[HN Gopher] Large-scale violence in Late Neolithic Western Europ...
___________________________________________________________________
Large-scale violence in Late Neolithic Western Europe based on
skeletal evidence
Author : diodorus
Score : 77 points
Date : 2023-11-04 02:56 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| smarri wrote:
| I found this a fascinating bit of research. I suspect that there
| is so much of our history undocumented, with only remnants like
| those described as a window to that past.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| What is considered history is basically only what is written
| down. That means that everything that wasn't written down, and
| everything that happened before we invented writing, is lost.
|
| This includes almost all ordinary peoples lives, but also
| things like the childhood of people like Charlemagne.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Everything that wasn't written down, and everything that
| happened before we invented writing, isn't lost, it's simply
| called prehistory instead of history.
|
| We do know all kinds of things about ordinary people's lives
| based on physical evidence in archeology; we can figure out
| what they ate and where they got that, what jobs they did and
| how they organized that, what health issues they had and how
| they died.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| How (modern) society has overcome violence as the dominent means
| of ensuring compliance and replaced it with decades of social
| norms and training and to be fair material reward (go to school,
| learn, work hard, don't kill anyone), this is "the greatest trick
| the devil ever pulled".
|
| Convincing billions to co-operate based on rules.
|
| It's incredible
| isoprophlex wrote:
| There's the occasional relapse tho...
| krapp wrote:
| Violence remains the dominant means of ensuring compliance, the
| "supreme authority from which all other authority is derived."
| Social norms are backed up with a threat of violence from the
| community. Civil society and its laws are enforced with
| violence from the state. Religious authority is enforced with
| the threat of divine violence. Even familial authority is very
| often enforced with violence from parents.
|
| Of course, not all violence is physical. The real change has
| been the transition from the common application of physical
| violence to emotional and psychological violence as our
| societies become more abstract and removed from the cold
| brutality of nature and subsistence living, except in "extreme"
| cases.
|
| Also the "greatest trick the devil ever pulled" was convincing
| people he doesn't exist. Slaves pick your food, sew your
| clothes and mine the rare earth minerals in your electronics.
| Vast engines of automated slaughter put meat in your stores.
| Every advertisement is mind control and every news story is
| psychological warfare. Every cop is a thug, every judge a
| sadist, every CEO a sociopath, every politician a psychopath.
| "People sleep peacefully in their beds only because rough men
| stand ready to do violence on their behalf," as George Orwell
| said. And they do, cruel, wicked violence. Your hands are
| soaked in blood, the roads are paved with bones, and the skies
| are blackened with ashes from the ovens of Moloch.
|
| But you don't see it most of the time, it's hidden away from
| you, or it's intangible. That's the trick the world learned
| from the Nazis, how to manipulate and control mass perception
| through modern media, and by extension to normalize the
| violence that drives modern society. You can just play Candy
| Crush, pay your taxes, be nice and not kill anyone and pretend
| the devil isn't real.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| Most of what your talking is gross exaggeration. Exaggeration
| to the point of falsehood. Even the kernel of truth of
| underpaid, subsistence workers producing a lot of our food
| and machines, to call the rest of it what you have is just
| false.
| throw310822 wrote:
| I don't agree with everything in it and how absolutely it
| is presented, but upvoted it for the sheer power of the
| prose.
| highstep wrote:
| you must be a be fan of chatgpt :)
| walleeee wrote:
| Precision is important. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone, but
| neither does calling the comment entirely false.
|
| Underpaid subsistence workers _do_ produce a huge portion
| of goods consumed in western nations. Engines of automated
| slaughter _do_ put meat in stores. Advertising cares not an
| ounce for your wellbeing, food conglomerates employ
| chemists to optimize not for health or flavor but how
| compulsively you want to eat their products, game studios
| and social networks employ psychologists to most
| effectively addict you. Mindlessly consuming the news _is_
| a great way to get psyopped. Note that I have dropped the
| universals (e.g. "every", "all") because they weaken the
| argument by opening it to pedantic attacks, but the above
| is largely true.
