RE: What is your opinion about Communism?
November 25, 2017 at 9:16 pm
(This post was last modified: November 25, 2017 at 10:19 pm by Anomalocaris.)
1st, we actually Have no clear idea of what full range of detailed social or economic structure our ancestors had between 200k - 50k years ago. We have mainly deduction emboldened by scarcity of evidence.
2nd, the argument that if we lived one way for 150k years and another for only 5k then the state assumed to have prevail for 150k must be more natural based on length of practice is similar to the argument that a newly freed slave who lived most of his life as a slave should go back to being a slave since that by length of practice must be his more natural state. We lived how we lived for 99% of our existence as a species purely because of a lack of means to do otherwise.
3rd. If you argue that genetically or behaviorally we might be better or more thoroughly adapted to a social structure or way of life that prevailed for 150k years than that which prevailed for 5 k years, and hence we should Return to the social structure we are better adapted to, then I must point out are not the same people as 200k - 50k years ago. We are not even the same people as 12k or 5K or even just 1k years ago. The changes to how we live our lives left clear imprints in the occurance and frequency of different behavioral and even metabolic genes in our popukation. How our ancestors lived 50k years ago is as unnatural to us now as how we live now would be unnatural to them.
Take for example the gene that render its bearer susceptible to gestational and type 2 diabetes. That gene carried great survival benefit to hunter gatherer societies and any early agricultural societies exposed to high probability of famine because it promotes the storage of energy and nutritional reserves as body fat. But this gene has been almost completely selected out of southern and western Europeans only since the 17th century because Europeans, through adopting a proto-capitalist society that was a able colonize the Caribbean and develop a transoceanic trade network that promoted the growing of sugar canes and the widespread adoption of refined sugar in the diet, suddenly found the life saving gene in a famine now created a deadly vulnerability to gestational diabetes and full blown type 2 diabetes. The fact that Europeans who were vulnerable to gestational and type 2 diabetes died off in droves between 1550-1800, leaving a substantially altered gene pool better adopted to the realities of a new society incorporating the effects of protocaoitalism is well documented.
The comparatively very low incidence of type 2 diabetes amongst people of Western European descent as compared to population that was not exposed to refined sugar until more recently is glaring even when Europeans consume much more refined sugar than those other groups. How dramatically even higher is incidence of diabetes and susceptibility to duabetes amongst populations that had been exposed to severe famine in the last 100 years more glaring still.
So the natural state from just 500 years ago - frequent famine and genetic adaptation to better survive these famines - are no longer the natural state to which we are genetically adopted today.
2nd, the argument that if we lived one way for 150k years and another for only 5k then the state assumed to have prevail for 150k must be more natural based on length of practice is similar to the argument that a newly freed slave who lived most of his life as a slave should go back to being a slave since that by length of practice must be his more natural state. We lived how we lived for 99% of our existence as a species purely because of a lack of means to do otherwise.
3rd. If you argue that genetically or behaviorally we might be better or more thoroughly adapted to a social structure or way of life that prevailed for 150k years than that which prevailed for 5 k years, and hence we should Return to the social structure we are better adapted to, then I must point out are not the same people as 200k - 50k years ago. We are not even the same people as 12k or 5K or even just 1k years ago. The changes to how we live our lives left clear imprints in the occurance and frequency of different behavioral and even metabolic genes in our popukation. How our ancestors lived 50k years ago is as unnatural to us now as how we live now would be unnatural to them.
Take for example the gene that render its bearer susceptible to gestational and type 2 diabetes. That gene carried great survival benefit to hunter gatherer societies and any early agricultural societies exposed to high probability of famine because it promotes the storage of energy and nutritional reserves as body fat. But this gene has been almost completely selected out of southern and western Europeans only since the 17th century because Europeans, through adopting a proto-capitalist society that was a able colonize the Caribbean and develop a transoceanic trade network that promoted the growing of sugar canes and the widespread adoption of refined sugar in the diet, suddenly found the life saving gene in a famine now created a deadly vulnerability to gestational diabetes and full blown type 2 diabetes. The fact that Europeans who were vulnerable to gestational and type 2 diabetes died off in droves between 1550-1800, leaving a substantially altered gene pool better adopted to the realities of a new society incorporating the effects of protocaoitalism is well documented.
The comparatively very low incidence of type 2 diabetes amongst people of Western European descent as compared to population that was not exposed to refined sugar until more recently is glaring even when Europeans consume much more refined sugar than those other groups. How dramatically even higher is incidence of diabetes and susceptibility to duabetes amongst populations that had been exposed to severe famine in the last 100 years more glaring still.
So the natural state from just 500 years ago - frequent famine and genetic adaptation to better survive these famines - are no longer the natural state to which we are genetically adopted today.
