Socially Imposed, Gender Specific, Evolutionary, Psychologic

[Gertie]

To boil down neuroscience and the evolution of human development so crudely is a dodgy biz imo. Especially when we're so ignorant of the detail. And then to come up with broad prescriptions for humanity in general based on this, which involve changing our previously described basic natures, is well, pointless.

What we do know is that it's our economic systems based on growth (requiring high consumerism fuelled by advertising, cultural pressures) which aren't compatible with sustainability, but competitive neo-liberal capitalism pretty much demands it.

[Zerubbabel]

No! Just as there is no gay gene there is no nurturing gene or aggression gene. That is what makes this topic so fascinating. It is not either hard-wired in the DNA or inculcated into the individual (nature vs nurture).

You are swinging the pendulum too far the other way. The existence of epigenetics does not eliminate the importance of genetics. The nature v nurture "debate" was always a furphy, obviously so to any thinking observer of life. There are only matters of degree in this area so "No!" is the wrong answer. Genetics remain an important marker and strong predictor of sexuality and aggression, amongst many other traits.

I don't understand what you wrote but that's OK.

Hey! Concerning your meat issue: I watched this thing the other night where this woman explains why men are statistically higher consumers of meat. She too found herself desiring more meat and fats when she eschewed the human artifice of modernity and stoically embraced physical labor and exposure to the natural world - the exclusive domain of men and exceptional women. To save time start at 1:10.

I'll offer my own answer to why the show is so popular: There is a deep-seated, perhaps sub-conscious, psychological revulsion against modernity and our dependency on it. It is an emollient to dwell for a moment outside of it, like taking a walk in the woods.

-- Updated December 4th, 2016, 1:18 pm to add the following --

To boil down neuroscience and the evolution of human development so crudely is a dodgy biz imo. Especially when we're so ignorant of the detail. And then to come up with broad prescriptions for humanity in general based on this, which involve changing our previously described basic natures, is well, pointless.

What we do know is that it's our economic systems based on growth (requiring high consumerism fuelled by advertising, cultural pressures) which aren't compatible with sustainability, but competitive neo-liberal capitalism pretty much demands it.

What are "our previously described basic natures"?

As with Greta, and Wilson, I really don't understand what you are saying. The first words of the OP were "Evolutionary Psychology" and I highlighted them. I wanted to insert the link to the Wiki article on it but apparently that is disallowed. That concept is the premise of the thread. It seems that maybe you and Greta and Wilson reject the premise. Perhaps you deny that there is any attempt by society to change the evolutionary psychological adaptation of men towards aggression. And perhaps the measurable change, the "surprising decline in violence" as noted by Pinker and Keeley, is not due to the concerted effort by society to impose a new psychological adaptation upon men. (?)

I think I understand your second paragraph. But it needs more. Is it followed by: "... therefore there is nothing individuals can do but to conform to the system." Or is it followed by: "...therefore individuals must reinvent themselves in order to change the system."


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[Wilson]

[The first words of the OP were "Evolutionary Psychology" and I highlighted them. I wanted to insert the link to the Wiki article on it but apparently that is disallowed. That concept is the premise of the thread. It seems that maybe you and Greta and Wilson reject the premise.

You think I reject the concept of "evolutionary psychology"? Good grief. I strongly believe, as I wrote, that evolution crafted our psychology to favor those aspects which were helpful to survival and reproduction back in hunter-gatherer days. Here's the definition that comes up first on Google, and it's what I understand "evolutionary psychology" to be. "Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection." If you think it means that evolution is currently altering our psychology to meet changing conditions, I think you're dead wrong. We aren't evolving much nowadays. Evolutionary changes occur fastest when a lot of people are dying young. (Especially when the numbers of humans are relatively small.) Those who survive send their seed forward, so that the useful mutations predominate. Nowadays, at least in the Western world, everybody lives to a ripe age. There's no evolutionary drive to favor one psychological trait over another. Any evolutionary changes in the genome currently are more related to which subset of the population is having babies and which isn't - but that's much slower than when life is not guaranteed.

I wonder if you have a mistaken concept of what is meant by "evolutionary psychology". Please clarify.

[Gertie]

Gertie wrote:
To boil down neuroscience and the evolution of human development so crudely is a dodgy biz imo. Especially when we're so ignorant of the detail. And then to come up with broad prescriptions for humanity in general based on this, which involve changing our previously described basic natures, is well, pointless.

What we do know is that it's our economic systems based on growth (requiring high consumerism fuelled by advertising, cultural pressures) which aren't compatible with sustainability, but competitive neo-liberal capitalism pretty much demands it.

What are "our previously described basic natures"?

As with Greta, and Wilson, I really don't understand what you are saying. The first words of the OP were "Evolutionary Psychology" and I highlighted them. I wanted to insert the link to the Wiki article on it but apparently that is disallowed. That concept is the premise of the thread. It seems that maybe you and Greta and Wilson reject the premise.

I think Evolutionary psychology is a valid and important field, but there are problems. For one, we don't have records of how people lived many thousands of years ago, secondly we don't know enough neuroscience to make many precise correlations with what we surmise about those times, and thirdly every individual is a complex kludge of all sorts of influences and experiences. So you have to make specific claims with caution to avoid convenient Just So stories.

And in picking out two specific gendered features - male aggression which can be examined in terms of hormonal activity for example, and female desire for material comfort (which I don't know how you'd measure to support your supposition, do you have links to research on this?), in isolation, you can only paint a very crude picture, and prescribing societal responses on that basis is going to be problematic.

I think I understand your second paragraph. But it needs more. Is it followed by: "... therefore there is nothing individuals can do but to conform to the system." Or is it followed by: "...therefore individuals must reinvent themselves in order to change the system."

