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The
rise and fall of cultures read more
================================================================= "Spengler" said that "cultures are born," have an infancy, adolescence, maturity and death (Patterns of Culture, p. 48) 67a communities and superorganisms seem to go through the youth, adolescence and senescence, just like individual organisms. in theory, termite colonies should be able to survive nearly forever. in reality, they only last 10?24 years (Insect Societies, p. 116) 41a *for the first 800 years AD, "Mayan civilization" rose to such a level that it could provide a standard of living unlike any the New World had seen before. *but as it developed internal weaknesses, the barbarians from the north sensed their opportunity to gash its soft underbelly. *by 1,100 AD, Middle America was plunged into a dark ages, awash in refugee wanderers. *it didn't recover until the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan set out to conquer its neighbors and build an empire in the 14th century. (Curtin, p. 84) the Aztec capitol, "Tlateloco," became a trade center on a par with 16th century London. 60,000 people showed up each day attracted by the hundreds of goods for sale. 55a An insect society can take 8 to ten years before it reaches sexual maturity, roughly 1,200 years in human terms. (Insect Societies, p. 444) 42b the termite colony has its adolescence. it doesn't produce queens until it's at least ten years old. (Insect Societies, pp. 194?5) 41b insect colonies increase rapidly in size until they hit maturity. *maturity arrives when they begin to send sexual forms into the outside world, carrying their genetic message to new locations. *do human societies as well top out when they've reached the stage where they can send their ideas out to inseminate the surrounding world? what's the adaptive logic of this senescence? why does nature kill off the social beast? why does she dispose of the individual? 42b sex provides "fresh permutations and CR combinations from which" spring progeny that have the chance of being in some way more innovative than their parents. death clears the way for those progeny... and progress. the battle between subcultures is the social equivalent to sex, in which kernals of the new social organization are born. why do societies become senescent and die? to make room for their children. 45a "sexuality and death are opposite ends of the same process" *sex allows genes to jump the barrier separating one generation from another. *death seems an obstacle, but it clears the path for sexuality's mix and match, its generation of fresh variations, its gamble on innovation. *after they pass their sexual prime, individuals wither away *they are cruelly trapped in a prison of infirmities. *civilizations also lose vitality and disappear, victims of the old age and death that aid in the process of creation. 45b "insect societies" have their youth, maturity, and their declining old age. after their juvenile years, their birthrate tapers off. the colony tops out at a peak size. it gradually stops putting out sexual forms, then begins to decline. (Insect Societies, p. 445) 42b an ant generation lasts but a month. a colony lives for sixty years. that's 720 generations, or nearly 1,500 years in human terms. As Lewis Thomas points out, each of the million ants in a colony at one time pursues her own compulsive tasks, unaware of how her role fits with those of the other 999,999, of how her labors carry out the mandate of those who have come before her and prepare the way for those who will follow. (Lives of a Cell, p. 151) 41b an ant colony may
survive 25 years. that's roughly 3,000 in human terms??the age of our
longest lived civilizations, the Chinese and Egyptian. (Insect Societies,
p. 444) 42b
[societies also need that sense of speed, of progress, to flourish] societies as well as individuals self?destruct in Man's Presumptuous Brain Dr. A.T.W. Simmions says the decline of Australia's aborigines came not from outside oppressive forces but from hopelessness. Papuans and Morits? of Northern Borneo are headed for extinction for the same reasons. 23b institutions, like individuals, are driven by goals. in fact, those "goals are built into their very structure" (The Nature of Culture??Kroeber, p. 156) a bank's raison d'etre is "to make a profit off the utilization of money" *a tenants' rights organization is created to weaken the rights of landlords. 77b "a crowd exists so long as it has an unattained goal." (Crowds and Power, p. 29) *civilizations, too, begin to dissolve once their goals are reached. perhaps each goal is a new meme test, which, once the experiment is over, is discarded, its elements swallowed up and transformed into new memes. if the experiment failed, the meme may flicker out and disappear. the parts that succeeded "may survive in new forms, incorporated into new CR ideas that rise in the rhetoric of new charismatic leaders who CR fashion the next civilization." 