Humans as Non-Animal: Can any inferences be drawn?

[southernhybrid]

Humans can mentally masturbate endlessly about all kinds of things, but humans don't seem to be able to know how to establish peace or to keep our habitats from being destroyed by our own actions.

Is that really a question where being or not being an animal is important? The universe is a process of self destruction.

Sure, the universe self destructs, but humans have a way of speeding up the process. Not that we have any control over it, but I don't have to be happy about it.

Who said that being an animal was important? "It is what it is" to quote a moronic president.

 

[untermensche]

A skyscraper is the product of human cultural evolution. It is not innate.

A bird's nest is the product of natural evolution. It is innate.

Two completely different processes at work.

A dam is a part of beaver evolution. It is not innate.

The beaver makes it without instruction.

It is innate behavior.

Building a skyscraper is not innate human behavior.

It took a lot of cultural evolution before any human could do it.

 

[Politesse]

A skyscraper is the product of human cultural evolution. It is not innate.

A bird's nest is the product of natural evolution. It is innate.

Two completely different processes at work.

A dam is a part of beaver evolution. It is not innate.

The beaver makes it without instruction.

It is innate behavior.

Building a skyscraper is not innate human behavior.

It took a lot of cultural evolution before any human could do it.

Is it culture, or evolution, that you credit with the human variations in domicile? There is no such thing as "cultural evolution" per se, as they used to seek in the 1960's-70's; cultural transmission and biological inheritance ultimately follow very different rules, except insofar as culture itself is a result of the natural evolution of complex, symbolically communicative neural networks.

I wouldn't describe either process as not being "innate" to our species, as if culture is not an innate property of ours I've no idea what is.

 

[untermensche]

The beaver makes it without instruction.

It is innate behavior.

Building a skyscraper is not innate human behavior.

It took a lot of cultural evolution before any human could do it.

Is it culture, or evolution, that you credit with the human variations in domicile? There is no such thing as "cultural evolution" per se, as they used to seek in the 1960's-70's; cultural transmission and biological inheritance ultimately follow very different rules, except insofar as culture itself is a result of the natural evolution of complex, symbolically communicative neural networks.

I wouldn't describe either process as not being "innate" to our species, as if culture is not an innate property of ours I've no idea what is.

The word "evolution" is different in both cases. Cultural progress is not evolution. Evolution is when the genes change.

You are right.

Demonstrating the processes are different.

One is innate. Like the human ability to develop a language.

It is not an inevitable progression from small hut to a large steel building with elevators, electrical wiring, glass and plumbing. None of those things are something humans can innately create.

 

[Politesse]

The beaver makes it without instruction.

It is innate behavior.

Building a skyscraper is not innate human behavior.

It took a lot of cultural evolution before any human could do it.

Is it culture, or evolution, that you credit with the human variations in domicile? There is no such thing as "cultural evolution" per se, as they used to seek in the 1960's-70's; cultural transmission and biological inheritance ultimately follow very different rules, except insofar as culture itself is a result of the natural evolution of complex, symbolically communicative neural networks.

I wouldn't describe either process as not being "innate" to our species, as if culture is not an innate property of ours I've no idea what is.

The word "evolution" is different in both cases. Cultural progress is not evolution. Evolution is when the genes change.

You are right.

Demonstrating the processes are different.

One is innate. Like the human ability to develop a language.

It is not an inevitable progression from small hut to a large steel building with elevators, electrical wiring, glass and plumbing. None of those things are something humans can innately create.

I certainly agree that any particular cultural process cannot possibly be inevitable. This should be self-evident given the great diversity of cultural trajectories in history. I would argue that culture and its effects are prompted by and to some extent bounded by the naturally evolved properties of the body, though. We have innate tendencies and requirements; we just exercise considerable ingenuity and variability in how we choose to meet them (and ascribe value to the solutions we've found).

 

[untermensche]

I think that human language changed the game. Along with the human intellectual capacity.

But the intellectual capacity was not enough.

The species that directly led to humans probably had a pretty good intellectual capacity. It probably used vocalizations for communication.

But it did not have language so it did not have cultural advancement at nearly the pace or scope of humans.

Language and human cultural advancements made possible by language separate humans from all other species.

