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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Lion] * 3
    #28606882 - 01/02/24 10:29 AM (26 days, 3 hours ago)

Culture emerges from biology. It isn't some synthetic thing superimposed on our inherent nature; it's downstream of our genetic characteristics.

What leads you to this conclusion? When I look at biology I see obvious connections to the environment in which that biology exists, yet biology does not directly control. Which strongly indicates to me that biology is not 1-directional, imposing a downstream flow, but rather multi-directional with lots of give and take, dynamism, and change.

A moth that develops spots in response to soot on trees seems to be a response to changes in the environment. It's biology followed environmental changes, not the other way around. Saying that biology created the spots is technically accurate, they are a biological feature, but it really neglects the way other factors are entwined in such an arising.

Culture is likewise entwined with environment. One cannot say city life is the same as living on a farm, or in the jungle. Nor are the cultures of the many varied environments on Earth the same. If culture emerges from biology alone, why would this be?

Living in industrialized societies for example leads to changes in reproductive practices. This is visible amongst immigrants. Why would moving into a new cultural lead to changes in "fundamental" biological processes, if biology is driving culture?


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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Nillion] * 2
    #28606364 - 01/01/24 07:31 PM (26 days, 17 hours ago)

I think the urge to fit in socially is behind the insecurity based predatory fantasy marketing and eventual acquisition of most stuff.

Besides that we have an inclination to hunt and be stealthy which is a kind of being sneaky, and that adaptive sneakiness also can be warped into taking from others or from the community and getting away with it.

The term selfish is like the term vain. It wraps all sorts of behavior that may have socially difficult side effects, but some people really are just that, selfish and vain, and that's that.


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:confused: _ :brainfart:🧠  _ :finger:


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Invisiblenooneman
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum] * 2
    #28607733 - 01/02/24 09:15 PM (25 days, 16 hours ago)

In psychology, it's fairly well studied that different people show different levels of prosocial behavior. Some people show little or none, others show a lot, most people are in the middle.

There are plenty reasons why prosocial behavior is beneficial for individuals. People who you help might help you in return, it can create social bonds which are incredibly important for finding lovers and jobs, it might make people think more highly of you which could benefit you socially, it can lead to promotions in the workplace because people want to work with others who they perceive as being nice or enjoyable to work with, and on a large scale it can help genes to survive by increasing the likelihood that a larger social group survives even if a single individual does not.

However, selfishness is also incredibly beneficial (for obvious reasons), and sometimes prosocial behavior can be useless.

Because both behaviors can be useful, we have people in our society who are selfish, and others who are very prosocial. Some people are maximizing one of the two traits, but most people fall in the middle.


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InvisibleDividedQuantumM
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Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? * 1
    #28606225 - 01/01/24 06:12 PM (26 days, 19 hours ago)

Modern economic theory depends on the axiom that man is naturally acquisitive and always acts for selfish reasons, ultimately. Most modern humans subscribe to this assumption.

There is in fact no genetic imperative making humans naturally selfish and acquisitive. Indeed, for hundreds of thousands of years we were a cooperative, non-materialistic species. If, for the sake of perspective, planetary evolution took a thousand years, human society as currently constituted would have lasted for less than a day. So, this "natural" acquisitiveness and material hoarding is the exception, not the rule.

We are not programmed by our DNA to be like this. We are programmed by our culture to be like this.

So, in contradistinction to economic and biological ideas, anthropology would tend to indicate that for most of our history we were not inherently acquisitive and always selfish.

Would anyone like to offer a solution to this discrepancy?


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici


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InvisibleDividedQuantumM
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Nillion] * 1
    #28606319 - 01/01/24 06:59 PM (26 days, 18 hours ago)

Good points. What it really comes down to is the fact that modern human societies, backed up by academia and science, treat human selfishness and the tendency to have as much as possible for oneself as a universal. When in fact, this behavior is only a small particular when considering the anthropological record.


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici


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Offlinelostintimenspc
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: redgreenvines] * 1
    #28606501 - 01/01/24 09:49 PM (26 days, 15 hours ago)

Compassion can correlate with a lack of power and a certain type of selfishness. You should help others because life is good and it doesn't affect your power.


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LSD, mushrooms and DMT are different structural levels within the same magically simulated mystery sometimes blandly called 'life'

Your life, your call.


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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Freedom] * 1
    #28606937 - 01/02/24 11:05 AM (26 days, 2 hours ago)

Maybe? We don't typically call animal survival behaviors culture?


