Humans in nature and human nature. (Just a thought.)
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- Опубликовано: 18 янв 2024
- Prosperity, stability and security are prerequisites for a slow life cycle.
Society is both the solution to and the prerequisite for loneliness. We wouldn't have the capacity to feel lonely if society wasn't part of biology.
Evolution relates not just to biology in isolate, but is a joining of biology, society and technology in a cycle of growth, adaptation, improvement and regression, in a chicken or egg scenario where it's difficult if not impossible to find a beginning.
My use of the word "humanity" as a synonym for "homo-sapiens" was a suboptimal choice, as they are not technically synonyms. But I hate it when precise language is also cumbersome.
Attenborough substantiating my flippant claim about frogs.
• Bullfrog Dad Protects ...
Link to patreon if you are so inclined.
www.patreon.com/user?u=3998481
The biggest lesson from history and prehistory is that we've always been human. Always.
We kinda look at people in the past differently because the idea of humans thinking and working like us for hundreds of thousands of years can be a lot. The idea of hundreds of thousands years of human experience, emotions, joyful moments and tragic moments just forgotten is something lots of people don't want to think about. So we put a barrier between us from the now and us from the past. Also makes it wayyyy easier to judge them to feel better about ourselves...
But sometimes(well a lot of times) a discovery is done that just pushes it in our face, that we've always been human. The example i want to use is the grave of the twin infants, carefully buried 31000 years ago under the shoulder bone of a Mammoth that was carved to size. They where carefully placed, holding amulets in their little hands. The whole grave was covered in ochre. The place chosen had a magnificent view. Next to it another burial was found, and dna research has established a connection, possible cousin.
For those children life was short, but it was with love that they where buried, with care that they where placed in their graves.
31000 years ago.
Thank you Malcolm for spreading hope and belief in humanity. I've found myself sometimes agreeing with the arguments from Hobbes and Peterson that you disassemble here and I really appreciate the way you articulated your counterarguments. It made me realize i forget to think about all those facts about our biology and actual inherent nature, and how we tap into systems that have existed outside of us and long before us such as ideas of a society. I especially love the wording and arguments you explain to Peterson's statement. I will continue to think about them, about how we come into this world surrounded by unconditional love by our biology, and enabled further love in a family which is inherent to the survival of humans to this point. We definitely can be a more virtuous collective by really appreciating these aspects of our human development.
Hobbs most famous work Leviathan shows us the purpose of this reasoning. It is founded on the idea that a hierarchical power system (usually the current one though sometimes a different one) is an absolute good and necessity and then reasons are made for it after this conclusion. I am not a good enough speaker to show people that this is a nonsensical position so now i just mostly hope to be left to myself and hope that i am not suffocated by their need for control.
This is incredibly well argued and succinctly put. It also feels like something to aspire to.
"We live in a society" --George Constanza --
Mutual Aid by Kropotkin generally shares this sentiment. Thanks for the humble presentation.
Also anything by Klee Benally (Rest in peace)
And David Graeber
This is interesting and not something i had really thought about before. It does make sense that human society arose as a result of and not in opposition to our "nature". I think a lot of this goes back to the fundamental idea that humans are above or apart from our nature (or can grow to be so) which isnt the case i dont think. Great video as always.
Humans do enjoy energy savings from being bipedal. This may compensate for our brains consuming lots of energy, though I’m not sure how big the savings are. Otherwise I agree with this.
I'd imagine it would depend on how much running you do. Lot of running, big savings, not much running, insignificant savings.
Finnish proverb I quite like. The world will surely teach one, if nothing else, to walk slowly.@@Another-Address
@@MalcolmPL there’s also walking under load, dancing and f__king. Perhaps the energy savings with these are also akin to running.
Excellent video. As someone who has in interest in pre history and the origin of our species I found this video to be very interesting and inciteful.
Thanks for this, and all your videos. So few people have a clear understanding of the physical realities that existed throughout history. Most aren't even connected to the physical realities of the modern day. Blessings on you for working to educate the human species.
I am SO grateful for your thoughts... and how you share an intelligent view of the world, and us in it.
Its nice to wake up with an empty brain and blink at a video like this. Something to think about all day.
This video is gorgeous. Thank you for your clear vision
Approach levels of based previously unimaginable. Jokes aside great vid.
I really like your line of thinking, have you read the book "Humankind: A Hopeful History" by Rutger Bregman?
I think you would enjoy it.
The problem with arguments that involve nature fall apart even bevore they get to the point of definition what nature is. Because usually people want to argue that "nature does x, therefore we should do x" which is just a fallacy and not worth adressing what the nature they want to reference actually is.
