Tools used by other animals are not enough. Language (I mean - of course - the human language) is the most important tool. But there are many preconditions necessary for the use of the human language, and one of them is the human brain, thus the human intelligence.
My point was more that if what seems bad now can be good later and the survival/propagation of the species is generally the measure of adaption, then we need to be agnostic about such evaluations. Especially given the context: here we are describing a species that has more individuals than it ever did before. Now I understand how that can, in the end, be detrimental TO MOST OF THE INDIVIDUALS, but to the overall species, I see little threat, especially given that HHH thinks he is going to thrive post-collapse.
If he is going to thrive - and for him this means not a lone invidual but with procreative options - then homo sapians will surivive. Many animal populations go through cycles with huge population dips.
This is why I am asking him about values. If he means maladaptions that are determined by looking at the vitality of most individuals or some other criterion, well OK I can see where he, HHH, might consider some things maladaptions.
But without this added information about his values, I don’t think it makes sense for him to use the term maladaption, since he expect to survive and presumably procreate post collapse, that a neolithic type lifestyle is better for humans and is coming.
So I don’t see any POSSIBLE maladaption at the species level for him in relation to his values.
If he means in pure evolutionary terms, well we are, so far doing rather well.
I will respond to this thread in due time but I must interject here on one thing.
Moreno, you think the world and human civilization is doing quite well? That’s quite a leap and stretch.
The word ‘well’ implies values or you have some objective measure in mind. I am trying to get at that objective measure or the value.
As you know, I dislike modern society in the extreme. I think it suckes the creativity, vitality out of us.
But you are talking in evolutionary terms. Suddenly we are looking at humans through Darwin and natural selection and propogation. In those measures humans are doing fine. They may be heading towards some very large scale population dip, but unless there is a full nuclear exchange, there will be many homo sapian survivors. So in Darwin terms, things are going along fine.
What is your measure/value for maladaption and how is it Darwinian?
Maybe Hahaha is as skeptical towards Darwinism as I am. One does not have to be fully against Darwinism, if one is skeptical towards it.
Sure. I am exploring. I think his overall set of positions fits uneasily with what is implicit in this thread. So I am probing. I am not sure what will come of that probing. I would classify myself as skeptical in part towards Darwinism.
In general, I get a feeling something is off - when I seem or am critical - and then probe. I often have not fully decided anything. I do keep the pressure up so it can seem like I know, for example, HHH is contradicting himself here. I don’t but I keep the pressure up to see what is there. It helps me understand what my intuitive reaction is about and also what I think about the issues. I also get to see what is going on in the other person.
Most modern people are a mish mash of paradigms and don’t really notice this.
I notice it in myself and do not try to suppress it, nor do I accept it. But I explore it.
And passing information/beliefs while preserving.
Micro to macro, the cell passes it as do we.
I have an unorthodox perception on Darwinism different than most others. I am skeptic of some of the beliefs it entails but overall believe in it.
Nothing wrong with being skeptical about things that people indeed should be skeptical about. I am the same with evolution. But we can see it happening everyday on a smaller or perhaps even larger scale than how he portrays it, over millions of years.
Huge questions and huge answers deserve the most skepticism and need a certain amount or level of evidence to be considered true, at least for me anyways.
Information is serving self-preservation. Without self-preservation or, more exactly, without any interest in self-preservation information would be useless.
Yep.
Humans are capable of destroying their environment on purpose, thus willfully, consciously, but other living beings are not capable of doing that in the same way.
The “stage” of evolution consists of the evolutionary “actors” (here: living beings) and the evolutionary “scenery” (environment). My thesis is that the “actor” homo sapiens has been destroying his “scenery” for meanwhile about 10000 years. Since then (the “Neolithic Revolution”) the humans have been affording the luxury of the partial dissociation of environment, and that means partial independence of adaptation because of culture (thus: intelligence; biologically said: brain).
By the word “dissociation” I mean the “avoidance of adaptation”.