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Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain


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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Lion] * 1
    #28606946 - 01/02/24 11:21 AM (26 days, 2 hours ago)

I find the distinction between biology and environment suspect at scale. A moth developing spots is trying to hide from predators. But it developed spots because of tree coloration changing. Where does the biological imperative begin, and the environmental one take over? Where did the environmental one begin to influence biology? It's way too mixed for such distinctions to be much more than arbitrary IMO

But if one is trying to cease a behavior, such arbitration, whether it is biological or environmental, can help lead to significant change.


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Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain


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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Nillion] * 1
    #28606985 - 01/02/24 11:48 AM (26 days, 1 hour ago)

before sailing ships and imperialism every 50 miles had a different culture.
some were fishers, some hunters, some gatherers,
some cultivators, some foragers, some had slaves,
some were slaves, some had mushrooms.
Some ate insects, some feared insects,
some domesticated cows and dogs, some tattooed their faces,
I couldn't list them all - but cultures were based upon local ecologies as much as on human biologies.
and then there was cross pollination of ideas and interbreeding.

and long after that there was imperialism, money...


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:confused: _ :brainfart:🧠  _ :finger:


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum] * 1
    #28607031 - 01/02/24 12:24 PM (26 days, 1 hour ago)

Mythology has often claimed that civilization was taught to our species by another. I have some beliefs along those lines that others would consider pretty far out, but they don't involve magic beings or aliens, just different forms of intelligent life on Earth.

Of course that's all trivia and a whole different topic, but I don't believe that we have the clearest picture of our ancient past.


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OfflineFreedom
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Kickle] * 1
    #28607032 - 01/02/24 12:25 PM (26 days, 1 hour ago)



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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Kickle] * 1
    #28607221 - 01/02/24 02:33 PM (25 days, 22 hours ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
Do you think there is an actual origin point? Or do you think our conception of origin is more akin to rounding off pi to 3.14?



Depends on the context and the thing being discussed in terms of origination.

In general I know more about transmission than ultimate origin and I know likewise that even the most tenable of explanations can only rest upon the understanding of the information one has, thus I cannot be sure of anything at all, but I am sure that I know what I think and believe and that is relative and subject to change.

I wish I was more intelligent on the daily.
It may be that my belief is nothing more than ignorance.


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum] * 1
    #28607670 - 01/02/24 08:18 PM (25 days, 17 hours ago)

As mentioned, I am not a man easily convinced of anything but this is also not the place to get into the details of my beliefs about these things. Here the basic information about the bottleneck in relation to timing and events sequence that relates to the elements I mentioned previously.


My best estimation is that the bottleneck occurred in relation to the event that triggered the Younger Dryas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

And that human populations were significantly diminished at that time. 

This corresponds to Late Plesitocene extinctions in the Americas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Pleistocene_extinctions#North_America

Not only did it hit North America hard...

I believe the event sequence wiped out the Sebilians for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebilian

and the Qadans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qadan_culture

Whose tools traces disappear around the same time as the Sebilians. Even the range for the disappearance of the Harifian culture hits about 10.8K years ago. All of these Egyptian cultures disappearance includes the same range for about 11K years ago. The event didn't just hit North America hard. After it those not wiped out by the event had to deal with something quite similar to a volcanic winter.

I don't think this is the place to discuss this topic though and I'm not inclined to outline and present it formally online. These are just examples of personal beliefs about aspects of our story, the tale of our species in relation to the history and future of this planet. However to the best of my understanding the origin of these cultural transmissions comes from limited  populations that endured the Younger Dryas and the event that triggered it.

A few populations also escaped the event, in Australia for example,  some of the Inca ancestors appear to have survived underground in a cave near Titicaca, but for the most part the human world was utterly decimated by a catastrophic event and a surprise ice age.

Wanna see a crater I think relates to the event in question?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iturralde_crater

An example of a myth relating to the event in question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hou_Yi

For the record Wikipedia only has a few elements of the story listed, there is more out there if you want to look for it.

That's probably all I am going to write about this for now, it relates to private theories and such that I'd rather not put on the internet.


Edited by Nillion (01/02/24 08:19 PM)


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: blessed] * 1
    #28608033 - 01/03/24 06:39 AM (25 days, 6 hours ago)

Unconditional love is
Quote:

blessed said:
Most people (around 90-99% of all people) that say they love someone (regardless of who it is), say "I love You" and demonstrate their love for someone else, do it from a selfish position.  That is, if person A says that they love person B, but then person A received absolutely nothing back from person B, you would find that person's A "love" would soon end.



