Reading the book right now. What's concerning to me is that we are currently seeing the dissolving of myths across the board, whether it be religion, faith in public institutions, or facades that we kept before social media existed. Is the breakdown of social cohesion a consequence? Letting go of myths seems like an inherent good, but can we survive it?
Why We Dominate the Earth
71–80 of 135 posts
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d say the Earth was fairly well dominated by the time Abrahamic religion started to become mainstream around 300AD.
Axial[1] religion might have something to do with which societies succeeded later, but that isn't the same thing as Abrahamic and is all about a later phenomenon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age
This sort of thing really makes me wish we had high-fidelity simulations of human societies we could do experiments with. And then comes the fear that we’re in one.
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#73It's kind of revisionist to consider the last 60 years (if we're generous) but more like 10 years as proof that intelligent beings got there through some massive amount of cooperation across borders and beyond close-knit groups >>Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. Human intelligence has been around a lot longer than a few decades and for the vast vast majority of tha…
> sects of people were uncooperative and competing with each other all the time And those groups who cooperated with in-group better have repeatedly outcompeted groups that didn't cooperate as well.
Up to a point. Successful cooperation seems to be through family ties or common upbringing, such as the vikings or spartans.
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#74> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions. I read his book where he talks about this. It makes some sense: you can operate at varied scales if you have shared fictions. When you meet a complete stranger, you're both members of the human race, sharing a desire for a better future. Meet a fellow countryman, and there are so…
Netflix is hosting Joseph Campbell and 'The Power of Myth' with Bill Moyers which wonderfully details how this idea of shared fiction works. [0] It's amazing how deep it permeates our culture including how Disney adopted Campbell's ideas as not only a vehicle for story telling but also as a matter of social responsibility creating a unified view among all the billions of Earth's human inhabitants.[1] You and I have a shared fiction that is also the same as a person buying a bootleg copy of Star Wars or Frozen on the street corner in Moscow, Beijing, Mexico City, or New Delhi.
[0] https://www.netflix.com/title/70281117
[1] https://livingspirit.typepad.com/files/chris-vogler-memo-1.p...
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#75> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions. I read his book where he talks about this. It makes some sense: you can operate at varied scales if you have shared fictions. When you meet a complete stranger, you're both members of the human race, sharing a desire for a better future. Meet a fellow countryman, and there are so…
>>> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions.
Shared fictions seems to just be a euphemism for culture. I wonder why he doesn't just call it that.
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#76Unrelated to the article, but the headline raised the question in my mind - is intelligent life an inevitability, and is that a good or bad thing? If the human race had not, would another species eventually rise to a similar position? And would it have caused the same destruction? On the flip side, what purpose would natural life serve if there was no species sufficiently cognizant to recognize it?
> is intelligent life an inevitability, and is that a good or bad thing? Without intelligence, there is no good or bad. You can't begin to overlay a moral framework on the world if there are no sentient beings to create it.
We are, by some definition (!), intelligent life. Therefore we can reason about a parallel universe where humanity did not rise to become the dominant species; what the alternatives might be (or have been); and what the implications of that might be.
I guess it was sort of an "if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound" sort of question. I am not a philosopher, so perhaps it was the wrong question, or poorly phrased. But I'm glad it sparked a brief discussion nonetheless.
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course not, at least in any practical sense. Even plants use the mathematical properties of fractals to make effective structures. If we encountered aliens that are as alien as possible, they would agree on the ratio of the radius to the circumference of a circle on a flat plane.
I'm not debating whether math exists or governs our reality. My question was can other species understand math concepts? Or is this a unique sapien genetic mutation. AFAIK, plants don't communicate or use math concepts (even if they grow using them).
As the author puts it, it's not about genetic mutations. Sapiens have the ability to share fictions, stories, in which we can all agree in order to live in a functioning society. So, in this sense, mathematics, laws and private companies are all 'fictions'. It only works if people believe in it.
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#78Reading the book right now. What's concerning to me is that we are currently seeing the dissolving of myths across the board, whether it be religion, faith in public institutions, or facades that we kept before social media existed. Is the breakdown of social cohesion a consequence? Letting go of myths seems like an inherent good, but can we survive it?
The debunking of myth began quite a while ago, maybe the 19th century even but certainly, the mid 20th century showed what horrors could be produced by the nation state.
Moreover, the majority of Western Europe could be called irreligious and lives more or less equivalently well and "morally" to the United States. Indeed, the United States has always been uniquely religious for an advanced society. We are now also set-up by a wide variety of unique social ills. There might not be any relation between but then again there might be.
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#79Reading the book right now. What's concerning to me is that we are currently seeing the dissolving of myths across the board, whether it be religion, faith in public institutions, or facades that we kept before social media existed. Is the breakdown of social cohesion a consequence? Letting go of myths seems like an inherent good, but can we survive it?
The book Homo Deus also introduces this idea, but calls them “intersubjective realities”, and they include not only religion, but capitalism. He claims that the strongest of these today is humanism, and even those who are religious usually share the humanist dream. He then goes on to talk about how we will continue to create new ones, some of which are terrifying.
I think that term makes it easier to see how they will continue.
Re: Why We Dominate the Earth
#80I saw an interesting, related theory in an ecology book I read recently. Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc). The rise of Abrahamic religion, with man as the most important creature on the planet and everything on earth created for man, is a factor for why we "dominate" the earth.
The Chinese don't follow an Abrahamic religion and yet they've built huge urban empires. It's unlikely this is a factor.
Also, the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs.