this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Ok, but why did feudalism come about, after 200,000+ years? Capitalism is just a current incarnation of an exploitative system brought to us by dominator culture. Before Capitalism it was Feudalism. If you back far enough, you get to stable groups that operated for millennia apparently without the need for domination being the primary driver of society.
Using game theory, if the players start out cooperating, this can go on indefinitely, but once someone cheats the game becomes exploitative. Sounds a lot like what happened in our species.
The history of humanity is the history of class dynamics. Feudalism came about as a result of agricultural development and the ability to store products, rather than needing to use them before they expire.
I know that's the common story, not sure I believe it.
I don't know that it makes sense to talk about class dynamics at a global/species level until the 19th or 20th century when culture and ideas could spread. Until then any class dynamics were probably intra-group.
Evidence shows that the change from pre-agricultural to agricultural societies was not linear or quick, it took thousands of years and happened in fits and starts in different areas before really catching on everywhere. It doesn't make a lot of sense that we invented agriculture and suddenly culture changed to protect the crops.
Feudalism did not occur everywhere, it was mostly a European thing
Why not? After Primitive Communist tribal societies, class has existed in every major society. It doesn't need to be global.
Nobody said it was linear or quick, just that class conflict is what drove change.
Sure. Different forms of class society with different contradictions have existed in other places.
I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, don't necessarily agree either though.
I don't think class conflict (that drove feudalism etc) arose just from there being grains around that "needed protection". Without the dominator instinct, grain storage just means insurance, food security (security against bad weather, not finding the herd to hunt, or outside groups raiding).
I think class conflict was due to individuals who both desired power over others and understood that grain provided a means of attaining power because it provided a hoardable resource that allowed paying others to back them up. "You want to eat good? Then protect me and my hoard" That then sets up a situation where the grain holders become the upper class, those they pay for protection become class traiters, and everyone else ends up exploited.
I posit that humans as a species are a generally good cooperative species but due to natural variation, some individual's brains are wired to think in a more exploitative way. But this exploitative person would be viewed negatively by their community and without a state to protect them, would be vulnerable to the direct consequences of their actions; and so this exploitative strategy was kept in check and unable to grow.
The ability to hoard grain allowed those with the dominator instinct to gain the upper hand against their community and take power. Feudalism evolved from that.
The rare dominator instinct + hoardable resources evolved into large scale exploitative economies of various types where the dominator instinct then became common and is now in most of us.
Is this "dominator instinct" backed up by science, or vibes? Is it not more likely that environments shape humans, who then shape their environment, which in turn reshapes humans who reshape their environment?
Vibes, mainstream science is a product of capitalism, why would it vilify itself?
These things are not mutually exclusive. The dominator instinct is not a metaphysical thing. Every species chooses (by evolving) a life strategy. Think about Bonobos vs non-bonobo chimps, same biology for the most part but they chose different strategies at the species level, chimps went with the dominator strategy and bonobos didn't. The dominator instinct probably pops up in some individuals the bonobo populations but is kept in check by the bonobo culture.
Let me know when it has a scientific basis.
The chimp/bonobo thing does have a scientific basis. I'd say genetic variation that causes modulation of personality traits is pretty well established as having a scientific basis. The fact that mainstream science doesn't view things in terms of a "dominator instinct" doesn't mean anything other than that those funding the science don't have motivation to view things that way.
Does it need to be instinctual, for some people's brains to be "wired different"? Seems to me that this phenomenon is more easily explained as learned behavior. Since people's behavior changes the environment, it creates a feedback loop; societies form a semi-artificial environment where people learn that domination is successful behavior, and are rewarded for continuing it. Thus, the behavior is propagated across generations, no instinct required.
...and neuroplasticity doesn't really fit well with the idea that people are "hard-wired" to certain behavior. The only thing we really seem to be pre-programmed for is language and communication.
Sorry for the late reply, I've been away.
Animal behavior is the product of both genetics and environment (including the environment affecting the genes, epigenetics), and feedback loops are real but any neuroplasticity is limited to what our genetics will allow and what level of change is genetically possible over a given number of generations.
This is what will cause genetic changes over time and turn learned behavior into innate behavior. Like the non-bonobo chimps probably started out that way (or maybe vice-versa) and over millennia or even millions of years, no longer have the capacity to behave like the other regardless of environment. If we took a non-bonobo family and put them with regular chimps I don't believe the non-bonobo children would behave like bonobos because they are around bonobos.
Even if the "dominator instinct" is purely behavioral and not based in biology at all, it doesn't change my point. My point is really a game theory point, that our species chose cooperation as a general strategy because it works out best for everyone in our situation at the time. But because we vary (whether genetically or a person's learned behavior) an occasional individual comes along that tries out a different strategy.
