Humergence®

Featured Post: What produces the “guru-addicted personality"?

The following is an interview between Chris Cowan and Natasha Todorvic, and Geoffrey Falk. Geoffrey is the author of a book called Stripping the Gurus, which Susan Blackmore described as a "...gripping and disturbing book [that] should be read by anyone who finds themself revering a spiritual teacher."

Collective Action vs. Collectivism

The P2P Foundation Blog has an excellent blog posting by Michel Bauwens on Jaron Lanier's new essay for Edge. 

The basic ideas of Lanier's essay are (quoted from CommunityWiki):

• There is a resurgance of the idea that the collective is all-wise, and that this is bad.

• There is an attempt to erase the individual, and this is dumb.
• AI is dumb. The Internet is dumb. Only people are smart.
  

The P2P foundation blog posting by bauwens borrows from his own P2P Manifesto, which looks at human collective action through the lens of Clare W Graves's theory of human nature. Clare W. Graves's theory shows that the fundamental nature of communist "collectivism" is different from the collective action of people voluntarily cooperating, as discussed by author Howard Rheingold here.

I also talk about this in the discussion section of this CommunityWiki page. I talk about how we are lacking a general "literacy of human nature", and how I believe that this lack of understanding is what is driving people to place labels where they do not belong. The reasons "why" people voluntarily collaborate are different than the reasons "why" people go along with state-imposed "collectivism" rules.

Did Cooperation Give Early Humans A Competitive Edge?

                [via Cooperation Commons and  New Scientist] Augustin Fuentes at the University of Notre Dame hypothesizes that Paranthropus went extinct because early Homo(human ancestor) species were more adept at cooperating:

...Paranthropus suffered from increased predation because Homo, and other early humans even more closely related to modern humans, learned to use cooperation to avoid being eaten. He says all would have feared the same predators, such as big cats. To test the hypothesis, Fuentes's team designed a computer program based on classic ecology models to simulate how teamwork could have tipped the scales in favour of Homo. They found that just a moderate amount of teamwork gave Homo a dramatic advantage over its close competitors, causing the extinction of Paranthropus. The computer simulations add to real world evidence of co-operation in early humans. For example, the common use of stone tools by early humans suggests they shared information on the location of suitable stone. These sites are sometimes 30 kilometres away from where the tools are found and would not have been easy for individuals to find on their own. "This implies some sort of information transfer that's not language yet, but is much more extensive than that available to other organisms," Fuentes says.

Indeed, it seems that this primitive form of cooperation is now a central part of human existence world wide. Simple, narrow objective Human cooperation of the type Fuentes describes has been so successful, that it is now driving a huge portion of other species to extinction. It is cooperation based around physiological satisfaction. Cooperating to meet the very basic survival needs of existence.

DRAWING LINES ON PAPER AND SAND: ANATOMY OF A CARTOON CLASH

Lines get drawn in many ways. Some are pen strokes sketched by artists; others are concrete forms laid out by architects. Many are abstract - dearly held values and unwritten social norms sketched indelibly in our minds, not with our hands. These days, cartoon drawings are crossing a lot of lines and pointing to divisions between worldviews in conflict.

A recent case of this in the U.S. involved actor and Scientology spokesman Tom Cruise who reportedly threw his star power around to persuade Viacom/Comedy Central to suspend rerunning an episode of the animated South Park satire that skewered the beliefs of Scientology. Fellow Scientologist Isaac Hayes left his voice-over role on the show in protest, as well. The event entertained many Americans, enraged loyal South Park fans, and got lots of attention for both the Scientologists and the show. The affair discredited Cruise in the eyes of some fans who see the church based on sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics as a self-important mega-cult, while fellow Scientologists viewed his stand as a heroic defense of their religion. This fusion of animated characters with matters of faith made perfectly good sense on Hollywood terms.

In contrast, many people scratched their heads in utter confusion and dismay when the publication of a set of pen-and-ink newspaper cartoons in Denmark caused outrage because quite a few Muslims believed they had crossed the line. For many non-Muslim observers, the intensity of the reaction made no sense at all. Subsequent reproductions of these inflammatory drawings fanned anger since they were taken as extreme insults and deliberate, in-your-face defamation. Protests and riots ensued as Islamic true believers took to the streets in righteous anger to demand respect for their beliefs. They were countered by calls for freedom of expression and an equally self-righteous refusal to buckle under to threats and intimidation.