Well by evolutionary changes I am thinking of things that would require changes in our genetic make-up, so maybe we are talking at cross purposes. I'm hopeful that social change can happen on a rather shorter timescale than evolutionary change, otherwise we are all seriously fucked.
The age of Endarkenment...?!?
- Thread starter gorski
- Start date
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
kyser_soze said:
The method is inextricable from the mindset. Having a primitivist-volkisch mindset *in the context of a western 'civilized' late-capitalist modernity * is very different from having such a mindset in the pre-modern epoch.
Are you honestly trying to claim that butchering your way through central Asia with barbaric violence, requires the same mindset as to go through modern feats of civil engineering to 'process' millions of Jews into the gas chambers?
stdPikachu
Plughole in bathtub curve
Grego Morales said:
Nonsense, endarkment is a perfectly cromulent word.
I can kinda agree with some of the article - I feel his comments on the "commercialisation" of science/knowledge are quite apt (and the conspiraloon inside me says that anti-intellectualism I see in some elements of the mainstream press and politics stems from the fact that uninformed/ignorant people are easier to control).
I think the authors fears over people still beleiving in things like creationism or <insert trendy mumbo jumbo pseudoscience/religion here> is a little ill founded though; it's only when these people start becoming involved in far-reaching scientific decisions that I begin to get concerned. Idiots like Bush trumpeting the creationist party line certainly don't help, but even in places like Kansas common sense has managed to prevail.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
kyser_soze said:
well, I concede the rare instance of gay/lesbian sponsored surrogacy. But it appears that the urge to reproduce through contrived or 'natural' biological means is a minorty desire. The vast majority are content to enjoy homosexual acts for themselves without any biological purpose in terms of genetic reproduction.
Actually, I would argue (followign Foucault) that "homosexuality" is a cultural construct, albeit one which takes place within certain genetic parameters.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Depends on how much you want to change the DNA really - a good example of this is the gene that enables lactose tolerance is more prevelant in caucasions than it is then amoung any other major geogrpahical group. Similalry, Inuits have genes that prime them to have higher levels of body fat and ability to better absorb certain nutrients from food (and to survive on an almost all-meat diet). We even have the ability to evolve on fly to a limited extent - for example, immunity from disease is the immune system evolving to respond to a new environmental threat, adapting to it and making the permanent change that means if you get that illness again (provided it's the same or very close to the infection you've already had) you won't get as ill (or indeed notice it at all)
Thing with evolution is that it's slow and fast depending on the species and what agents are in play - there are some recent examples of fast evolution happening in 2 different directions for a species of rodent for example.
(will find NS link...might take a while tho!)
http://www.newscientist.com/channel...d-creatures-evolve-to-be-great-and-small.html
Thing with evolution is that it's slow and fast depending on the species and what agents are in play - there are some recent examples of fast evolution happening in 2 different directions for a species of rodent for example.
(will find NS link...might take a while tho!)
http://www.newscientist.com/channel...d-creatures-evolve-to-be-great-and-small.html
Idaho
continuity character
Arguing that dehumanising people and the enemy is a modern thing is nonsense. Arguing that in olden times they were all hot blooded and now we are cruel, cold and calculating is also nonsense as a quick scan through the history of the slave trade, conquests of the new world, the romans, etc, would show.articul8 said:
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
I think that mass murder througout history has meant that you have to create the same psychologies in those carrying it out; dehumanise those being slaughtered; make the process a spiritual task for which a greater future or paradise is a reward and that they will be absolved of their sins. You have to overcome human empathy to manage mass murder.
Not just that, but you seem to think that the guards that stuffed the Jews into the trains, or separated them out at the camps and pushed them into the chambers, regularly tortured and brutalised those who were kept alive in the camps didn't get to see the results of their work. The nazis killed people with gas because it was efficient - if Ghengis had access to Zyklon B I don't doubt he'd have used it.
Humans have been great at murdering each other in a variety of different ways for millenia, both individually, in warfare and various forms of genocide - C20th was most remarkable for the fact that it was recorded and those doing the genocide weren't historical victors (as was traditionally the case) so never got the chance to cover it up by being the ones who wrote history.
articul8 said:
Re. the urge to reproduce, it's more like an urge to have sex, which in the era before effective contraception was a reasonably reliable way to end up having kids. There were those practising the Catholic-endorsed rhythm method of course, the technical term for them is 'parents'.
Don't see how genes can have much if anything to do with people being gay.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
That you're genetically coded to be attracted to the same sex only?
But how could that be passed on to future generations without dwindling to miniscule frequencies, of the order of 1-in-a-1000 or less? I know gay people can and do have children, but it is at a much lower rate compared to heteros (iirc in the US about one-fifth).
There might be other biological factors, eg something in the womb environment which alters hormone levels during fetal development, as well as social causes, but I can't see how genes would be a major player.
(off topic, sorry)
There might be other biological factors, eg something in the womb environment which alters hormone levels during fetal development, as well as social causes, but I can't see how genes would be a major player.