Of course humans are a sadistic and easily misled species too.

 

[JohnG]

I suspect we really started to separate ourselves from the animal kingdom during the agricultural revolution. Hunter gatherer people associated themselves with earthly gods, animals and rhythms.

The agricultural revolution taught people to connect with the “heavens” as their farming calendar was so closely associated with it. The signs of the zodiac is a farming calendar essentially.

At this point people disassociated with nature.

This is just a theory, probably oversimplified, but I’ve always meant to research the idea.

 

[rousseau]

I suspect we really started to separate ourselves from the animal kingdom during the agricultural revolution. Hunter gatherer people associated themselves with earthly gods, animals and rhythms.

The agricultural revolution taught people to connect with the “heavens” as their farming calendar was so closely associated with it. The signs of the zodiac is a farming calendar essentially.

At this point people disassociated with nature.

This is just a theory, probably oversimplified, but I’ve always meant to research the idea.

I recall reading a similar argument at one point, and I believe there's something to it. The more we literally remove ourselves from nature via technology, the more disconnected we'll become from it. Look around today and many of us are afraid to do things as simple as drink water out of a tap, or eat vegetables that aren't slathered in sauce or seasoning.

 

[untermensche]

I suspect we really started to separate ourselves from the animal kingdom during the agricultural revolution. Hunter gatherer people associated themselves with earthly gods, animals and rhythms.

The agricultural revolution taught people to connect with the “heavens” as their farming calendar was so closely associated with it. The signs of the zodiac is a farming calendar essentially.

At this point people disassociated with nature.

This is just a theory, probably oversimplified, but I’ve always meant to research the idea.

With farming you have science.

You have prediction.

I plant this seed and wait and I will have food in the future.

With farming you learn about probability.

Not all the seed will grow. You plant more than you need knowing this.

 

[Politesse]

There are some common misconceptions about foraging ("hunter-gatherer") lifestyles floating around here; foragers don't just randomly wander around the landscape, they also have to plan extensively and pass down quite a lot of information to the next generation about what Westerners would call botany, biology, ecology, geology, fire science, and so forth. You'll starve to death just stumbling around hoping to run across food sources, if you don't know how to predict what will be available at what times, in what places, what is available raw and what must be processed, what plants have medicinal properties, etc. If anything, agriculture lowers the bar on how much information you need to carry in your head in order to survive, though this may be one of the things that made it attractive to our Mesopotamian forebears.

 

[rousseau]

There are some common misconceptions about foraging ("hunter-gatherer") lifestyles floating around here; foragers don't just randomly wander around the landscape, they also have to plan extensively and pass down quite a lot of information to the next generation about what Westerners would call botany, biology, ecology, geology, fire science, and so forth. You'll starve to death just stumbling around hoping to run across food sources, if you don't know how to predict what will be available at what times, in what places, what is available raw and what must be processed, what plants have medicinal properties, etc. If anything, agriculture lowers the bar on how much information you need to carry in your head in order to survive, though this may be one of the things that made it attractive to our Mesopotamian forebears.

A couple years back I spent some time reading about different hunter-gatherer communities across the globe throughout history. One of the counter-intuitive things I realized is that Indigenous culture isn't really that far removed from European culture leading up to it's Apex. The only thing separating more complex civilizations from less complex ones is conducive agriculture. But the basic human experience was the same: need for food, housing, fun, family, escapism. Indigenous cultures were very similar to European cultures, but hunter-gatherers were more directly tied to the land and seasonal patterns.

With regards to disconnect, I think what we're looking at is degree of specialization. Looking at my own life, for example, I spend most of my days indoors, water and food are essentially delivered to my doorstep, I never have to worry about staying warm. Actual concerns about the natural world are so far from my view as to basically be invisible. The framework I live in is a specialized culture that orients my thought patterns in a completely different way than would be the case if I were a hunter-gatherer.

Probably hunter-gatherers still felt they were special, but likely also felt a deeper connection to the natural world.

 

[bilby]

There are some common misconceptions about foraging ("hunter-gatherer") lifestyles floating around here; foragers don't just randomly wander around the landscape, they also have to plan extensively and pass down quite a lot of information to the next generation about what Westerners would call botany, biology, ecology, geology, fire science, and so forth. You'll starve to death just stumbling around hoping to run across food sources, if you don't know how to predict what will be available at what times, in what places, what is available raw and what must be processed, what plants have medicinal properties, etc. If anything, agriculture lowers the bar on how much information you need to carry in your head in order to survive, though this may be one of the things that made it attractive to our Mesopotamian forebears.

A couple years back I spent some time reading about different hunter-gatherer communities across the globe throughout history. One of the counter-intuitive things I realized is that Indigenous culture isn't really that far removed from European culture leading up to it's Apex. The only thing separating more complex civilizations from less complex ones is conducive agriculture. But the basic human experience was the same: need for food, housing, fun, family, escapism. Indigenous cultures were very similar to European cultures, but hunter-gatherers were more directly tied to the land and seasonal patterns.

With regards to disconnect, I think what we're looking at is degree of specialization. Looking at my own life, for example, I spend most of my days indoors, water and food are essentially delivered to my doorstep, I never have to worry about staying warm. Actual concerns about the natural world are so far from my view as to basically be invisible. The framework I live in is a specialized culture that orients my thought patterns in a completely different way than would be the case if I were a hunter-gatherer.

Probably hunter-gatherers still felt they were special, but likely also felt a deeper connection to the natural world.

I suspect that specialisation long pre-dates agriculture.

A palaeolithic tribe likely had the guy who was good at knapping flint, who rarely (or even never) participated in the hunt; And the guy who was good at hunting, who rarely (or even never) knapped a flint. If for no other reason than that the first guy would want to prevent the second from wasting good flint nodules with his lack of dexterity; and the second would want to prevent the first from scaring away the game with his lack of stealth.

As soon as there are people acting as a group, specialisation becomes a massive advantage over other groups.

 

[rousseau]

There are some common misconceptions about foraging ("hunter-gatherer") lifestyles floating around here; foragers don't just randomly wander around the landscape, they also have to plan extensively and pass down quite a lot of information to the next generation about what Westerners would call botany, biology, ecology, geology, fire science, and so forth. You'll starve to death just stumbling around hoping to run across food sources, if you don't know how to predict what will be available at what times, in what places, what is available raw and what must be processed, what plants have medicinal properties, etc. If anything, agriculture lowers the bar on how much information you need to carry in your head in order to survive, though this may be one of the things that made it attractive to our Mesopotamian forebears.

A couple years back I spent some time reading about different hunter-gatherer communities across the globe throughout history. One of the counter-intuitive things I realized is that Indigenous culture isn't really that far removed from European culture leading up to it's Apex. The only thing separating more complex civilizations from less complex ones is conducive agriculture. But the basic human experience was the same: need for food, housing, fun, family, escapism. Indigenous cultures were very similar to European cultures, but hunter-gatherers were more directly tied to the land and seasonal patterns.

With regards to disconnect, I think what we're looking at is degree of specialization. Looking at my own life, for example, I spend most of my days indoors, water and food are essentially delivered to my doorstep, I never have to worry about staying warm. Actual concerns about the natural world are so far from my view as to basically be invisible. The framework I live in is a specialized culture that orients my thought patterns in a completely different way than would be the case if I were a hunter-gatherer.

Probably hunter-gatherers still felt they were special, but likely also felt a deeper connection to the natural world.

I suspect that specialisation long pre-dates agriculture.

A palaeolithic tribe likely had the guy who was good at knapping flint, who rarely (or even never) participated in the hunt; And the guy who was good at hunting, who rarely (or even never) knapped a flint. If for no other reason than that the first guy would want to prevent the second from wasting good flint nodules with his lack of dexterity; and the second would want to prevent the first from scaring away the game with his lack of stealth.

As soon as there are people acting as a group, specialisation becomes a massive advantage over other groups.

The earliest specialization was likely the divergence of gender roles. Roughly, hunting vs cooking tasks.

 

[bilby]

I suspect that specialisation long pre-dates agriculture.

A palaeolithic tribe likely had the guy who was good at knapping flint, who rarely (or even never) participated in the hunt; And the guy who was good at hunting, who rarely (or even never) knapped a flint. If for no other reason than that the first guy would want to prevent the second from wasting good flint nodules with his lack of dexterity; and the second would want to prevent the first from scaring away the game with his lack of stealth.

