Based on Bryan’s recommendation, I’ve been reading the excellent Promises I Can Keep (quotes below), an ethnography of mating patterns among poor folks in Philadelphia. I greatly respect ethnographies, and intend to read more of them (suggestions welcome).
And which cause utility? My theory is that people lapse into forager values when circumstances allow because the forager lifestyle is enjoyable, because humans adapted to it over a long period.
Farmer values, by contrast have to be learnt by rigorous discipline, and the lifestyle does not feel like fun -- conservatives seem oddly miserable to liberals.
So happiness peaks where there is enough wealth to allow widespread foraging, not at maximum wealth.
My hypothesis has always been that this was a resource/risk dynamic associated with class: that the very lowest and very highest classes have always exhibited the "forager" behavior most because, at the one end, the rich can afford the risk, having more status to spend on and power to fix unsuccessful wagers, and at the other, the poor have less to lose and more to gain by taking chances. According to this view, the middle classes are the "farmers" exhibiting the most stability (which is plausible given their aspirations toward an ideal of high stable social status), and the reason we might be seeing a change now is that the middle class (in the U.S.) is currently disappearing from both ends, and so the farmers are losing numbers to foragers above and below.
Let the infants die. They're inferior anyways. Societies who buy the slave morality they are sold by the parasites will always be burdened by life unworthy of life, until their vitality and virility are sucked away. The strong must rely on themselves and their fatherland - the unity of blood and soil - to rise above the immorality being sold to them in the name of progress.
To me, 2 is the only one that doesn't quite fit the spectrum; I think it's an artifact peculiar to monogamous feudal cultures. I think the more general case is:
2. We act as if we expect to have control over our partner's selection of other partners.
Jeremy Bentham was educated in the history of the ancients, and he didn't even seem to be able to conceive of such a thing in his "Offenses". He wrote that the birth-rate would not be affected by tolerance of the practice because once boys aged up only women would want them.
As is evident in the pattern where reactionary capitalists produce liberal (and financially feckless) offspring. (See, for example, the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair.)
And which cause utility? My theory is that people lapse into forager values when circumstances allow because the forager lifestyle is enjoyable, because humans adapted to it over a long period.
Farmer values, by contrast have to be learnt by rigorous discipline, and the lifestyle does not feel like fun -- conservatives seem oddly miserable to liberals.
So happiness peaks where there is enough wealth to allow widespread foraging, not at maximum wealth.
An alternative to the resource/risk theory is a signaling/countersignaling explanation.
My hypothesis has always been that this was a resource/risk dynamic associated with class: that the very lowest and very highest classes have always exhibited the "forager" behavior most because, at the one end, the rich can afford the risk, having more status to spend on and power to fix unsuccessful wagers, and at the other, the poor have less to lose and more to gain by taking chances. According to this view, the middle classes are the "farmers" exhibiting the most stability (which is plausible given their aspirations toward an ideal of high stable social status), and the reason we might be seeing a change now is that the middle class (in the U.S.) is currently disappearing from both ends, and so the farmers are losing numbers to foragers above and below.
Of course you'd say that: maybe you can get one of them to marry you.
Scary enough.
Let the infants die. They're inferior anyways. Societies who buy the slave morality they are sold by the parasites will always be burdened by life unworthy of life, until their vitality and virility are sucked away. The strong must rely on themselves and their fatherland - the unity of blood and soil - to rise above the immorality being sold to them in the name of progress.
How'd I do?
And the answer is?
To me, 2 is the only one that doesn't quite fit the spectrum; I think it's an artifact peculiar to monogamous feudal cultures. I think the more general case is:
2. We act as if we expect to have control over our partner's selection of other partners.
White-knight manginas like you encourage their bad behavior, leading to dystopia.
Even if that leaves them unable to feed their infants?
Unwed mothers should be fined and shamed, not given ANY money.
"Forced" leisure???
Really? "Forced"? Think about that in today's America. Almost impossible.
Jeremy Bentham was educated in the history of the ancients, and he didn't even seem to be able to conceive of such a thing in his "Offenses". He wrote that the birth-rate would not be affected by tolerance of the practice because once boys aged up only women would want them.
Couldn't we view gay marriage as a modern formalization of what already existed in Rome?
As is evident in the pattern where reactionary capitalists produce liberal (and financially feckless) offspring. (See, for example, the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair.)
I would also like to hear recommendations for good ethnographies.