Here's a game that demonstrates my point.
https://ncase.me/trust/
Imagine a form of this game is played in early humans that have a cooperative culture. The cheater is likely to be ostracized or beaten up/killed allowing the cooperative culture to continue. But then you throw money into the game (ability to hoard resources, and create artificial scarcity by taking things from others and allowing selective "paying" of individuals that back you up. Now when a cheater comes along, they have tools (money and artificial scarcity) that allow them to break out of the normal game rules and dominate others -- a dominator instinct was born.
sorry, what do you mean by this? Surely the benefit of a learning and growing brain is that it can respond and adapt to situations faster than germ-line genetics ever could. Why would there be a genetic limiter, what purpose would that serve?
Absolutely, but it's our genome that programs this adaptability.
Consider humans vs giant pandas for example. Our genes programmed our (brains and) bodies to be highly adaptable, some can be vegans, others carnivores, some can live in the snow, others in the tropics, we can learn new languages throughout life, and build novel tools and learn to use them. A giant panda might die if eats anything other than bamboo and will do poorly in any environment different than what it's evolved for. This is because we evolved for adaptability while giant pandas evolved to be fit in a mostly unchanging environment.
Giant pandas probably don't have the genetic adaptability built in for a dominator instinct to arise in them, while in humans, the dominator instinct can arise within our mental adaptability. It might start as meme (in the Dawkins sense) and then the brain can evolve to facilitate the behavior (to be honest, I think this is what is happening in our species currently, generations living under exploitative economic systems might be driving our brains to be less sympathetic to others rather than viewing others as part of our environment).
It's not that say giant pandas have evolved a genetic limiter really, it's that humans have evolved to be able to survive in various and changing environments and a brain that can learn is a key part of this ability. Giant pandas have not had the selective pressure to evolve a genome tolerant of change able to produce a brain that can adapt on the fly to new environments.
Ah, I see, you just meant that other species don't share our capacity for learning and adapting. Although, why do you continue to describe exploitative behavior as an instinct if you agree that it is a learned trait?
I'd say exploitative (and dominant) behavior can be either biologically based instinct or learned trait.
Learned behavior could potentially become a trait if it spreads, is beneficial to the species reproductive success, and genetic mutations occur.
A nice person can learn that to survive requires them to act in an exploitative manner, I'd not call this an instinct, this is a animal of an adaptable species adapting to a cruel environment.
A person that is not nice because they are less adaptable and see exploitation as the default way of operating in life and would act this way even in a nice environment could be called an instinct. This could be the biological start of what could evolve into a stable instinct in a species should this person's genes become dominant in the population (I believe this is happening now).
The reason I talk the way I do on this topic, is my belief that early humans did not have a desire to dominate others on a large scale, we were more like other animals. Not that everything was peaceful or tribes didn't have leaders and inter-tribal battles, just that any individuals with a tendency to dominate and hoard were mostly taken care of by cultural mechanisms and didn't get very far, i.e. they got their ass beat when then screwed over their brother and the community said "good, they deserved it". Or a tribal leader that was dominant and coercive rather than a respected leader could get killed and there's no state to stop this or punish those who did it. The tribe decided their leader was bad for them and took care of the issue.
But at some point, these cultural mechanisms were not enough to contain these individuals with a dominant instinct and they took over and colluded, and this eventually evolved into the concept of the state.
The thing that might've tipped the scales is money. Money provides a means to hoard wealth, something that is difficult without money as things rot or or too large, etc. By hoarding money that represents resources, they are simultaneously creating artificial scarcity and those willing to violently back up the dominant hoarder can have more than others setting up a class structure. This is a bit different than for example how Marx says classes came about.
tl;dr I think our society was stable for 200K years until a dominator instinct took over that was previously kept in check culturally, facilitated by the invention of money. This situation exploded when we found our fossil energy inheritance that we're currently wasting on the equivalent on hookers and blow. And now society is built around the dominators, designed for easy exploitation and prevention of self-defense, it's called "statehood".
Isn't "the state" just cultural mechanisms extended beyond familial or interpersonal ties? There's a threshold where the group becomes too numerous for a member to form social ties with all other members. At that stage, culture becomes a force unto itself, propagating further than the members that comprise it. That point, more than money, seems to be where exploitative behavior becomes more likely to take hold.
Like, feudal aristocracies were plenty exploitative, plenty domineering. But they didn't necessarily need money for it; a lot of them operated on barter economies. They just needed a knife-point and a cultural belief to justify the domination. Money is just an innovation on a much older process.
This is "community"
"State" refers to a group of people that feel entitled to rule over others and use violence to do so. To help ensure their power they create laws that make their violence legal and give it names like "law enforcement" and make your violence, particularly violence to protect yourself against them, illegal. This typically goes along with enclosure leaving people nowhere to escape the state.
This is true but does not on it's own lead to the formation of state. Without dominator types successfully taking advantage of the situation, it could just as well lead to loosely connected communities. Also, the size of early non-state communities was limited to ecosystem provided resources (i.e. they were inherently sustainable), our populations are not because we found fossil energy.
Domination and "the state" are not equivalent, but it takes the former for the latter to come about. Domination without the state has always existed on some level, I think that pre-state societies had cultural mechanisms to prevent dominators from taking over.