As soon as there are people acting as a group, specialisation becomes a massive advantage over other groups.

The earliest specialization was likely the divergence of gender roles.

Probably.

Roughly, hunting vs cooking tasks.

That's a very twenty first century comment. In reality it would have been childbearing vs everything else tasks.

 

[rousseau]

Probably.

Roughly, hunting vs cooking tasks.

That's a very twenty first century comment. In reality it would have been childbearing vs everything else tasks.

I was mainly thinking of specialization after the discovery of fire, but I guess you could call childbearing/everything else specialization. That would really come down to what you were aiming with via the definition, but child-rearing/providing seems like the starting point after which we specialize to me. Unless you're considering impact on our evolution then the differentiation likely matters a great deal.

In reality a lot of stuff happened between those two reference points, so probably some level of specialization occurred before the discovery of fire.

 

[Politesse]

We really can only speculate about pre-agricultural societies; most peoples have been at least aware of agricultural societies for the past three centuries, even if they didn't themselves choose to specialize in farming until recently, so there have been limited opportunities to study such communities in detail. But ethnographic studies of modern foraging societies would suggest that the specialization question has something of a mixed-bag answer. On the one hand, there tends to be a lot more "general knowledge" expected among all members of what are usually much smaller groups than you find in populous nations. When there are only 50-60 in your immediate polity, as is common for foragers, most people need to at least know how to do economically central tasks, regardless of age, gender, etc. Early post-war studies therefore emphasized the more "egalitarian" aspects of hunter-gatherer life, possibly to the point of excess. On the the other hand, there is also usually preferential gender selection for certain tasks, and a loosely meritocratic system of task leadership (for instance, someone with a natural talent for hunting is more likely to be put in charge of a hunting party by common consent, etc) and outright specialized roles (such as religious sepcialization or traveling midwives or traders) are not an uncommon sight in any human community regardless of their dominant food procurement strategy. Archaeology provides some evidence of family-specific motifs and production strategies for material goods, suggesting some level of family-based task differentiation from a very early period of human history.

 

[Jokodo]

It's also worth noting the divide between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists isn't as sharp as some would believe. Few hunter gatherers just collected their subsistence from pristine nature, unaffected by the work of previous generations. Many a national park administration in the 20th century had to learn the hard way that banning/heavily restricting indigenous land use and incurring hefty fines for arson was detrimental to preserving the ecosystem, as many savannah and semi open forest habitats would have fallen prey to forest encroachment millennia ago if it weren't for hunter-gatherers rejuvenating the undergrowth and thinning the canopies with fire.

The same is true for pre-agricultural Europe: https://uis.brage.unit.no/uis-xmlui/handle/11250/2433170

 

[untermensche]

The use of fire predates humans.

So you are talking about an environment shaped by an animal like a human for a long time.

Humans do not awaken to a pristine environment ready to be written upon.

They did not discover all their food sources.

 

[Jokodo]

The use of fire predates humans.

That would seem to depend on how you define "humans".

So you are talking about an environment shaped by an animal like a human for a long time.

Humans (or "an animal like a human") aren't unique in shaping their environment. Other than fires (many of which set by humans), grazing itself is a major formative factor of savanna habitats - thus ungulates shape the very environment that provides for their niche. Gall wasps live the vast majority of their live (several months to a year as larvae, compared to days or weeks as adult insects) in an entirely artificial environment, a land of milk and honey their mothers created for them by injecting a chemical cocktail into plants that would trick those plants into an abnormal growth pattern that provides shelter and nutrition for the larvae. In a sense, that's a level of removal from the "pristine" nature few humans have reached.

Humans do not awaken to a pristine environment ready to be written upon.

There hasn't been a pristine environment on this planet's surface for the better part of two billion years. We couldn't even breathe the atmosphere on a pristine earth: It's only because of the waste produced by cyanobacteria that elementary oxygen makes up more than a negligible fraction.

They did not discover all their food sources.

That would seem to defend on how you define "discover".

 

[untermensche]

There is only one species called "humans".