GEORGE: Well, that's a forthright view! Thanks.

I've been looking through other threads on the site.
Those about Near Death Experiences I have commented on in the past,
and my view that they are based on inadequate anecdotal evidence,
often embroidered by later writers, still stands.
Most of the items, like Nature's Wonders, about biology or evolution
are too specialised for me to have an opinion, except that they
have natural explanations and do not support Intelligent Design.
The rest are mainly on theology which is a completely vacuous subject.

So I'm afraid I don't have much new to contribute at present.
But I may be back with some different topics if that is OK.

More than OK, George. You were one of our very first contributors, and have always enlivened and illuminated our discussions!

You will have gathered that there is one burning topic which has occupied us for years and is tied in with your comment about intelligent design. (I prefer lower case, in order to distinguish it from the divine variety.) While I am not 100% committed to the theory, I am hugely impressed by the conclusion of several renowned scientists that single cells (including bacteria) are intelligent, sentient, decision-making beings. No one will deny that living organisms are hugely complex, and James A. Shapiro proposes that these complexities have been designed by the cells themselves (he calls it "natural genetic engineering"), as they cooperate with one another in order to adapt to or exploit ever changing environmental conditions. This is very different from Darwin's reliance on chance mutations causing speciation. You don't have be a biologist to recognize the amazing complexity of the cell itself, let alone the complexities of the cell communities of which our organs and whole bodies are composed. Cellular intelligence provides an explanation for speciation, and so it would be interesting to hear your reaction to this theory. No obligation of course! We'll welcome your contributions on any subjects you choose.

George: Well, that's a forthright view! Thanks.

I've been looking through other threads on the site.
Those about Near Death Experiences I have commented on in the past,
and my view that they are based on inadequate anecdotal evidence,
often embroidered by later writers, still stands.
Most of the items, like Nature's Wonders, about biology or evolution
are too specialised for me to have an opinion, except that they
have natural explanations and do not support Intelligent Design.
The rest are mainly on theology which is a completely vacuous subject.

So I'm afraid I don't have much new to contribute at present.
But I may be back with some different topics if that is OK.

You are welcome here always.

dhw: " I have no idea how he knows that prehistoric humans lived in nothing but love and cooperation – his only reference seems to be the metaphor of the Garden of Eden."

xeno: Any cursory study of current non-state or pre-state societies, or even societies that evolved when state power declined has turned up more evidence that cooperation and mutualism tend to be our default mechanism. It's maybe 3rd on my list but I'm about to read "Against the Grain" which is an in-depth study of archaeological and paleontological evidence suggesting that the advent of agriculture and eventually state-based societies created the structural foundation to create empires, strongly suggesting that the majority of what we've viewed as "western progress" owes quite a bit more to self-imposed impulses to competition and domination. Apparently the majority of non-state societies tended to peaceful cooperation and it was the advent of states that made our world more violent.

dhw: I’m not sure where you get this from. Tribal warfare (i.e. conflict between groups of humans) goes as far back into human history as we can go. But yes, there is also love and cooperation, and I would suggest that our default mechanism is a mixture: we must have love and cooperation in order for society to work. But as with our fellow animals, we also need the selfish (but healthy) instinct for survival, and I believe that selfishness (when it expands beyond the instinct for survival) lies at the heart of all the nasty things we get up to. Our innate curiosity allied to advanced technology enabled us to explore far beyond our own territory, and so inevitably enlarged the scale of conflict (e.g. war) as well as that of cooperation (e.g. trade). (Think of animal leaders of the herd and territorialism as a forerunner of human "competition and domination".) For me, the “default mechanism” is the very same mixture of love and cooperation on the one hand, and selfishness on the other, that we find in our fellow animals.

As far as the World Transformation Movement is concerned, I have already explained my objections!

Well stated. Cooperation undoubtedly started in early hunter-gatherer small groups in which only by working together in group interest could they survive. Those groups may have fought off other groups if necessary. Which means we learned to blend in self-interest with group interest. Larger group states a few thousand years ago led to important considerations of moral and ethical principals as evidenced by the appearance of religious groups, both Eastern and Western thought

I would say cooperation started even earlier than hunter-gathering as it's fundamental to several of our relatives, Bonobos being one example.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

dhw: " I have no idea how he knows that prehistoric humans lived in nothing but love and cooperation – his only reference seems to be the metaphor of the Garden of Eden."

xeno: Any cursory study of current non-state or pre-state societies, or even societies that evolved when state power declined has turned up more evidence that cooperation and mutualism tend to be our default mechanism. It's maybe 3rd on my list but I'm about to read "Against the Grain" which is an in-depth study of archaeological and paleontological evidence suggesting that the advent of agriculture and eventually state-based societies created the structural foundation to create empires, strongly suggesting that the majority of what we've viewed as "western progress" owes quite a bit more to self-imposed impulses to competition and domination. Apparently the majority of non-state societies tended to peaceful cooperation and it was the advent of states that made our world more violent.

