• Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    Ah okay, thanks. That's interesting. Violence undoubtedly occurred, which was why I posted the second link. But this sort of thing was covered above to an extent: raising the rare and recent to the level of norm and ancient. (I know 10,000 years isn't recent, but it's still a fraction of a percent of our existence.)
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    H. sapien violence is natural (thus, the species-wide adaptation of eusocial risk-sharing). Racism, however, is ideological (and maladaptive in the long-term).
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    H. sapien violence is natural (thus, the species-wide adaptation of eusocial risk-sharing). Racism, however, is ideological (and maladaptive in the long-term).180 Proof

    Your thinking is awfully reductive. Either violence is a product of genes or of socially imposed forms. That doesn’t seem to be any room in your thinking for an interpretive interaction between person and world.
    That makes your thinking violent , and not because of a one-way imposition from nature or nurture. It’s violent to the extent that it gives you no way to understand others’ thinking from their vantage in an empathetic way, only as a potentially malevolent arbitrary shaping , to which you will find you have no choice but to respond to with hostility.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    I'm sorry, but you're strawman is "awfully reductive". I've neither stated nor implied a cause or mechanism for violence. If you have a point, Josh, it's too obscure for me to discern it.
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    I've neither stated nor implied a cause or mechanism for violence.180 Proof

    You’re welcome to do so here. What do you mean by ‘natural’ when you say violence is natural and define us by species name?
  • James Riley
    2.9k


    I thought you might be over my head (maybe you are) but my brain shut down reading your post. All I can say is homo sapiens is an animal and we share intraspecific traits with most animals I know. And, while mere anecdote, I've personally seen a lot of violence that was not sex/mating-related or, if it was, it went way beyond what was called for just to get laid or to take out another male's offspring. Some of it haunts me. After all, I thought Bambi was cool.

    While it might be over-stating the case to say nature is nothing but red in tooth and claw, it is also overstating the case to say we are naturally a kumbha ya critter. In fact, I think our legal systems are largely designed just to exhaust the financial and emotional resources of the parties to the point where they give up on the idea of self-help and just bow their heads and crawl back in their caves. Otherwise, shit would be getting real, all the time.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    I'm not interested in going down rabbit holes. Glean (charitably, I hope) what you can from the context of my post – contrasting 'natural' with 'ideological' and the respective parenthetical remarks – as well as the context of this thread disscussion.

    :up:
  • Apollodorus
    3.4k
    I tend to believe that some form of bias is natural, as @180 Proof says.

    This may be (a) bias against the different and (b) bias against the unknown.

    If so, then racism is possibly an extreme form of it, depending on how it is defined?

    But I am a bit dubious about the claim that "evolution favors diversity" (@Cheshire).

    Diversity may play a prominent role in the animal kingdom in general, but less so within a particular species.

    For example, there seems to be no great diversity among elephants, lions, or wolves.

    Also, it seems that more successful species, like humans, tend to wipe out less successful ones.

    So, I could be wrong, but something doesn't seem right somewhere ....
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Violence is natural; however, organized, logistical violence aka "war" is cultural (i.e. but for exapted language-gaming / discursive reasoning, "war" does not occur). And racism is just war by other means.
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    you’re no fun
  • frank
    15.8k
    Either violence is a product of genes or of socially imposed forms. That doesn’t seem to be any room in your thinking for an interpretive interaction between person and world.Joshs

    What's the alternative? (I'm asking). Isn't psychology also imposing forms?
  • Lil
    18


    Whites are becoming minorities in many places.
  • Cheshire
    1.1k
    Whites are becoming minorities in many places.Lil
    Yes, this is an excellent example of an
    ...iteration of the white genocide conspiracy BS that has been poisoning society for hundreds of years.Cheshire

    Excellent contribution.
  • Lil
    18


    It's a fact. The white genocide conspiracy BS doesn't take away from that.
  • Cheshire
    1.1k
    It's a fact. The white genocide conspiracy BS doesn't take away from that.Lil
    It gives it false meaning.
  • Lil
    18

    How so?

    I think that it's worth saying so as not to erase the truth behind the hyperbole. There's a reason many white young men feel disenfranchised as they do. There is racism toward whites. And white populations are shrinking from the majority.
  • Cheshire
    1.1k
    ↪Cheshire
    How so?
    Lil
    It implies a threat which speaks to the emotions in order to propagate the BS that normally precedes it. See Above.
  • BC
    13.6k
    ~ . ~
  • BC
    13.6k
    ~ . ~
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    :up:

    If this is the case, it's not caused by anti-white exploitation-discrimination, ethnic cleansing or genocide of whites by non-whites at any time anywhere on the planet. To the extent many whites suffer or are aggrieved in North America or the EU where whites control well over 90% of governments, militaries, police, organized crime and industries, they do so because of elite / establishment whites. Can you handle the inescapable truth? Do you think this fact of the matter portends "racism" against whites by whites (insofar as non-whites control next to nothing that exploits the lives and livelihoods of themselves or, especially, whites)? :brow:
  • Benkei
    7.7k
    Good, maybe it will be an end to racism someday then.
  • Lil
    18
    It is simply a statement of uncontroversial fact.

