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Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world
    #25545608 -

In any conceivable development of human societies, sooner or later a culture or cultures would have to have come along with the means and intent essentially to conquer the world. And so, naturally, we have history, as it were. In this light, it seems everything must be more or less the way it is. So, it is not unreasonable to believe that "everything must be this way." Looking back, it seems there was a certain inevitability as to how civilization would unfold.

On the other hand, the hypothesis of the multiverse has come into fashion and seems valid enough. By the logic of the multiverse, there would have to be quadrillions of other Earths, essentially identical to our own, on which social and cultural development would have been very different. So, in light of science which appears sound, it becomes very difficult to answer the question whether things must be as they are, or could potentially have gone any number of different ways.

Do you think this dichotomy is sensible? Fundamentally, the question is: must human society be this way, or could human culture possibly have evolved differently?


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum] * 1
    #25546734 -

Things could of evolved differently but they didn’t.  Anything is possible if you think about it.

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: Yellow Pants]
    #25547323 -

Sure, anything ought to be possible. But if the potential exists on a planet for one culture eventually to dominate all the others, how can that option be avoided? How could things have gone differently?


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25547350 -

DividedQuantum said:
Sure, anything ought to be possible. But if the potential exists on a planet for one culture eventually to dominate all the others, how can that option be avoided? How could things have gone differently?


A different belief...
How any 'reality' is varied.
Anything could go differently and has..
Especially, as related to human history which is composed of a great deal of lies, omissions, etc...

Did things historically go as people say? Clearly, as has been show time and time again from archaeological findings, science, and other discoveries, it didn't. So, what is the history of the world per-say? How are you certain things didn't go different? If a person chooses to (right now) believe in a completely different history and chose a different path based on it, quite frankly everything changes.

So, there is no fate or contingency. What is .. Is as you so decide it to be.

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: r00tcmplx]
    #25547415 -

I couldn't disagree more. Reality and the past are definitely NOT just whatever we would like them to be. Our perception of the past determines a lot, but the past happened a certain way -- we do not create it. To suggest otherwise is nonsense.


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum] * 1
    #25547462 -

DividedQuantum said:
I couldn't disagree more. Reality and the past are definitely NOT just whatever we would like them to be.



The past is most certaintly whatever a group of people liked it to be.
This is proven time and time again through archeological digs that prove large swaths of history and books to be false. History is written by the victors is it not? People have lied and covered up large parts of human history that are inconvenient to certain narratives. There are millions of examples one can site. So, what of man made history that is biased/false most times to push a reality/agenda?

Reality is most certainly what one chooses it to be.
What is the reality of an NPC?
What is the reality of an independent thinker?
What is the reality of a person devout to communist China?
What of the reality of an American?
What of the reality of an Athiest American? What of the reality of a devout Baptist American? What of the reality of a Father who thinks the world of his family and his children? What of the reality of one who could care less?

We decide our own realities. History is nothing more than an 'agreed' upon collection of populist narrative driven realities. There are others and you can choose them freely.

So, proof by example.... A myriad.
You're choosing to disagree with this clear and present fact and thereby
demonstrating and reinforcing my point.. An individual chooses their reality and that of the past.

DividedQuantum said:
Our perception of the past determines a lot, but the past happened a certain way -- we do not create it. To suggest otherwise is nonsense.


Your perception is a choice. Your perception of the past is a powerful choice... but a choice nonetheless. One that varies with the range of colors on earth. No two people have the same 'reality' past/present/future. The past happened a certain way according to certain perspectives which all vary. So, there is no singular past... Just a large body of varied recollections as is the present.

To suggest otherwise demonstrates the point I made.
So, thank you for disagreeing Quantum
:heytheresexy:

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25547466 -

DividedQuantum said:
Sure, anything ought to be possible. But if the potential exists on a planet for one culture eventually to dominate all the others, how can that option be avoided? How could things have gone differently?


Potential isn’t a real thing just an assessment in the mind that may or may not turn into reality.  So you’re either dealing in the mind of could ofs, would ofs etc. or you’re dealing in what is and what happened.  For example hitler could of decided not to invade the soviets and instead crush England in full force.  That probably would changed culture as it is now.  Reality is the culmination of previous realities.  Sure there are probabilities and potentials but all that exists in the mind until proven otherwise.

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25547683 -

I think knowing one's history is important, imo.

We are a culmination of billions of years of evolution, and are all connected.