(off topic, sorry)
dash_two said:
Here's a summary of recent research by Simon Levay, a neuroscientist who has done quite a bit of work on the biology of sexual orientation. It's as good a short summary of the current state of knowledge about what determines sexuality as I've yet seen.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
dash_two said:
Autism isn't an inherited gene; Cystic Fibrosis requires both parents to be carriers and even then IIRC it's about a 40/60 chance that their kids will have it. The same could be true of homosexuality - gene mutations happen for a variety of reasons, and aren't necesasrily something that is passed down. Disabled people with genetic disorders who have kids don't necessarily pass those down, whereas predisposition to certain types of cancer, or the genes that control tolerance to alcohol and nicotine uptake are...
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
kyser_soze said:
On the contrary, ethnographers suggest that, in for example, regular human sacrifice, the sacred nature of the act is very much amplified by stressing the humanity of the sacrificial victim. it is far from clear that those pursuing what they think of as a divinely sanctioned war necessarily fail to recognise the humanity of their victims. On a very basic human level it is necessary - if killing someone in person - to recognise someone that you are killing, even as you kill them.
For Eichmann, the holocaust victims did not even have to be recognised except as a fact, an abstraction, a number. This strikes me as an entirely different psychological process.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Which ethnographers? And making a physical person a sacred object dehumanises them as well - they become sacred and more than human, they become a symbol...same difference in the end.
Religious wars are ALWAYS fought on the psychology that your enemy is heathen, ungodly and therefore less than human - from the Sumerians through to the Crusaders, the propaganda is the same.
Abolsute crap - sociopaths kill 'in person' yet don't recognise that person as human necessarily; same applies to the armies that have massacred and raped through the centuries.
Religious wars are ALWAYS fought on the psychology that your enemy is heathen, ungodly and therefore less than human - from the Sumerians through to the Crusaders, the propaganda is the same.
Abolsute crap - sociopaths kill 'in person' yet don't recognise that person as human necessarily; same applies to the armies that have massacred and raped through the centuries.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Ethnographers as referenced in French journal, Documents. Can't find them off hand.
I din't say they were made into sacred objects. I said that the act of killing a human in full aknowledgement of their humanity was made all the more fearful and powerful - a sacred act
How can you know what a sociopath does or doesn't think when killing someone (unless...
) What I'm saying is that modernity made it possible to think of human beings as only a fact/number/abstraction at the same time as killing them in their thousands. ie. avoiding the recognition of a shared physical encounter - which would take place if someone were being killed in person even if this extinguished after the instant of recognition.
kyser_soze said:
I din't say they were made into sacred objects. I said that the act of killing a human in full aknowledgement of their humanity was made all the more fearful and powerful - a sacred act
How can you know what a sociopath does or doesn't think when killing someone (unless...
) What I'm saying is that modernity made it possible to think of human beings as only a fact/number/abstraction at the same time as killing them in their thousands. ie. avoiding the recognition of a shared physical encounter - which would take place if someone were being killed in person even if this extinguished after the instant of recognition.kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
BUT...the jews WERE killed 'in person' - the guards pushed them into the trains and the showers, and watched them being dragged out. Fucks sake, there are records of ancients shovelling loads of people into buildings and setting them on fire. You're whole argument that it's only modernity that allowed people to become an abstraction is historically wrong - humans have always been able to depersonalise on a massive scale - there's an element in it that is in fact a safety measure that can help people deal with mass death in the event of natural disasters, otherwise you'd end up with more people than already do loosing it in large disasters because of an over-extension of empathy.
This whole 'modernity led to the holocaust' line of reasoning is conservative bollocks - it's the same line that says modernity led DIRECTLY to the gulag, or to the Cultural Revolution. The Nazis were impacably against modernity, and yet you say they used it, rather than pseudo-religious dehumanisation (much of which was borrowed from pre-modern European history).
The METHODS used were a product of modernity - by the pschology was that of a medieval religious caste, and it had NOTHING to do with modernism.
By reading a lot of psychology on serial killers.
This whole 'modernity led to the holocaust' line of reasoning is conservative bollocks - it's the same line that says modernity led DIRECTLY to the gulag, or to the Cultural Revolution. The Nazis were impacably against modernity, and yet you say they used it, rather than pseudo-religious dehumanisation (much of which was borrowed from pre-modern European history).
The METHODS used were a product of modernity - by the pschology was that of a medieval religious caste, and it had NOTHING to do with modernism.
By reading a lot of psychology on serial killers.
I think the argument has maybe got turned on its head. Compassion for strangers - i.e. those outside your immediate family/clan/whanau/whatever isn't in any way natural, it's only comparatively recently that we start to imagine an ethics which is extended to all people (or indeed all living things) regardless of their relation to us. So it's not hard for this to be undermined, in fact it's enough just to fail to inculcate it in a new generation - something that modern society is in danger of doing as much through inattention as on purpose.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Ah yeah, but that would qualify, under articul8's rules, as 'direct contact' with your victim. Unless you look them in the eye when killing them it doesn't count, it's modernism...
