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 --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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