Yes, they are almost always bad faith arguments that can be used to argue for or against just about any position.
Regarding the hairlessness of humans: there is a theory that suggests the hairloss happened to facilitate the loss of heat while running, as humans were (and some still are) endurance hunters: running after prey until it can't run further.
I think people talking about 'Man in the State of Nature' aren't usually thinking about science at all beyond the surface. They're trying to make a philosophical point, assuming that reality conforms to their philosophy, and thus not bothering to check whether they're right. A lot of others probably think that the conditions society imposes on the very poor are 'natural.'
Most of what I see is not an earnest attempt at serious conversation, it is rather rhetoric and/or sophistry. A dubious attempt to strengthen a tangentially related position by presenting the uncritical opinion as established truth, in pithy enough fashion that the ploy goes unnoticed.
The advent of "civilization" (whatever that means) can also be argued to be something catastrophic to human quality of life--organized agriculture enabling the first class divisions and mass warfare, slavery, etc.
Yeah, but that's not a convincing argument for someone who has different core beliefs.
One hundred percent yes. Human nature is not an amelioration of a state of nature, it is a result of a state of nature. What we lack is not there because our ancestors no longer needed. What we have is there because it was so vital to our ancestors that life without it was impossible.
yes ❤
Man you nailed it! Thank you.
Another fascinating musing. Keep it up!
An excellent response.
I don't really care much for the scientific and evolutionary perspective, but I do love your thoughts against the idea that technology is the savior of Humanity, and that without it we were worse off. Personally I think technology advanced too far over 1,000 year ago. But I guess nature being good isn't necessarily the same topic as technology being bad.
I believe that Beauty is the ultimate good. And I believe that the four most Beautiful things are Music, Stories, Good People, & Nature. The people who wish to "Improve" Humanity, through technology or anything else, are striving towards the evil destruction of Humanity. As far as I'm concerned, Angels and Demons are equally inhuman monsters. And the only fate worse than True Death is the loss of Humanity.
PS: My definition of Humans is not the scientific "anatomically modern humans" one. There is a high likelihood that many of the ancient human varieties, especially the more recent ones that were more closely related to us, would fit my definition of Human just as well as anyone today. And even to day I think that there are many humans who were unlucky enough to be born missing a piece of their Humanity, or being robbed of it later.
But losing a piece of your humanity is not the same as losing your humanity entirely.
developed my canon of easy listening RUclipsrs: this channel, Simon roper, and kliksphilip lol
Thank you for bringing up the constraints on what human societies could be like that our length of maturing and lifespan would have, I never thought about that before. It made me think of another way to imagine what life may have been like back then, by comparing the historical evidence to social groups that similarly long-lived animals are in today. I’m not actually sure of the best comparison, but I’m picturing how family groups of gorillas or elephants live and divide up duties that need to be done for survival.
Of course, that comes with the reality as well that many of those family groups/societies of large social animals have been disrupted to the point of societal breakdown by hunting and loss of living space, which is extremely sad and infuriating too
In terms of the life span/birth rate/growth rate comparison, elephants are probably a decent comparison. If memory serves, its bout sixty-seventy years, about one kid every couple years and about 15-20 years to grow up.
@@MalcolmPL I think gestation is almost 24 months too
Is there anyone else you would recommend who talks about this topic
It's hard to argue that Hobbes was not aware of biology (evolution, yes). I think what Hobbes was referring to was not our biology, but that we are, in the absence of civilized life, by default in the "wrong" state of society, and that to get to a state of society where we can realize those biological capacities we have to actively fight against nature and human nature to carve out a place for us to prosper. This lineage of thinking persists to this day through Malthus into Darwin, and is actually espoused by most evolutionary biologists (though they are perhaps not aware that this is an assumption).
Ah, I see, so it's just blatant Eurosupremacy then.
I’m pretty sure there’s a certain point where we know that human ancestors lost most of their hair and that is from the history of modern melanin genes. I think it was about 800,000 years ago that the Homo erectus ancestors evolved modern Melanin, this signals a loss of hair on the body, probably due to increased sweat glands. The loss of hair tends to be thought of as an adaptation to long distance bipedal movement rather than clothing. I think clothing would then be an adaptation to the loss of body hair when traveling to other climates. But I’m not sure, certainly they could have coevolved.
Loss of hair and increased sweat glands are not directly associated. Horses sweat and have hair.
Attempting to articulate my thoughts, apologies if they are a little scattered.
Certain adaptations are contingent on another. We take the example of modern melanin being contingent on a lack of hair, (there being no reason for modern melanin if skin isn't exposed,) what then is lack of hair contingent on?
