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If I thought that greed, craftiness & apathy were just human my life would be so different. ( With taking the things I see.)
When you think to understand from all things rational however that lowliness has been a minor occurance throughout our evolution; more even that we could had never made it through past massive challenges with the current neglect ... Extracting that the state of destructive short-sightedness on broad scale is lasting for a not even anthropological blink of a mere 5000 years ... Being a cultural astray that can be vastly evened out with just a generation of time ...
Then you find yourself pulling your hair innerly.
Moreso, it shoudn´t even take such an anthropoligical understanding to be frantic in disbelieve. Just not skipping on needless daily hardship out there while having a notion of the indescrible affluence that counters and causes the pain and destruction ...
Even when without any clue on athropology, just the indifference and remorselessness behind a screaming inbalance and extermination of a blue planets future will shattter your condition.
Like before, at this point I will say that the above humble insights will be common sense for pretty certain. And after a `What have we done?!!´moment all the intelligence will meet to ponder over which emergency and humane measures to be taken first.
Only that it seems predictable how then it will be too late; after so many decades wasted by dazed minds zapping away from unbearable ugliness, letting themselves be conciliated by their personal more or less cozy recess.
For some cozy in terms of rather physical and material comfort, for some cozy in illusionary terms of mind, and others in terms of both. All so trivial background before a whole picture of global insanity.
Ruphus
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This is the last post I write in this topic. I'm not living in the US and I'm not interested in commenting the fresh actuality of what happened in their domestic field.
"The plaintiffs contend that Section 1021(b)(2) of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to groups engaged in hostilities against the U.S. such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban respectively that the NDAA arms the U.S. military with the ability to imprison indefinitely journalists, activists and human-rights workers based on vague allegations. The principal allegation made by the plaintiffs against the NDAA is that the vagueness of critical terms in the NDAA could be interpreted by the U.S. federal government in a way that authorizes them to label journalists and political activists who interview or support outspoken critics of the Obama administration’s policies as “covered persons,” meaning that they have given “substantial support” to terrorists or other “associated groups”. "
For the most recent lawsuit update watch this declaration. http://youtu.be/QsGJpTAsV8k Sorry to post YT links again, but this affair isn't, for what I understand covered by the mainstream medias... (edit: there was one broadcast media :RT. http://youtu.be/jxtGz5gZaqI)
Now what I could say is that the plaincliffs are not lucubracious conspirationist. If that were the case, they would not have bring this to lawsuit. These peoples have nothing in common with Paul Jones and his fellows BS talkers. Even if Bill would probably pack them in the same bag just coz they're 'radical' lefties and so deserve to be discretited.
So when these people alert on a matter like, free speech could go potentially under pressure, then I tend 'naively' to believe them.
From what I understand if ie an independant journalist like J. Scahill wants to investigate (see my post above about his last work "dirty war...") on what happen on the battlefield by speaking with witnesses, meeting resistants or activist to ask them questions about how, what, who are the victims of let say a drone strike, to gave victims's a voice, then his behaviour / activities could be covered up by the vagueness of the NDAA's terms and phrasing.
If a State does not allow independant journalists or activists to freely operate but instead putting coecitive measure above their head in order to make their speech harder to express, then I wonder about the concept of democracy applied in this country. Not to mention imprisonement of journalist or human rights activist or ordinary citizens whitout any trial, as we know this only happen is Cuba, China or assimilate...
quote:
Freedom to talk against the governments actions is allowed and tolerated. We want that freedom to speak out and take down the government if need be. In case of martial law, if the people at large are under attack by the admin in power (not an individual), we have second amendment. There is not ever a need to take out citizens that speak out or leak top secret info in black covert operations...as sexy as that sounds. Instead what happens is secrets are sold or whatever, it is discovered, and then we can punish those involved for endangering the nation
I don't know what kind of informations you consider truthful. Maybe you're fine with the version you heard in Foxnews or others mainstream media. But as Giroux labelled them, most of the journalists in there are stenographers. And I agree with him.
Now here's my last link for this topic. I came across this one while I was browsing estebanana's link about Zinnproject. It's a 2010 documentary from John Pilger : "the war you don't see" I watched it and there's some very good point in it IMO. Very informative and it also point out at how BBC journalists cover the events. Just to be clear the guy is not a conspirationist, even if he might be a leftie! It's worth watching it even if it's not your cup of tea. And yeah! he begin his explanation with a old chap personna : Ed. Bernays. Gives it a friendly touch
Ah one more thing. The docu is sutitled in spanish. So for those who might be reluctant to watch it, take the opportunity to practice and consilidate your spanish or vice versa. You might learn something on both scale
_____________________________
"The most important part of Flamenco is not in knowing how to interpret it. The higher art is in knowing how to listen." (Luis Agujetas)
ORIGINAL: Ricardo Ok ok man relax...it should be obvious I am just about done with this stuff and joking around at this point. Back to half compases.
