charles brough

Yes, we evolved in small groups so we are unable to really show much compassion and concern for those who are outside of what we regard as our group. People can show more genuine concern and compassion for a dog trapped on a sinking ship than whole nations suffering near starvation. We are territorial also. We go to war rather than lose just a segment of our land. We also try to expand our territory, even create empires over other people. We still do; we're even doing it now.

Yes, actually studies have been done on this and the absolute maximum number is two hundred. We cannot remember names or faces of that many. (Some rare people are unable to recognize faces at all). We are limited that way because we evolved to not need to remember that many. We are actually more comfortable in groups of about forty people, a common hunnting-gathering group size. It is not concidence that platoons are about that size, as well as congregations, orchestras, and school classes. Army squads and sports teams are the size of the male hunting teams of hunter-gatherer groups and, as well, war parties,

I agree. The word "Doomsday" was applied by the National Geographic channel to the prepper series but a slow population crash is far more likely in the decades to come than a single-day catastrophy.

It seems to me that over-population has little to do with not being enough food or being too jammed together. Any primate group tends to experience over-crowding when the group size grows in excess of the size its species evolved to be optimal to it. We humans evolved to live in hunting/gathering size groups of less than one hundred. How have we manage to so dramatically exceed that---or have we?

Are you one of those who laugh at the "Doonsday Preppers (see the National Geographic channel prepper series) and dismiss them because "we have always had 'End Times' fanatics?" If so, you might consider that a real one could be coming that has nothing to do with religion.

I just read the word "prepper" used in my newspaper for people prepairing for travel. The growth of "doomsday prepping" has introduced a new word into our language. (Perhaps you've seen the "prepping" series on the National Gegraphic TV Channel). What is your theory as to why so many people who look ahead see no hope? Is it justified? If you think it has always been this way and that its just a media fling, try listing all the world problems that are not being effectively dealt with . . . advertising link to blog removed

Why be so hostile? I agree. I am dismayed about how the information we get from the media shifts from one thing to the opposite and back, that is, how deceptive a picture we are getting. I no longer try to judge who was wrong. It is a mistake. A more accurate resolution will eventually come out.

I agree that its a bad law. Also, I notice that the first media photos show a picture of a mug-shot-like photo of the Mexican American and a tall and muscular Afro-American male. The first fotos made the self-defense concept a bit unbelievable, but the second ones made the claim very much believable. It was reported today that there was blood on his head when he was checked. I don't know most of the details and none of us do, but there is enough to suspect that the Mexican-American could end up convicted because "the system" is afraid an aquittal would end in riots.

Due to the nature of Florida law, it appears that the judicial system has to prove that the vigelante who shot the Afro-American youth did not kill in self-defense and/or that killing was a hate crime. If it does not succeed in either, he would have to be acquitted. That could lead to race riots. I lived in Los Angeles through two such riots. In the Rodney King riot, it started when a group of police beating down Rodney to the ground. A tape of it was shown and it did look brutal. However, it was never made clear that Rodney was a huge and powerful individual and on some sort of a powerful and illegal stimulant.

Thanks. I was just going by the title as you suggest. I would say the hippish "selfish gene" title is rather appropriate. To me its just natural selecton, biological and group/social.

Surely you don't expect the forum members to give answers to all those questions!! That is what education is for. You go to college, or you do research on your own. All that you are unfamiliar with has been reseached and you could learn a lot from it.

Here's another one: there is an ameba size cellular organism called the "slime-mould slug. These amebas gather together in long strands when their food source shrinks. These strands act like worms that move away from the water to a high point, splitting the worm to go around both sides of things. Then they compact themselves one upon the other into an upward-like worm so that those on the top are exposed to any animal that walks by. They are picked up in the animals fur and, like a bee taking pollen, it is spread to a new territory for the slime mold slug.

Perhaps you are asking it is possible that we will ever understand everything there is to know about the brain and how we think. The answer of course is "no." We will never know everything about anything. Every years, we build a better, more accurate picture of how the brain works, and that is what science does. As I explain in "The Last Civilization," science is a constant effort to improve our understanding. Since we will never understand everything, we will always have science, or at least have it as long as we humans exist.

