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> If the society has no money, there's going to be a whole lot of punishment going on The mostly uncontacted hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon jungle have no
by VictorPath 5y ago
> If the society has no money, there's going to be a whole lot of punishment going on
The mostly uncontacted hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon jungle have no money, and not much punishment. Men all go out and hunt. If they are old or young or sick, the hunters give them food. If they are fine and refuse to go out on a hunt, they tend not to eat.
There is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt. If you don't go out and get food, you don't eat, unless you are gifted food as the young, old and infirm are. There's no coercion other than a hungry stomach.
Of course in civilized society, there are a class of rentier heirs who do not work, who have a relationship with those who do work, of expropriating their surplus labor time. Obviously this is done with coercion and punishment.
- seriousquestion 5y agoAre there examples of that in groups larger than Dunbar's number?
- wizzwizz4 5y agoI don't know of any, but does it need to?
- ativzzz 5y agoYes, unless you'd like our current society, which is astronomically larger than dunbar's number, to collapse, in a most likely very violent manner.
- erikerikson 5y agoThis is an excellent point. The scaling of social accountability is a difficult problem. In my opinion it is a root problem of humanity and our current solutions are due for disruption.
- VictorPath 5y agoIt depends how groups are defined. Agriculture is a precondition for a society divided into classes (for social, not practical reasons). Groups from the beginning of human behavioral modernity to the rise of agricultural slave empires in Sumeria etc. 10,000 years back worked this way. So from the drawing of cave paintings in El Castillo onward through the next 30,000 years, all humans lived like this. You could say it is human nature. Then class-divided society spread - 2000 years ago the modern Stockholm area was a classed society, whereas 200km north were hunter-gather bands. By modern day, hunter-gatherer areas have dwindled to remote areas. The urge to have large numbers of people all under one grouping seems to be the impetus of a ruling class or ruler, from Alexander the Great to modern times. There are signs of hunter-gatherer bands in relations of mutual aid with other bands, for marriage and other things. One of the earliest pieces of literature, instructions of shuruppak, instructs rulers to get new slaves from far away lands. (To reiterate a point from before - there is no evidence of class societies before 10,000 years ago. It is possible some tried to be a non-working ruling class, but the methods of production of migratory hunter gather bands made this difficult, and over a span of time impossible. Whereas with the rise of agriculture 10000 years ago, we have a mass of evidence of class societies.)
- blix 5y ago> Agriculture is a precondition for a society divided into classes (for social, not practical reasons). I would completely reverse this... a society divided into classes is a precondition for agricultural society (for practical, not social reasons). In the period of early civilization, convincing people to work 16 hours in the fields or in the mines is very difficult if they have any other viable option, including migrant hunter/gathering. Therefore, it is necessary to create a class of people that have no other viable options, either by slavery or other forms of inequality. The social structures surrounding inequality evolved as a method of maintaining this practical class stratification.
- an_opabinia 5y agoIndigenous Americans, prior to colonists’ arrival.
- qwytw 5y agoThis might had been the case in only low density areas (same as in all other continents), the majority of indigenous Americans did not live in classless societies.
- an_opabinia 5y agoNobody said no classes. There wasn’t money like there was in Europe. There were by some intellectually honest estimates 50m people living in N and S America at the time of arrival, a huge number of people were living day to day without money.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago[source] Disney Indigenous Americans practiced warfare, rape, slavery, and cannibalism no different than other peoples around the world.
- giantg2 5y ago"There's no coercion other than a hungry stomach." This sounds like the classic punishment of being sent to your room without dinner, right? Removing the basic necessity of food is about as coercive as it gets. Even in civilized society we feed prisoners, give food to the hungry, etc.
- missedthecue 5y agoA better way to phrase it would be "compelled by reality".
- giantg2 5y agoMaybe there's an even better way to phrase it... Other types of coercion are also part of reality.
- mikem170 5y agoReality being land owners backed by the state who don't allow people to wander off and grow their own food?
- giantg2 5y agoDuring the depression, some governments actually had areas in the government land, like parks, that people could sign up for a garden plot. You could grow your own food. This allowed people in the towns and city land to grow on.
- mikem170 5y agoThat's interesting to hear! I guess it matters how many people are struggling whether they might allow such things. (The group protects itself more than it protects low-status individuals in the group?)
- AussieWog93 5y ago>There is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt. Are you sure about this, or are you treating a "noble savage" fantasy as if it were fact? I've read some early settler accounts of Australian Aboriginals, and they would beat the living shit out of the lower-status members of their society (especially women) on a regular basis. Sometimes the beatings would be followed up with rape, and the perpetrators would get away with it Scot free because they were high-status.
- VictorPath 5y ago> Australian Aboriginals, and they would beat the living shit out of the lower-status members of their society As I said, there are societies where women gather berries and men hunt. There aren't really "lower status members" of those societies. Including the Aboriginal Australians who lived this way. As the book Dark Emu shows, some Aboriginals lived as hunter-gatherers, some as farmers. The aboriginal farmers did not live this way, and certainly may have had lower status members who were mistreated. I should point out some people have qualms over portions of Dark Emu, but generally not over this. Even a critic of this point like Ian Keen admits there was some form of farming by some Aboriginals.
- mikem170 5y agoModern society has problems with violence and sex crimes against women, too.
- chmod600 5y agoThe Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker makes a compelling case that violence (including rape) are dramatically lower in modern societies all around the world.
- mikem170 5y agoI'd buy that. I just didn't know that it was relevant or comparable to modern state backing of the rentier rich. wasn't sure how to judge such a comparison. I know that modern governemnts will send uniformed guys with guns if you mess with a rich persons property. But I wondered if aborigines beat low status members and women for economic reasons, or for mating reasons, or for something else?
- will4274 5y agoCitation needed. This would certainly be atypical. Uncontacted tribes in other parts of the world (e.g. the Sentinelese) are famously violent. It's easy to imagine paradise in cultures we don't understand but reality is rarely that pretty.
- VictorPath 5y ago> Uncontacted tribes in other parts of the world (e.g. the Sentinelese) are famously violent. In the Amazon loggers and miners, often illegally, encroach on indigenous areas and kill members of the hunter-gatherer bands. Yes, the bands sometimes react in a "famously violent" response to these massacres. I don't really see the connection in how these 50 person bands act together with their "famously violent" response to outsiders who are killing them. Also the people I am speaking if are living in bands, not tribes.
- samatman 5y agoI highly encourage you to read some ethnography of the Yanomani, to purge this ludicrous and incorrect vision of noble savagery from your mind.