51a Toynbee was one of the arch "proponents of the idea that CR civilizations follow the pattern of organisms in their" maturation, decay and disappearance. *he felt that as civlizations disintegrate, their content moves on, taking root in the core of the new civilizations that follow. (The Nature of Culture??Kroeber, p. 373) *but he felt the new civilizations often simplify the legacy, making it more efficient. *the Egyptians invented hieroglyphic writing, for example. *this was a huge step forward from having to memorize all knowledge. *but the system was clumsy and so complicated most couldn't master it. *a relatively barbaric group, the Phoenicians, borrowed the basic idea, but simplified it and created an alphabet, something so simple that almost anyone could master it. (The Nature of Culture??Kroeber, p. 347) 76a "when a civilization runs out of a goal, a sense of something ahead of it toward which its energies are directed, a utopia that it's visibly pursuing, then it runs out of steam." discovery of the new world opened a new set of horizons Venetians and Florentines felt they were "the peak of civilization" and would stay on top Spanish were willing to gamble "When a new world is discovered, it totally transforms the world" [new worlds and new technologies reshuffle the hierarchy of societies] Spanish gold??>inflation, which undermined the wealth of Venice and Florence Portuguese sea route to the East undermined them even further Mountain has been moving out from under us toward the Arabs and Japanese Japanese moved into technologies we abandoned Arabs by finding money rather than producing wealth discovery of a new world changes the world view...science Protestant Reformation came as a result of printing press until discovery of new world, there had been a fixed sense of what the world's limits were the world was no longer the place the Romans had conquered, there were places the Romans had never seen shook the Ptolemaic view "the steam has gone out of our civilization...because we've lost the sense of a goal" but Soviets "offer the vision of a new utopia" "I propose...space" "new worlds generate new kinds of wealth and the countries that are on top of those new kinds of wealth tend to dominate the world." Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan are grabbing new opportunities the way the English did in the 17th century Japanese have active space program British invented steel, but "the rest of the world leapt ahead of them into the new technology"??> The Great Depression of 1870 6b the Portuguese and Spanish got to the new world first, but the English prospered from it the most. why? 18a ecologists say that when a "developing ecosystem" is new, its productivity rate is explosive. once it's mature, the emphasis shifts to effiency and frugality. (Evolution, Entropy and Information, p. 121) 53a "American archaeologists studying" the collapse of the Maya feel that the following five steps occur when a civilization collapses. central authority collapses??capitols decline and literacy disappears. the ruling elite disintegrates. the central economy collapses. trade and industry disappear. people abandon the cities and go back to substence farming and barter. a myth grows up about the heroic world that has disappeared. (In Search of the Trojan War, p. 244) 53a says "Ibn Khaldun," before a dynasty dies it sends up a brief shoot of brilliance, a misleading illusion that all is about to be better. "sounds like the Reagan years" (In Search of the Trojan War, p. 247) 53a in a complex dynamical system, the elements that don't prove useful stop calling on the "resources of the system...and quietly wither away" [is that what happens to senescent societies? they've ceased their utility?] =major mechanism behind human self destruct machinery if group selection exists, those groups will survive that are most successful as complex dynamical systems...the groups that learn, adapt, and seize or create opportunities in the world around them. 25a Witte, minister of the last czar, Nicholas, knew that societies that don't move forward are losing the hierarchical race. *his quote. Stalin knew the same thing. he told a conference, *"those who lag behind are beaten." old Russia, he said, had also been beaten in the battle for standing on the international hierarchy, first by the Mongols, then the Turks, then the Swedes, then the Polish/Lithuanians. 22a [Until recently, we Americans have been too convinced of our self importance to remember this lesson. And we've paid the price.] *steel workers today live in ghost towns filled with men who may never hold down jobs again *why did the steel industry, once this country's backbone, collapse? *did greedy, short?sighted executives overlook the new technologies that could have kept the business alive? *the real culprit was government central planning *Harry Truman in the early 50's ordered the steel industry to build new plants *steel company presidents balked, so Harry momentarily nationalized the industry *the presidents knuckled under...and built *the technological advisers urged that they build with the new oxygen furnace technology. *government and company leaders alike ignored them, convinced that the old ways would be dominant forever *demand for steel didn't rise as Truman had anticipated, and plant capacity went idle. *other countries which had built oxygen plants turned out steel for less than we could, and went out to conquer American markets *US steelmakers lost customers *in the early 60's, the president of US Steel decided to raise prices to stockpile cash to build modern, competitive plants *the old cash reserves had been burned up building Truman's obsolete plants *John Kennedy was convinced the steel industry was profiteering, and mounted a pressure campaign to get steel prices rolled back. it worked. *the industry never accumulated the reserves for new plants. *two decades later, it was a wasted skeleton doddering toward death. *the communal "perceptual system" had failed to see the new competitors on the horizon *workers and presidents alike had been convinced that American dominance would go on forever they saw their opponents as each other rather than seeing the outsiders bearing down on them, ready to strip them of nearly everything they had (PR Quarterly 6/87) 33b "the society that feels it's in control of things "has discovered a new technology [relate to internal vs. external focus of control] "in the rat race between social groups", it's a winner society that feels it's in the hands of fate is using technologies that have reached the point of diminishing returns Vikings ran out of villages to conquer, then ran into Arabs "not master of it's own destiny,...destiny is mastering it" 5a
