Check Emmanuel Todd's books. For him, there is a basic social structure and it's family. In English there's "The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social Systems"; "L'Origine des systèmes familiaux" is more up to date with his theories but unfortunately isn't available in English yet (I guess, maybe it is now?).
No, but I learnt about the existence of that man and that book while making an internet search for "basic human social structure". I discovered that Bo Gräslund was one of few people who had used that expression. So I guess that it might be worth reading.
"Civilization is the process through which humans strenuously depart from their nature in the service of the group as a whole."
This implies the existence of a constant bare human nature over which culture and civilization is laid.
But this view conflicts with the notion of self-domestication that underlies the growth of complex societies. We, living in cities of millions, are very different psychologically, from our Paleolithic ancestors.
Also, what do you think about Julian Jaynes' notion of consciousness and breakdown of bicameral mind? He provides explanation of numerous phenomena otherwise inexplicable-- the view of history as the shadow of withdrawing gods or voices.
What and why s religion? And how is religion bound-up in growth of civilization?
"This implies the existence of a constant bare human nature over which culture and civilization is laid."
All that is required is a more or less continously present gap, of nonconstant size, between changing civilization and changing human nature. Neither of them are required to be constant; and indeed that would be a most unlikely state of affairs.
>>But this view conflicts with the notion of self-domestication that underlies the growth of complex societies. We, living in cities of millions, are very different psychologically, from our Paleolithic ancestors.
Also people in simple societies are self-domesticated. At least that is what self-domestication theorists like Richard Wrangham say. It could definitely be that people in civilizations are even more domesticated. But the self-domestication process started long before civilization.
>>Also, what do you think about Julian Jaynes' notion of consciousness and breakdown of bicameral mind? He provides explanation of numerous phenomena otherwise inexplicable-- the view of history as the shadow of withdrawing gods or voices.
Having once gone down that rabbit hole, I would like to see your take on Jaynes. You do also need to read some critiques. Also recommend following up with Iain McGilchrist "The Master and His Emissary", about brain lateralization.
I recommend you to start with David Stove's review of Julian Jaynes. David Stove is very readable plus he tends to have caustic things to say about many holy cows--enlightenment, Darwin, and Popper. He was entirely irreligious himself.
I would love to, if I just knew about any such compilation. It is a bit strange that no one, as far as I can see, has compiled the conditions that humans face outside civilization.
But at its most basical level, it is very easy: Although human nature is both peaceful and warlike, the rules of the game say that everyone will have to stay prepared for war. It is self-evident, but many thinkers have nonetheless failed to acknowledge it.
It depends on time perspectives. Cultural drift is a thing in the shorter and medium term. But in the long term (when we are all dead), evolution will sooner or later arrive.
I agree with your last position, "evolution will sooner or later arrive." I retain some skepticism about the original quote though. If the level of complexity in human coordination is a consequence of evolutionary process which reflexively incorporates changes in the environmental context, then it seems entirely plausible that sufficient cultural drift in the short/medium term could move human society into a region of the fitness landscape where the local maximum is lower than heights previously achieved. Taking the finite duration of the human species as a more certain prediction of the future than increases in coordination, it could be that the end of the endeavor (i.e. meteor impact, cataclysmic solar event, etc.) arrives before escape from the local maximum.
As a Kiwi, I recommend reading the link "The Māori genocide of the Moiriori" as highly illuminating of human nature.
To expand on it a little:
The Polynesians brought (to New Zealand) gardening technologies/plants that they were able to apply (somewhat) in the north. Archaeological evidence records only defended settlements in the north of NZ (north of Auckland) where the first Polynesian settlements are presumed to have established. This is consistent with the original Polynesian settlers of the 13 century bringing their martial culture of tribal warfare (zero sum conflicts over resources) with them.
However, the oldest expansive (multi dwelling) archaeological sites are in the south island (and some of the artefacts found closely resemble those of the Polynesian Pacific islands) and are noticeably undefended.
These undefended sites were possibly preserved because they were only (seasonally) occupied for a generation or two. It is presumed that inter-group conflict was not an issue because groups could simply move away from aggravation by migrating into unexploited territory.
An undefended archeological site in Christchuch city (South Island) shows that Moa (an abundant and easily killed source of food) were locally eliminated in less than 100 years of first occupation of the site, possibly in as few as 2 generations (say 30 years). Moa are generally considered extinct within 200 years of Polynesians arriving in NZ and do not seem to be recorded in folklore.
Later archaeological sites are divided into defended 'Pa' and small (single family) seasonal camp sites.