|
| The "every X is a Y" is more fraught. Police are too often
| predisposed to violence and abuse, many politicians are
| sociopaths, surely. Selection effects are real. But there
| are reasonable people too.
|
| The more important point, which the comment misses, is that
| _nobody is really in charge_. Yes, there are "smoke-filled
| rooms" where conspiracies are hatched, but modernity is too
| large and complex for complete centralized control. The
| dominant forces today, I would argue, are distributed
| algorithms composed of flesh and blood human beings, their
| ideas and social fictions (which comprise institutions),
| and a vast array of machines. This vortex, this enormous,
| evolving structure of incentives and infrastructure, has
| its own autonomy. _This_ is Moloch, and it doesn 't even
| require active malice on any particular person's part.
|
| Paperclip maximizers are not just a thought experiment, we
| are surrounded by them. We are _in_ them.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| What irks me about this (op's) line of thought is the
| labeling of these facts as the devil, evil, even though
| it's still very likely the best the humanity got to ever
| experience.
|
| Yes, the advertisers don't care one bit for the well-
| being of the consumers, but can you imagine a reality
| where they would? I don't. Calling something evil even
| though there's not much improvement to be made is ...
| needlessly negative?
| bsenftner wrote:
| I love how people debate about "the greatest trick the devil
| ever pulled" - as if it is not amazingly obvious it was
| creating religion and himself along with gawd as these giant
| boogieman. There is no devil, children.
| niodnyod wrote:
| Based.
| NotSuspicious wrote:
| Good writing, not wrong, also kinda makes me feel metal as
| hell for doing my taxes.
| tdba wrote:
| > the trick the world learned from the Nazis
|
| The world learned this trick from an American
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
| HPsquared wrote:
| Centuries of Genghis Khan style "submit or perish" probably has
| a certain "domesticating" effect on a population. The more
| rebellious ones don't last long in that environment.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The region my family is from was directly ruled by "submit or
| perish" types (it was historically common in the marginal
| regions of Inner Asia). Plenty of rebellions, peasant
| revolts, and clan feuds have happened over the centuries.
|
| Also, what you described is basically psudeoscience and veers
| very closely to eugenics (the study of how to arrange
| reproduction within a human population to increase the
| occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as
| desirable)
| myth_drannon wrote:
| He described Homo Soveticus.
| NotSuspicious wrote:
| Ignoring whether or not this specific situation is true,
| describing how different environments select for different
| traits is not pseudoscience; it's the foundation of
| evolution.
| ilkke wrote:
| Are you suggesting that we should disregard if this
| specific situation is true, but that it is possible that
| some populations are genetically evolved to be more
| servile?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Could be genes, or memes, or both (or neither).
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Actually, if you look at history, there were often extended
| periods of peace during stable empires. For example the Pax
| Romana during the high Roman Empire.
|
| During these periods of imperial peace, warfare is mostly
| confined to the frontier regions or where the empire abuts
| another empire.
|
| One could argue that we are in a similar time now. The USA
| basically has a de-facto empire over the Americas and Western
| Europe. The Middle East is a frontier zone. Ukraine abuts a
| former empire (Russian/Soviet) trying to regain its former
| glory. Taiwan abuts China which is trying to establish its own
| hegemony in its region.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > often extended periods of peace during stable empires
|
| Peace as in no major wars, sure. But plenty of hyper-local
| conflicts (think clan feuds, hyperlocal peasant revolts, etc)
| would happen all the time before the expansion of state power
| in the 20th century.
|
| Hell, when my great-grandfather was born, they were recent
| settlers in a region of Northern India that was completely
| depopulated of the indigenous population during the British
| conquest of the Sikh Empire.
|
| Where my great-grandfather's family was from was filled with
| multi-generational clan feuds, the occasional peasant revolt
| against the govt tax collector, and the occasional
| millenarian revolt.