There is no greater act of humility at this point in time for myself...:yesnod:

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25548057 -

DividedQuantum said:
In any conceivable development of human societies, sooner or later a culture or cultures would have to have come along with the means and intent essentially to conquer the world. And so, naturally, we have history, as it were. In this light, it seems everything must be more or less the way it is. So, it is not unreasonable to believe that "everything must be this way." Looking back, it seems there was a certain inevitability as to how civilization would unfold.
...

Do you think this dichotomy is sensible? Fundamentally, the question is: must human society be this way, or could human culture possibly have evolved differently?


You pose several questions.

Yes the history (or usually the written record of the victors) is generally a history of battles; and war has been pretty much continuous somewhere on the planet, along with the rise of civilization. There seems little room for controversy here.

When it comes to: could of, should of, would of, or might have...it would seem there is no basis for proof.

In isolated areas, for periods of time there have been more peaceful interludes.

The degree to which torture has accompanied garden variety killing has varied from culture to culture, and time to time, but has remained an undercurrent along with slavery, and other unsavory practices.

It would seem that overall the Human Species, would appear rather unpleasant, to any alien from a 'truly advanced galactic civilization' so to speak. Ego, & instinct, rule most of our actions, while arrogance generally blinds us to this truth.

If we look at art, both in painting and literature, we find again and again that sensitive, intelligent, and creative people point or hint at this in their work. For instance both Tom Sawyer and Hucklberry Finn by Mark Twain, although, great adventure stories, also are serious social criticism. And this is mild stuff compared what has been written about war, torture, and the prisons of civilized societies.

As to what 'could' be; - the 'intent' of meditation, is to reduce the suffering that attachment to ego causes. Yes, ego formation is necessary. If we were to remain unindividuated, like a baby, we would end up nonfunctional in the back ward of an institution. But the downside of ego is the unconscious anxiety caused by the unconscious feeling of separation, fear of death, & the desperate attempt to maximize selfish gratification, as a compensation. So just as language is necessary for the human primate to maximize intelligence, meditation is necessary to minimize selfishness and reestablish connection after individuation, but as most societies are ignorant in this regard, suffering tends to be the norm for the species and individual.

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25548150 -

I think you jumped of from massive assumption and got further away.

I can conceive a development that doesnt end I  a conquered world.

I look at natural world and see more symbiosis than not.

If it were that concievable we wouldnt evenb have started.


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Just a fool on the hill.

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: laughingdog]
    #25550128 -

laughingdog said:
DividedQuantum said:
In any conceivable development of human societies, sooner or later a culture or cultures would have to have come along with the means and intent essentially to conquer the world. And so, naturally, we have history, as it were. In this light, it seems everything must be more or less the way it is. So, it is not unreasonable to believe that "everything must be this way." Looking back, it seems there was a certain inevitability as to how civilization would unfold.
...

Do you think this dichotomy is sensible? Fundamentally, the question is: must human society be this way, or could human culture possibly have evolved differently?


You pose several questions.

Yes the history (or usually the written record of the victors) is generally a history of battles; and war has been pretty much continuous somewhere on the planet, along with the rise of civilization. There seems little room for controversy here.

When it comes to: could of, should of, would of, or might have...it would seem there is no basis for proof.

In isolated areas, for periods of time there have been more peaceful interludes.

The degree to which torture has accompanied garden variety killing has varied from culture to culture, and time to time, but has remained an undercurrent along with slavery, and other unsavory practices.

It would seem that overall the Human Species, would appear rather unpleasant, to any alien from a 'truly advanced galactic civilization' so to speak. Ego, & instinct, rule most of our actions, while arrogance generally blinds us to this truth.

If we look at art, both in painting and literature, we find again and again that sensitive, intelligent, and creative people point or hint at this in their work. For instance both Tom Sawyer and Hucklberry Finn by Mark Twain, although, great adventure stories, also are serious social criticism. And this is mild stuff compared what has been written about war, torture, and the prisons of civilized societies.

As to what 'could' be; - the 'intent' of meditation, is to reduce the suffering that attachment to ego causes. Yes, ego formation is necessary. If we were to remain unindividuated, like a baby, we would end up nonfunctional in the back ward of an institution. But the downside of ego is the unconscious anxiety caused by the unconscious feeling of separation, fear of death, & the desperate attempt to maximize selfish gratification, as a compensation. So just as language is necessary for the human primate to maximize intelligence, meditation is necessary to minimize selfishness and reestablish connection after individuation, but as most societies are ignorant in this regard, suffering tends to be the norm for the species and individual.



Yes, and given that, it's hard to see general outlines as having been different. Of course, we existed as egalitarian hunter-gatherers for something like 150,000 years (at least, it now appears), so to argue that stratification is necessary or strictly inevitable is questionable at best. However, there was a power vacuum there and one might argue that sooner or later it had to be filled. And that is what motivates me to wonder about the inevitability or lack thereof regarding what has transpired on this planet.