I feel I have worked out the common evolutionary denominator here.All of which you describe (and it is a great introduction to the subject) are outcomes of an urge that can be selected for at the individual bottleneck,. It's taken me a while to come up with a vague enough term that can handle both simple & complex societies/economies.
We confuse ourselves when we try to have different causes for various outcomes at different scales.
I started with moral urge, then moved to worldbuilding urge, and now just say worlding. I say 'vague' because civilisation implies cities (its an outcome) morality also implies cities, as does ethics. Which were used in city-states to get eveyone to acknowledge the same responsibilities, which when shrunk down into ganglang tribalism have been condensed into honour or shame for persons (individual or clan).
I now used worldbuilding for a double-downed doctrinal worlding, it produces dogma & thoughtpolice/parishpriests and conscience and 'faith' as a type of obedience-identity mix. The caste around Roman emperors behave like gangland-cult leaders too (everyone was too scared to stop clapping so they clap their hands raw for hours just like in North Korea).
So what is a worlding urge? It is a type of extended phenotype, an umwelt which is felt as an individual thing as much as a sense of self is, but is about how to organise the world in camp/landscape/town&country, so just like a cocoon, but a cocoon mediated by recursive tool/language use, often with overloaded elements (multitool-like symbolic elements & uses) that we call culture.
As an extended extended-phenotype worlding is the same as selfing, ecept it is done with others, and you need to learn it as a child. (See 'making special' by Dissanyake for an example). If you are brought up by wolves it's not great. Gangland cult leaders are a type of wolf, and are often recidivist baboon style social hierarchy creators (I do not think of it as proper worlding). So the distinction is not between simple/primitve and civilised/complex, but better those who world well and those who world badly. Narcissists/psychopaths always world badly because empathy builds both the self and the world and narcissism are a pathology of that successful human ability to world.
In terms of measurement of this 'worlding' I think the best mapping is done by the anthropologist Mary Douglas et al with their risk-perception grid-group matrices. this allows individual decisions in response to perception of risk (to nature/morality) to be played out within a social problem solving space. It is interesting that this worlding space is a happy liberality, and going outside it can lead to Amazonian gangland calculation leading to insistent warfare, and totalitarian death-cult one-ness "worlding". Russian is the best example today, as a failing empire it is destroying it male population, all the while clapping it hands raw.
'Worlding' produces a world which acts like a home of homes. It is 'socially constructed' by individuals and any structures it decides on arise out of that effort. These outcomes are not then all strictly 'emergent' nor all strictly 'commanded' into existence. This is a non-con-structionist view (structuralism are a type of animism IMHO even if some say animism is also a anthropological myth, it is a useful scary multi-tool of a moral warning demon). I hold a neo-Pyrrhonist-adjacent empiricist epistemology. My methodology is all over the place and too poetic to avoid being highly idiosyncratic if not highly internalised, but I am trying. (Ontologies are for loser shame-honour trapped simpy incels) (this whole comment is a cry for help?)
I believe the jargon for the three tasks you list is "the production of viable offspring".
In plain language: the production of grandchildren. The civilization that ensures it has at least as many grandchildren as it had of their grandparents will get itself into the future.
And don't forget the war! A culture is viable if it both produces grandchildren and is capable of defending itself in different respects: Capable of defending its cultural values against competing memes and capable of physically defend its members or to organize escape routes when someone organizes an industrial-scale extermination of its members.
Yes, the defence aspect of "producing grandchildren" is perhaps a bit too obscure in the bare two word phrase. It is implicit but a bit buried.
A culture can be non-viable all by itself, though, without need for defence against competitors. Look at ours: fertility is below replacement, without much that is obvious in the way of pressure from other cultures. All of the pressure that is preventing grandchildren is internally generated, from what I can see.
If you have not read it, you may enjoy The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. Part of the science-fiction premise is that nation-states are gone and humans organize by self-selecting into “cultures” that share values and aesthetics.
It also has interesting connections to LLM/AIs but that is another matter.
Check Emmanuel Todd's books. For him, there is a basic social structure and it's family. In English there's "The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social Systems"; "L'Origine des systèmes familiaux" is more up to date with his theories but unfortunately isn't available in English yet (I guess, maybe it is now?).
Interesting article thank you
Have you read _Early Humans and Their World_ by Bo Gräslund? It's on my to-be-read stack, but I haven't read it.
No, but I learnt about the existence of that man and that book while making an internet search for "basic human social structure". I discovered that Bo Gräslund was one of few people who had used that expression. So I guess that it might be worth reading.
"Civilization is the process through which humans strenuously depart from their nature in the service of the group as a whole."
