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"Society has always been able to censor its members through culture and pressure to conform" It's statements like this that I think show how grossly misunderst
by theblackbox 17y ago
"Society has always been able to censor its members through culture and pressure to conform"
It's statements like this that I think show how grossly misunderstood this whole debate is. Society? how so? modern society? the global village? Always!? Impossible.
There is widespread belief that the human mind is pre-configured to attend to only a certain amount of individuals, and thus anthropologist believe that their was an upper limit on the size of human settlements for much of human evolution. There are still some tribes and groups that behave in such a way that I think shed's light on this issue. There are a group of Amish in USA that form communities no bigger than 124ish individuals (about the limit that psychologists believe we are capable of interacting with and knowing on the level we evolved to commune at). When the community exceeds this threshold, the population split and one group settle another village about a days travel away.
I'd be willing to speculate that this type of communal migration is what burst the human population from it's African homelands. Each time a community became to big to handle, whereby I think I mean the potential for dissent crosses a threshold, it was better for the community to split than for this dissent to fester. This type of behavior can also be seen in some of the great apes.
I would argue then, that Society has not ALWAYS had the ability to censor it's citizens, but that the myriad communities of humanity have aggregated into a whole much more massive than can be sustainable with the old paradigm of being able to leave and settle a new community. This is no longer possible, and only seems so through the creation of new mediums to populate with those few dissenting pioneers.