So we ask, what problem does hair exist to solve?
Protection from the weather. Africa is not known for being particularly cold, but winter and nighttime temperatures do sometimes drop to near freezing, worse with windchill. Loss of the standard mechanism of protection from the weather is thus contingent upon the development of some other solution, be that biological or technological.
Other hairless animals solve the problem through different means, elephants through thermal mass, seals through blubber. Warthogs by sleeping underground. Humans do not utilize either of the former, and are awkwardly shaped for crawling into small holes.
There must therefore have been a different solution. Which leaves us with either clothing, (even if that clothing was just simple cloaks,) or else buildings with walls and roofs.
Neither of these two developments have sufficient evidence in the period, but of the two, one is less contingent than the other. A building must be developed deliberately, while a fur blanket or rug can be developed accidentally.
This is where my logic takes me. Clothing, or at least blankets have to come before the loss of hair.
Of course logic doesn't always adequately reflect natural process. But oh well.
@@MalcolmPL I forgot to get back to you on this but it came to mind that one of the main functions of hair was to work as a detector of fleas/ticks. So decrease in hair must have a greater benefit than the cost of a decreased ability to detect fleas and such. Idk exactly what that part means for this question but. We can also track when clothes became widely used due to the speciation of gentile lice from head lice which are thought to have speciated due to clothes being on the body. If those two dates are separated by enough time we can likely say that hairlessness wasn’t evolved due to clothes. But that’s not to say that your thesis overall is wrong, I agree with it very much as a framework. Just the specifics of hair evolution might be a bit more hairy than your example. I would also say after clothes are made they probably prevented or encouraged certain populations adaptation of hair.
We're hypersocial apes that looked at bird flocks, and decided forming flocks was in.
I used to be a Hobbesian fellow in outlook until I actually read up on anthropology and realized that such pessimistic views of humans are beyond stupid and that sociology, applied properly anyway, points to such brutishness Hobbes was likely extrapolating from his own times being born out of culture, specific civilizations, demographic issues, logistics, etc. We can be fairly certain that things such as murder and rape have always existed in even archaic homo sapiens because they're expressed by apes and other mammals even. But erstwhile, organized violence, mass killings, slavery, ethnic cleansing, etc just don't really seem to be part and parcel to man in the 'natural' state prior to large organized civilizations and most critically, property.
When Hobbes speaks of the brutishness of man he's reflecting on the brutishness he witnessed in his own time, the Wars of Religion which tore through Europe and left some regions half depopulated through the sheer scale of violence intermixed with disease and starvation. But organized mass death and violence doesn't exist in the archaeological record until roughly 12,000 BCE, where mass graves exhibiting violence emerge side by side with settled agricultural lifestyles, or very large organized non-sedentary cultures.
Thus the idea that mankind is by nature a warlike, brutish, and cruel creature just doesn't hold up based on what is known of prehistoric and ancient humanity. Instead anthropology presents more or less the total opposite - cooperative societies distributed over large expanses of land, forming blood ties through marriage exchanges and conflicts likely being defused by simply migrating somewhere else. Mass killings and the like are blatantly born out by a mixture of property providing motivation for struggle in the first place, and denser populations creating more centralized cultures and systems which serve to drive violence in the first place. In fact, even dense population doesn't seem to be a silver bullet explanation for brutality either, because there are _massive_ settlements found around 10,000 BCE in modern Ukraine, Anatolia, inner Asiatic Steppe, etc, with populations in the thousands that would be inhabited for a quarter to half the year, possibly for trade or religious rites - without nary an example of organized violence. Or even centralized rule for that matter. Communities seem to have congregated into massive temporary settlements, exchanged goods, participated in cultural rites, then split off after the period to go back to a semi migratory lifestyle before meeting up again next year.
Pessimists such as Hobbes aren't wrong in that their observations often have legitimate sources, but are wrong in how they assess the causation of the violence they witness (often with men like Hobbes, confusingly assuming authoritarian structures are the answer to 'control' the bestial nature of man when every horrible conflict he lived to see was born of it). In truth though, they just identify flaws within the feudal, authoritarian, or heavily class based democratic systems they live within, and assume the causation for violence is some quality of the human spirit. Not the power structures, desperation, disillusionment, or zealotry that surrounds them.
Your hazelnut upload showed up in my subscriptions but this one didn't
RUclips gives you the option of publishing a video with notifications or not.
you're like a monotone carl sagan who hasn't quite given up hope in spite of human society's flaws.
You are the fourth person this week to make the sagan comparison.
