3 ms·
The prevalence of human sacrifice throughout history baffles me. I know it's just my cultural heritage to see humans as unique individuals with brains full of o
by kqr 4y ago
The prevalence of human sacrifice throughout history baffles me. I know it's just my cultural heritage to see humans as unique individuals with brains full of original ideas, but it still shocks me every time I hear it that someone would willingly, without being threatened, extinguish a human life.
- gammabetadelta 4y agowe aint nothing but mammals incentives drives us overpopulation was controlled by sacrifice and infanticide
- kqr 4y agoI don't buy this whole "overpopulation" thing people keep talking about in more or less appropriate concepts. Through virtually all of history, there's a strong correlation between "more people" and "better living conditions". We are a social species. We're practically made to effectively make use of as many of us as possible to preserve ourselves.
- relaxing 4y agoBroadly true, but shorter periods of food deficit leading to decline in population are still possible. The last agricultural famine in England was only in the 17th century.
- pid-1 4y ago> Through virtually all of history, there's a strong correlation between "more people" and "better living conditions". That's survivorship bias. Populations always try to grow, not to shrink. However, growth will only occur when possible (due new technologies or more resources being available).
- towaway15463 4y agoYou’ve just never lived through a famine.
- medstrom 4y agoMore effort into your posts with less dramatic world-view, please.
- staticman2 4y agoThey might have believed in the afterlife, so from their point of view they weren't really extinguishing anything, just converting it from flesh to spirit.
- kqr 4y agoThere are two reasons I doubt this: (a) is such a belief really compatible with what we think is the selective force of evolution, i.e. stay alive long enough to make sure your children have children? In other words, is this something people truly feel when it comes down to it, or is it just a story they tell each other in low-stakes situations? and (b) even if I believed in this, that's orthogonal to my belief that every human has a valuable role to play in this, current-life society!
- ellopoppit 4y ago>i.e. stay alive long enough to make sure your children have children? In other words, is this something people truly feel when it comes down to it The Aztecs sacrificed an estimated tens of thousands of people a year, because they believed it would postpone the next apocalypse in which everyone would die
- kqr 4y agoBut do we think this was a belief shared by everyone until their deaths, even the people who were sacrificed? Or was it a belief primarily instituted by people who thought they, themselves, would never be sacrificed?
- staticman2 4y agoEvolution doesn't suggest everyone reproduces or "stays around long enough to make sure your children have children" . In World War 2 for example lots of 18 year old men for example were drafted and sacrificed their lives without having a chance to reproduce. Taking your thought experiment to it's conclusion you might conclude world War 2 couldn't have happened. Your argument about selective pressure would by the same logic lead one to conclude chaste nuns can't exist and monestaries and vows of celebacy are fiction. Religious belief just needs to be useful on average for there to be selective pressure. Also evolutionary psychologists can't really explain the existence of gay people (attempts to do so have been a stretch, according to the evolutionary psychiatrist author of The Moral Animal) which demonstrates the limits of declaring things are impossible due to thought experiments about evolutionary pressure.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoIt would be mind blowing to watch and many were watching. Big theoretical benefits for social cohesion for culturally disparate people. Whole is greater than the parts.