Kill the Economy

[NoOneMan]

104. Culture

Which reciprocally creates the economy, religion, etc.

It is an expression of our nature.

Unless we can pin down the origin of our economy to a single (or few) ethnic/cultural group that expanded outward via migration from a common point of origin (using accumulated surplus energy) and dominated other groups with their power and economic system. Then it isn't so much of a reflection of OUR nature, but maybe the nature of a specific dominating ethnic group from a specific geographical origin, who has enslaved mankind accordingly to their ideals by simply creating an environment where others will starve or be killed if they do not follow the rules.

Whew....I mean, its a possibility that we are all playing according to a game that was brought to us by outside influences rather than living in a common day manifestation of our natural instincts. Right?

How European Farmers Spread Agriculture Across Continent

Wouldn't it be sad if our entire conception of reality was "unnatural" and the result of a very successful bad idea from specific geographical regions that could do nothing but grow infinitely once it began to fester? What if our entire notion of the failings of humanity (our "greed", our "impulses", our "short-sightedness&quot are simply cultural constructs to solve the cognitive dissonance created by living out of alignment with our natural instincts? Perhaps because we cannot feasibly shake the control of the culture, we find it more easy to solve this internal conflict by changing our conceptions of human nature (which in turn helps us resign to the notion that we are destined to destroy ourselves).

All over the world, we have seen (and continue to see) societies who do not accumulate surplus energy and wealth, and who do not destroy their environment; often, if they have anything civilization judges of value, they are destroyed or assimilated. But our only cognitive representation of mankind rests on the dominating culture, without discriminating domination through technology from nature itself.

Humans had a hundred thousand year accumulation of culture (some still do) that did not naturally manifest into a progressively complex society that consumes everything in site. We do know that in a few rare instances some specific cultures did, and expanded out destroying the others. Civilization only has about a 10K year track record, and it seems to aim at convincing people that humans didn't have another viable way to work together, think complexly, and communicate prior to its evasive existence. That is a tough pill to continually swallow.

In any case, I do not accept that cultural expansion and domination is an aggregate representation of all human nature whatsoever, but perhaps a unique few who constructed a self-reinforcing, self-sustaining, exponentially growing system (think game-theory). Hell, we know that even on a simpler level, a single individual--a genius, a virtuoso, a savant, a sociopath--can have an impact on culture that is disproportionally larger than their representation in the gene pool; basically, an improbable fluke can impact all of human history immensely. By no means can we consider our current culture any type of accurate manifestation of human nature with what we know.

Just food for thought. Thats all.