Because what the campa guards did invovled no direct contact with people as they were moved from the trains to he showers; or observing the experiments of 'drs' like Mengele
Because what the campa guards did invovled no direct contact with people as they were moved from the trains to he showers; or observing the experiments of 'drs' like Mengele
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
kyser_soze said:
NO - the Nazi's were self-consciously anti-modern, in a way which is not possible for those living before the invention of modernity!!!
it is precisely becuase the could use the instruments of modernity completely severed to the rational 'ends' Enlightenment philosophers had presupposed to be inherent in 'progress' that meant they were a hell of a site more insidious in their destruction than it would have been possible for any pre-modern group to have been. Miliions of Germans really did not know - or at least did not care to find out - what was going on in the death camps. People at the time couldn't fail to have been aware of what Geghis Khan was upto becuase it was all much more open.
and BTW I'm not saying that "modernity" necessarily leads to fascism. I'm saying that the fact that Nazis used modern methods is a fact, and that a modern "instrumental" mentality allowed them to put science to hideously reactionary ends.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
What the Nazis did was take a religious, pre-modern mindset and apply modernism's techniques of industrialisation to the process. But to say that it required modernism for them to be able to dehumanise their victims is tosh - the psychologies had been around for millenia before then, and the Nazis, along with Stalin, Mao and any other number of dictators, took the technological potential offered to them to spread their message and enact it.
Nazism was a personality cult modelled on religion, the same as Stalinism - the state becomes church and the Leader becomes God - and co-opted every part of society with it. Nazism's future was couched in the epic; it was written with so much reference to European religious wars and pogroms it's painful - check out anti-semitic wood carvings from the Germanic states from the C14-16th and then look at some Nazi propaganda - it was lifted directly from it, in some cases there were almost direct copies of woodcarvings showing jews as rats, as coprophagics.
Nazism was a personality cult modelled on religion, the same as Stalinism - the state becomes church and the Leader becomes God - and co-opted every part of society with it. Nazism's future was couched in the epic; it was written with so much reference to European religious wars and pogroms it's painful - check out anti-semitic wood carvings from the Germanic states from the C14-16th and then look at some Nazi propaganda - it was lifted directly from it, in some cases there were almost direct copies of woodcarvings showing jews as rats, as coprophagics.
gorski
customised free radical
God, another night in which all cows are black...
[This was written before I saw Fruitloop's response and it's broadly written in the same manner - I'm growing tired of Kyser's posturing... My, my, he has drank all the bloody knowledge of the world... he knows everything there is to know about everything... There is no end to his wisdom and it seems he never stops to doubt himself on anything... A journalist, maybe? ]
[This was written before I saw Fruitloop's response and it's broadly written in the same manner - I'm growing tired of Kyser's posturing... My, my, he has drank all the bloody knowledge of the world... he knows everything there is to know about everything... There is no end to his wisdom and it seems he never stops to doubt himself on anything... A journalist, maybe?
]
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
kyser_soze said:
Kyser, sorry but are you being deliberately dense? Kindly explain how it is possible to be self-consciously anti-modernist before modernism had arrived on the scene?
If, as I am arguing, it is the self-conscious deployment of a modern instriumental mindet to deliberately anti-modern ends, this necessitates a different psychology to the medieval mentality which knew nothing of Enlightenment doctrines so couldn't possibly set out subvert them so thoroughly.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
As a term it was nivented by the enlightenment, as a process it wasn't. Teaching your congregation to think of those who don't believe what you believe to be animals, to be not human, to be outsiders and heathens is the same process pschologically.
The Enlightenment, much like psychology at the start of the C20th, was a process of identification of behaviours, processess and patterns that existed but hadn't been recognised - indeed, the new ways of thinking the enlightenment produced enabled the identification of these 'new' patterns, in much the same way as the release of natural philosophy from the shackles of religious control enabled modern science to be created.
The psychology of hate, of how it can be used to manipulate individuals and large numbers of people, is ancient. What's been happening since the Enlightenment is identifying how.
Ever hear a parent say something along the lines of 'Your generation thinks it invented sex/drug/whatever?' - same with post-Enlightenment thinking; because it's something that's been 'discovered' it's presumed that it was also an invention of modern thinking, the 'Look aren't we clever, those ancients could NEVER have been as smart as this!'
The Enlightenment, much like psychology at the start of the C20th, was a process of identification of behaviours, processess and patterns that existed but hadn't been recognised - indeed, the new ways of thinking the enlightenment produced enabled the identification of these 'new' patterns, in much the same way as the release of natural philosophy from the shackles of religious control enabled modern science to be created.
The psychology of hate, of how it can be used to manipulate individuals and large numbers of people, is ancient. What's been happening since the Enlightenment is identifying how.
Ever hear a parent say something along the lines of 'Your generation thinks it invented sex/drug/whatever?' - same with post-Enlightenment thinking; because it's something that's been 'discovered' it's presumed that it was also an invention of modern thinking, the 'Look aren't we clever, those ancients could NEVER have been as smart as this!'
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