This implies the existence of a constant bare human nature over which culture and civilization is laid.
But this view conflicts with the notion of self-domestication that underlies the growth of complex societies. We, living in cities of millions, are very different psychologically, from our Paleolithic ancestors.
Also, what do you think about Julian Jaynes' notion of consciousness and breakdown of bicameral mind? He provides explanation of numerous phenomena otherwise inexplicable-- the view of history as the shadow of withdrawing gods or voices.
What and why s religion? And how is religion bound-up in growth of civilization?
"This implies the existence of a constant bare human nature over which culture and civilization is laid."
All that is required is a more or less continously present gap, of nonconstant size, between changing civilization and changing human nature. Neither of them are required to be constant; and indeed that would be a most unlikely state of affairs.
>>But this view conflicts with the notion of self-domestication that underlies the growth of complex societies. We, living in cities of millions, are very different psychologically, from our Paleolithic ancestors.
Also people in simple societies are self-domesticated. At least that is what self-domestication theorists like Richard Wrangham say. It could definitely be that people in civilizations are even more domesticated. But the self-domestication process started long before civilization.
>>Also, what do you think about Julian Jaynes' notion of consciousness and breakdown of bicameral mind? He provides explanation of numerous phenomena otherwise inexplicable-- the view of history as the shadow of withdrawing gods or voices.
I haven't read it. I will take a look at it.
Having once gone down that rabbit hole, I would like to see your take on Jaynes. You do also need to read some critiques. Also recommend following up with Iain McGilchrist "The Master and His Emissary", about brain lateralization.
I recommend you to start with David Stove's review of Julian Jaynes. David Stove is very readable plus he tends to have caustic things to say about many holy cows--enlightenment, Darwin, and Popper. He was entirely irreligious himself.
I have now read a few pages of David Stove's text and it is indeed a very readable introduction. Thank you for the advice!
Can you please suggest reading material on the rules of game theory that apply to basic human social structure? Thank you.
I would love to, if I just knew about any such compilation. It is a bit strange that no one, as far as I can see, has compiled the conditions that humans face outside civilization.
But at its most basical level, it is very easy: Although human nature is both peaceful and warlike, the rules of the game say that everyone will have to stay prepared for war. It is self-evident, but many thinkers have nonetheless failed to acknowledge it.
Ok. Thank you.
“In the future, levels of human coordination are likely to increase. That is more or less the only thing that can be known about the future.“
Robin Hanson’s recent writings about cultural drift suggest that this prediction about the future may be less certain than as it is presented here.
It depends on time perspectives. Cultural drift is a thing in the shorter and medium term. But in the long term (when we are all dead), evolution will sooner or later arrive.
I agree with your last position, "evolution will sooner or later arrive." I retain some skepticism about the original quote though. If the level of complexity in human coordination is a consequence of evolutionary process which reflexively incorporates changes in the environmental context, then it seems entirely plausible that sufficient cultural drift in the short/medium term could move human society into a region of the fitness landscape where the local maximum is lower than heights previously achieved. Taking the finite duration of the human species as a more certain prediction of the future than increases in coordination, it could be that the end of the endeavor (i.e. meteor impact, cataclysmic solar event, etc.) arrives before escape from the local maximum.
I think you are right from beginning to end. My reasoning was a bit too simplified.
As a Kiwi, I recommend reading the link "The Māori genocide of the Moiriori" as highly illuminating of human nature.
To expand on it a little:
The Polynesians brought (to New Zealand) gardening technologies/plants that they were able to apply (somewhat) in the north. Archaeological evidence records only defended settlements in the north of NZ (north of Auckland) where the first Polynesian settlements are presumed to have established. This is consistent with the original Polynesian settlers of the 13 century bringing their martial culture of tribal warfare (zero sum conflicts over resources) with them.
However, the oldest expansive (multi dwelling) archaeological sites are in the south island (and some of the artefacts found closely resemble those of the Polynesian Pacific islands) and are noticeably undefended.
These undefended sites were possibly preserved because they were only (seasonally) occupied for a generation or two. It is presumed that inter-group conflict was not an issue because groups could simply move away from aggravation by migrating into unexploited territory.
An undefended archeological site in Christchuch city (South Island) shows that Moa (an abundant and easily killed source of food) were locally eliminated in less than 100 years of first occupation of the site, possibly in as few as 2 generations (say 30 years). Moa are generally considered extinct within 200 years of Polynesians arriving in NZ and do not seem to be recorded in folklore.
Later archaeological sites are divided into defended 'Pa' and small (single family) seasonal camp sites.