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: pineninja]
    #25550135 -

pineninja said:
I think you jumped of from massive assumption and got further away.

I can conceive a development that doesnt end I  a conquered world.

I look at natural world and see more symbiosis than not.

If it were that concievable we wouldnt evenb have started.



Your point is well taken, but as I noted in the previous post, there was an inherent power vacuum generated by the constellation of human societies in relation to specific resources. What I can't figure out is whether that vacuum could have been neutralized by factors that never in fact developed, but could have. To me it is an interesting question, although very difficult to answer.


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25550417 -

DividedQuantum said:
Yes, and given that, it's hard to see general outlines as having been different.



Quite the contrary. His exposition examples how the general outline can be different at a moment's notice had people the will to seek out an alternative. Conflict, torture, slavery, power grabs, politics, manipulation... If you allow yourself to be a victim of it, such becomes your reality.. If you fight it, thus becomes the alternative :


The potential is always there. There is no vacuum besides the one that often exists in the majority of people not to select and assert an alternative. No Mystery theater. No Fate beyond the one you chose or don't chose.

DividedQuantum said:
Of course, we existed as egalitarian hunter-gatherers for something like 150,000 years (at least, it now appears), so to argue that stratification is necessary or strictly inevitable is questionable at best. However, there was a power vacuum there and one might argue that sooner or later it had to be filled. And that is what motivates me to wonder about the inevitability or lack thereof regarding what has transpired on this planet.


Make a decision and put your energy and work towards it and that's what becomes of your reality. Be an NPC and let others dictate the past/present/future for you and thus becomes it. What you chose to believe about the past shapes your future thus why it is such a manipulated construct.

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25550428 -

DividedQuantum said:
Your point is well taken, but as I noted in the previous post, there was an inherent power vacuum generated by the constellation of human societies in relation to specific resources. What I can't figure out is whether that vacuum could have been neutralized by factors that never in fact developed, but could have. To me it is an interesting question, although very difficult to answer.


There is no power vacuum beyond an individual deciding not to utilize their power/free-will and lending it to another in service of that individual's goals. You make choices in this life. The choice to be an NPC and blind slave/servant to another is a choice. The outcomes, when transmuted through human traits/characteristics are expected. There's nothing difficult about the question or answer. There does seem to be some aversion towards accepting a plain and present reality.

You make the reality you want.
You can also chose to let someone make it for you.
The past shapes the present.
The stories of history are filled with falsehoods.
So, if you blindly let someone dictate and fill your head with falsehoods towards certain agendas thus will become you.

Be a zombie drone NPC in service to others and their reality or shape and forge your own.... That's your choice and answer

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25552521 -

Re: DQ, re: "However, there was a power vacuum there and one might argue that sooner or later it had to be filled. And that is what motivates me to wonder about the inevitability or lack thereof regarding what has transpired on this planet."

Again I see 2 aspects.

1) is there any meaning to " inevitability"

2) Does evolution repeatedly produce similar solutions

As regards (1): determinism is associated with Newton and the idea of "the clockwork universe", which has been supplanted by chaos theory and the "butterfly effect". The implication here is that both 'determinism' and " inevitability" are flawed concepts.
Before all of this, there was a Zen Koan with a similar question
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Gate/Hyakujo%27s_Fox
(the  answer (verbal portion at least) by the way, is that an enlightened person is one with causation---not free of it, or simply bound by it)
Hence a dualistic interpretation is avoided.

As regards (2): In a general way, do the forces of nature/evolution tend to fill unexploited niches?, I would say yes. Are we much more like all other animals than we like to admit? again  I would say yes. Which means we are driven by hormones, neurotransmitters, and instinct primarily. However our wrinkled prefrontal cortex gave us the ability to plan and engage in complex cognitive abstraction, resulting in agriculture & then civilization which freed the human primate from being part of the food chain, and from the balancing effects of being symbiotically related to the natural environment. Without these necessary restrictions, of which humankind is largely unaware, the animal instincts have run amok. This very general outline suggests a high probability for the present state.

However if we take into account how delicately balanced life and the universe are, it is easy to imagine a plague, virus, or asteroid (among many such possible examples), causing the whole scenario to turn out differently. Hence number (1) above.

Edited by laughingdog (10/20/18 12:30 PM)

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: laughingdog]
    #25552635 -

laughingdog said:
Re: DQ, re: "However, there was a power vacuum there and one might argue that sooner or later it had to be filled. And that is what motivates me to wonder about the inevitability or lack thereof regarding what has transpired on this planet."