|
| You wouldn't read about most of this stuff in your high
| school history textbook or on History Channel, but it would
| happen with consistency. I can guarantee with a fact that
| this same story existed in every single country before the
| 20th century and the rise of the railroad, canned food, and
| the telegraph.
|
| Before those 3 technologies arose, power projection was
| difficult, and "empires" were in reality a mixture of local
| fiefdoms (literally) who pledged feality to some guy in a
| capital far away.
|
| To use the classic Chinese and Russian quote - God and the
| Emperor are far, but I am here [0]
|
| [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_
| emper...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| On one hand, war and violence kill off the most violent people in
| society, providing a genetic benefit to those who don't fight. On
| the other hand, the winners produce a lot of babies.
|
| But the mass killings of early modern and modern Europe really
| didn't increase the fecundity of the winners. It mostly just
| killed off the violent.
|
| I've no idea about the genetics of this, might be bunk, but
| europe and Japan were both so warlike for so long, it is bizarre
| to see them so peaceful.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >On one hand, war and violence kill off the most violent people
| in society
|
| This sounds very counter-intuitive to me! Interesting if true.
| I get that two war parties going at each other would result in
| some violent people dying. But I am not sure bravery and
| violence are always locked together, and it would also seem
| that a relatively small group of very violent people could kill
| a very large group of non-violent people.
| vitorbaptistaa wrote:
| See: Spanish invasion of the Americas. Hundreds of Spanish
| soldiers with superior technology and bad intentions VS.
| thousands of native Americans.
| lazide wrote:
| You mean 10's of millions of natives?
| nradov wrote:
| The Spanish invaders relied as much on diplomacy as on
| violence. They formed alliances with local groups who were
| opposed to the Aztec and Inca empires.
| cracrecry wrote:
| You mean hundreds of Spanish soldiers with superior
| technology allied with tribes that were subjugated and
| enslaved by other Native American tribes?
|
| The Spaniards did not do it alone. This is a fact very easy
| to prove. It always shocks me to see people in North
| America complaining about Spaniards, when in North America
| there is less than 1% native Americans, the rest were
| exterminated, ethnic cleansed. In most hispanic countries,
| native and mixed people are over 70% of the population.
| imjonse wrote:
| violence and war has a lot more to with availability of
| resources and the economic situation than with genetics.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| It killed off the slightly less violent and the slightly less
| ruthless. Those who where more so survived (and less subject to
| pain), as did their DNA.
|
| As for countries and war-like...that doesn't seem to be limited
| by geography and/or DNA. The species generally prefers
| violence. World history teaches us that. Sure, there are
| exceptions but they are rare.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I think in most historic wars the civilian deaths far
| outweighed the soldier deaths, not fighting would not protect
| you from dying because of that war.
|
| E.g. if we're talking about the major conflicts causing
| depopulation - the 30 years war had half a million combat
| deaths but five million or more dead civilians; Mongol
| conquests lack good numbers for aggregate combat deaths, but
| they are clearly a small fraction of the 40-75 million of total
| depopulation, as the armies simply weren't even close to that
| large; conquest of Americas has most of indigenous population
| die outside of combat; WW2 has civilian deaths at twice the
| military deaths; WW1 is the exception of being roughly equal,
| but then we have events like Taiping rebellion which killed
| more than WW1 but again with civilians outweighing combatants,
| etc.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| Nah, violence breeds violence, not killing it. The trend to
| violence goes down because the majority has found a better way
| to deal with disagreement: corporation and compromise. At the
| same time, a better economy and less inequality has rendered
| violence less and less necessarily. When I look back at many
| societies, where until very recent decades violence was the
| norm on the street and now seemly disappeared altogether, I
| could find no better explanation than a better economy has
| encouraged the new life style.
| duped wrote:
| Why bring genetics into something with a very well established
| political and historical explanation?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It think in evolutionary terms we are still the product of our
| way of life as it was over hundreds of thousands, if not
| millions, of year.
