Seven years ago, after a year of reading up on forager lives, I first started to explore a forager vs. farmer axis: A lot of today’s political disputes come down to a conflict between farmer and forager ways, with forager ways slowly and steadily winning out since the industrial revolution. It seems we acted like farmers when farming required that, but when richer we feel we can afford to revert to more natural-feeling forager ways. The main exceptions, like school and workplace domination and ranking, are required to generate industry-level wealth. (
Not sure if you're using the foragers/farmers distinction seriously or just as labels. If the former - just where exactly in modern life is anything much decided by informal chat forming a consensus? If the latter, well left/right are not personal inclinations or psychological traits, but positions in a social matrix. See, eg, the very different ways these map in the US as compared to pretty much any other western country, or the recent research that showed even infrequent exposure to Fox News shifted political views rightward.
Very interesting. I think--like you said--the key is that while people have a range of personality that affects how they act politically, the average group political personality sways with conditions.
I also think that you have to somehow accommodate the different behaviors of men and women, and the different behaviors of dominance motivated/enable men and non-dominant men. A huge amount of what we call history is the result of the actions of a continual supply of a very few--probably psychopathic--men. At a certain point it seems like the shackles of forager community broke allowing the male monsters to wreak the havoc we are so used to over the past few thousand years. My question is, is this concept correct, or did male psychopaths rule hunter/gatherer communities too?
"In the late 1990s, North Korea suffered a major famine that, according to the most recent research, led to between 500,000 and 600,000 deaths. ... This year, North Korea enjoyed an exceptionally good harvest, which for the first time in more than two decades will be sufficient to feed the country's entire population." (emphasis added)
The author, "Andrei Lankov is professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is the author of "The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia".
[And there is chronic hunger in the South among the homeless old people.]
Yeah, and the people went from barely making it to starving. While under the Military First policy the people with guns had their bellies full. The Kim dynasty can't afford to lose their support.
I have lived in Seoul and I can assure you that there are far fewer homeless people than in a typical large American city.
Excuse me if I don't except your assurance when it contradicts what has been widely reported in the press. The one-half figure came from an article in the Times. Here's an example more or less at random from CNN:
"On a Saturday morning in South Korea's capital, Seoul, a line forms near a city underpass. It's filled with homeless elderly people, who wait for Pastor Choi Seong-Won to set up his weekly mobile soup kitchen."
From the Australian press:
"In a fast-paced nation famous for its high achievers and its big spending on private tutors and luxury goods, half of South Korea's elderly are poor, the highest rate in the industrialised world."
This is in part a fairly recent development due to weakness in the S. Korean economy. Perhaps (giving your honesty the benefit of the doubt) you lived in Seoul before this catastrophe beset the elderly of South Korea.
As to starvation in the North, it is just buffoonish to claim to know what the experts admit ignorance or at least uncertainty.
[I suppose you and Robin also believe that Kim killed a relative with an antiaircraft missile.]
[Added.] As to the wiki information, there's a boldened warning you must have "missed": "these statistics are non-comparable and wildly inaccurate."
Probably those strategies are common to whichever group has the most power, whether on the right or the left.
The left has won the culture war, so now they are consolidating their victory by punishing dissenting views. The right cannot culturally punish people in manhattan, so now they are all for diversity of opinion.
You're familiar with Paul Rubin's model of internal vs external domination, yes? Left focusing on internal threats (emphasize equality, coalition with have-nots, diverse opinions as source of new have-nots), right focusing on external threats (emphasize fitness, integrate have-nots, seek internal consensus).
Whether his or your model, some of these outcomes are also random events. US academia, for example, was not always so left-dominated; presumably our nature isn't what changed. Also, anecdotally, Taiwanese academia is not more left-wing than business.
