17 ms·

Walking by someone without acknowledging them certainly is counter to human nature. I think that is very much a function of your local culture, not some core "

by unwind 12y ago

Walking by someone without acknowledging them certainly is counter to human nature. I think that is very much a function of your local culture, not some core "human nature". Here (Sweden) I regularly walk by people without acknowledging them, and that's in the office. Out in public, I would probably be considered mildly strange if I started acknowledging strangers.

netcan 12y ago
If you had just come back from an overnight fishing trip and passed someone who lived 2 miles from you in 752 AD and didn't acknowledge them, they would probably conclude you were being possessed by some belligerent spirit. How are gonna not acknowledge someone after spending a winter huddled together in a barn eating salted fish and trying not to freeze to death. If you happened across a stranger without at least thumbing your axe and giving him a good look it would also be very strange. Stranger = Danger. Strangers = Invasion. The whole concept of people/strangers as a benign part of the background probably originates with cities, or whatever the earliest dense populations were. What I am trying to say is that we're used to it now and its normal, but before a certain point it would have been extremely alien. The fact that you and some of your fiends can visit Lindisfarne without the locals heading for the hills is the remarkable thing, from a long enough perspective.
- delinka 12y ago
  But none of that makes it "human nature." It's still cultural.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    Are there mammals of any sort that don't acknowledge passing other mammals in some way? Is that cultural?
  - netcan 12y ago
    Are we talking semantically (what is the definition of human nature?) or something else? IE If we find that living within a family group is how humans lived from pre-sapiens times until recent times, does that "prove" that something is human nature (it's how we evolved to behave), isn't human nature (we don't behave that way now) or is that tangental (it proves nothing)? For the purposes of the thread, I don't think it matters much if we disagree about a technicality. I just wanted to make an analogy about the future being very alien to inhabitants of the present to the point that the ways it will be different and how we'll feel about that will be hard to conceive. Walking through a group of strangers without looking up from your phone (or iStone, if you're a caveman) would have been as weird as walking through a pack of hyenas. Insane. If a caveman had tried to imagine how he'd feel about that world, he'd probably imagine feeling terrified all the time. Do you play with everyone's kids or ignore them too. Do you have sex with everyone? What happens if you're eating a sandwich? They wouldn't even know which questions are relevant to imagining how they'd feel. I'm making the case that self culture (JennicCam, Facebook, JustinTV) is the very start of something which is so alien to us that it's hard to address in a non ridiculous way.
rasur 12y ago
Out here in Switzerland it's almost the opposite out in public.. one can walk about (ok, not so much in busy areas of main cities) and greet and be greeted by random strangers. I'd agree it's a cultural thing.
jlewallen 12y ago
I've noticed lately that I tend to give solitary individuals a nod when I walk by them. More than half the time I get a nod back and I find I initiate far more nods than I receive. I'm sure it's function of all kinds of things, all cultural. For example, if the person is having a cigarette outside a bar, I'll usually get a nod back and especially so if it's daytime. If it's in my building, I'll usually get a nod back under some sense of neighborly solidarity I can only guess. On the street it's much more random. I'm on the east coast and originally from the west coast.

by unwind 12y ago

netcan 12y ago

If you had just come back from an overnight fishing trip and passed someone who lived 2 miles from you in 752 AD and didn't acknowledge them, they would probably conclude you were being possessed by some belligerent spirit. How are gonna not acknowledge someone after spending a winter huddled together in a barn eating salted fish and trying not to freeze to death. If you happened across a stranger without at least thumbing your axe and giving him a good look it would also be very strange. Stranger = Danger. Strangers = Invasion. The whole concept of people/strangers as a benign part of the background probably originates with cities, or whatever the earliest dense populations were. What I am trying to say is that we're used to it now and its normal, but before a certain point it would have been extremely alien. The fact that you and some of your fiends can visit Lindisfarne without the locals heading for the hills is the remarkable thing, from a long enough perspective.

delinka 12y ago
But none of that makes it "human nature." It's still cultural.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  Are there mammals of any sort that don't acknowledge passing other mammals in some way? Is that cultural?
- netcan 12y ago
  Are we talking semantically (what is the definition of human nature?) or something else? IE If we find that living within a family group is how humans lived from pre-sapiens times until recent times, does that "prove" that something is human nature (it's how we evolved to behave), isn't human nature (we don't behave that way now) or is that tangental (it proves nothing)? For the purposes of the thread, I don't think it matters much if we disagree about a technicality. I just wanted to make an analogy about the future being very alien to inhabitants of the present to the point that the ways it will be different and how we'll feel about that will be hard to conceive. Walking through a group of strangers without looking up from your phone (or iStone, if you're a caveman) would have been as weird as walking through a pack of hyenas. Insane. If a caveman had tried to imagine how he'd feel about that world, he'd probably imagine feeling terrified all the time. Do you play with everyone's kids or ignore them too. Do you have sex with everyone? What happens if you're eating a sandwich? They wouldn't even know which questions are relevant to imagining how they'd feel. I'm making the case that self culture (JennicCam, Facebook, JustinTV) is the very start of something which is so alien to us that it's hard to address in a non ridiculous way.

rasur 12y ago

Out here in Switzerland it's almost the opposite out in public.. one can walk about (ok, not so much in busy areas of main cities) and greet and be greeted by random strangers. I'd agree it's a cultural thing.

jlewallen 12y ago

I've noticed lately that I tend to give solitary individuals a nod when I walk by them. More than half the time I get a nod back and I find I initiate far more nods than I receive. I'm sure it's function of all kinds of things, all cultural. For example, if the person is having a cigarette outside a bar, I'll usually get a nod back and especially so if it's daytime. If it's in my building, I'll usually get a nod back under some sense of neighborly solidarity I can only guess. On the street it's much more random. I'm on the east coast and originally from the west coast.