|
| Smallish tight groups of hunter gatherers trying to survive in
| an hostile environment. As such, when group violence arose I
| suspect that there wasn't much of a "those who don't fight"
| kind of people.
|
| Change to this way of life is relatively recent (on a scale of
| thousands of years, not hundreds of thousands+). And the
| "modern world" is really something that is brand new and most
| likely has not changed us in evolutionary terms yet.
| cracrecry wrote:
| >might be bunk, but europe and Japan were both so warlike for
| so long, it is bizarre to see them so peaceful.
|
| This applies to all the world. Before Hispanic conquerors, in
| America the wars were extremely gore, with things like pyramids
| of heads(The conquerors wrote about them , but archaeological
| evidence had been found recently), skinning and scalping the of
| enemies, human sacrifices.
|
| The wars in North America were not less violent, with everyone
| carrying a rifle, people using them to hunt Indians from the
| train, and the eventual extermination of almost the entire
| native population.
|
| Africa? When has Africa been peaceful? I helped refugees in
| Europe from recent wars in places like Congo or Central African
| Republic where kids are given automatic guns and enforced to
| kill and rape their family members. That is happening today in
| Africa and nobody cares.
|
| Asia? Most of what you call violence in Europe actually came
| from Asia. The Huns, the Parthians, the Mongols, the Arabs, the
| Turks, all came from Asia, mostly from the central plains.
|
| China history is full of violence in order to unify the
| territory. They also suffered from invasions like the Mongols,
| the Manchus and the piracy of the Japanese.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| On a tribal scale "the violent" organise the violence. They
| don't take part in it.
|
| That's one reason why it's still happening.
|
| In contemporary war, tribal leaders have no direct, personal,
| immediate threats. They have meetings while other people do the
| dying for them.
|
| TBF this wasn't always true, and that didn't make war less
| likely. But it's true today, and there are certainly leaders
| who would be less casual about death if they were facing it
| personally.
| nologic01 wrote:
| There is something mysterious about homo sapiens' _organized_
| violence behavior: How much of it is genetically driven (nature)
| versus culturally determined (nurture)?
|
| Random individual violence does not seem to be innate except as
| an aberration. You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis of
| millions (an environment that was presumably never encoded /
| selected-for in our DNA) and not really worry that one of the
| thousands individuals you come across will simply go berserk for
| the fun (or benefit) of it. "Rage" of various forms happens, but
| typically under intense stress conditions.
|
| But give a _group_ of individuals the slightest pretense in the
| form of some arbitrary cultural narrative and they will engage in
| acts of incredible cruelty and dehumanization of random "other"
| groups. Competition for actual resources seems just a fig leaf.
| Clan dominance in some imagined anthroposphere is typically the
| real driver. Think e.g., two football fan clubs attacking each
| other in ritualistic or actual murder. Its supposed to be fun,
| there is nothing real at stake, yet somehow group violence is
| triggered.
|
| This behavior is so pervasive in history (and pre-history) that
| it is almost certainly based on genetic traits. But maybe what
| was once a "positive" feature is now a millstone around our neck.
| In a crowded planet with ever advancing technological
| capabilities large-scale violence based on arbitrary cultural
| concoctions is simply not a scenario we want to have in front of
| us. Feels like maybe the most critical aspect of our own species
| we need to understand and somehow "manage" - assuming its at all
| possible. Do we have a survival strategy?
| adolph wrote:
| > Do we have a survival strategy?
|
| If one frames organized violence as a means rather than an
| ends, then it is possible to see an answer other than the
| survival strategy of "be the best at organized violence."
| nologic01 wrote:
| I don't see this working in the long-term. It assumes that
| one can win "once-and-for-all", whereas the splintering in
| competing factions and the pursuit of group objectives with
| violent means seems a recurrent pattern. Historically even in
| absolute monarchies (where you would think power relations
| have been settled would be paralyzed by internal strife,
| infighting clans etc.)