Which is related to avoidance of relation, in any full sense. In inter-human relationships you can have control as the main interaction/goal or something more complicated where one does not want to (at the very least simply) control the other person. So it is with relations to non-humans. There is an underlying thanatos-like pattern/urge where control is seen at the highest relation. Once you have this as the highest relation what you relate to cannot be itself in its full range, since it is not free, cannot have the slightest element of mystery about it, nor have its own goals. I do think this is connected to certain epistemologies more than others. Once you see something in terms of causes and effects and think that the only understanding of it is via sussing out and controlling causes and effects - scientific epistemology - then you have a foundation for control based relations. Science IS NOT NEUTRAL. This does not mean it is bad or I want to throw it out. But I think we need to skirt the lie that methodologies and epistemologies are neutral. Once they are ranked as the highest or only one (as a route to knowledge, for example) whatever relations are inherent in the epistemology and attendant methodologies will create relations and ethics.
This is a part of my negative reaction to the whole civilization is female or suits females. Men have had a guiding force in the creation of the epistemologies and methodologies at root in civilization and have a tendency to want linear, controlled relations (interspersed with chaotic catharsisj on their own terms).
Do you mean that that is a part of your “negative reaction to the whole” that says “civilization is female or suits females”?
I don’t see how that follows, as long as information continues through the masses, then self preservation is only an integer of that. Society is the continuation of information utility and transcends the importance of a given individual. Throughout history we see the pursuits of individuals surpassed by the needs of humanity, and no individual has ever conquered the world ~ even with the most powerful armies of their time [which is still a mass movement] e.g. Genghis Khan.
What happens when powerful leaders die and their self preservation ends? Everything continues! Much as if they didn’t matter ~ because they only matter in the moment, hence only what they represent matters… Humans warm to such individuals because they think the gods are at work, and that a ‘great’ individual somehow makes them better by association. This is why you instead get ‘the forces of history’ and political movements which surpass all individuals who stand in their path.
We were talking about evolution and that evolution is all about self-preservation.
See: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=190214&p=2602110#p2601953 .
Some people (here, for example) say that civilization suits women better than men, and, essentially that men thrive in something more primitive and civilization does not suit their needs and desires. I say, BS. I see civilization as organized more by males and to suit the male desires for linear interactions, distanced relations, and control. It’s like for a couple of thousand years women are seen as being like nature, dumb beasts, out of control, ruled by tempestuous emotions, while men are rational, homo sapiens, outside of and better than nature. Now women also bear the burden for being the cause and beneficiaries of civilization, while the men are suffering it. And yet underneath this new attack on women, the same old seeing women as nature, barbaric, irrational forces, still guides the way men interact with women. Damned as if you do and don’t always at the same time.
From within civilization, now, men see themselves successful, like the sheriff in the Walking Dead, living out their passionate manly lives in the wilderness. When in fact most of them would just start setting up civilization again, rebuilding machines like at the end of Vonnegut’s Player Piano, and cannot really deal with non-linear situations, complicated relations, intimacy, conflict that is generating rather than simply destructive and controlling. They still skip step after step to get to violence because they cannot feel their full natures. They still think being partial is natural.
It is controled by males, only by males. The relatively few males of this higher “class” (later becoming an own species?) organize, thus control their lives according to an old patriarchal system.
But note: Not all men but only a few men are meant here. And this few men are enough to control the world. That is the problem we have.
Yes. I am not saying, women good, men bad. I am not saying, even, that linear and control are bad. Things have been out of balance, the lack of balance is the problem. But in the context of civ is female and bad, I am going to then focus on who the prime creators of that imbalance are and stress that they did this from their own desires - which, I think were skewed by a great deal of fear denial. It seemed good to deny fear, so they did. But women are not remotely blameless and some men have struggled against this imballance in all eras and so on. I just find the double blame absurd and it often comes from the same men.
And yes, the elites are where the core imbalance lies.
A massive self directed die off would be maladaptive.