I’m not sure where you get this from. Tribal warfare (i.e. conflict between groups of humans) goes as far back into human history as we can go. But yes, there is also love and cooperation, and I would suggest that our default mechanism is a mixture: we must have love and cooperation in order for society to work. But as with our fellow animals, we also need the selfish (but healthy) instinct for survival, and I believe that selfishness (when it expands beyond the instinct for survival) lies at the heart of all the nasty things we get up to. Our innate curiosity allied to advanced technology enabled us to explore far beyond our own territory, and so inevitably enlarged the scale of conflict (e.g. war) as well as that of cooperation (e.g. trade). (Think of animal leaders of the herd and territorialism as a forerunner of human "competition and domination".) For me, the “default mechanism” is the very same mixture of love and cooperation on the one hand, and selfishness on the other, that we find in our fellow animals.

I wasn't trying to suggest that tribal warfare was nonexistent. Where I'm coming from isn't romanticism either: when you study hunter-gatherer tribes, where are the armies or police forces? They don't exist. The same goes with nomadic groups. Inuit society for example, to combat greed followed a system where if one member accrued too much, they would be forced to share it with the community. This tells us as well that greed in general was recognized as bad for the community, and that we also acknowledge that while we DO have tendencies that can lead towards murder, we have other tendencies that lead us to keep the peace. For a rather odd but powerful example, in pre-state mesoamerican culture, combat between tribes was ritualized to the point where killing on the battlefield simply wasn't the custom. Why is that? Yes, the religions were bloody and winners were as likely as losers to be sacrificed to the Gods, but that's besides the point: Why the tendency to develop a nonviolent replacement for warfare? As a final point to just ponder: While everyone agrees that a society *could* exist where all members were *solely* devoted to short-term self-interest, why have we not actually seen this happen? If it *could* happen and it doesn't, this suggests something "more kind" about our natures and this leads me to conclude on the surface that I don't buy the typical answer of the necessity of a state to maintain law and order. I'm not buying Leviathan at face value.

The suggestion I believe is made in "Against the Grain" is that the evidence will show that more technically advanced societies historically enslave or conquer (or both) less "advanced" rivals, and that the history of states in general isn't necessarily one where the pursuit of liberty was the romantic goal. In other words, the Siege of Melos, which I've brought up here before is a more typical example in history in regards to the history of states.

As I noted earlier the America natives were stone age until recently, but the six tribes of the Iroquois nation cooperated while other tribes had fierce battles. Certainly learned cooperation where it existed, and fierce worriers for the sake of warfare in the more western tribes.

GEORGE: Yes I concluded they were just trying to sell the book,
which looks pretty thick and is probably pricy.
The illustrations used also remind me of JW literature,
which also postulates a Garden of Eden, past or future.
Does anyone still defend the idea of a matriarchal society in the past,
such as was set out by Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess?
Which I suspect is more poetry and fantasy than based on reality.

DAVID: I don't think so from my readings. Using the example of American natives, called Indians mistakenly, they were stone age and patriarchal, and were in North America from almost 18-20,000 years ago.

dhw: I don’t know Robert Graves’s book, and I don’t have time to do any research on this, but I’m pretty sure there were matriarchal societies in parts of Africa. And apparently there is compelling evidence that the Amazons were real, not mythical!

Wikipedia supports dhw's entry :

https://www.mydomaine.com/matriarchal-societies

There are five more entries below that one

Since no-one seems to know the book I give a taste of it here:

Extract from Robert Graves, The White Goddess,
Appendix II - A talk about the book given in 1957.

<<The most important single fact in the early history of Western religion
and sociology was undoubtedly the gradual suppression of the Lunar
Mother-goddess's inspiratory cult, and its supersession /// by the
busy, rational cult of the Solar God Apollo, who rejected the Orphic
tree-alphabet in favour of the commercial Phoenician alphabet - the
familiar ABC - and initiated European literature and science. It is
no secret that, towards the end of the second millennium BC Apollo's
people captured the Moon-goddess's most revered shrines and oracles,
including Tempe, Delphi and Delos, and so limited her worship that
the great raging Ninefold mountain-mother of Parnassus was at last
converted into a choir, or ballet, or troupe of nine tame little
Nymphs, 'the Muses', with Apollo as their art-director and manager.
Apollo also triumphed over the Italian Goddesses Minerva and Carmenta,
when the Romans went all Greek under the late Republic.>>

--
GPJ