We are domesticated animals

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Tue Aug 7, 2012, 01:42 PM - Edit history (1)

We are domesticated animals, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that.

Domestication is a change in a population itself, genetically. Take a population of wild horses. First, the only ones you can catch, or even get near, are the most trusting members of the gene pool. Now try to train them. The ones too wild to train run away. (Or are eaten by people.) The ones who take to training stick around, and have offspring with each other. And every time that "No corral can hold me" gene pops up that horse leaves. The training doesn't get passed along genetically, of course. But the predisposition does... the train-ability.

Cows will stay within barriers they could easily break out of. Why? Because all cows who were not inclined to stay within flimsy barriers left the gene pool. With every cow there's a choice... eat it or keep it for milk? The ones who keep trying to escape either escape (and thus out of the domestication gene pool) or are eaten (and thus out of the domestication gene pool).

The best milk producers are eaten last. Over time all remaining cows were freaks of nature, producing crazy amounts of milk.

Domestic cats inclined to run away to live in the woods are less likely to pass their genes to the domesticated cat population. Cats that eat human babies don't last in the domesticated cat gene pool.

Wild dogs who don't recognize humans as pack leaders don't hang around humans. They are off being wild dogs. Only the unusually human-friendly dogs hang around the humans. And they breed with each other. Over time you get two populations... wild dogs and domesticated dogs.

And parallel to our (unplanned and naturally occurring) domestication of animals through winnowing out animals that didn't fit with civilization, we have done the same with human beings.

Anyone who was too independent for civilization or too violent for civilization tended to be subtracted from civilization, one way or another. And that process made the human species more docile, more cooperative, more religious and more deferential to authority.

Which is fine. Early man was probably not very congenial.

But we are as domesticated as any other creature that has been subject to the winnowing pressures of civilization's priorities for a very long time. Civilization: Love it or Leave it.

(On the other hand, there is a limit to how nice we can get. Any human group without some level of violent-mindedness was taken out of the gene pool by another human group that was violent. The selection-pressure for the domesticated human is being violent enough to fight wars of defense or conquest versus other societies, but docile enough to function within his/her own society. Key here is that civilization, which requires some docility, has organizational and logistical benefits that allow civilized man to wipe out uncivilized groups. Cooperative violence is the most effective kind.)

[Curtland1015]

1. SLIGHTLY off topic, but isn't it crazy that there used to be a different species of "man"...

...on this planet?

Humans and Neanderthals just existing together seems so WEIRD. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to have a different species of human just walking around.

[cthulu2016]

2. And not just those two

We (homo sapiens) killed off every hominid species in the world.

We have chimps. Why don't we have anything more human-like than chimps? There's a big gap there that has been filled time and again, yet nothing in between survived.

We do not tolerate competition.

[bhikkhu]

11. Twenty-two species, by current estimates

Probably we didn't kill them all off, but given the inbred intolerance that is so common, and so difficult to teach out of children even in these highly civilized times, its not hard to imagine that we had a lot to do with most of it.

Good reading on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Human-Twenty-Two-Species/dp/0300100477

[cthulu2016]

13. There's killing and then there's killing

I don't know that we put rocks to the heads of every single hominid, but we almost certainly killed plenty directly while also driving many to undesirable lands where they died out.

Considering the Bantu expansion and the _____ expansion (? drawing a blink here... the Asian equivalent of the Bantu expansion) resulting in the disappearance of much of homo sapiens variety, it seems likely that genocide is just how we roll.

For instance, the whole stretch from Africa to Australia would have once been full of people much like Australian aborigines, but the only ones who survived were in Australia, on the lucky side of a new sea barrier.

There is nothing implausible about more than one hominid species coexisting on the planet. Whales and apes and great cats didn't end up one global species... but we did.

There were lots of hominids in different places before we busted out out northeast Africa. And in a geological blink they were gone.

There were many species of large mammal in the Americas, but few remained after only a few thousand years of humans in the Americas. Our exceptional abilities seem to include causing the extinction of large animals.

I think the most parsimonious explanation is that something distinctive about us about us is why the world ended up with one global hominid species.

[4th law of robotics]

3. All this probably occurred long before modern humans existed

our ancestors had been social animals for a long time prior to H. sapiens.

We didn't breed for such traits as they already would have been there. All we could do is add social constraints (ie shame) on top of that to keep people in line.

[Odin2005]

5. Actually, it happened when we invented agriculture.

There are differences in the brains between agricultural populations and populations that were recently still hunter-gatherers that are identical to the differences between domesticated and wild animals. Essentially, we agricultural populations are stupider and more docile.

[4th law of robotics]

6. Do you have a link for that?

I'd be interested to read that paper.

[cthulu2016]

8. We have always been social

But we are probably less violent and more controllable today than previously.

Environmental selection can drive evolution very fast in terms of lessening traits within a population. It depends how reliable the environmental factor is.

For instance, if a mad dictator took over the world and had every person over 5'-3" killed or sterilized the average height of the human species would be considerably less a generation later.

Something complex like social behavior takes a long time to develop. But something like over-aggression can be reduced quickly. Not eliminated of course... no more than we have eliminated pets that run away.

[Odin2005]

4. Thom Hartmann has speculated that ADHD is a relic of before we domesticated ourselves.

Per capita, hunter-gatherer societies are the most violent societies and modern industrialized societies are the least violent.

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. We the sheeple. n/t

[cthulu2016]

9. .

[slackmaster]

10. We are sausages with eyes

We are hostages.

[cthulu2016]

14. That's rather beautiful

[Octafish]

12. Some just love the domesticity thing.

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection