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Saturday, June 01, 2013

Fun With Fundamentalists

If you are an atheist who believes in free markets or who believes evolution applies to history or culture you are not an atheist after all.

11 comments:

watching the watchers said...

This statement is itself fundamentalist oversimplification. The best book on evolutionary psychology is Sex at Dawn. Modern failure of the nuclear family is explained by egalitarian prehistory. Check it out. Most other books on the subject implicitly support social stratification and, by extension, free market fundamentalism. Not this one. Recent research regarding horizontal gene transfer also implies a biological basis for socialism.

Dale Carrico said...

This statement is itself fundamentalist oversimplification.

Well, it's a simplification, brevity being the soul of wit and all, but I scarcely agree that it is a fundamentalist one.

Recent research regarding horizontal gene transfer also implies a biological basis for socialism.

That explains why we live under socialism then. Oh, we don't. Guess we'll still have to actually struggle to arrive at equity-in-diversity after all.

Social darwinism and evodevo is still reactionary nonsense, and there is no such thing as a natural market. That was my point, and it still stands.

watching the watchers said...

Divorcing culture from the natural world is essentially an arrogant deification of the human mind, and one that is inextricably linked to colonialism as well as environmental degradation. It was European colonists, after all, who looked down their noses at Earth religions, using their preference for a remote sky god to justify cultural eradication.

The point in referencing evolutionary psychology is that the best work in that field emphasizes social inequity as a relatively recent development resulting from competition for natural resources, leading to the conclusion that mutual aid is a crucial factor in evolutionary development. This observation hardly leads to the conclusion that political struggle is unnecessary, but I can understand that optimism isn't exactly your forte.

Dale Carrico said...

Refusing reductive "evolutionary" misconstruals of historical struggle and refusing scientistic rationalizations for cultural prejudices is far from "divorcing culture culture from the natural world." I am not exactly unaware of the environmental and political effects of the rise of agriculture or the long history of crimes and abuses of European colonial powers -- I teach these things to undergraduates. I can only assume that you are making these points because you haven't been reading me long enough to know where I coming from, and hence misconstrued the thrust of my point in refusing misapplications of only loosely "Darwinian" conceits to the complexities of historical struggle and polyculture dynamisms. You will forgive me if I remain highly skeptical about even "the best work" in "evolutionary psychology" which I am sure is compatible in some construals with more progressive outcomes even if it is almost always used in practice for reactionary ends emerging out of reactionary assumptions -- quite apart from the fact that as science it seems to me (beyond the broadest not particularly useful generalities) to be well on the way to being shelved next to phrenology as a symptomatic fad of boys looking to justify their toys. As for optimism, I am optimistic enough to think humans capable, even now, of building a sustainable equitable consensual planetary polyculture -- but I am more interested by far in effort than back-slapping and hand-clapping. Most people who make a big thing of their optimism in my experience have been scam artists looking for a mark.

watching the watchers said...

Racism, colonialism and social Darwinism are logical outcomes of the ideas Darwin himself put forth. Consider the full title of his work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, or his numerous racist quotes, such as this one from the Descent of Man: "At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes...will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."

One of the points Sex at Dawn demonstrated was that Darwin's fear of contradicting Victorian social norms influenced him to minimize the prevalence of numerous South American indigenous cultures that practiced partible paternity (also known as multiple baby daddies), since this information would have undermined European notions of women's proper role in society. This is a very clear example of how European religious traditions helped to shape the racism and misogyny inherent in so much of what passes for objective science. How exactly do insights like that support reactionary sentiments, again???

Dale Carrico said...

Stop spamming the Moot with ads for your pet book. I'm glad you like it so much, it sounds okay, I guess. Of course, Darwin was indeed a product of a racist, classist, sexist, colonialist society and his works reflect this, and not only incidentally, and neither is it exactly surprising that such a society would go on to misapply his work in social darwininst directions -- or that vestiges of such irrationalism continue on into the racist sexist plutocratic evodevo present, including in faux-progressive modes of the kind that you seem to favor yourself. But to apply evolutionary models to the vicissitudes of historical struggle or to judgments about cultural lifeways is simply to misunderstand evolution. I'm quite happy to agree to disagree with you on this topic -- you don't exactly seem persuadable, the conversation is hitting diminishing returns, and it is taking on the boring coloration of a pissing contest anyway. Best of luck to you.

watching the watchers said...

The line of thinking I've mentioned here is very focused on undermining the idea that society should be structured around nuclear families, thereby leading to "faux-progressive" ideas such as the need for greater support for single moms. But if a body of research that completely demolishes practically every notion that modern social conservatism is founded on somehow strikes you as too reactionary, then so be it.

Dale Carrico said...

You don't need to lie about Darwin to offer valuable support for single Moms. What should have been obvious to the meanest intelligence is that I am describing as "faux-progressive" reductionist mis-applications of mis-understandings of evolutionary theory to historical and cultural questions -- I wasn't describing actual progressive outcomes that demand social struggle and good arguments (not evodevo crapola) as faux-progressive. You'll never find a single suggestion in any of my writing that opposes single Moms or non-heteronormative families or the like. You're probably not a stupid lying tool, so stop acting like one. May I suggest that you breathe deeply and think things through before replying again? As I said, this is past diminishing returns by now and sounds like a dumb pissing contest. Stop digging.

Dale Carrico said...

But if a body of research that completely demolishes practically every notion that modern social conservatism is founded on somehow strikes you as too reactionary, then so be it.

I will add this serious point. Historical struggle and cultural diversity is radically underdetermined by evolutionary adaptations. Just because one can shoehorn a progressive outlook into the profound error of thinking otherwise (Peter Singer's A Darwinian Left attempts this as well) doesn't make the underlying error into a truth, doesn't make this mode of argument more useful in the longterm than defenses of progressive outcomes and lifeway diversity on terms pitched at an actually relevant level of abstraction instead, and it also doesn't change the fact that these arguments and assumptions are far more often used for reactionary purposes (like justifying racist accounts of crime and poverty, like justifying sexist misallocations of science education funding and so on) than progressive ones.

watching the watchers said...

I fail to see how anything I said about Darwin was a "lie", considering that the bulk of my comment was direct quotation. Interpreting blatantly racist quotes as leading to racist action is just common sense, and I think you're seeing motivations on my part that don't exist, objectively speaking. This is obviously getting a little personal for you, isn't it? LOL Not sure what that's about, but ok.

Dale Carrico said...

That evolutionary thinking is relevant to the vicissitudes of historical thinking or the value of the details of sociocultural diversity is the error you defend, that evolutionary theory is meant to be treated as relevant to these rather than to biology is worse than an error. This is the fourth time I've said it. If you believe otherwise, you are still wrong. It's wrong to be wrong. Yes, this is getting very personal, er, somehow. Good luck to you.