Jordan Peterson is a very silly man.
I'd argue that Humans didn't have long lives in the past. Before our modern understanding of germ theory a human live span was around 35 year (common deaths included a tooth abscess which is easily treated today with antibiotics) . Also of note is that we have very little fossil evidence of our ancient ancestors (all the fossils of our species Homo and it relatives) could all fit in the back of a mini van if you didn't mind jumbling them all up. And finally It's not so much the science but the conclusions often speculative and sensationalized that makes the news. There is much that is unknown and much that is still debated.
The 30 year life span factoid is famously a result of statistical issues. Further in presenting it you commit the fallacy of circular reasoning, "I argue that humans didn't live very long in the past because humans didn't live very long in the past."
As for the rest, I can offer no comment as those are questions which only the specialized archaeologists will be well enough versed in the minutia to answer. "How common was tooth decay in homo-erectus?" Etc.
@@MalcolmPL this the article that I thought I was quoting from but obviously misread Evolution of the human lifespan and diseases of aging: Roles of infection, inflammation, and nutrition 2010 I too am no expert in this field: people did live long lives in the past but due to high mortality rates usually in childhood it lowers the average live span. Regardless there were older adults in ancient populations and my statement is misleading if not incorrect. I will continue reading about this topic. Thanks
@@jasonz9902 30 is the number for life expectancy, not life span, and it's an average of a bimodal distribution composed of lots of zeroes (infant mortality) and the actual distribution of adult expectancies (which must be sufficiently above 30 so that when you average it with all the zeros u get 30). I think the statistical issue Malcolm may have referred to was trying to average a bimodal distribution: if you average falls in a region that describes neither mode, what meaning does the average have?
I usually like this channel's videos, but this one was ill informed from start to finish, especially the ending about being hairless because of clothing or Australopithecus wearing clothing, when the region humans come from was hot and humans were persistence hunters who needed to sweat to out endure prey. People such as the Hadza still living today somewhat similarly to the original humans near the original region don't wear much clothes at all. Also about how natural human habitats are ones of abundance. Evolution only requires enough subsistence to have enough offspring for the species to survive. Infant and maternal mortality were high and populations low for much of human pre-history. Agriculture also introduced a cycle of boom and bust as well as the threat of famines and an increase in warfare, raiding and blood feuds.
Appeals to human nature are often flawed, but this video was a bad counter argument. It's also unclear what exactly the argument being made is.
“ill informed from start to finish,” are you implying that we are in fact born starving and lonesome?
Pettiness aside, lets engage the arguments you put forward.
First off, you are treating it as gospel that early humans practiced persistence hunting. This is an assumption, not a datapoint. We don’t know for a fact if they did or didn’t.
It’s generally not good practice to argue based on assumption as different people are not obligated to share your assumptions. Arguments should be built from common ground.
But let us assume that I share this assumption and continue. Are you sure that you have the direction of causality the right way around?
What you are implying is that the behavior of persistence hunting predates the lack of hair, that the lack of hair was a response to the behavior, but to my mind it should be the other way around, that the development of the behavior is enabled by the preexisting lack of hair. That the one seems a prerequisite for the other. To my mind persistence hunting seems to make a lot less sense if your body isn’t already adapted for it.
On your point about the Hadza, I would like to remind you that modern hunter gatherers are not an analogue for early humans.
Setting that aside, your point about clothing in modern Africa is not a good argument. The heat of Africa is grossly overstated and the nights in Tanzania can get cold, sometimes dropping to single digits, not counting wind chill or rain.
You’re making it sound like the Hadza are sleeping under the stars in nothing but a loincloth, but they have a variety of clothing, live in huts and sleep on and under furs.
@@MalcolmPL They have clothing but compared to most of the world it's less in the same way people generally wear less clothing the hotter it is. Also, I did say "somewhat similarly" not "exactly the same", there are finite ways in which humans can behave under certain conditions so unless you have evidence otherwise it's safe to assume similarities.
The whole conversation is confused because it's just a series of statements without a unifying point. The "natural state" of humans must be bound by time and place though a few inevitable constants due remain such as the need to survive and reproduce, etc. If we are to focus on the original region where humans evolved, then we need to look at the actual evidence and current scholarship not push unfounded claims.
You can't just throw out a bunch of hypotheticals with no evidence and claim them as just as valid as accepted theories, especially if you're going against general consensus on historical/anthropological topics such as persistence hunting. If you're sensitive to critique then you should put in the effort for a more solid argument.
"You can't just throw out a bunch of hypotheticals with no evidence."
This is a contradiction. If you believe that I did, then evidently I can.