Here's how internal and external locus of control were first discovered. A therapist working with a 23 year old student who's always failed tries to give him new habits that will help him succeed. the therapist assumes that once the student sees just how successful he can be by adopting the new habits, he'll welcome those habits into his life. the student follows the therapist's instructions, and lo and behold, for the first time in his life, succeeds. The therapist is pleased and wraps up the case, convinced that the student will continue with the patterns of behavior that have brought such wonderful results. to the therapist's astonishment, when he leaves the picture, the student goes back to his old way of doing things, and goes back to failing. Why? asks the puzzled therapist. His inquiry reveals something that startles him. The student never saw "a connection between the new forms of behavior and the success". *He looked at his success as "some random quirk of" fate, caused by luck or the caprice of some distant authority figure who arbitrarily took a liking to him. *psychologists drew a picture of two kinds of people: external and internal. internals believe the things in their lives are the result of their own behavior; that they can control their world. *externals believe they're in the hands of an unpredictable, uncontrollable world that lifts them up on some days and squashes them on others. a world of powerful humans who control their lives according to whim. [isn't this the self?fulfilling prophecy into which some eastern and african despotisms have turned?] a world there's no sense trying to understand. psychologists created a battery of tests to measure internal vs. external. found people can feel control over one aspect of their lives and no control over another. *a person can be internal one month and external another. people can feel in control one month and out of control another. *sometimes you feel on top of the world and some times you feel it's on top of you. *sometimes even when something good comes along, you don't feel like you deserve it. lower classes feel less in control than middle classes. people who feel in control are much more capable of solving a problem. some times in a culture's life, it begins to feel it's getting a handle on things. [relate to toads] *it gets exhilirated. that it knows the rules by which the world is run, that it has a right to everything in this world. "People who already feel on top of things are much more capable of coping with the world than people who don't feel on top of things." [to him who hath it shall be given??connect to toads. in the complex dynamical system, resources go to winners] sometimes people are internal and sometimes external. why? the internal computer calculating their social standing is connected to their hormonal system. when the menatl computer says they're on top, that hormonal connection improves their posture, raises their sperm count, and turns their immune system on high. he who feels on top of the world, wants to take more pieces of it into his own hands and becomes more capable of it. when an entire culture feels on top of the world, you get the exuberant sense of manifest destiny [see the notes from Shirer re Manifest Destiny], the feeling that there's a key to the universe and they've managed to get their hands on it. *Like the Arabs, who got Allah's direct message and with it dominion over all the earth's creatures. *"the internals take their swords in their hands and march off to conquer the externals," the poor souls who are not feeling on top of their world, whose hormones have put them on underdrive, who are having trouble solving problems and fighting off disease. the externals become wives, victims, subjects, slaves. and the exuberant internals are confirmed in their belief that the world has been handed to them on a platter and among the goods on the platter are their poor external enemies. 20a
"indication of the extent to which peace means a status quo in which our team is on top, Khomeini sent a telegram to the Iraqis, saying peace be unto those who follow the right line." the implication??those who don't follow my ideas deserve war 17b "one man's justice is another man's oppression" the complaint of one man that he lacks justice is his complaint that he is not sufficiently able to oppress others. when the Arab tribes got justice, they took slaves. "How much justice did the slaves get?" 18a "Let peace be sought through war"=Cromwell's motto. peace=our side ruling. 21b "peace means; if I manage to get on top of you, please be so kind as to sit still. Justice means; I always belonged on top of you to begin with." "if we're not on top yet, justice means, let me turn the system upside?down, so you can be on the bottom." 16a "every nation's version of peace." first, let's achieve justice. That means let's put us on top. Then let's freeze the hierarchical ladder. Isaiah wanted swords beaten into plowshares, but he wanted other nations bowing to Israel. peace with honor was peace with supremacy. in America, we feel on top. countries currently at number 128 don't regard a peace that freezes them on the bottom with equanimity. they would prefer an apocalyptic period of upheaval that turns things upside down, planting those of us on top with our noses staring at the bottom. then peace would be a blissful proposition. in Russian, the word peace means the state that follows successful warfare, a more honest notion than ours. 15a
why are some societies more violent than others South American societies were violent when Hegel described them in 1827. societies go through developmental phases the Western societies that today are relatively peaceful in the 1300s were ravaged by warfare in which peasants were murdered, raped and pillaged by their own troops 28b South and Central America have countries where political violence is the norm and others where the "politics are relatively peaceful." one thing distinguishes the two. the handful of countries where peace is common were not colonies of Spain, they were colonies of England. the differences have nothing to do with race??both sets of countries are mixes of blacks, Indians and Europeans. they're differences of culture. (Violent Neighbors??see the history of Belize) 48b "something causes a tremendous shift" in society from the premium placed on violence among people like the Sioux or the Yanomama to the premium placed on non?violence in a society like ours, where parent's groups rise up to protest the violence on television and the spread of violent toys, or like China of the 15th century, where the bulk of the citizens (?) even refused to fight an invasion" from the premium placed on violence in 15th century England, where cock throwing was an excericize in personal violence and hunting was regarded as a noble sport, a practice for war, to today's England with it's incessant demonstrations for peace. 15b "South American countries seem to respect power" and brutality. they hate us and fantasize treating us with brutality. we keep trying to win their friendship *in Venezuela, they wanted to tear Nixon apart and burn the pieces. they almost succeeded. Nixon was the symbol for America to the Venezuelans. "if the Venezuelans or a great many other people in the so?called Third World, had their way and rose in the hierarchical scale sufficiently to have power over us, they would treat us with a brutality it's hard for us to imagine." 20a "Both Islam and Marxism idealize violence. Islam sees itself as perpetually at war with a non?Islamic world. And Marxism holds as one of its highest values, revolution." revolution is the use of a gun to redistribute power. Marxist Nicaraguan children are taught to count using coloring books with pictures of men with machine guns. tiny Marxist states have standing armies that dwarf those of democracies. Marxist Ethiopia starves its citizens so its soldiers can have guns. "When mankind glorifies violence, the killing of other men can not end." 27a some societies encourage violence toward children. ours discourages it. what's the difference between a society that dictates violence and one that dictates peace? one that dictates turning the other cheek and one that believes in an eye for an eye and the glory of battle? during the Russian Revolution, crowds gathered to see thieves beaten to death. cries of pain were greeted with thrills of delight. a stable society has to deemphasize violence. " Violence is the primary means of redistributing resources. A stable society remains stable because the current resource distribution is more or less satisfactory" 18a hierarchy of needs may account for the rise of permissiveness and the shift from a violent orientation. **what is the hierarchy of needs? if you can't breathe, you don't pay much attention to gourmet food. but if you've been breathing regularly for some time now, you come to take oxygen for granted and may become obsessed with the pursuit of caviar. in the days of hunters and gatherers, proto?Japanese were quite delighted to find berries and nuts in the woods. By modern times, when food was more plentiful, nuts and berries were referred to contemptuously in Japan as "famine food." the shift from love of violence to its abhorrence probably comes as a society moves up the hierarchy of needs. the more needs it takes for granted, the less violent it wants to be. "Now let's look at a possible reason for this quaint phenomenon. It's the old adage, when you ain't got nothin' you got nothin' to lose." a pre?Englishman hunting acorns for tonight's meal and living in a cave could gain a great deal by clubbing his neighbor then making off with his mammoth chops and wife. But a fifteenth century chinese citizen would lose the comforts of the latest hi?tech gadgets and food as exotic as morsels of roasted human baby flesh. he'd trade that in for life in the field, horrible rations, and a probable return to home in a box. 16a "differing experiences during the growth of an animal or human, cause different areas of the brain to develop" the brain of a cat raised indoors is different from that of a cat raised outdoors (from the book The Brain) "Could it account for the abhorrence of violence that tends to accompany a large, stable, well organized empire and the love of violence that seems to characterize more primitive cultures?" English citizens in the 1500s loved small instances of violence. 18b groups which place a premium on violence have the automatic upper hand??eg Arabs and Mongols. 18a Hitler's takeover=an
example of the barbarian principle at work. "if you can't win peacefully,
win violently." 14a << Just listened
to the Audio Book of "How the Irish Saved Civilization". Describes
how St. Patrick converted the Irish, taught them the ways of Christ's
Peace, and set them up to be whipped by the Vikings later on. FASCINATING.
