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> The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we value about ourselves are generally not that valuable to others. I love my own personality and humanity

• Ectiseethe 7mo ago
  > [Within tribes, if] you can't do anything, at least we still love you because you are kin. That's a nice sentiment, but do you have sources for the claim that tribes universally "loved" non-productive members just because they were kin?
  • xdertz 7mo ago
    There are many instances of braces and artificial limbs or that were found or fossilised bones that showed crippled people that grew into old-age, which provides evidence that people cared for 'non-productive' members.
    • rapnie 7mo ago
      Indeed. If one is crippled their 'value' for the tribe doesn't suddenly disappear. A person has their wit, their positive spirit, their wisdom and skills, their empathy, care and understanding for others that is important for the tribe's wellbeing. Etcetera.
    • giantg2 7mo ago
      Finding evidence that disable people existed does not provide evidence that they were not able to contribute in some way. It's incredibly ableist to assume they couldn't.
      • graemep 7mo ago
        In the context of a pre-industrial society? I doubt it. In a hunter gatherer-society? I doubt it even more. people with certain skills (e.g. tool making, music, cooking maybe..) certainly, but not for a lot of people. However, decent human beings do not value other human beings purely on the basis of their economic contribution. Someone might be a net cost, but a decent society still looks after them.
        • giantg2 7mo ago
          You're missing things like making clothing (tanning, sinew, etc) , gathering wood, etc. You can be missing an arm or leg and still contribute to those.
      • jaapz 7mo ago
        Assuming that disabled people are worthless when they are not able to contribute to the group is even worse.
        • giantg2 7mo ago
          I never said that. I'm merely countering the claim that disabled people couldn't contribute.
      • CaptWillard 7mo ago
        I say this with all due respect and as someone who is struggling to envision their own ability to meaningfully contribute in the likely future: Nature is ableist. Humanity rises above it to the extent that we can, but ...
        • bee_rider 7mo ago
          I think we have a skewed perception of ability, now that we’re connected via the internet to the whole rest of humanity. Nature is ableist in a lot of ways… if you had diabetes in some ancient tribe you’d basically be screwed. But if you had an amputated leg, I dunno. You could still be the best flint knapper in the tribe. I mean, think of your extended circle of friends and acquaintances, your 100 “closest” friends. In particular, think back on the community grew up in, if you’ve subsequently moved to a tech hub that accumulates rare talent. I bet picking through your hobbies there are a couple potentially useful things that you’d be a top-tier contributor in. Most people are really bad at almost everything they don’t do, after all. I’m not going to engage in some prehistoric idealism. The past was pretty brutal. But we’d probably all die by getting little infected cuts, not because we were abandoned by our tribes.
    • ourmandave 7mo ago
      The cynic in me wonders if it's because they were family members of the leader so got better health care.
  • deleted 7mo ago
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• speefers 7mo ago
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• giantg2 7mo ago
  It seems like most people in the first world either couldn't do physical tasks or would tell themselves they can't. Things like bow making and hunting (including processing) require specialized knowledge and a lot of physical work. Same goes for farming. But the real thing that makes the comparison fall apart is that with machines people have less utility and people today "require" more resources- can an individual today do anything meaningful to help the tribe survive? And by meaningful, we necessarily tie it to positive economic impact, which is very hard to achieve at lower paying jobs or jobless when we look at things that get paid for by the tribe such as like healthcare cost.
• flavionm 7mo ago
  We still do that, though, within our own little tribes inside civilization. Most people still love their grandparents, even though they're old. That just doesn't necessarily extend to all of civilization.
• ramesh31 7mo ago
  >A good example of what tribes did better vs civilization: if you can do anything to help the tribe survive (I am a good hunter, you can create good bows), you are a prized member. If you can't do anything, at least we still love you because you are kin. Indeed it seems that there really are two "modes" for human civilization; one where human beings are scarce and valuable, and one where they are abundant and cheap. The West has spent the last 400+ years in the former mode, as the plague decimated Europe and they spread into the vast new world, where humans were so scarce they had to be forcibly imported via mass enslavement, and wage earners could demand a premium. Now that globalism has brought us all onto the same stage as the Eastern masses, things are starting to feel pretty crowded.
• stalfie 7mo ago
  This is incredibly naive. Hunter gatherer communities, especially those in regions without an abundance of food, are and were extremely selective about who were accepted and who weren't. This starts from infancy where non-desirable babies were simply killed. Estimates vary greatly but perhaps around a third to half of "modern" hunter gatherer tribes practice infanticide. The stated reasoning behind infanticides is often extremely vicious and comes down to "he/she is not a good fit for the tribe", or in other words "nobody likes him/her". This fact alone might be one of the major explanations of the high rate of prehistoric infant mortality. But if you are even allowed to grow up and become an individual, things might be somewhat better once you are part of the in-group, but that does not factor in the fact that human empathy has an overall tendency to switch off if you're not. Even if you're loved because you're kin, your neighboring tribe might still kill you, or you and your kin might kill them, for entirely petty or cynical reasons. The prehistoric bone record supports this as well, seemingly human-weapon related reasons is the most common cause of death. You can also examine your own emotions to get some idea of our evolutionary environment. Loneliness hurts, to the point where it has measurable negative health impacts equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes each day. Your brain is screaming at you not to be lonely, but why? Well, in our ancestral environment, being excluded from the social group meant death, so most individuals that did not have a profound and visceral fear of that happening got their genes consistently removed from the gene pool. For loneliness to be that big of deal, being excluded must have been an easily available option. If everyone loved and accepted everyone unconditionally, this emotional state would simply not have evolved. Humans quickly become extremely brutal once the environment necessitates it, up to and including cannibalizing your own kin. Infanticide and murder of both ingroups and outgroups is historically commonplace because it was also commonplace prehistorically. Even modern tribes, that live in relative abundance, are still brutal in many ways to this very day. But of course, when you look at any group of individuals in a tribe survivorship bias will dictate that it all looks nice and rosy. But you might want to check the skeletons in the cave before you pick that as your conclusion.
  • meta_gunslinger 7mo ago
    Don't wake him up from his "Noble Savage" fever-dream.