[P2P-F] What do I Know?

Mon Jul 24 15:19:04 CEST 2017

dear Anna,

if you read anthropological accounts of Amazonian native tribes, such as in
the books of Pierre Clastre (societies against the state), and others, then
it seems that warfare was endemic, he even describes it as 'their favourite
passtime'; at the same time, it was more 'sporadic' , since nomadic tribes
can move and thus avoid protacted conflict. This is in 'our times', so you
could argue that it was different 'in the past'. The evidence does not
support it. I had to revise my romantic notions that prehistory was less
violent. That evidence was not yet available in the books I used to read in
my youth.

Here is the study showing violence has percentually decreased since
prehistoric times:

here is the key passage: "I have collected data on violent deaths; the long
list of sources can be found below. These data show that in prehistoric
times (archeological evidence) and in non-state societies (ethnographic
evidence) the levels of violence was much higher than in modern state
societies and in the world today."

from
https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths/

the study (of studies) summarized:

"The proportion of human deaths phylogenetically predicted to be caused by
interpersonal violence stood at 2%. This value was similar to the one
phylogenetically inferred for the evolutionary ancestor of primates and
apes, indicating that a certain level of lethal violence arises owing to
our position within the phylogeny of mammals. It was also similar to the
percentage seen in prehistoric bands and tribes, indicating that we were as
lethally violent then as common mammalian evolutionary history would
predict. However, the level of lethal violence has changed through human
history and can be associated with changes in the socio-political
organization of human populations. Our study provides a detailed
phylogenetic and historical context against which to compare levels of
lethal violence observed throughout our history."

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v538/n7624/full/nature19758.html

On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 8:03 PM, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:

> Thank you Michel. Actually I was just questioning whether aggression and
> violence are a *natural* tendency in males, which has to be supressed. As
> Rajani says:
>
> "They managed to restrain male destructive drives – which are the scourge
> of all living things -  within the prison of affective, kin relations to
> the extent  humanly possible:"
>
> And unlike you I do not see aggression and nurturing as polarities in each
> of us. The evidence of prehistory as I have been reading would seem to
> suggest that for many hundreds of thousands of years groups of small band
> hunter gatherers lived harmoniously without need for interfighting.
>
> See my article : http://sublimemagazine.com/healthy-birth-healthy-earth
>
> Anna
>
>
> On 24 Jul 2017, at 10:10, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:
>
> Thanks for this reaction Anna,
>
> I agree about agression and nurturing to be polarities in each of us,
> which may then be culturally re-inforced and fixated in all kinds of ways
> by cultures and societies,
>
> But patriarchy predates EM by thousands of years, and gendering predates
> patriarchy by tens of thousands if not more. It is easy to forget that even
> in tribal societies, with very strong nurturing, and this could be true
> even for matriarchal societies (who engaged in hunt and had to defend
> themselves), that male initiation was especially geared towards
> de-sensitizing males and habituating them to violence. A meta-study last
> year was pretty unequivocal: the amount of human to human violence has
> dramatically decreased over time. Civilizational and nation-state based
> wars can have a terrible cost, but overall, the percentages are
> dramatically lower than in most tribal societies (anthropologists and
> others have counted skeletons and how they died, i.e. percentage of signs
> of violence vs illnesses etc..)
>
> Ironically, though the balance and positions between males and females
> have varied over time, I think only EM derivatives have allowed the
> flexibility you describe.
>
> The question is: can this be married with a return to nurturing ? To the
> degree that we can enter post-civilisational processes (see A. Chandler for
> a definition of civilization that is specifically linked to class based
> societies, the need for internal repression, and thus , the need to
> de-sensitize and make nurturing more difficult), we can develop renewed
> nurturing practices. I see a lot of evidence of this around me, and more
> specifically, in EM derived cultures, while where I live hear in East Asia,
> maybe because of earlier forms of EM influences, the evolution may go in
> the other direction (a lot of east-asian women in the middle classes do not
> want to nourish their children directly because of aesthetic reasons for
> example, and the men have to work harder and are less at home). The
> movement for labor, gender, race and civic rights, to the degree they are
> protests against hierarchical and class divisions, are post-civilisational
> and create the basis for renewed emphasis on nurturing. (see how maternal
> and paternal leave allows parents to spend more time with their children)
>
> Michel
>
>
>
> <<Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2017 08:41:24 +0100
> From: Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk>
> To: P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>,
>         rkanth at fas.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Fwd: What do I Know?
> Message-ID: <624F7EB1-C7EF-44A6-A7E6-6F63E0A5B48D at shsh.co.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Dear Rajani,
>
>  In this long rant there are nuggets of truth which shine, but I have a
> quibble with one particular statement which is fundamental to your
> approach, - that men are naturally aggressive and violent.
>
> "I also know that men and women are profoundly,  and naturally, dissimilar.
> By instinct,  men are aggressive and violent, and  women are nurturing".
>
> Our definition of what is masculine and what is feminine has been defined
> for us by our culture which, as you have demonstrated, has been
> contaminated with EM values. These definitions are being questioned now by
> people who don't fit in to these gender categories, who are demanding at an
> increasingly younger age, to be seen as non binary. Those of us who grew up
> with these definitions may be becoming more fully aware of our own
> discomfort at being thrust into one or other of these gender categories.
>
> Progressives have got so far as to allow that masculine and feminine
> energies exist in both men and women. But it seems a bridge too far to
> question the very definition of masculine and feminine as culturally
> dictated.
>
> While this may seem peripheral to your whole thesis, I view it as a
> radical challenge to the foundations of patriarchal culture which rests on
> the primary division between male and female. (Unfortunately this has
> currently been taken over by big pharma, since it paves the way for drug
> dependency from an early age, and has actually created more confusion about
> having to decide to be one or the other.)
>
> Nevertheless the basic categories are being questioned and fatally
> blurred, so that being yourself is what really matters. This is a really
> positive step towards your kin based affective society, where kin is seen
> as including all beings.
>
> Anna
>
> --
> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at:
> http://commonstransition.org
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
> #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
>
>

-- 
Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
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