💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › replies › 3323 captured on 2022-04-29 at 13:23:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

~inquiry

> Personally I disagree. The idea that Capitalism
> is an emergent property of the human experience
> isn't really backed up by anything. Research
> into the evolutionary course for humanity strongly
> contraindicates against hyperindividualism or radical
> self interest. Evolutionary homo sapiens got as far
> as we have mostly because of cooperation. From an Evo
> Psych perspective the research into human's inherent
> bias towards greed is shaky at best and people like
> Kroputkin have strongly argued against this idea.
> 
> https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution

What are you thoughts on the likes of laws, law enforcement, and prisons? To me, their existence suggest human bias more toward greed than cooperation, especially when it seems those who "get caught" constitute the tip of a "everything's okay so long as you can get away with it" iceberg.

Said another way, is it *really* cooperation when it - at least seemingly to me - mostly occurs under threat of punishment if-and-only-if caught?

> Believing that Capitalism is some kind of state of nature is
> obtusely neoliberal and frankly silly. Behavioral genetics is
> unprovable nonsense and people have shown time and time again
> that they can make decisions that seem to violate whatever
> evolutionary drives they might have. So even in the worst
> possible case scenario, Greed and therefore Capitalism are
> inevitable products of the human condition, that doesn't
> prevent us from striving towards a better world regardless.

If people "can make decisions that seem to violate whatever evolutionary drives they might have", I can't help but wonder why so many have seemingly little problem embracing drives against what greater collectives codify in law as acceptable - read: cooperative - behavior.

It seems reasonable to me that the like of "capitalism" (or, as I'd rather put it, "capitalist behavior") originates in roughly the same region the likes of murder, rape, and countless other instances of non-cooperation.

> The rug can't be pulled from under itself, until the rug tries
> realizing all at once that it never was a rug. The presence
> of the rug had made it forget the vast and infinitely tiling
> surface it rested upon. In that moment it knew that no matter
> what direction it choose it was now free from the metaphysical
> confines of the rug and now more able then ever to seek a
> better place.

Oooh, I like that!

Write a reply

Replies

~calgacus wrote (thread):

What are you thoughts on the likes of laws, law enforcement, and prisons? To me, their existence

suggest human bias more toward greed than cooperation, especially when it seems those who "get

caught" constitute the tip of a "everything's okay so long as you can get away with it" iceberg.

Said another way, is it *really* cooperation when it - at least seemingly to me - mostly occurs

under threat of punishment if-and-only-if caught?

I think what you're missing is that "laws, law enforcement, and prisons" do not and have not existed in all societies for all of history. Yes, the *current* arrangement of *our* capitalist societies relies on coercion and prison, but that does not mean *all* arrangements did. For instance, the Iroquois confederation and many Huron tribes did not have any form of "prison" or "laws." When somebody murdered somebody else (which of course did happen from time to time) the families and confederations themselves were responsible for the perpetrator, would have to "make right" with the victims in some form or another, and perhaps exile or help to educate the murderer. This is not an isolated case, by the way—many societies operated similarly, and may operate this way again. If this is interesting to you, I would implore you to read *The Dawn of Everything* by Graeber and Wengrow, which is a wonderful volume that directly argues against the line of thinking you're pursuing here with a plethora of real world examples and evidence!