Humor? seriously? yeah sure that might be a modern trait, but out in the bush the best man is the one that can protect you from being raped silly by other men, the best man is the one the bets you "because he loves you" as the yanomomo women say to each other. In fact look at how many women today stay with their abusive husbands and just take it, possibly an instinct? As for rape the female reproductive track is rather good at expelling semen, the chances of pregnancy per sexual intercourse is quite low in fact about 2.5% or less.
If you saw a child laying prone in a ditch, bleeding, crying, screaming for help - you'd run as fast as your feet would take you over to that child.
Did you learn that trait or was an instinct?
If you learned it, then that's great, we should raise all children to be empathetic. Which means working towards developing a violence free culture. If it was instinct, that's great too - because now we have something to work with. In a society were violence is not a part of the language, there isn't going to be much of any violence in that society. Will there occasionally be a brain tumor induced sociopath? Maybe, what, one in a million? Right now the biggest entity in our society, and the only one with the legal right to initiate violence against you, is the State. If we want a relatively violence free society, we should work towards shrinking the size of the State.
Usually said children were raised horribly in ways that question if their minds could not have been damaged much more then simply not taught language. If you were chained to a toilet in a white windowless empty room from infancy with almost no human contact you would probably have difficultly perceiving colors and objects.
So you think a human without language can think about higher order abstract concepts like advanced mathematics. Even with a language it's nearly impossible for many people to understand some concepts in math. Without ANY language, written or otherwise, I fail to see how these abstract concepts could be 'thought' about.
Either way, the point I was attempting to make, is that we 'think' in our language. This suggests our brain, whatever it's innate ability, also has the potential for huge amounts of change to occur during childhood. So, even if children do have an innate prejudice, the brain has such a huge amount of plasticity, most humans when taught race doesn't exist, lose that prejudice. Maybe due to neuroplasticity racial prejudice is completely (or nearly completely) gone - as in those neurons are no longer used to process information about race. Imagine if the concept of race just didn't exist. Which, it shouldn't as it really doesn't make much sense.
Language seems to be used, instead of 'race' to identify 'tribe members'. There's evidence we use language to ascertain who is and is not a part of the tribe. This suggests tribal identify is learned. IF it's learned, then it's a matter of 'educating' children to learn the appropriate language - one of peace and voluntarism. I's argue the women of Yanomomo are learning the idea being beaten is love. Many women today will not tolerate it. AND those that do, often come from shattered childhoods where they learned violence and to succumb to it from their mother's and father's relationship.
Yes, but we also have evidence that humans were killing each other since before the dawn of man (chimps do it!). But yes we have changed a lot in the last few millennia, consider the rate of lactase persistence for example, proof that we can institute changes to our "nature" in just a few dozen generations, in short we have been domesticating our selves.
Then that's good - right?
Feudalism is practically slavery. I doubt productively has much to do with these systems for those governments, more to do with balancing the needs of desires of people with how well they could be controlled, its why say slavery was very popular in the United States's early years because it was not only very productive, but the slavers were very easy to control. Rome not so easy to control, Japan, easy to control as serfs worshiping the emperor. The society evolves to the technology and resources of its time and place, slavery is thus not less productive then freedom, just less productive then the cotton gin.
I recently read Bondsmen were much more productive than Slaves. There also seems to be a size issue. As in how much land is being worked. I seem to recall reading small farms are better managed with freemen working them. But, if you scale up to massive farms, then Slavery may have an advantage. The difference being Slavery required a State to enforce the Law on runaways. If there's no State to enforce the Law, Slaves just walk off the plantation. So, for Slavery to exist, the State must exist. This isn't true for freemen working by choice. The private owner must make an offer for wage and then it's up to the labor market to determine what the minimum wage will be versus productivity and the price the commodity can be sold at. That required no State at all. AND if competition and free markets are allowed, the productivity should go up, the price should go down and everyone wins.
... "Civility"? as in the adjective of civilization. Even the Mennonites you so love have civility, they live by social order and rules and internal government based on strict following of their interpretation the bible with punishment of banishment.
I don't "Love" Mennonites, they're far from the ideal society. I'm saying some of their societies, the ones that have a culture of not hitting their children, serve as evidence of how peaceful parenting can lead to peaceful children who grow into peaceful adults that create a peaceful nonviolent society. Sure, it's a correlation, but, that's still evidence.
Everyone seems to be arguing we can't have a free society because we NEED the State to defend us against all these horrible people who are our neighbors etc.... OK, well, here's a way to create a peaceful society that's being practiced now, it something ANY parent can do and works. Thus, over time, actually not much time if everyone were to act similarly, we no longer need a State. See, this is WHY the State hates peace. Peace to the State is like Holy Water is to the Vampire. The State NEEDS violence to justify it's own existence. Violence grows hand in glove with the State. Which is why we now have the TSA (which the State LOVES). And that TSA, it isn't going away, because we now have ourselves a Forever War. Something the State has waited to reignite for a hundred years. Here it is.
Nothing to do with language, nada, we have no proof that language is required for human level intelligence, none, it is merely hypothetical.
What do you mean by proof? It's no like we can run an experiment on humans. We have evidence language is required in order to have autobiographical memory. IOWs children really don't 'recall' their own past in long-term memory until they develop a language to express those memories in. AND without past recollection, we can't project into the future. ALL of this is evidence language is required to think, let along think abstractly as we humans are capable of.
You're not going to find any other species writing Lord of the Rings any time too soon I can promise you that much.
You know I somewhat agree with this idea: we know have the technology to get rid of class room and school books and just sit kids in front of a computer or tablet several hours a day, that machine will feed them more information more accurately and more enjoyably then some old hag teacher that speaks in monotone and believes a good paddling is the solution to any child's problems... oh wait the machine, that not "natural". As for the parents: some of them give a shit about there kids, are horrible abusive parents, who would more likely hock their kids computer for money to buy smack then upgrade it into the teaching aid. Public schooling provides some kind of standard.
Private schooling would provide a much higher standard (and does). So, at the very least parents who do not work hard towards their childrens' education would have their child returned to a more public schooling environment. This could be done by assessment. It should be noted there are many children who can not read, where BOTH their parents AND their teachers couldn't give two shits about their education.
I see you point about the PC not being natural and I responded that Natural wasn't the best adjective.
Well for the poor and wreckage its a benefit over all not a "cost", everything has pros and cons, you look a public education as a means of programing people into societies cogs, I look at it as a means of trying to give everyone and foundation in knowledge so that they have a chance to understand and improve the world rather then forming hordes of morons that riot and burn down the libraries and destroy civilization leaving the world in darkness for a thousand years. Likely it may very well do both these things but the latter pro out weighs the former con.
Have you been to Detroit lately?
Sure, public school does provide a foundation if you're in a good public school. And it that sense yes, it's better than nothing. But, it's far FAR from even being structured appropriately. We are no longer a society dependent on cogs to work in factories. Those jobs are gone and are not coming back. Education must drastically change - I just suggested some of the faults with public education and offered some thoughts to think about.
Hence all the education in things like science, math, geography, civics, world history, etc, etc, because when your working in a factory you will be thankful you had to take the class in 6th grade about why Rome fell.
Most people cannot recall any of those lessons. Hell, once they graduate many can't recall hardly anything. This suggest to me they're not really learning. They're just being babysat until they can be shoveled out into the world having learned to raise their hands when they need to go pee - like a common prisoner.
