I'm currently reading this book about how evolution has occurred over the past 10,000 years since 'civilization' occured. It talks about the genetic selection that has taken place since the advent of agriculture. And how culture has effected evolution. I think in opposition to SJ Gould and others' claim that not much human evolution has occurred in about 40,000 - 100,000 years.
One scary chapter, but a relevant one, is how agriculture came with the rise of statism. And how people wwere selected for and bred like crops and livestock. This included cutting down on natural competition, much like how cows and plants are not competitive in farms.
He gives all kinds of evidence for differences in skeletal structure and brain sizes since then. (Much of the book is like Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel.) And even has some interesting theories about introgression between Humans and neanderthals that may have caused us to pick up language ability. Each of us probably has some neanderthal in them.
Of course, there are many other excellent point in this book. I don't know if he is sympathetic to primitivism (like many who talk about pre-agriculture), but he sure seems to be sympathetic to anarchism. Speaking of the state in a way that describes them as the sadists and human farmers they are. (particularly around page 110). He says the first states lowered standards of living for most. Just as agriculture probably made people sicker than they were under hunting and gathering, because of diets we weren't genetically used to (but later become more so). Over time people became more genetically 'tame' and also displayed neoteny (prolonged obedience usually limited to youth).
There is also a lot of talk about time preferences and how they change with the rise of property.
I still have much left to read, but it is a good book so far.
As always, I have the book on scribd for any who would like to read it.
I recommend this book. It is not even tangentially connected to economics, but I think many participants on this forum would be interested to read it anyway. It tells how humans are the most internally differentiated species after dogs and how human evolution in the last 10,000 years has been far, far speedier than at any time before. This for a variety of factors, including increase in population size (benefitial mutations occur rarely, but spread easily even among huge populations once they occur). I think it is useful as a corrective to some of the things you will hear primal eating people say. I have a lot of time for them and are pretty much convinced by their arguments, but I do not think they are aware that when they say stuff like 'grain has only been around for the last 10,000 years of hundreds of thousands years of human evolution' their argument isn't as nearly as strong as they think it is, as the speed of evolution has not been anything like constant. We have in fact adapted to grain (witness four times lower diabetes rates among grain munching Europeans compared to among Navajo when grain munching) albeit perhaps not to the extent we would have liked. Interview with the author.
Does anyone have a PDF of an ePub of the book? I don't want to have to log in with Facebook to download it from Scribd.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
I got it here: link.
I disagree that human evolution has increased in the rate of increase. I think it is going at the same rate it always has but as the environment gets more complicated, evolution is influenced by these external factors, which appears like it is speeding up. I have not completed the book yet, just replying to the original post.
For example man might have spent 4000 years trying to adapt to cold northernly climates. Only to invent advanced heating and thermal housing and no longer require those attributes caused by cold climates. This could contribute to a change in environment that could cause an evolutionary change over the next 100s of years. Not that this has occured I was just making up an example.
I also disagree that agriculture necessarily had anything to do with the rise of statism. Man could have been practicing agriculture for 100s or 1000s of years in some regions before statism took hold there.
Does it seem weird that memmetics isn't being discussed in this thread? The reason why I ask the question is the fact that I think one could easily see Statism in all its forms as a kind of meme or a collection of memes which reinforce each other. So, in reality it's not a matter of humans engineering humans, rather memes engineering humans for memes (not literally or consciously). Just food for thought.
"The power of liberty going forward is in decentralization. Not in leaders, but in decentralized activism. In a market process." -- liberty student
I disagree that human evolution has increased in the rate of increase. I think it is going at the same rate it always has but as the environment gets more complicated, evolution is influenced by these external factors, which appears like it is speeding up.
Well I think that biologists hold that even in animal species evolution is never constant. Instead it is for the majority of the time very slow, but can greatly speed up when evolutionary pressures change and intensify, that is when you have a crisis for the species of some sort.
I don't go for much of what the book has much to say about the state either. The author believes the rise of the state decreased the levels of violence, which doesn't sound terribly likely to me. Also I don't see why the existence of state should foremost select for docile character. You can easily make up reasons why it was likely to select for any number of character traits. In any case the book doesn't dwell on this, it is far from being central to the text.
I also disagree that agriculture necessarily had anything to do with the rise of statism.
I think it is related but it's a mistake to see agriculture qua agriculture as the culprit. The State rose alongside the rise of capital stocks. Prior to the rise of capital stocks, the only way to plunder someone was to literally eat them. Hans Hoppe in a lecture on YT discusses how cannibalism is the original principle of parasitism within humans and that this was gradually eradicated as we moved out of primitive conditions.
But as the capacity to produce capital stocks (wealth) has increased, so has the capacity and drive to plunder those stocks (State). The agricultural revolution is connected to this because it resulted in a sudden, dramatic increase in the capacity of humans to build capital stocks. Semi-perishable grains could be stored for several seasons with the right storage technology, enabling the accumulation of massive grain stockpiles. In addition to feeding humans, these stockpiles could feed domesticated livestock, giving rise to what I think of as "primitive capitalists": farmers who could continue to feed themselves and their cattle even through droughts and famines.
The author believes the rise of the state decreased the levels of violence, which doesn't sound terribly likely to me.
It may have decreased violence but what it has increased is terror. The State is founded squarely on terror, the terror of being publicly hung or beheaded ... or being imprisoned for a few decades with "Bubba". The idea that violence is the "ultimate evil" is part and parcel of the Statist "meme" (since someone mentioned memes). Human beings are capable of handling violent situations, just like we are capable of handling fire. Your brain has all the necessary circuitry to handle violence.
