File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-04-30.191, message 73


Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 09:01:19 -0600
From: Lisa Rogers <eqwq.lrogers-AT-state.ut.us>
Subject:  sociality and social change -Forwarded


Forwarded Mail received from: Lisa Rogers

      Date:  04/23/1996  08:58 am  (Tuesday)  
      From:  Lisa Rogers
        To:  STATE-DOMAIN.WPSMTP("om-AT-gambro.se")
   Subject:  sociality and social change

>>> <om-AT-gambro.se>  4/23/96, 08:33am >>>

Lisa Rogers ( 23 april 1996 ) wrote:
>There is no good reason to think that natural selection ever favored
>the survival of a group over the survival of an individual.

Q: How about natural selection favoring those *individuals* who chose
to join a group over those who didn't?

A: You got it, exactly right.  Depending on everything else, either
one might be advantageous at various times and places.

>Any one decision, such as which group to join, if at all, or when to
>split, is not simply a matter of certain life or death.  Various
>opportunities have various costs and benefits, in terms of expected
>RS, risks and variance in outcomes, etc. [snip]  Evolutionary
biology asks what might have >been the costs and benefits that
existed, to which organisms >responded by doing thus and so?

Q: As the population density grows, the rewards for group-living (ie
Division of Labor) grow too, no? FWIW it looks to me like there's an
awful lot more group-living people today than there are
non-group-living people. Does that say something about RS?

A: You are definitely onto my line here.  The "rewards" for anything
are meaningless by themselves, costs and benefits of all options must
be included in order to see which option would yield the greatest net
RS.  DofL I don't see as an unmitigated good, and clearly foraging
societies have minimal DofL, what exists is primarily a sexual DofL. 

I think that pop. density is important in making foraging a more
difficult way of life.  As the supply of materials in the environment
decreases relative to each person, each one must dig deeper
[literally, for wild tubers that have not been harvested already],
hike farther, etc.  This means less food harvest per hour [wages are
reduced] which means less food for everybody.  Foragers are typically
quite lean, and things like birthrates do depend on the quantity of
nutrition for women, or more specifically her physiological "energy
budget".

Kids grow slower, mature later, maybe have a little high mortality
rate, etc.  This is not to say that people were "forced" into
agriculture by widespread starvation, or some silly things I've heard
of like they were all so starved that they were mentally retarded,
until somebody grew some high-protein grain and they got smart.  Not
at all!

I think that people were/are always looking for higher returns, and
as long as foraging was *better than available alternatives*, that's
where we stayed.  At some point, in some places, the returns for
foraging began to equalize with returns to some early farming.  Then
continues to tip away from foraging.

One way to think of exploitation is that the victims *cannot do
better* by leaving.  If other opportunities are not available at
equal or better returns, they may put up with the crap.  Or seek to
change it, of course, which has its own costs.

Cheers,
Lisa



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