|
| Now, all this would be just the normal human history (and as
| per the article, pre-history). What changes the dynamic is
| the advancement of science and technology. If we assume that
| it is accruing monotonically (which has been the case for
| several centuries), then if the same social dynamic or
| emergent organized violence continues, at as some point even
| a small group that drifts into a state of feeling aggrieved
| could prompt vast destruction.
| itsacomment wrote:
| >Historically even in absolute monarchies (where you would
| think power relations have been settled would be paralyzed
| by internal strife, infighting clans etc.)
|
| This isn't surprising at all given that "absolute monarchy"
| was more of a marketing term than a description of reality.
|
| England, which rather decisively cut off their monarchs'
| pretensions at absolute power, was far more centralized
| than whatever the fuck the different parlements (sp?) of
| France or the Spanish cortez were doing during the
| absolutist age.
| lazide wrote:
| Until the next person who doesn't see it that way starts
| slaughtering people, and you have no defense?
|
| Or are you proposing a genetic breeding/selection program to
| weed out such tendencies? A "final solution" to violence,
| perhaps?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's closely related to narcissism and sociopathy.
|
| Murdering Cluster B people might be a little extreme, and
| most non-Cluster B people will feel uncomfortable with that
| idea.
|
| But most violence is demonstrably driven by certain
| personality types who lead the violence and normalise it.
|
| Excluding those types from leadership positions of all
| kinds as soon as they show evidence of toxicity is unlikely
| to make things worse.
|
| The alternative is on a scale from small cults to
| megadeaths. (Perhaps gigadeaths on a bad day.)
|
| And we already exclude most of the population from
| leadership and power anyway, using other reasons as an
| excuse.
| lazide wrote:
| Sounds like something a cluster B personality would dream
| up?
|
| I'm guessing whatever criteria that was decided for
| filtering would conveniently exclude the one making it?
|
| It also seems likely to be problematic human survival
| wise, as it's not like those traits evolved in a vacuum.
| sorokod wrote:
| _You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis of millions_
|
| Megapolis implies society, structure and rules. Also machinery
| to enforce these rules.
|
| Not an example demonstrating that violent individuals are an
| aberration.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The same forces that make organized violence probably also
| drive out individual violence. The group monopolizes
| violence.
| sorokod wrote:
| I would say that group violence is channeling the violence
| of individuals to achieve some goal a group might have.
|
| Chimp Empire is worth watching in this context.
| ptsneves wrote:
| The most basic definition of state is that it is some
| institution with the monopoly of violence. Think of it, who
| in all myriad society organisations and hierarchies has the
| legitimacy to use force? The state. Even murder is allowed
| and trained for, if you are part of the state organisation,
| normally called armed forces. Many anarchists in the XIX
| century despised the idea of state because accepting it
| means accepting organised violence and importantly a
| monopoly on it.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There is a book about this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)
| nologic01 wrote:
| I agree its not a sharp example, there are lots of
| interacting effects and factors. But to me at least the
| statistics seem rather overwhelming. Social structure and
| rules and enforcement seem more tailored to mop up
| aberrations rather than constrain "normal" behavior. There is
| probably social studies of toddlers etc that analyze this
| question when conforming behaviors are less developed. I
| don't recall reading something that proves it is only learned
| cultural norms that "pacify" us.
| sorokod wrote:
| In different places and times there were different
| thresholds on the level of violence acceptable to society.
|
| We should be careful to not project our current norms on
| the entire history of humanity.
|
| A quote from A Distant Mirror The Calamitous 14th Century
| by Barbara Tuchman:
|
| _In village games, players with hands tied behind them
| competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to
| death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open
| or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal's claws.
| Trumpets enhanced the excitement. Or a pig enclosed in a
| wide pen was chased by men with clubs to the laughter of
| spectators as he ran squealing from the blows until beaten
| lifeless_
|
| and another one:
|
| _The citizens of Mons bought a condemned criminal from a
| neighboring town so that they should have the pleasure of
| seeing him quartered._
| itsacomment wrote:
| Both cases are arguably examples not of individual
| violence but organized group violence.