I love everybody and expect nothing and I still think that is pretty self serving. It if didn't help make me happy and help me find peace I doubt I would have pursued the ability to love neighbors like myself. I'm not sure that selfless love can even exist and I write that as a parent who wakes up early and makes food for children to help them prepare for the day. Even when I serve others I also serve myself.


Edited by Nillion (01/03/24 06:42 AM)


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Invisiblepineninja
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum] * 1
    #28616953 - 01/10/24 09:40 PM (17 days, 15 hours ago)

Naturally speaking we are far more symbiotic than we are taught....if we aren't then we are the first organism I'm aware of that doesn't have a give take existence.

Though with a culture that effectively promotes pissing in the well we are perverting this fundamental nature and due to the imbalance it has created we may well destroy ourselves.

Without this base symbiotic potential we wouldn't be here having this debate.

If one believes that we are never to correct ourselves because we are without the tools we are doomed.
It'll take an awaking to realise that we have a role and are more than capable of performing  it.





It all begins within a belief.
Taught by the never ending competitive narrative.
Reinforced deliberately by educational deceit.
You must win your Darwinistic comparative.

This low level crude explanation.
Hailed as one giant step forward.
Is just another symptom.
When conciosnesses are left unexplored.

A narrowing of all potential.
Allows the mangagers to get you stood in line.
Fueled billionaires jet transcontinental.
While scientists get lost in time.

Where tangibility can rest only in physicality.
When constructed atoms need be newly discovered.
Why Newton needs a destructibility.
Collecting any truths we can recover.

It all begins within a belief.
That ones separation can be measured.
A successful chart to bring relief.
To it you must be tethered.


--------------------
Just a fool on the hill.


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Offlinemkcobain
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: redgreenvines] * 1
    #28618346 - 01/12/24 06:14 AM (16 days, 7 hours ago)

The natural habitat of a human is clans of a few hundered members. Is it selfish of a member sacrificing its life for the continuity of the clan? What is the "self" here the clan or the member? If you find this selfish then your answer is "yes".


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #28606301 - 01/01/24 06:45 PM (26 days, 18 hours ago)

I've seen jealousy in young children, as well as generosity so I think that we have some strong instinct for both behaviors and as you mention we are programmed by our culture, I suspect in a way that creates an imbalance in terms of these two instincts.

Examples of kindness are often a decent inoculation against the infectious disease of indifference and coldness. People who are shown love are more likely to be loving I think, so on and so forth. It's not really a solution, but it gives individuals a chance to try to make the world a better place one choice at a time. I also think that our behavior and examples speak more loudly than our words.

Speaking of the ruthlessness of our society and how we are taught to seek to compete against one another instead of work together, I think this article written, again, by Albert Einstein, has more than a few good points.


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #28606314 - 01/01/24 06:56 PM (26 days, 18 hours ago)

Quote:

Einstein said: An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.





In the article he observes that competition against one another has numerous detrimental effects. He also predicts the economic collapses we have repeatedly seen, which have been dealt with by using bailouts.

Isn't that funny? That when our capitalist society has repeatedly failed to be sustainable we keep using socialism to repair it.

I think so.

I wonder how many people in the USA who claim to hate socialism cashed their Covid checks?

Most of them, I'd wager.
Making every one of them who did so a practicing socialist.


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #28606345 - 01/01/24 07:16 PM (26 days, 18 hours ago)

Indeed, our species has relied heavily upon cooperation to survive for most of its existence.

It is interesting that the wild type people of the past are considered more magnanimous by nature than the domesticated form of our species is today.

Still there was more cannibalism in the past, so it's complicated.

Speaking of people eating...

I'm reminded of the parable about Hell being a place where people seated at a table are trying to feel themselves with spoons too long to reach their mouths, they all suffer from hunger. In the parable Heaven is identical but the difference is that the people are feeding one another.


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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: lostintimenspc]
    #28606627 - 01/02/24 04:50 AM (26 days, 8 hours ago)

Quote:

lostintimenspc said:
Compassion can correlate with a lack of power and a certain type of selfishness. You should help others because life is good and it doesn't affect your power.



knowing this to be true, what is your recipe for achieving compassion?


--------------------
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