scientist in question will not even see the data -- not that xhe recognizes and dismisses it, but that xhe is constitutionally incapable of even recognizing the incompatible data. For those who -do- recognize the impact of the data, they will often repeat the questionable study, 'tweaking' the parameters until the data matches their pet theory.
Because humans have proven to be exceptionally adaptive, we have also retained the gene-mapping of these diverse non-conformists or parti-conformists in our genetic stream, because, since we have been capable of substantially greater levels of adaptation, more of these non-conforming genes have survived into our present manifestation.
I believe that this is why, even though there are culturally normative values that indicate things like:
quote:
How man has a need to conquer to gain, and protect to maintain. and quote:
I know how women have an innate need to nurture, service, and support the man protector with anything he may require that insures their need for protection... the current population retains those qualities more as a residual that is reinforced by common culture than as a genetic imperative.
How a person lives in hir own domain is mapped as much by the tendency to conform to or deviate from cultural norms as it is to follow some pre-programmed genetic imperative. It served the purpose of academics at the time to enforce the ideas that would maintain the cultural status-quo. The idea was to -support- the foundations of the current society, not throw them into upheaval.
Today, I do worry that our culture is being driven away from its paleolithic underpinnings -- but it is not the categorized "male is this and female is that" that I am worried about. The part that I am worried about is the suppression of the creative, adaptive human -- the one who chooses to step out of the mold and find his or her own right path, and then develop the adaptations to survive that way. I believe that we -are- being turned into cattle -- and are being turned into cattle that other cattle are controlling... like letting the psychotics run the asylum. We are progressively eliminating creativity. We are stripping our children of the opportunity to explore ideas and arts, AND of the opportunity to use that exploration to develop their own individual perspective on the world. We are, I believe, destroying our anarchists before they have the capacity to show us what we are missing.
Yes, adaptability and creative diversion is messy. Sometimes it screws up right royally and there is danger in taking the risk of not walking down the common road. But even in this lifestyle, there are those whose practice falls closer to the common world, and those whose practice breaks new ground. In intimating that the genetic predisposition, if there is truly any such thing, is the key determinant to the soundness of an act intimates that our capacity to adapt and to create and to revise and to re-shape is without comparable value. The essence of human nature is that each human has a unique and unencultured perspective... the combination of that perspective and the enculturation of society, and how those balance out in the individual is the best determinant of the ongoing viability of the species.
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