| sorokod wrote:
| Go for it, argue...
| vivekd wrote:
| That's my interpretation as well. I was in a slum in Africa
| once and fell victim to that kind of random violence. I think
| it happens everywhere in the form of crime.
|
| Obviously no one likes crime so societies try and clamp down
| in that
| jwilber wrote:
| What? Even in that needlessly pedantic interpretation, their
| point still stands.
| thesumofall wrote:
| Why We Fight by Mike Martin is a great recent book about this.
| It argues that our tendency to war is indeed an effect of
| evolution but that the historic trend to us forming larger and
| larger groups has significantly reduced violence
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Violence between groups exist in other animals as well.
|
| My take is that this is a natural consequence of competition
| for resources. The more individuals or groups are organised,
| the more violence becomes organised as a logical consequence.
|
| We have evolved as social animals members of tight groups and
| this seems to be quite old looking at chimpanzees and gorillas,
| for example. So this 'tribal' streak is probably embedded in us
| to this day.
| antonkar wrote:
| It's evolutionary to see danger in strangers because
| historically it was better to overestimate danger then
| underestimate it for your survival. You can only react once if
| someone hits you with a stone from their back. So people and
| groups overestimate danger that they will be hurt/diminished in
| some way and then attack when they see the slightest sign of a
| threat. It can be used to manipulate crowds, just say their
| children are in danger because of the out-group. Can really
| recommend the book on the exact mechanics of anger by the most
| influential psychologist of our times
| https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Hate-Cognitive-Hostility-Vi...
| usefulcat wrote:
| > Competition for actual resources seems just a fig leaf.
|
| More often than not, and very broadly speaking, the fight is
| over mindshare: tribal beliefs and allegiances. Differences of
| religion, politics, nationality or ethnicity are nearly always
| perceived to be far greater than they actually are.
| specialist wrote:
| I keep thinking back on a space opera conflict involving many
| domains of species. There are mammalian, avian, reptile, etc.
| They've formed coalitions in an effort to catch some highly
| valuable fugitive humans. (IIRC from Brin's Uplift Wars
| universe. Star Tide Rising?)
|
| The machine's weapons of choice are algorithms, code,
| simulations, viruses. No physical violence. But still very
| high stakes, like mind wipes.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| I don't see a disconnect between those two states.
|
| As individuals we want acceptance, respect and love. It's
| abnormal for someone to randomly, attack others when they are
| alone and already vulnerable feeling. Normal people crave
| community and do not attempt acts that result in their ridicule
| and/or rejection. Only outliers like psychopaths continuously
| break societal norms.
|
| As groups we form bonds and have our place/role. Protecting
| what we have and those we love seems natural as does protecting
| the society, world view, or leader(s) our group supports.
|
| Therefore, I would expect individual violence to be much less
| than group violence in intensity, duration and occurrence.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Random individual violence does not seem to be innate except
| as an aberration. You can walk in any tightly-packed megapolis
| of millions (an environment that was presumably never encoded /
| selected-for in our DNA) and not really worry that one of the
| thousands individuals you come across will simply go berserk
| for the fun (or benefit) of it. "Rage" of various forms
| happens, but typically under intense stress conditions._
|
| to me this analysis is not starting off in the right direction.
| We're talking about Neolithic people here so it's appropriate
| to use more straight up evolutionary law of the jungle
| thinking. Sudden violence is in us from the get go. Look at so
| many other mammals, they use violence with each other to sort
| things out at the drop of a hat. Look at how we portray
| cowboys, and indians (or fasts, and furiouses?). I'm not even
| saying that the picture is accurate to history, I'm saying the
| picture is accurate to how we think, viscerally, and such films
| excite us, not because of memories because we were there, we
| weren't. Just because it's how we think.