I feel I have worked out the common evolutionary denominator here.All of which you describe (and it is a great introduction to the subject) are outcomes of an urge that can be selected for at the individual bottleneck,. It's taken me a while to come up with a vague enough term that can handle both simple & complex societies/economies.
We confuse ourselves when we try to have different causes for various outcomes at different scales.
I started with moral urge, then moved to worldbuilding urge, and now just say worlding. I say 'vague' because civilisation implies cities (its an outcome) morality also implies cities, as does ethics. Which were used in city-states to get eveyone to acknowledge the same responsibilities, which when shrunk down into ganglang tribalism have been condensed into honour or shame for persons (individual or clan).
I now used worldbuilding for a double-downed doctrinal worlding, it produces dogma & thoughtpolice/parishpriests and conscience and 'faith' as a type of obedience-identity mix. The caste around Roman emperors behave like gangland-cult leaders too (everyone was too scared to stop clapping so they clap their hands raw for hours just like in North Korea).
So what is a worlding urge? It is a type of extended phenotype, an umwelt which is felt as an individual thing as much as a sense of self is, but is about how to organise the world in camp/landscape/town&country, so just like a cocoon, but a cocoon mediated by recursive tool/language use, often with overloaded elements (multitool-like symbolic elements & uses) that we call culture.
As an extended extended-phenotype worlding is the same as selfing, ecept it is done with others, and you need to learn it as a child. (See 'making special' by Dissanyake for an example). If you are brought up by wolves it's not great. Gangland cult leaders are a type of wolf, and are often recidivist baboon style social hierarchy creators (I do not think of it as proper worlding). So the distinction is not between simple/primitve and civilised/complex, but better those who world well and those who world badly. Narcissists/psychopaths always world badly because empathy builds both the self and the world and narcissism are a pathology of that successful human ability to world.
In terms of measurement of this 'worlding' I think the best mapping is done by the anthropologist Mary Douglas et al with their risk-perception grid-group matrices. this allows individual decisions in response to perception of risk (to nature/morality) to be played out within a social problem solving space. It is interesting that this worlding space is a happy liberality, and going outside it can lead to Amazonian gangland calculation leading to insistent warfare, and totalitarian death-cult one-ness "worlding". Russian is the best example today, as a failing empire it is destroying it male population, all the while clapping it hands raw.
'Worlding' produces a world which acts like a home of homes. It is 'socially constructed' by individuals and any structures it decides on arise out of that effort. These outcomes are not then all strictly 'emergent' nor all strictly 'commanded' into existence. This is a non-con-structionist view (structuralism are a type of animism IMHO even if some say animism is also a anthropological myth, it is a useful scary multi-tool of a moral warning demon). I hold a neo-Pyrrhonist-adjacent empiricist epistemology. My methodology is all over the place and too poetic to avoid being highly idiosyncratic if not highly internalised, but I am trying. (Ontologies are for loser shame-honour trapped simpy incels) (this whole comment is a cry for help?)
https://www.academia.edu/40978261/Why_we_should_an_introduction_by_memoir_into_the_implications_of_the_Egalitarian_Revolution_of_the_Paleolithic_or_Anyone_for_cake
blogged at this substack
https://whyweshould.substack.com/
and crossposting at
https://whyweshould.loofs-samorzewski.com/topics-and-projects.html
with a
list of worlding posts
https://whyweshould.loofs-samorzewski.com/the-world.html
(the whole blogging effort is a set of notes not yet organised as I think it all aloud)
Isn't the comments section intended for readers to comment on what the writer has written?
I did.
I believe the jargon for the three tasks you list is "the production of viable offspring".
In plain language: the production of grandchildren. The civilization that ensures it has at least as many grandchildren as it had of their grandparents will get itself into the future.
Or, at least, has a chance of doing so.
And don't forget the war! A culture is viable if it both produces grandchildren and is capable of defending itself in different respects: Capable of defending its cultural values against competing memes and capable of physically defend its members or to organize escape routes when someone organizes an industrial-scale extermination of its members.
Yes, the defence aspect of "producing grandchildren" is perhaps a bit too obscure in the bare two word phrase. It is implicit but a bit buried.
A culture can be non-viable all by itself, though, without need for defence against competitors. Look at ours: fertility is below replacement, without much that is obvious in the way of pressure from other cultures. All of the pressure that is preventing grandchildren is internally generated, from what I can see.
Yes, our culture is indeed suicidal.
If you have not read it, you may enjoy The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. Part of the science-fiction premise is that nation-states are gone and humans organize by self-selecting into “cultures” that share values and aesthetics.
It also has interesting connections to LLM/AIs but that is another matter.