Dude its not about the jokes. It the repeatedly putting things into my mouth and then making fun of something i didnt even say. You can bet im done with this **** too.
Oh good, then you won't reply to what I have to say. Just kidding.
Obama retaining citizens...old news and don't worry, Obama hating right wingers are ALL OVER that one. Nobody likes that ****. There are going to be necessary evils of course when you dealing with these hit and run terrorist types that hide behind week minded, innocent govs, women and children etc. Don't get me wrong, I think revenge is pointless, and it is in fact what USA is doing. Journalists like to dig up dirt PERIOD, so of course they are gonna focus on what is most surprising disturbing etc...and of course nobody likes to air mistakes and dirty laundry. (USA commander offer goat sacrifice as apology...LOL). I don't see what is so surprising about that. Revenge is childish, but unless I am personally affected it's hard to say how I would really feel about hunting down hit and run cowards. Perhaps pain would be enough for me to hunt till I die, I don't know. I for one am content that suicide bombers blow themselves up, good ridence to week mined morons. Much like blaming students for not learning, I can only blame an individual for a single act of violence, but everybody wants justice that remains in pain, looking for a single head to cut off. About usa presidents, well, people want to take down any leader will always point out their faults, and never play devil advocate to their own agenda.
As per this thread, the two journalists focus on obama drones is enough to put the "bush orchestrated 911 for oil" conspiracy to bed...other wise, what is the point of this actually hunting terrorist crap? Seems, according to those guys, usa is ACTUALLY looking for terrorists...odd. Anyway, like I said, if murders want to hide behind women and children, and if anyone gets killed USE their deaths to rally more nuts to your cause, well, what cant you do? Simply stop and let them call the aggressor weak, giving more momentum to their cause. We all know violence begets violence, revenge revenge revenge, that's what it is all about anyway. It's endless cycle no matter where you point the finger. Obama promised to stop, he didn't, I for one am NOT surprised in the least. Leaders of this country never were dictators, there is other stuff going on and unless it all gets spelled out, then conspiracies seem to suffice.
I'll actually be relieved when Obama's current term is over so crazies can elect another conservative whack job president. Then the evil liberals will be subdued and we won't have to listen to Truthers and Birthers and we can get on with destroying in the world in domestic peace.
In the mean I hope he cuts them off at the ankles. And that Karl Rove starts a new conservative movement and the Tea Party keeps on the delusional partying. And the Arm Chair Marxists keep on occupying things. Then when all those nuts are busy politically masturbating the rest of us can keep working on fixing the damages.
Ruphus, I hear what you're saying and it makes a lot of sense. Give me a few days to think about it and formulate a worthy response...
There's just one thing I'd like to clear up - those traits that you mentioned (apathy, greed etc), are you saying they exist in all life forms? I'm sorry, I didn't quite get your point there...
That´s not what I meant. Such traits could only be with higher developed species, as they would need a degree of awareness. ( <- Formerly exclusively attributed to us, then to primates, and since some years realized to exist with many of advanced species.)
Then again, for non-solitude / social animals selfishness pays only to a limited degree if not mostly will be detrimental overall. In fact even for loner species as well who often enough will even show unexpected social abilities.
Behavioural sciences are increasingly discovering evolutionary merrits of cooperation. Like with monkeys who will return the favour of being lend a mate´s stone for opening 5 nuts, granting the stone owner 3 items. Benefitting others in advantage of their own future. Or with their warning of the community about a lurking leopard under risk of being killed themselves. Etc.pp.
Not to neglect opposite examples like of the crow that will pretend searching somewhere only to mislead a fellow, so that it may secretly benefit all alone from the true location of food.
But for a physically weak specimen like we have been it should be very clear by now that we would had never been able to stand through 6 or so million years with a behaviour similar of to the contemporary.
Also from artefacts of hominids it can be concluded that strong solidarity, empathical skills and responsibility for the community prevailed the cultures of our ancestors.
And finally the unnaturalness of our standards show accordingly with the rate of psychosis. ( As we are not genetically prepared for emotional barrens.)
When has been the last time that you met someone who appeared to rest in relaxed confidence? Such individuals have become edelweiss in our major civilsations. -
So, what I meant is that empathy and cooperation is the anthropological speciality that contributes to members of human community in natural ways. Which again serves the individual, who hence as empathical will be practically self-benefitting too; only on a fundamentally different level than with the brainless method of reckless ellbowing and pathologically gathering of the past 5 millenia.
The status quo assessed as unnatural and terminating humanity.