The Darwinian social dilemma is that with predator avoidance the first
priority in life, it is easy to learn to kill strangers. >> ESPECIALLY
IF YOU ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT INTERGROUP COMPETITION PLAYS A SIGNIFICANT
ROLE IN EVOLUTION. THIS WOULD MAKE KILLING STRANGERS BUT *NOT* KILLING
YOUR FELLOW GROUP MEMBERS A NECESSITY. TO KILL OTHERS IN YOUR GROUP
WOULD BE TO DIMINISH PART OF THE PROTECTIVE MECHANISM WHICH IS YOUR
SHIELD AGAINST OTHER GROUPS??THE GROUP TO WHICH YOU BELONG AND WHICH
DEFENDS YOU WHEN YOU COME UNDER ATTACK OR WISH TO ATTACK TO RAISE YOUR
OWN GROUP'S STATUS AND BOUNTY. THE ONLY "BRETHREN" YOU'D WANT
TO KILL WOULD BE "CRIMINALS," THOSE WHO BEHAVE IN SUCH A WAY
AS TO WEAKEN THE GROUP STRUCTURE. cheers?? howard
"Experience teaches that it is not disarmament that points the way to peace, but rather that peaceful relations open the door to disarmament." West Germany's President Richard Von Weizsacker. (Peacemaking among Primates pg 267) 73a To the appeasers "efforts to avoid war were ipso facto virtuous. And they assumed that all sensible men would agree. But in Berlin, making war was a virtue and those who shrunk from it were base." William Manchester, The Last Lion Alone 91b quote fr. Gibbon??barbarians make war for the fun of it, but "inhabitants of a declining empire must be lured into the service CR by the hope of profit or compelled by the dread of punishment." young Romans in the Empire's years of decay were so desperate to avoid the draft that they'd cut off their own fingers (Gibbon, p. 360?1) 52b Alaric, the general who toppled the ancient city, had benefitted from the Empire's attempt to buy him off. when he'd conquered Greece, the Emperor had made him general of the eastern Empire. Alaric had weapons constructed at a frantic pace, then use thosed weapons to attack Rome. (Decline and Fall, p. 557) 53a *Chinese disarmament, 3rd Century, left the Emperor unarmed. *but the princes held on to their armies, and rendered the emperor powerless. *each prince grabbed for the throne, throwing the country into chaos. (History of China, p. 122) *no prince managed to live for more "than a year" on the throne. *all became so absorbed in fighting each other that they forgot about dangers from the outside. *Finally the huns got the bright idea of installing an emperor *they, after all, still had an army. *And they had all the latest weapons. they'd bought them from demilitarized Chinese soldiers. Result: the 4th century Han dynasty, a name the Huns took to look "a bit more Chinese." (Hist of China, p. 123, 124) 40b disarmament wreaked havoc on the Chinese citizenry. *in 310 a former Chinese slave "worked his way up to the leadership CR of a tribe of displaced Huns" and led a campaign that went straight across China, killing 100,000 Chinese. 40b "the Greeks attempted to ban long?range CR weapons" (Charisma and Institution Building, between pp. 30?40) 43b *2nd and third century Christians forbade soldiering. *Origen believed Christianity "would so utterly transform human CR society that war would vanish." *others felt God, not armies, would defend societies that laid down their arms. (Christianity, Baynton, p. 62) 42b
the same impulse that underlies college panty raids shows up among the Massai and Kipiki when newly initiated young males "go off to raid cattle" from rival tribes, often triggering a war. (Natural History 6/89, p. 68?) 72a 2 groups of ants making war??description, Insect Societies, p. 158 41a "According to Wilson, when a population over populates the territory, groups within the population compete for territories and those that win, in the hierarchical struggles, possess the territory" [like Gombe chimps warring, witch hunts] rimbum warriors losing and living with in?laws also applies to wandering Jews and displaced Palestinians 8a {{subculture}} says geopolitical analyst Halford John MacKinder, "the great wars of history... are the outcome...of the unequal growth of nations." (yen, p. 268) 64b peace among capuchin monkey sub?groups depends on "a balance of terror" *when one group senses weakness in another, it attacks...violently *and when a subgroup has finally come out on top, its members begin to fight with each other. (Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 268) 73a [power vacuums lead to war] "why people go to war" scarcity discovery of a new resource "19th century" America, the railroad turned wilderness into