Again I see 2 aspects.

1) is there any meaning to " inevitability"

2) Does evolution repeatedly produce similar solutions

As regards (1): determinism is associated with Newton and the idea of "the clockwork universe", which has been supplanted by chaos theory and the "butterfly effect". The implication here is that both 'determinism' and " inevitability" are flawed concepts.
Before all of this, there was a Zen Koan with a similar question
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Gate/Hyakujo%27s_Fox
(the  answer (verbal portion at least) by the way, is that an enlightened person is one with causation---not free of it, or simply bound by it)
Hence a dualistic interpretation is avoided.

As regards (2): In a general way, do the forces of nature/evolution tend to fill unexploited niches?, I would say yes. Are we much more like all other animals than we like to admit? again  I would say yes. Which means we are driven by hormones, neurotransmitters, and instinct primarily. However our wrinkled prefrontal cortex gave us the ability to plan and engage in complex cognitive abstraction, resulting in agriculture & then civilization which freed the human primate from being part of the food chain, and from the balancing effects of being symbiotically related to the natural environment. Without these necessary restrictions, of which humankind is largely unaware, the animal instincts have run amok. This very general outline suggests a high probability for the present state.

However if we take into account how delicately balanced life and the universe are, it is easy to imagine a plague, virus, or asteroid (among many such possible examples), causing the whole scenario to turn out differently. Hence number (1) above.



I am in agreement that the notion of 'inevitability' is dubious, but on the other hand, cultural evolution, as Marvin Harris points out, happens in a more or less deterministic fashion with respect to resource availability, reproduction, intensification, memetic evolution, etc. Nothing is set in stone, and Nature is not deterministic at bottom, but cultural evolution will follow very specific lines under certain conditions involving the criteria I just mentioned. Agriculture, counterintuitively, is a very complicated subject, and did not in fact lead to more leisure. The notion that it freed us is incorrect, and it was adopted in a large-scale way only extremely rarely in the ethnographic record, since it was not truly adaptive in the majority of cases. But that is a subject for a different thread. You may be right that my emphasis on inevitability is flawed, but then, I look at it from a perspective of curiosity about whether certain historical turning points could have gone differently, or whether they would have happened in a similar form if they had. An impossible question to answer, perhaps, but an important one, imo.


--------------------
Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25553261 -

if one looks at one instance of genocide, it doesn't seem inevitable, but a question of various random factors. Hence in the 1950s, shortly after WWll ,when movies had shorts,
and there were perhaps also documentaries of WWll, the phrase: "this must never happen again" was used in relation to Hitler's death camps. Indeed they seem somewhat unique, but we now know genocide is not unique, and even was a feature of this county's history, which those who used the phrase: "this must never happen again", conveniently overlooked. I don't know how times it has happened, but in the last hundred years, Stalin, Cambodia, Bosnia, probably a few places in Africa readily come to mind, as well as in our own back yard (going back about 200 years)  giving smallpox blankets to the Native Americans. (if one goes to  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history ; it is obvious that I only know of the tip of the iceberg)

As regards agriculture, as it pertains to this aspect of the question, what it seems to have made possible, as part of the civilization package, was standing armies, without which very large scale brutality was not possible

Looked at from this point of view, I agree with you that man's aggressive, xenophobic, and greedy nature when combined with intelligence (of a sort) was bound to turn out badly. Now one can speculate whether like the dinosaurs we will go extinct, be replaced by or merge with, AI, or something else... 

Is there a book you recommend on the finer points you make about agriculture?

Edited by laughingdog (10/20/18 05:54 PM)

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: laughingdog]
    #25555404 -

Good points. Indeed, war, and thus genocide, were not possible before the stratification of various societies due to agriculture. One could posit that the darker elements of human nature were kept in a sort of check over the eons during which we remained as hunter-gatherers. As soon as that house of cards fell, the baser elements of our nature were given free reign.


Here are some good sources that include descriptions of the facts pertaining to the development of intensive agriculture:

Berman, Morris. Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Gowdy, John (ed.). Limited Wants, Unlimited Means. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1998.

Harris, Marvin. Cannibals and Kings. New York: Random House, Inc., 1977.

Harris, Marvin. Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going. New York: Harper Collins, 1989.

Lee, R. B., and Irven Devore. Man the Hunter. Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1968.


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25555815 -

Thank you for the book list. It’s been awhile since I’ve read Marvin. I will look up some of the others.