Not sure if you're using the foragers/farmers distinction seriously or just as labels. If the former - just where exactly in modern life is anything much decided by informal chat forming a consensus? If the latter, well left/right are not personal inclinations or psychological traits, but positions in a social matrix. See, eg, the very different ways these map in the US as compared to pretty much any other western country, or the recent research that showed even infrequent exposure to Fox News shifted political views rightward.
Very interesting. I think--like you said--the key is that while people have a range of personality that affects how they act politically, the average group political personality sways with conditions.
I also think that you have to somehow accommodate the different behaviors of men and women, and the different behaviors of dominance motivated/enable men and non-dominant men. A huge amount of what we call history is the result of the actions of a continual supply of a very few--probably psychopathic--men. At a certain point it seems like the shackles of forager community broke allowing the male monsters to wreak the havoc we are so used to over the past few thousand years. My question is, is this concept correct, or did male psychopaths rule hunter/gatherer communities too?
I haven't located the article which said half are homeless, often living in cardboard boxes.
Their dependence on external sources for food doesn't imply they were starving. Moreover, the date of the article is 2014 (re "first time").
"From the Australian press" says that half the elderly are poor, not that half the elderly are homeless.
from the article:
"In the late 1990s, North Korea suffered a major famine that, according to the most recent research, led to between 500,000 and 600,000 deaths. ... This year, North Korea enjoyed an exceptionally good harvest, which for the first time in more than two decades will be sufficient to feed the country's entire population." (emphasis added)
By the best accounts, they're not starving:
http://www.aljazeera.com/in...
The author, "Andrei Lankov is professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is the author of "The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia".
[And there is chronic hunger in the South among the homeless old people.]
Yeah, and the people went from barely making it to starving. While under the Military First policy the people with guns had their bellies full. The Kim dynasty can't afford to lose their support.
Well, the Soviet Union collapsed, and it was the North's main ally an trading partner.
I have lived in Seoul and I can assure you that there are far fewer homeless people than in a typical large American city.
Excuse me if I don't except your assurance when it contradicts what has been widely reported in the press. The one-half figure came from an article in the Times. Here's an example more or less at random from CNN:
"On a Saturday morning in South Korea's capital, Seoul, a line forms near a city underpass. It's filled with homeless elderly people, who wait for Pastor Choi Seong-Won to set up his weekly mobile soup kitchen."
From the Australian press:
"In a fast-paced nation famous for its high achievers and its big spending on private tutors and luxury goods, half of South Korea's elderly are poor, the highest rate in the industrialised world."
This is in part a fairly recent development due to weakness in the S. Korean economy. Perhaps (giving your honesty the benefit of the doubt) you lived in Seoul before this catastrophe beset the elderly of South Korea.
As to starvation in the North, it is just buffoonish to claim to know what the experts admit ignorance or at least uncertainty.
[I suppose you and Robin also believe that Kim killed a relative with an antiaircraft missile.]
[Added.] As to the wiki information, there's a boldened warning you must have "missed": "these statistics are non-comparable and wildly inaccurate."
The North did rather well? Then they must have mightily fallen. Or I suppose this picture is some anti-Juche fake:
https://upload.wikimedia.or...
Probably those strategies are common to whichever group has the most power, whether on the right or the left.
The left has won the culture war, so now they are consolidating their victory by punishing dissenting views. The right cannot culturally punish people in manhattan, so now they are all for diversity of opinion.
I don't recall Rubin's model, but it seems quite consistent with the story I give above.
You're familiar with Paul Rubin's model of internal vs external domination, yes? Left focusing on internal threats (emphasize equality, coalition with have-nots, diverse opinions as source of new have-nots), right focusing on external threats (emphasize fitness, integrate have-nots, seek internal consensus).
Whether his or your model, some of these outcomes are also random events. US academia, for example, was not always so left-dominated; presumably our nature isn't what changed. Also, anecdotally, Taiwanese academia is not more left-wing than business.
I know of and agree with all you say - why do you think it conflicts with what I've said?
The farming social scene has a different average from the forager one, more in the scared and so conservative direction.