inexhaustible resources makes people feel more vigorous, sperm count goes up, they swagger *god is with them Manifest Destiny British conquering the world for Christ and civilization brought to those heights by sailing ships, trade, banking, steam engine "under Hitler, Germany began to prosper" "when a society is suffering from scarcity...it becomes cowed and passive" [use the conservation of resources by the Arizona toad to show why] The Basques abandoned their territory the Irish under "potato famine" did the same when the Vikings invented their boats, they opened a tremendous resource fish *started to swagger and felt manifest destiny Mongols developed long?bow the force that opens new resources is a new technology 4b A careful psychological study of the writings, speeches, and other materials by and about George Bush and Saddam Hussein showed that when they were optimistic about themselves, they were the most aggressive in their international stance. (Military Aggression and Risk Predicted by Explanatory Style by Jason M. Satterfield and Martin Seligman, p. 77-82, Psychological Science, March 1994) On the other hand when the two were the most personally pessimistic, they were the least aggressive and the least warlike. 93a "Fredrick Turner's Frontier hypothesis" when society senses a fresh horizon, the be fruitful and conquer mentality is at work exuberance, imagination when it feels frontier is gone, it adopts the k strategy??self denial *repressive, "leaves no room for teeming imaginations...[or] abundant fantasies of new utopias" *spaceship earth and small is beautiful=the latest manifestation outer space the answer 8a **"War and intolerance seem to go together, probably not because one causes the other, but because they're both the result of the same cause." that cause: "the threatened or actual redistribution of wealth or shake?up in the hierarchy of groups." "The dominant class ends up with losing it's dominance, a dominant nation ends up with losing it's dominance. A subordinate class or nation sees the opportunity to climb the ladder to the top through some accident which has increased it's ability to corner wealth and power." Crusades??Christian Europe saw the opportunity to coalesce and seize a higher position vis a vis the forces of Islam. 17a what conditions lead a society to have "deep dreams of peace?" what conditions lead other societies to excited dreams of pillage and war? "when a society is on top of the hierarchical ladder it dreams of peace, it goes soft, it seeks to preserve a nonviolent status quo and when a society is on the bottom but sees a chance to move up, it begins to dream of the glories of conquest?" the fantasy of conquest provides an outlet for the powerful fantasies of destruction that frustration triggers in the human brain. in New Guinea when crowding gets bad and wives begin to carp, frustration begins to build??>war. Chinese in the 15th century had grown so complacent they were willing to buy peace at almost any price, and gave away almost half their country to the Kin. like the mood in America for the last 30 or 40 years. as we see ourselves sinking we move toward reactionary religious fervor and possibly the selfrighteous zeal for bloodshed that often goes with it. 17b do people go to war when they find new resources, as the Americans did when manifest destiny reflected their zeal for conquest at the turn of the century? or when frustration reaches a peak, as in the case of the rimbum tree. or both? 17b c [whiff of riches] the higher the murder rate in a city, the lower the suicide rate. and the lower the murder rate, the more people kill themselves. in prosperous times, suicides go down and murders go up. in depressions, suicide becomes more popular than murder. *supports the notion that when a society is feeling boisterous, it becomes more aggressive, more willing to beat the pants off its neighbors when their fates are declining, the self?destruct mechanism takes over. suicide was more common than murder in higher socio?economic groups. study concluded that homicide rose in lower classes in prosperous times because frustration rose. and suicides went up among upper classes during economic declines because of frustration. so much for notion that elimination poverty will reduce demand for revolution 23b [see conservatives and withchunt] as state of economy improved, murder rate among blacks went up and among whites went down. 23b [opportunity wakes us up] *put a male in with a female rat and at first he'll hump her for all he's worth *later, he'll get bored and lose interest in sex. give him a NEW female...his testosterone level climbs all over again. *Coolidge effect among guinea pigs it's what humans go through when there's a new girl in the office. *the sahara toad principle again: a new girl represents a fresh opportunity for your genes to corner resources. you spring from relative dormancy into interest and action. 