"If you're sensitive to critique then you should put in the effort for a more solid argument."
This is an ad hominum as well as a catch 22. You say that I should put more work into my argument, but when I attempt to clarify or defend my position you are going to call me overly sensitive and dismiss the additional effort. So, how should one respond to this?
Joking aside, let's return to your criticism.
I'm going to drop the point about endurance running, as my issue with it is methodological not factual, I don't actually think you are wrong there, just over weighting assumptions. And going off on that tangent won't help clarify the video.
Let's reformulate my argument from the video in the hopes that you find it more reasonable, or at least more clear.
I am trying to make a philosophical point about the way we think about things. Namely that things which we associate with modern humans do not necessarily derive from modern humans. This argument is philosophical, not paleontological.
For the early examples in the video I criticize people like peterson and hobbes who talk about society as a human invention while neglecting the fact that even deer and wolves have societies. We cannot be born starving and lonesome because stable social relationships are a prerequisite for human babies to be helpless.
Later in the example you criticize I use the hypothetical example of clothing in the form of cloaks and blankets, positing that they were developed by pre-humans, Australopithecus, hairy ape men, whatever, the specific species is not important to the argument.
My argument is as follows.
Hair is designed to protect the body from the weather.
Human beings require protection from weather. 10 degrees, windy and wet is not survivable without protection.
If these facts are true, then before a lack of hair becomes viable, whether it evolved for endurance running or not, humans require an alternative means of protection from weather.
Some other mammals exist without much hair. All of these have alternative means of resisting weather. Elephants and rhinoceros have thermal mass, their bodies take too long to cool for the weather to matter. Small animals like warthogs have underground burrows where they can shelter. These are not options for human beings as we do not have much thermal mass and our bodies are poorly shaped for living in narrow tunnels.
This means that before hair can disappear, humans require one of three things. Buildings, fire or clothing, therefore one or more of those three has to be a development of hairy ape men and not modern humans. Clothing is the example I used but it could be any of the three.
@@MalcolmPL The fact no one comes into the world alone, human cooperation is innate and necessary for survival and humans also need and have a social group are uncontroversial. From what I know of Peterson he doesn't seem to have any intelligent thoughts beyond mundane self help everyone already gives.
Hominin species had technology in certain species at certain points increasing in complexity until we reach modern humans (as the last surviving branch). But I'm not clear what the point is. Humans aren't special? Though that could easily allow for hominins are special or the homo genus is special.
The conversation still seems too vague. Is the question whether human nature exists or what human nature is? Or is society natural? But then what is society?
I don't know much about Hobbes but I thought the point of his famous quote is about the necessity of the state, or rules and authority, to better the lives of people without which we live in a state of anarchy. I partially agree in the sense that anarchy is unstable because the natural drive of all living things is to improve their own odds of reproduction over that of competitors and so violent competition is inevitable.
So is cooperation, but cooperation mainly with an in group in competition with an out group. But anarchy can't last because eventually the open competition creates a new hierarchy. The less actors in competition means the less conflict there is, which is why consolidation over time is a good thing, inevitably in the future there will only be 1 in group, under 1 state.
In ancient states such as in Greek cities, one of the explicit primary roles of the state was settling disputes between elites to avoid blood feuds and further violence.
If one were to have a place with abundant resources and a forager society, unless the climate and ecosystem were perfectly stable, it still would devolve in conflict over resources unless a lot of people were dying of other causes and no one outside the area knew it existed in order to prevent overpopulation and outsiders conquering the area.
None of this is to endorse a darwinian society, but rather to understand that it must be actively worked against.
I enjoy hearing your perspectives and find them intriguing considerations. However, you too make enormous assumptions about what may or may not have occurred millions and millions of years ago and how humans developed. There really is scant evidence that these developments occurred in the manner you state yet they are widely accepted because there is a persistent and unquestioned belief in them in the scientific community. Few, except for those with contrary religious beliefs, will even dare to question them. These too may fall under scrutiny someday as they seem (to me) to be equally misguided. I wonder if you can step back and see yourself making similar errors that Hobbes, Peterson, and others have made interpreting human nature, its origin, and development.
Let me restate in simplified fashion. My point is not that I "really" know what's going on, I flatly do not. Rather that the argument surrounding human nature is a conversation for zoologists and paleoarchaeologists, not philosophers or psychologists.
Nothing Peterson says baffles me. He's just saying what the right-wing brain rot is telling him to say - it's not much different than what all the others preaching to the right-wing hive mind is saying.
Neat channel, btw.
Sophistry is a powerful drug. Able to intoxicate wielder as well as audience.