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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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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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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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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: 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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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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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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OfflineLion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #28606813 - 01/02/24 08:59 AM (26 days, 4 hours ago)

Quote:

DividedQuantum said:
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.


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

Maybe culture, and ideology in particular, can take on a life and momentum of its own that makes it 'break free' in a sense from the biological imperatives which caused it to arise. It's an interesting question. In any case I do agree with you that selfishness and acquisitiveness are not the foundational characteristics of human psychology. They're nested in a much deeper bundle of traits, and more pronounced in certain individuals and human groups than others.


--------------------
“Strengthened by contemplation and study,
I will not fear my passions like a coward.
My body I will give to pleasures,
to diversions that I’ve dreamed of,
to the most daring erotic desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear at all, for whenever I will—
and I will have the will, strengthened
as I’ll be with contemplation and study—
at the crucial moments I’ll recover
my spirit as was before: ascetic.”


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #28606823 - 01/02/24 09:20 AM (26 days, 4 hours ago)

I think social construction indicates that a lot (not all, I agree much of behavior is biology) of our culture is non-biological in origin and that in order to make it work there have been centuries of eugenics efforts. 

We are the domesticated version of our kind, not the type that was adapted towards natural survival, if I am not mistaken. Particularly here in the US where I reside.


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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Lion]
    #28606843 - 01/02/24 09:51 AM (26 days, 3 hours ago)

what is deeper than foundational?
storm sewers?


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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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OfflineFreedom
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Kickle]
    #28606925 - 01/02/24 10:55 AM (26 days, 2 hours ago)

I think culture is how we coordinate behavioral adaptations to environment.

Desert culture is about surviving in the desert. Arctic culture is about surviving in the arctic. City culture is about surviving in the city (and cities require diversity), farming culture is about serving in farmlands (which requires more homogeneity).

With technology, we are becoming masters of the environment, and culture can now break free from old survival bonds to the environment. We are creating our own environment. I see our current situation partly as a competition for the direction of our culture, it is free to diversify in many directions. Its like an evolutionary process.


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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?


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


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OfflineLion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Kickle]
    #28606939 - 01/02/24 11:13 AM (26 days, 2 hours ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
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?


Actually I totally agree with the thrust of your argument. Environment is a highly determinative factor in producing culture. When looking at the development of culture over centuries and millennia, I think what we see is environment impinging on biology. Newer cultures are perhaps more abstracted from one specific environment and are the results of things like the development of institutions, mass media, etc. The trajectory of all of these things still seem to have a very large biological component, though.


--------------------
“Strengthened by contemplation and study,
I will not fear my passions like a coward.
My body I will give to pleasures,
to diversions that I’ve dreamed of,
to the most daring erotic desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear at all, for whenever I will—
and I will have the will, strengthened
as I’ll be with contemplation and study—
at the crucial moments I’ll recover
my spirit as was before: ascetic.”


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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.


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


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OfflineFreedom
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Kickle]
    #28606951 - 01/02/24 11:26 AM (26 days, 2 hours ago)

Quote:

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





Cultural Evolution in Animals

Quote:

In recent decades, a burgeoning literature has documented the cultural transmission of behavior through social learning in numerous vertebrate and invertebrate species. One meaning of “cultural evolution in animals” refers to these discoveries, and I present an overview of key findings. I then address the other meaning of the term focused on cultural changes within a lineage. Such changes in humans, described as “cumulative cultural evolution,” have been spectacular, but relatively little attention has yet been paid to the topic in nonhuman animals, other than asserting that the process is unique to humans. A variety of evidence including both controlled experiments and field observations has begun to challenge this view, and in some behavioral domains, notably birdsong, cultural evolution has been studied for many years. In this review, I dissect concepts of cultural evolution and cumulative culture and appraise the accumulating evidence bearing on their nature and significance for evolutionary biology at large.






Man on Earth makes a convincing argument about culture adapting us to environment, IMO


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InvisibleNillion
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #28606959 - 01/02/24 11:32 AM (26 days, 1 hour ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
I find the distinction between biology and environment suspect at scale.




I'm inclined to agree.

Is all behavior geared towards survival?
I wonder.

I think that there are some nuances there and that Freedom and Kickle both have good points that may not be in opposition.


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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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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Are humans naturally acquisitive and always selfish? [Re: Freedom]
    #28607001 - 01/02/24 12:06 PM (26 days, 1 hour ago)

@freedom
Could be the cultural sentiment around animals is changing as humanity gets new looks at itself. In college there was an entire psychology course dedicated to comparing humans to animals and trying to distinguish what makes humans unique. More often than not the studies lead to recognizing an ability an animal species possesses naturally that humans don't. It both highlighted our dependency on external tools but also how our creation and utilization of such tools leads to a greater understanding of the behaviors of other life. Understanding imo leads to a greater sense of connectedness.


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


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