23a "the impulse toward war is triggered, not by having a lot, but by a rapid increase in the amount one has, even if one starts from a very low level. This could also explain why the impulse toward revolution is inflamed instead of stilled by increasing the standard of living of people in poverty." an increase in standard of living wakes the poor up, makes them hunger for more. visions of more, if you're on the bottom, mean taking over what those on top possess. already HAVING a lot doesn't make one warlike, it makes one lazy, complacent, desirous of maintaining the status quo. And having very little makes one listless, weak, ripe for conquest or genocide. [these principles need some strong, anecdotal examples] 17b [nature's strategy is simple. when there's little to be gained, she slows an organism down. when opportunity arrives, she speeds it up] why do we sleep? clue comes from squirrels, who're awake 3 mos and sleep 9. awake the mos when food is out. asleep when food is scarce. sleep makes cost?effective use of time [like the toads who hibernate until the rain comes??see above] being awake in winter would burn more fuel than they could find. 19a melatonin keeps the body in tune with its daily cycles by plugging into receptors "in the hypothalamus" (Science, v. 242, p. 78) 55a [the hypothalamus also just happens to handle aggression] prolonged stress depresses "melatonin secretion" (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, p. 100) 72a were the Arabs in the time of Mohammed, the Macedonians in the time of Alexander, the Germans under Hitler, experiencing the first whiff of a new prosperity? were the Romans in the early days of their expansion? 17b "according to Caesar, when one tribe managed to win a victory against Rome, it inspired other tribes to join in a general rebellion. As soon as there was defeat, tribes began to desert." 17b New Guinea, the Rimbum warriors who take a batch of new territory go through a boom. the pigs who'd been eating the gardens have been killed, so the yams grow plentifully. There's plenty of extra land. Presumably, the winners go into an R phase. meanwhile the pigs are procreating, and the wives are having babies. while things were good, it was easy to rise in society. it was easy to accumulate status symbols. but now it's getting more difficult to make ends meet. there are fewer yams and more mouths to feed. the wife starts complaining. frustration mounts.??> war *In modern society, we have similar cycles. the roaring 60s with prosperity and sexual revolution. Arab oil embargo in 73, things got harder each year. upward mobility was replaced by downward mobility. sexual repression began to dominate the headlines??"The Sexual Revolution Is Over" said the cover of Time in a time of scarcity, men become frightened of demon spirits, impurities, displeasing god. they want to sacrifice. Mayans going through cycles because of soil nutrients wanted to sacrifice to gods Why does this lead to war? a leader comes who says he knows the cause of our troubles, the impurities we're allowing among us??> withchunts 12a each insect colony claims a group of plants as its own, and defends it against other social insects. some colonies even post sentries on the spot who stand guard for days before returning home on furlough. (Insect Societies, p. 447) 42b the most aggressive ants are those who cling to a rigidly fixed territory, says Wilson. (Insect Societies, p. 247?8) 42b among insects, war is "held to a minimum in temperate zones." *but in the tropics, violence is a permissible luxury. (Insect Societies, p. 451) *humans seem less fettered by the weather. Europeans happily butchered each other for centuries. they simply stopped for a rest when the snow came. 42b
bees gather "nectar, pollen, water and resin" (Honeybee Ecology, p. 82) 54a a colony raises 150,000 bees each summer (Honeybee Ecology, p. 83) 54a "bees have
been around 35 million years." (Honeybee Ecology, p. 124) 54b |