    Why then is it okay to discriminate against - often minority - Whites?
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    it's difficult to imagine humans as peaceable. It's the WYSIATI again: history is a list of wars punctuated by discoveries; the news is conflict punctuated by sexual assault stories. From a limited viewpoint, we do seem inherently cruel.Kenosha Kid

    True, but it always strikes me as a bit odd that people don't include any self-reflection in that. Or maybe they do and society is even more of a train wreck than I thought. But really...when people are thinking that humans naturally just bash in the head of anyone they dislike and rape anything in a deer-hide skirt, do they think to themselves "Yep, that's what I'd do if it wasn't for all this damned enlightenment etiquette I've been brainwashed with"? What we really get from the WYSIATI is that the word around us seems to be full of rapists and murderer except us and our community of friends and family who all seem perfectly nice and unlikely to do either. I'm curious as to why that second half of the image doesn't figure into default assumptions about human nature.

    An interesting guess at an answer to this comes from Peter Gray. Unlike hunter gatherers, we are controlled almost every inch of our lives as children. We never get a chance to see what we would do without parental control. This creates a gap in the narrative, in our story of ourselves, which is both frightening and perpetually as dumping ground for every dark impulse we can't handle the existence of in our new shiny adult self-narrative. We don't see ourselves as the product of our own motives, but rather as having been 'built' from this mysterious 'state of nature'.

    Advocates of prehistoric war aren't motivated by this sentiment. It's based in the evidence they've seen.frank

    What evidence? I'd wager almost no-one has seen the evidence bar a few archaeologists and authors. The overwhelming majority will read the theories of those who've seen the evidence. They'll pick up, for example, Pinker's book (The Better Angels of our Nature), read the blurb and think "that's for me". I picked up Pinker's book, read the blurb and thought "apologist bullshit". Unfortunately I then had to read it for work, so the point was moot, but otherwise I would have just put it straight back on the shelf. It's different if you keep stumbling across evidence in favour of one theory in the course of your general reading, but that's simply not the case for most ordinary people. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those people who did pick it up thinking "that's for me", I'm saying it's a choice, people are not bombarded with evidence which they have to sort through, they're bombarded with adverts, and shit about celebrities. evidence is something they have to actively seek out, it's a motive driven exercise.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Do you have evidence of state, church or economic discrimination – which in the US is in principle illegal by statute – against whites by nonwhites or are you just mouth-breathing unfounded, white grievance propaganda?

    Caveat: Prejudice alone is not racism; however, racism is enforced prejudice.
  • ChatteringMonkey
    1.3k
    The claim that war is not in our nature by pointing to hunter gatherer groups showing little of it, is either a bit of a truism or an argument that doesn't really cut it... I can't decide.

    War, almost by definition, presupposes complex organisation, specialisation and societal structure etc... It shouldn't come as a surprise, I think, that we see little of it in small tribal groups because they just didn't and don't have any of the things that would even enable warfare as a possibility.

    You can interpretate it either way it seems to me i.e. they only started with warfare under certain conditions, or as soon as the condition were right they started warfare.... and so I don't see how it showes anything regarding human nature.
  • ChatteringMonkey
    1.3k
    Racism is a bit similar I suppose. You tend to see it where larger organised ethnic groups dominate other ethnic minorities. It's not only whites, that's a bit silly, they are not that special... I already pointed out the Bantu dominating Pygmies, but in China with the Han much of the same dynamic is going on... there's plenty of other examples.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_nationalism
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    You tend to see it where larger organised ethnic groups dominate other ethnic minorities.ChatteringMonkey

    Racism is larger organised ethnic groups dominating other ethnic minorities.
  • ChatteringMonkey
    1.3k
    I could agree with it's an ideology created in support of organised ethnic groups dominating ethnic minorities.

    If you literally mean 'is the same' then I don't agree.
  • Isaac
    10.3k


    OK, so what would you call one organised ethnic group dominating ethnic minorities, but without a supporting ideology? What is it you're imagining constitutes this domination at an individual level, random chance, one group actually being better than the other ("it's not racism, it's just a fact")? I'm struggling to see how you could separate the two. If one organised group are dominating another on ethnic grounds, that is de facto racism, no?
  • frank
    15.8k
    evidence is something they have to actively seek out, it's a motive driven exercise.Isaac

    I understand what you're saying. One datum looking for interpretation is, as I mentioned earlier, that we appear to have more female ancestors than male. During some phases our our prehistoric ancestry the ratio was around 2:1. One suggestion for explaining that is prehistoric war.

    I'm a little surprised that people bring up biases about what early humans were like. That stuff just isn't on my radar, though maybe it should be. To approach the question with a strong reaction against those views, which I read Kenosha as doing, isnt the best way to get to the truth.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.