Violence is not the ultimate evil. The ultimate evil is to live in subjugation, terror and fear, to have one's productive energies ripped away and diverted from one's own genetic offspring and put to use supporting the genetic offspring of another. This is the State. It is a highly organized system of indirect cuckoldry.
How do you think successful genes can spread through the population so rapidly? Do the math. The successful gene must be propagated from a single source and from the offspring of that source. Those possessing it must literally father more children than their competitors. So, yes, the State has played a role in "accelerating" human evolution but only in the same way that alpha male primates have their evolution accelerated by male-to-male competition.
As an aside (yes, I'm getting down a rabbit-trail), this goes to show the absurdity of women in politics. I don't have a moral problem with it... if a woman wants to be in politics, by all means, she should do what she likes. But the idea that it's ordinary or natural for women to be a 50/50 composition of the political class with men is just downright silly. Politics - from Nature's point-of-view - is about one thing and one thing only: offspring.
The sexual privileges that come with high political status are the vehicle by which the politically powerful have genetically out-competed their subjugated rivals. The advantages of plunder are of reproductive benefit to the female only through proxy of her male children (their ability to use that wealth to magnify their reproductive capacity). Additional wealth beyond what is needed to be well-nourished is of only marginal reproductive advantage to the female (she might be able to attract a genetically better male but that's it). Politics - like labor and production - is primarily a male activity. I'll qualify this statement once again for the hyper-sensitive that this is a descriptive statement not a prescriptive one. I have no problem with women in politics or the workplace but the fact remains that it's not "normal" or "natural" for them to be there... our biology is not structured in that way.
Also I don't see why the existence of state should foremost select for docile character.
Because if you fight the King, you will die and you will not pass on your rambunctious genes.
Clayton -
One scary chapter, but a relevant one, is how agriculture came with the rise of statism.
Yes. That's why I say the only anarcho-capitalist societies have been H/Gs.
Clayton:Because if you fight the King, you will die and you will not pass on your rambunctious genes.
I thought about something similar a few years ago. Think about all the physically superior and intellectually superior men that were killed in World War II. They might have been able to produce offspring before they were sent off, but even those children grew up without dads. This is definately to the advantage of the elite class; that women had to raise their children without their husbands/boyfriends certainly pivoted how "society" evolved after the war.
Also, think of the men who survived. They went through militaristic indoctrination and it certainly affected how they would raise their children and how they conducted business at work. (I have a theory that much of the corporate bureaucracy today is a result of the militarization of the minds of the men who went back to work after the war.)
That's a description not proof. I could just as easily claim that if you do what the king tells you to you will half starve and, weakened, perish in an epidemic or just die fighting his wars, thus killing off your docile genes and leaving room for more sneaky genes that, in the interest of self-preservation, do not balk from desertion or hidding produce from tax collectors.
leaving room for more sneaky genes that, in the interest of self-preservation, do not balk from desertion or hidding produce from tax collectors.
But you've missed the point - rambunctiousness is the opposite of sneakiness. Watch any old Western movie and its depiction of the brawler. There are brawlers today just as there were then (though I doubt they looked anything like Hollywood depicted them) but they are more marginalized and less economically successful today.
As for sneakiness, you're absolutely right. That is exactly what we are breeding for (though I don't think the Elites intend this) and it will continue to increase. The average Joe will get better and better at maintaining 'the Facade' of white-picket suburbanite mediocrity while becoming secretly focused on deception, concealment of economic activity, tax-evasion, and so on. The Establishment is fighting gravity.
I have a theory that much of the corporate bureaucracy today is a result of the militarization of the minds of the men who went back to work after the war.
Interesting idea. I can attest to the fact that the corporate world is made in the image and likeness of the Pentagon. The military culture permeates the corporate culture. I work for one of the world's largest corporations (around 95K employees) and it is sometimes jaw-dropping the level of militarism.
When I first started, I was stunned by the interior decor of the buildings. The cubicles are available in three shades of gray: slate-gray, beige-gray and gray-gray. The walls are undecorated. There is no common-area seating, no lounges of any kind (no breakroom/employee lounge). The interior environment is pseudo-Spartan.
Then there's the lingo. 90% of everything spoken in a meeting is jargon: acronyms or codenames. We have a "classification" system that is modeled on the military's: Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, etc. We "execute to plan" in order to "deliver on schedule" and when problems arise there are "crack teams" that are assembled by the "war room" to "mitigate"... I could go on and on. Sometimes I have to stop myself from just bursting out in laughter at the absurdity of it all... a social faux pas that would be a bit like bursting out in laughter at a funeral, given the gravity etched into the long, dread faces around the table.
Or take the "charity" runs that happen a few times a year. Now, when you think of running for charity, you ordinarily think of a bunch of friendly people half-running half-walking... maybe a few dedicated runners sprinting out ahead of everyone because racing is just what they do and they love it. At the end, maybe the winner or top 3 get published and the rest are ignored. Not here. Everyone is ranked. And because the campus is large, there are a lot of runners, so even ranking in the top 100 is actually quite an achievement. A particularly ambitious manager in my group made sure to "let it be known" that he had ranked 80th in the race. There is a direct correlation between his career ambition and the competitiveness in the race. Ranking high in PT in the military is taken as a sign of dedication, diligence, etc. I believe the same principle is in operation with these corporate "charity" races.
Given the high degree of rigidity in the big tech companies, I think that the major reason for their survival is IP and government contracts.
How many business do you think would be using MS Office if Microsoft did not have IP protection. Or, given that college is the precursor to the corporate world, what if universities didn't require business majors to take a class in which half the course was learning how to use Excel, Access and Project? What if universities instead taught OpenOffice/LibreOffice? And how many millions of licenses do they sell every year to governments?