Part of what you call a  “house of cards” seems to have been group size. It comes under the heading of ‘Dunbar's number’, here’s a book & wikipedia reference. I recommend the book for more detail. **

Apparently hunter gatherer groups varied a lot. The one amateurs like me know a little about are mainly the bushmen of Africa, who seem to be particularly nice people. Whether this is a universal characteristic of hunter gatherers, I don’t know.

I think another part of the “house of cards”, was how the group size was kept low. I think both, years of infant nursing reduced fertility in the female, with the help of some infanticide, accomplished this.

It seems to me, that as Dunbar says, always being surrounded by people who feel like family, as opposed to the alienation often felt in todays big cities, is perhaps necessary for optimal human mental/emotional health.

Perhaps any animal “released” from the constraints of its environment of origin, (which it had evolved to fit reasonably well), will find itself engaging in maladaptive behavior, if it suddenly finds it self in new environments without the previous ’constraints’, some of which provided useful boundaries. This is of course what happened to humans. Certainly we have what may be called “darker or baser elements”, but then again ‘nature’ herself is very cruel, as a perusal of parasites on Youtube shows.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brain+controlling+parasites
(about 50% of species are parasites and carnivores routinely eat their prey while it is still alive.)
But how much worse we are, I don’t know. ‘Nature’ herself seems totally amoral.
Perhaps one could wonder whether the brain of which we are so proud, is not like the peacocks’ tails, and the stags’ antlers (which sometimes get entangled during fights for mates, with the consequence of both stags dying ****), aren’t perhaps at this point not only not yet optimized, but perhaps partly actually an impediment.

The above thoughts seem to make some sense, when we recall, what we already know, namely that: Evolution makes do with the best solutions, available, from a somewhat random mixing from a pre-existing tool kit, for a situation that presently exists, in a limited area; with no ability to predict the future.

If evolution was able to be predictive, reducing birthrate, as brain size increased in humans, would seem to have been an intelligent decision.

**
Dunbar, Robin (1998). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language (1st Harvard University Press paperback ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

****
https://www.google.com/search?biw=1142&bih=680&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=_O_MW_OYB4Cv0PEP3LKa-AI&q=dead+deer%27+antlers%2C+entangled+&oq=dead+deer%27+antlers%2C+entangled+&gs_l=img.3...50316.58501..59021...0.0..0.112.529.0j5......0....1..gws-wiz-img.FPoqM_UOV-k

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: laughingdog]
    #25557590 -

Very good points. Yes, I think the balance that was inherent in hunter-gatherer lifeways was based essentially on group size, which was ten or so to a camp and a few dozen to a band. If there were any arguments or if fighting was incipient, hgs could simply engage in what is called "fission-fusion," in which the individual goes off with a different sub-group. It has been called the most effective method of dispute resolution in the history of the world.

Hgs did vary a lot, and they were most certainly not all nice. The Yanomamo of the Amazon were/are a brutal culture whose entire ethos was based on bitter violence. They fought all the time, and were a very aggressive and mean people. There are others like this.

Indeed, lactational amenorrhea kept fertility low, and infanticide was common. (It existed in as much as 50% of human groups to at least some extent). This ties into group size remaining reasonable, as you point out.

Mental health surely was more copacetic among hgs. This is for a number of reasons, the main one being the one you point out: we evolved to live in such a group, based on close family ties, and when we left that situation aberration ensued. This ties into your point about leaving the constraints of one's environment of origin. Some of us surely resemble the tiger at the zoo neurotically pacing its cage back and forth.

I agree that evolution, while it seems to feel its way through natural selection with some orderliness, is rather blind and dumb. Your point is well taken: as brain size increased, it might have been nice to offset it with decreased fertility, in order to maintain sanity for the ecosystem, or at least keep us out of such awful trouble.

And thanks for the book recommendation, I'll check that out. :thumbup:


--------------------
Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #25557628 -

yes the city as zoo seems a good analogy or metaphor
along with reduced fertility improved emotional processing for complex situations would have been nice;
and as has been pointed out by many, who are concerned with the effects of junk food on health, our instincts to devour sweets and fat, have backfired in the civilized environment of plenty, and 'pretend food' for profit.

Thanks for getting me started, I ordered these books used, as they were affordable

People of the Stone Age: Hunter-Gatherers and Early Farmers (Illustrated History of Humankind, Vol. 2)  Burenhult, Goran

The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture
Cohen, Professor Mark Nathan

The Emergence of Agriculture (Scientific American Library)
Smith, Bruce D.

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
Scott, James C.

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Re: Fate vs. contingency in the history of the world [Re: laughingdog]
    #25557815 -

Sure thing. Those look promising. I would also look at Cannibals and Kings by Harris, as he gives particularly good insights in it.


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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