Also from artefacts of hominids it can be concluded that strong solidarity, empathical skills and responsibility for the community prevailed the cultures of our ancestors.
Ruphus
Fascinating. I would like to read more about this. Could you point me to some sources?
Also from artefacts of hominids it can be concluded that strong solidarity, empathical skills and responsibility for the community prevailed the cultures of our ancestors.
Ruphus,
Could you be more specific? Which ancestors and how far back in history? What is the evidence that leads to your conclusion?
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
There is not any evidence of hominids holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Hominids were busy butchering one another.
Later there is evidence of burial practices by Neanderthals which shows they had social organization which exhibited compassionate care for group members. But there are also various stages of in the Homo line that show cannibalism. The cave at Zhoukoutien in China are full of skulls in which the cave dwellers over hundreds of generations ate the brains of others. There is no other reason to break through Foramen Magnum bone at the base of the skull than to get at the fresh brains.
Which makes our ancestors more like the actors in Zombie films...Hmm AHHHHH Braaaiiins! Freeeaach Braaaiiinnss! Me eat Braiiaaans.
( Sorry to interject, before I arrived at my degree in the soft subject of art history, I studied Physical Anthropology.....)
i like how 'birther' is being used as if it were on the same level as Truther. what kind of hapless fool could speculate that a half-kenyan was possibly born in kenya?! and kenyans are foreigners who happen to be black, so it's a racist suggestion as well! this is what liberals call a 'twofer'
Some bad hours behind me, thought I might have to put my old cat to sleep.
Your questions are good ones, but apparently not to be backed up by quick internet search. ( Besides of that some sites seem blocked from my place.)
What I am stating is a derivate of decades long interest into the matter, comprised of mainly articles and interviews as updates on anthropological themes. Thus, I am convinced that there exist special works that deal with the main attributes I named and the background, but on todays search I couldn´t find any.
If I can inspire you to leave obsolete yet persisting stereotypes behind which claim the opposite, you might find the string of consciousness yourself over time.
It all starts with evolutionary benefit of cooperative behaviour as observable with monkeys already, then with apes and with the efficient difference between chimpanzees and bonobos. A prove over and over again of how empathical quality will return and benfit the individual in the long run.
Next, there is evidence of how physcially inferiour species benefit from hoarding ( the more heads the better) whether in terms of hunting big game or of defence against superior predators. ( Having said that you might find interesting what I came accross here: Socioterritorial Units among Carnivores and Early Hominids http://www.academia.edu/attachments/3431955/download_file ) For some reason numbers of hunting / gathering hominid communities appear to have ranged around one dozen, seldomly reaching sizes of 30 individuals.
Such small groups in an environment that commonly was stuffed with a high density of large predators only consequently had to be under great pressure with providing food and under steady risk of falling prey themselves.
So, just as meat consumption allowed for greater leisure and grey cell allocation from guts to brain for developing symbolic thinking, artwork, tooling and language, the huge risk for small communities enhanced the awareness of mutual dependency and the empathic and solidary skills.
Such a living of common pressure, high dependency and must of association represented hominids´conditions for pretty much all of the 7 million years since coming down from the trees to roam the plains. This changed only very lately for those individuals who left the hunter & gatherer existance behind for farming.
With farming there came up: # safety from the predators direct threat # less leisure, the specialisation of femals on housekeeping tasks and their loss of gender parity # more patriarchically and less democratically structured culture # rising priority of individual possession # separation of food and commodities from efforts # exploitation
The unnatural situation of long term advantage through exploitation of fellow humans must have started with first settling and farming, and come to regular exploitation with the first domains of about 5000 years ago.
For an overlook on destructiveness and constructiveness of behavioural variatons with social species, there simply remains no practical option for a guileful "human nature" as painted by established exploiting and clerical beneficiaries, that could had prevailed through the times and challenges.
Instead the immense socialisation of hominids is being evident throughout their legacy ( from physical specialisation like mirror cells or speech enabling shift of larynx, to gained transmitting of skills and to empathical prowess, everything pointing to cooperative specialisation). And yet, with all the complimenting skills several demographic bottlenecks occured, threatening to extinct homo sapiens. ( Last one around 40 000 years ago, when our stem was reduced to about 60 000 worldwide.)
Our ancestors denied of their cooperation and sketched as more trivial than what even monkeys are being discovered as by modern faculties, could simply not had survived their million of years as highly vulnerable gatherers and hunters.
I am certain that there will exist works that ascertain this; eventhough still today noone wants to hear of it, simply for collision of trusted `good´old stereotype and quick ressort.
