Supreme Court of the United States

[onejayhawk]

Perhaps the reason you can't teach is because you don't possess the faculties to analyze things. I know far, far more than you do about most things, so you are right in that sense. I'm quite sure you have nothing to teach me.

If you didn't descend into obfuscation every time you were challenged, perhaps people would take you seriously.

You should offer lessons in humility. It seems to be your best subject.

J

 

[Lexicus]

Chimpanzees wage war on each other.

We're as closely related to Bonobos, which don't engage in war.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...s-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/

The most ancient clear-cut evidence of deadly group violence is a mass grave, estimated to be 13,000 years old, found in the Jebel Sahaba region of the Sudan, near the Nile River. Of the 59 skeletons in the grave, 24 bear marks of violence, such as hack marks and embedded stone points.

Even this site is an outlier. The vast majority of archaeological evidence for warfare—which consists of skeletons marked by violence, art depicting battles, defensive fortifications, and weapons clearly designed for war rather than hunting—is less than 10,000 years old.

Deep Rooters try to dismiss these facts by resorting to the old argument that absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. They allege, in other words, that there is not significant evidence of any human activity prior to 10,000 years ago.

To rebut this charge, Haas and Piscitelli recently carried out an exhaustive survey of human remains more than 10,000 years old described in the scientific literature. They counted more than 2,900 skeletons from over 400 different sites. Not counting the Jebel Sahaba skeletons, Haas and Piscitelli found four separate skeletons bearing signs of violence, consistent with homicide, not warfare.

This "dearth of evidence," Haas continued, "is in contrast with later periods when warfare clearly appears in this historical record of specific societies and is marked by skeletal markers of violence, weapons of war, defensive sites and architecture, etc."

 

[Farm Boy]

Warfare is technological and sociological innovation applied to homicide. You have to free up calories before specialization away from hunting tools and implements even becomes a possible let along pertinent development. I'd guess for most of our history, noncooperation simply involved not sharing food and mate selection.

 

[Lexicus]

It's my position, which I believe is best substantiated by the evidence, that war is a meme like cooking or clothing - though arguably more viral than either, because of the fact that when one group in an area starts warring, the others must follow suit or be destroyed.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm not limiting noncooperation to "warfare."

 

[Lexicus]

I wasn't disagreeing with you.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You should offer lessons in humility. It seems to be your best subject.

J

Wahhhhh! I got caught in the same false narrative I've been caught in before, and just because I won't acknowledge it you keep picking on me! You are so arrogant!

Again, the perfect example of why I no longer bother trying to reason with the right wing dingbats of life. It just makes no difference.

 

[Farm Boy]

I wasn't disagreeing with you.

Fair enough!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It's my position, which I believe is best substantiated by the evidence, that war is a meme like cooking or clothing - though arguably more viral than either, because of the fact that when one group in an area starts warring, the others must follow suit or be destroyed.

Yeah, subjugation works like that...whether it is "war" or just rustling and pillaging. But the point remains that it is what humans do.

 

[Lexicus]

Wahhhhh! I got caught in the same false narrative I've been caught in before, and just because I won't acknowledge it you keep picking on me! You are so arrogant!

Indeed, it is pretty amazing to see someone saying "I despair of teaching you" one minute and then preaching humility the next without any trace of irony.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah, subjugation works like that...whether it is "war" or just rustling and pillaging. But the point remains that it is what humans do.

Sure, it is one of many things humans do.

I will cite a David Graeber quote that really sums up my attitude towards most of these debates:

"We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.”

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sure, it is one of many things humans do.

I will cite a David Graeber quote that really sums up my attitude towards most of these debates:

"We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.”

Yeah, I don't see much choice about the foundation. The real question is what we take as the civilized veneer, and how committed to it we are.

 

[onejayhawk]

Warfare is technological and sociological innovation applied to homicide. You have to free up calories before specialization away from hunting tools and implements even becomes a possible let along pertinent development. I'd guess for most of our history, noncooperation simply involved not sharing food and mate selection.

War is the destruction of opposition by available means. Homicide is not necessary. Destruction of tools is often more effective.

J

 

[Farm Boy]

If I burn your year's worth of grains then quibbling that I killed you in the cold 2 months from now instead of with a rock now seems a bit... immaterial to the point debated, being cooperation/competition and the great ape.

Most examples I'm coming up with are also kind of besides the point. Something greater in here re "subjugation" not being either 100% adversarial or cooperative?

 

[Gori the Grey]

I like Lexicus' quote that it's hard to probe to some most fundamental propensity; they're all in there.

To the cooperation/contention puzzler, I'd add Hesiod's observation that there are actually two kinds of contention (his word is usually rendered in English as strife): violence and competition, and that that the second is a kind of strife that is good for humans (i.e. advances us as a species).

 

[Farm Boy]

So back to the nebulous sense I get that men and women of faith generally have more compatible values than the godless acolytes of accumulation?

 

[Lexicus]

the godless acolytes of accumulation?

Anyone who voted for Donald Trump falls into this bin by definition, right?

 

[Farm Boy]

He seems to be in that camp himself. Do I need to be a Jew to have voted for a Jew?

 

[Lexicus]

He seems to be in that camp himself. Do I need to be a Jew to have voted for a Jew?

Nope, but you do need to be a godless worshiper of Mammon to have voted for Donald Trump.

 

[Farm Boy]

k.

But that would reinforce Tim's and my point about why and who is so desperate that the nascent alliance be busy practicing murderfare on each other.