In our vast inter-connected modern world we've had to effectively systemise and institutionalise the sort of instinctive group welfare checks and balances which could be done on a personal level in small tribal groups. But those systems can adapt as circumstances arise. We can look at the consequences of our current systems and adjust them for better outcomes. We're doing that to some extent with things like recycling, green belts, fining industrial polluters, international climate change targets, renewable energy, and so on. We could tax bad practice and give incentives for good practice - eg designing products which last and are mendable. We could also reduce corporate power, require transparency from companies re resource impact, limit advertising, and so on.

But one of the problems with this rather impersonal vast systemised approach is that people don't 'feel it' as immediately or personally. So taking on responsibility for big issues and big changes seems like turning a tanker, and not part of daily life. Many people don't even bother to vote. Finding ways to engage people in a big issue like sustainability and the sort of economic reforms which would make a big difference, and ideally has to be dealt with at a global level, is a challenge. One we may be forced into eventually.

[Zerubbabel]

Gertie you make it seem so difficult. Even with a genetic chemical hard-wiring like testosterone social pressure can change it, and has. Surely if the feminine drive towards comfort is not genetically hard-wired, nor epigenetic, but merely a socially subjective behavioral trait then it too can be changed with a mere change in cultural value judgment, which begins with each individual. The individual doesn't need to undertake the daunting task of steering the tanker, of instituting sweeping economic reforms - the individual need only to stop consuming, to opt-out. When enough people opt-out then the economy reforms itself regardless of what any economic theory prescribes.

From a practical standpoint we need a new moral against materialism, we need a new neo-atheism, an atheism against the worship of the economy. And it surely is a religion which frames every human event, from which the first question is how this event effects The Economy. On 9/12 George Bush tells us "We can't let this stop us from shopping." and everybody understood what he meant. The high holy-days of this religion are upon us now, kicked-off on Black Friday where we sacrifice to our god The Economy by going into debt to consume to the very best of our abilities. How do we create morals? They are merely abstract constructs of the human mind. Any individual can just construct one for themselves.

I'd be very surprised if there is any research on female-driven demand for an increase in the human artifice (the entirely man-made world in which we are increasingly coming to inhabit). It is heretical to criticize women and there yet remains an army of white knights to champion their fair damsels (a left-over remnant of a previous psychological adaptation). But there are metrics to be found in what we call marketing research. One must be careful to identify items bought by men because of pressure from women. E.G. men are the vast majority purchaser of diamonds but it would be wrong to conclude that men desire diamonds. Add to that cars considered "chick-magnets" or upscale homes which might be the equivalent of a peacock's feathers.

The unmentionable reality of our age is that our material comforts are the gilding on our cage called modernity. They are more effective than an actual lock. The noble lie is that these things are our new "needs". And the irrational faith of our new religion is that future man will invent clever solutions to whatever problems we create through our wanton appetitive desires.

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-- Updated December 5th, 2016, 1:49 pm to add the following --

Wilson, I'll go with the definition you put up. I probably still misunderstand you though. I hear you saying that we are in a post-evolution epoch(?).

Even if you rationally proved that beyond any doubt, I would still reject it because what you are doing is killing Hope and leaving us all to wallow in all the other evils from Pandora's box. I'm left with the reality that mankind is nothing but a parasitic fungus which grows to cover the earth, it's host, and then eventually kills it, and itself, through poisoning. The fungus creates it's own fermentation and we all will party right up to the very end.

Mankind can willingly reinvent it's abstract ideological self - because mankind invented it's abstract ideological self in the first place.

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[Wilson]

Wilson, I'll go with the definition you put up. I probably still misunderstand you though. I hear you saying that we are in a post-evolution epoch(?).

Even if you rationally proved that beyond any doubt, I would still reject it because what you are doing is killing Hope and leaving us all to wallow in all the other evils from Pandora's box. I'm left with the reality that mankind is nothing but a parasitic fungus which grows to cover the earth, it's host, and then eventually kills it, and itself, through poisoning. The fungus creates it's own fermentation and we all will party right up to the very end.

Mankind can willingly reinvent it's abstract ideological self - because mankind invented it's abstract ideological self in the first place.

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Zerubbabel, yes, I believe that evolutionary changes are rapid when the number of individuals is relatively small, and life is dangerous. That's not the case nowadays.

But attitudes can change greatly and quickly - much faster than evolution can accomplish. That's why there's hope for mankind.

[Zerubbabel]

...attitudes can change greatly and quickly ... That's why there's hope for mankind.

Unless! ...unless there is a collective blindness, a narrative, a noble lie which maintains social momentum. I see that embodied in a near universal rejection of what I claimed in the OP: "...women control the majority of all spending and so are the driving force and the dominant consumer. The women has a much higher standard of comfort than the man. Much of this is justified by present or potential children. This hyper consumption and obsession with comfort is presented as being “for the children.”" We are (still) in the age where women can not be held accountable, especially for something which once was a virtue, but is now a vice.

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[Wilson]

...attitudes can change greatly and quickly ... That's why there's hope for mankind.

Unless! ...unless there is a collective blindness, a narrative, a noble lie which maintains social momentum. I see that embodied in a near universal rejection of what I claimed in the OP: "...women control the majority of all spending and so are the driving force and the dominant consumer. The women has a much higher standard of comfort than the man. Much of this is justified by present or potential children. This hyper consumption and obsession with comfort is presented as being “for the children.”" We are (still) in the age where women can not be held accountable, especially for something which once was a virtue, but is now a vice.

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You mean .. Unless there is a collective blindness to what you, Zerubbabel, believe.

[Zerubbabel]

You mean .. Unless there is a collective blindness to what you, Zerubbabel, believe.

Absolutely! Collective blindness always rejects heretical beliefs out-of-hand, so to speak.