|
| So I'd start out the analysis with, we are violent animals at
| the base of our brain, or is it at the base of our evolution,
| but animals don't kill each other that often. On top of that we
| are extremely social animals, you can walk down the street
| surrounded by strangers and not hit them. But also on top of
| that we are thinking, calculating, theory of mind imagining:
| this person has been irking me for awhile now, if I secretly
| kill them, my problems will be solved.
|
| I'm not saying it's anywhere near that simple or that that's
| accurate, but we need to think that way. We've seen some papers
| recently here that said it's not appropriate to think we have 3
| brains in 3 layers, wrestling with each other, because they're
| more intertwingled than that. So this kind of noodling only
| takes us so far, but I have the sense that it's the right kind
| of thinking.
|
| I don't think our violence is aberrant at all, but we did
| "invent" being extremely social, and then etiquette, and then
| even the term aberrance to talk about some behaviors which are
| unusual within that framework. Rabies might be aberrant
| behavior in dogs, and anxiety conditions, but otherwise they're
| pretty basic. And anxiety is so prevalent we have to assume
| it's adaptive anyway.
|
| Starting with Freud, an aspect of psychology that is not as
| widely understood as it should be is the notion of unconscious
| thought, and unconscious motivation. (The term _subconscious_
| is associated with a more woo-woo theory of Jung 's, that we
| share subconsious awareness with other people, is why
| _unconscious_ is the usual term.) It 's very difficult for
| people to grasp that they don't actually know what they are
| thinking, but it does leak out.
|
| If you are talking to somebody and say "I'm not saying that
| you're X, I'm saying that you are Y", you are definitely
| thinking that they are X, or at least a substantial part of you
| is. That's where you got the idea to deny it from. It can be
| broken down plainly in computer programmer terms. While the
| brain isn't "just like a computer", in order for you to compare
| X and Y you have to use the subroutine or the struct or the
| class for X and the other one for Y, they are separated at some
| place in your mind. You can't say X without the X part of the
| brain lighting up. What makes you say "I'm not calling you X"
| is another part of your brain lighting up to say "this is an
| unpleasant thought, better not be accused of saying it, that
| will be socially awkward".
|
| "Children blurt out the truth, children say what we are all
| thinking." We have additional brain processes that children
| have not developed yet, but we didn't lose the thoughts they
| have, that's why we understand them. It's all that shame and
| judgement we fear from other people and apply to ourselves that
| starts to tear our coherent ideal self (that we think we are)
| apart.
|
| So, imho we don't get anywhere by imagining we are a "good
| people" walking around who sometimes aberr; we are complicated
| collections of competing selfish ideas, some of which are
| nasty.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Anyone interested in our violent past, and how we got to our
| less-violent present, would be interested in The Better Angels of
| Our Nature by Steven Pinker. He goes into great detail about how
| ridiculously violent the past was, and how much less violent we
| have become over time. Tl;dr: the concentration of permission to
| commit violence into the hands of the state has been a huge
| factor. As the numbers in the article here show, it is a rare
| state that can keep up with the level of violence that occurs
| naturally when individuals are having at it.
| lacrosse_tannin wrote:
| Neolithic is ~10,000 years ago, when agriculture, sedentary life,
| cities, started; not sure how you all trying to attribute
| organized violent behavior to genetics.
| mrangle wrote:
| Most people don't have a concept of the timeline of
| civilization. Which leads to a warped sense of human history
| across other topics. Like probable human organization in Spain
| in roughly the same era in which people in Egypt were planning
| the Pyramids. At the same time, commenting is fun.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Are these dates consistent with the migration of the Indo-
| European people into this area?
| huytersd wrote:
| According to David Reich, isn't this when the Yamnaya rolled
| through Europe, killed 99% (really) of the men and took all the
| women?
| axpy906 wrote:
| 10k years ago about the same time as when more advanced
| civilizations could've possibly existed. Wonder if these are the
| inhabitants getting attacked by them.
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