That's right. It started with "The Enlightenment" and "The Age of Reason." They began when the Reformation gradually freed people from the confines of the single, Catholic, way of thinking. Great questions? The "selfish gene" theory may well have some value in dealing with lone organisms, but it is hopeless in answering the questions you raised. The mechanism involved in GROUP organisms (such as we are) is clear over Gould, Dawkins and the other's heads. Any animal behavioralist will tell you that group animals such as we (who evolved in hunting/gathering size groups roughly forty people) are innately motivated in a social way that became genetic. In other words, we have social instincts. In us and most other mammal groups, the males compete for status and the winner, the Alpha male impregnates more females as reward for leading the defense of the group and its territory, keeping down the juvenile males (keeping order!), and setting where, when and how to hunt. They lead the "war party" (sports team?) and hunting pack. The females are compansionate and raise the children and gather (shop?) All are motivated to care for the rest of the group to gain status. This is instinctive in all group mammals. Every member benefits by caring for the others at the expense of, if necessary, all outsiders. In other words, all in an effective group benefit. Groups with members that are socially weak do not survive. Chimps have been seen attacking another, weaker group and killing every member in order to take the other group's territory. (We call it colonialism). In "The Last Civilization," I show how we use ideology to expand the size of our groups so that we still function as effectively and efficiently in them as in the hunting/gathering size groups we were limited to before the development of language and speech. I also show how natural selection occurs between these expanded groups or "societies." We have social genes, not selfish ones!

Will someone please enlighten me? This thread goes on and on about what is in "the Center of The Universe," but no one has explained whether the universe even has a center or not! That could, after all be important since it is what this whole long thread is about!

We have a great subject for this thread. It is a shame to see it abused by hostile and uninformed posts. This should be reported. . .

Close, but not quite. The weakening of both religious and secular ideology by growing division ("sectarian") causes behavioral deterioration (social problems) which alarms people who then turn back to the founding faith in hope of re-stabilizing society. That is conservatism and "religious regression." In Roman times, with the end of the polytheistic age, regression back to the old polytheisms did not save the Greek-Roman society. Instead, people turned to an ideology built on the belief in one single and less "spiritual" and more abstract god, one who had no image. In the same way, the old Christianity-based society will, in turn, be replaced with one that is non-theist and hence better able to accommodate to modern science, dealing as it does with natural cause. Yes, a nutshell distortion. People recognized the West as "superior" because the US was so rich and so powerful. People adopted Western secular doctrines because they hoped they would then become richer and more powerful also. But as they become more prosperous and we more divided and our policies intrusive, our popularity sinks, our influence weakens and more people turn back to their old faith. Militants grow more powerful.

I can understand why you would be partial to the New Testament in favor to the Koran (after all, it has had more influence on how we think), but be reasonable. You know your history and that the Muslims created one of the world's greatest civilizations. It was supreme in the world in about the 12th century. So did the Hindu civilization based upon their worship of hundreds of thousands of different gods. The great civilization of China was based on ancestor worship! The value of a religion is determined only by how well it built civilization, that is, how well it worked. Religions have no other value. All of them are too old and now obsolete, but they persist because our Secular ideolgy has been unable to replace them. The problem now is that we lost control over the oil there when the West gave up its empire, and we have been pushing them around ever since in order to get back control. We invade them, interfere politically, assasinate scientists, bomb them, and even imposed a Judaic government on them which we still back politically, economically and militarily. We allowed Isreal to build nuclear weapons but proceed to shut down the Iranian economy becuse they feel unsafe and want one to. I believe things will continue to grow worse until the old, world-divisive religions---and Marxism--are replaced. That task will take a better belief system than we now have anywhere.

IMMORTAL, your long quote is informative, and written by a believing Muslim. As you indicated, the Israeli issue is not the only one. It is, however, the one that most Muslims are aware of and which is a constant source of deep esentment. The other issues are understood more by better educated Muslims. Our understanding of the issue was labeled as "depressive" in one of the posts above. In a way it is because it is accurate and shows the direction the world is going. People sense that. Our secular system is weakening and losing its ability to bring unity to the world. The old religions are becoming more assertive. The US is now wasting its resources, men, and wealth hopelessly trying to "solve world problems." If anyone is interested in where this is going, I would be glad to show it---or check out the URL below.