On this internet search what I came accross as entertaining for general anthropological interest has been:
quote:
It is now becoming clear that the Neandertals had cultures and social organizations developed to the point that community members unable to provide for themselves were fed and cared for. The La Chapelle-aux-Saints man lived to well beyond the normal life expectancy of 30-35. He was 40-50 years old and had severe crippling arthritis that would have made walking difficult. In addition, he would have been limited to soft foods, or other people chewed his food for him, because he only had 2 remaining teeth. It is likely that his last years were made possible only because others were compassionate and provided food and protection for him. The same pattern of group support for those unable to take care of themselves was found at Shanidar Cave. The man who had been so carefully buried there in a ritual manner had major orthopedic problems. Crushing injuries earlier in life resulted in multiple broken bones. This apparently caused degenerative joint disease, the withering of one of his arms, and blindness in one eye. Like the La Chapelle-aux-Saints man, he would have been severely handicapped, yet he lived 30-45 years. To do this, he must have had considerable family and community support.
But there are also various stages of in the Homo line that show cannibalism. The cave at Zhoukoutien in China are full of skulls in which the cave dwellers over hundreds of generations ate the brains of others. There is no other reason to break through Foramen Magnum bone at the base of the skull than to get at the fresh brains. ...
( Sorry to interject, before I arrived at my degree in the soft subject of art history, I studied Physical Anthropology.....)
In modern teaching students get introduced into the option of cannibalism as not inevitably aggressive conduct. And there are suggestions of cannibalism as burial procedure on the one hand, and formerly implicitely interpreted cut marks as cleaning procedure for the bones for funeral on the other hand.
Further, skulls with extended holes were found to have served as ladles.
So, cheers to the crude and vandalizing cave men, in the way reigns prefer them to appear. As it lets current conditions look so much more plausible than they actually are.
And while at the alleged primitiveness of the old chaps: Their stone tools were so perfectly designed to individul task, that modern equivalents of metal do feature the same shapes
In modern teaching students get introduced into the option of cannibalism as not inevitably aggressive conduct. And there are suggestions of cannibalism as burial procedure on the one hand, and formerly implicitely interpreted cut marks as cleaning procedure for the bones for funeral on the other hand.
Ha ha ha LOL,
Who the hell you think I studied with, Raymond Dart? LOL.
In the case of Zhoukoutien, the idea that is being floated is that it was an ancestor preservation worship ritual consuming of the brain. It's called endocannibalism if you need a specific name for it.
The stuff you posted is al good stuff, but it's about what a first year anthropology student needs to know at the end of the first semester to pass the final. After the first semester or even near the end if the the first a serious anthropology student gets the Anthropologists "Come to Jesus Talk".
The talk includes this main idea: Anthropologists are trained to look at the fossil record and try to develop behaviors and specialization traits,but not speculate wildly about the behaviors that are impossible to know. Most of the big fights in the discipline develop because one expert posits a behavior pattern not completely supported by fossil evidence. To literally, almost self referential joke on the discipline, "anthropomorphosize" hominids is a flimsy practice. Hominids are so old, so varied and so separate and archaic from our modern line of Homo Sapiens Sapiens that we really can't know how they felt or how they felt about each other. Leaves you scratching your sagittal crest I know.
Things that become important are the ways the processes of trait development are charted. How does the use of fire effect the shape the dentition, and how can the dentition be used to identify separate lines of development in early humans? By tracking those developments long over arching connections become visible. So anthropology is not just throwing statements like ..."early human or hominid, males banded together and protected the females." You really don't know what the group structures are and especially how they behaved because you can't put your emotional and ethical values on those creatures. You can see something in the fossil record such as a hominid with a broken femur that had healed and the hominid lived on and died long after the injury. This could imply that groups would take care of an injured party and move them with the band as it moved until the injured hominid could walk again. But on the other hand one never knows if a the group was in danger and one was gravely injured whether or not they had to move on and leave one or two behind after an animal attack, or an attack by another group.
It's problematic to romanticize about a perfect lovey dovey prehistory.
Plus there are these amazing paradoxes in prehistory one can scarcely fathom. Such as which of the early human lines took to reproducing using the Missionary position, and why did they fornicate facing one anther instead of bumping behinds? It's a serious question, and the answer it has to do with the human line developing away from having an estrus cycle. The monkeys have estrus cycles and some of the other upper primates as well, but what does it have to do with the cultivation of modern human consciousness?
The questions and the answers are not so easy and not gotten off of charts. Even though the pictures tool kits of the various periods are fascinating and complex to the point of modern humans not being able to make them.
Labeling behaviors is odd too, because where were the missionaries in prehistory? And how did those early humans learn to reproduce without Jesuits and Dominicans there to tell them to face each other? And why do some people today still prefer doggy style? And dogs have estrus cycles and humans do not???
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