Close . . . The people in other ideology-based societies, such as Islam, feel a genrally-repressed humilation and resentment towards us because they see us as imposing Israel on them. To them, it is a blot on their fourteen hundred year-old civilization. Most Muslims want to liberalize their old faith by adopting our "road-to-economic-success" secular ideology. Bur some who see no economic future, especially unemployed young men, fall back to the old faith and see their humilation as a need to re-assert Islam's stature by defeating us and our world influence. So they developed the despicable act of terrorism as the only effective means of achieving that. With it, they are achieving more success than we admit to ourselves. Their 9/11 attack has cost us thrillions of dollars of our pwn and the world's resources. We are being slowly bled to death.

. . . as you imply, it is philosphy.

So the question is why is our civilization loosing its ability to deal effectively with world problems? Is it because we are religious, too religious, or not religious enough? Here is the answer: The only reason the world can get along, divided as it is between our large religion-based societies such as Islam, the (Christian) West, the Marxist East and Hindu India is because the US became the strongest and most prosperous nation on Earth. People all over the world then tried to adopt our secular belief system because they figured it would enable them to become strong and prosperous also. And with most of the world adopting it, we as its leader, were able to lead the world into a "World Community of Nations" and create "the Global Economy." However, we have been gradually losing both our military superiority and prosperity. So, the rest of the world has also been losing respect for our secular belief system and has been turning back to their old and uniformly intolerant faiths. The Christian Right in the US, Ultra Orthodix Judaism, Muslim fanaticism . . . Even Chinese Marxists are now trying to resurect their old Maoism. The result of all this is that world cooperation has become more difficult and the US become increasingly unable to get agreements needed to solve world problems. So the question is why is our civilization loosing its ability to deal effectively with world problems? Is it because we are religious, too religious, or not religious enough? Here is the answer: The only reason the world can get along, divided as it is between our large religion-based societies such as Islam, the (Christian) West, the Marxist East and Hindu India is because the US became the strongest and most prosperous nation on Earth. People all over the world then tried to adopt our secular belief system because they figured it would enable them to become strong and prosperous also. And with most of the world adopting it, we as its leader, were able to lead the world into a "World Community of Nations" and create "the Global Economy." However, we have been gradually losing both our military superiority and prosperity. So, the rest of the world has also been losing respect for our secular belief system and has been turning back to their old and uniformly intolerant faiths. The Christian Right in the US, Ultra Orthodix Judaism, Muslim fanaticism . . . Even Chinese Marxists are now trying to resurect their old Maoism. The result of all this is that world cooperation has become more difficult and the US become increasingly unable to get agreements needed to solve world problems.

My work is social theory also in that it is the way I interpret social science data by working on the foundation described below. But I still regard the field itself as riddled with subjectivity because it does not base its interpretation of the data on this: We evolved as small-group (hunting/gathering) primates and feel secure only in such groups. Stress builds up as the group size swells beyond what is optimal to us. The only way we have managed to live in larger groups has been to develop (evolve) the ability to use language and speech into ideological systems that were able to bound us into the larger groups. As we perfected the structure of these ideological systems over the tens of thousands of years, we managed to keep explanding their ability to bind us together this way. (Incidentally, Alexander Pope is my favorite poet of all time)

What is unique about social evolution is that societies do have life cycles, but when one dies, the people that belonged to it still live. They just converted to a better religion and a new life cycle began, one belonging to their new society, the one their new ideology bound them into. As you can imagine, I am concerned that as stress builds in the decades to come, that there might be a protracted nuclear war or cyber attacks that destroy the world's power and electronic systems. Also, there is the ever-present threat of pestulance, like the plague that reduced our numbers by a third in the Middle Ages. Names change but the process stays the same. All civilizations have had secular ages, we just call them something else. The one existing in Roman times is called Hellenism. The Potolemic dynasty in Egypt was Hellenist, for exampe. It tied Egypt into the rest of the Roman world. In the great Hindu civilization, it was the teachings of the Buddha which later degenerated into a denomination of Hinduism. Even Islam had a relative secular age in about the 12th century. Secular leadership in China began when Buddhism spread there and lasted more than a thousand years. About prejudice, I firmly believe in treating every individual with consideration no matter what I feel about either their race or religion. I do not approve of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, for example, but I would not treat any believer of it impolitely even though they teach the take-over of most of the Near East ("their Promised Land"), the tearing down of the mosque on the Temple Mount and replacing it with their Temple, or keeping their women back and in shrouds like reactionary Muslims do. Is that a "prejudice?" I know you agree it is not . . .