Not sure why somebody hasn't said this yet, but it doesn't follow that even if 100% of all known hunter gatherer groups lived in the same way today (they don't!), we could then be certain about the ways in which any have lived besides that.

But even disregarding that, this is not supported by the evidence

Any kind of stable social group at low technology levels would need a fairly egalitarian model simply because everyone was essential. Anyone simply refusing to cooperate anymore would be a massive harm to the whole group.

One factor to bear in mind is communities would effectively be in a state of permanent manpower shortage - effectively needing to take every step they could to prevent fragmentation and preserve unity.

Undemocratic institutions are unsustainable over the long term under those conditions.

> They live in a dictatorial hierarchy, just like the apes they are

That is completely wring on so many levels. Least of all the fact that many of humanity's closest relatives are either matriarchal and/or egalitarian.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-sex-and-society-2006-06/

> old societies were largely male dominated tribal groups

Lots of anthropological evidence suggests otherwise. For most of human history, societies weren't necessarily patriarchal or matriarchal, but they were matrilineal (i.e. descent was tracked through the female line). This is because in these societies the only parent you could truly know was yours was your mother. Women didn't necessarily 'rule' these societies in a sense that we would understand it, but they did exercise influence over family and tribal life in a way that could, in many cases, cause quotidian existence to revolve more around them. IIRC societies didn't tend to become male dominated until there was an emergence of food surplus and specialized labor.

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I’d call most of human tribal life anarcho-communist, but I’m open to being corrected by someone with more anthropological experience.

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woke is ridiculous

Agree, because how many tomorrows are we going to keep telling ourselves when we only live within each passing present moment, the future is now, and has always been right here with us.

Whether we express pain and suffering or joy and pleasure, that means we embrace the moment! Whether or not one is doing it intuitively or intentionally does not matter, they are active in this process. When we embrace the moment as a challenge we will always derive something good from the experience -- that deeper connection/feeling of wholeness; reinforce the self instead of losing the self.

Hmm well you said it means something to you and your opinion is all that matters, which isn’t a disagreement to self-examination. It’s actually in the path to agreement. Disregarding that, you’re now saying you have no view on interaction with other lives. So to you murdering somebody would be the same as helping somebody? If I assume the answer is that there is a difference, you are assigning a value to other lives and it’s a natural step to say that taking a life would be a bad use of life. It’s then a natural step to discourage that bad use of life, as it has a negative affect on life overall

Like I said it’s fine to take different views such as value not being dependent on self examination. But I don’t think it adds up to say we just live in an option-less silo. It seems to quite evidently not be the case

Some people still live like this and it is infectious. I served on an elite army unit and also worked around many folks with PhD's. These groups of people despise complacency. I liked being around that, it kept me sharp. I still try to live like that.

I recently went to a homeless shelter to drop off clothes. A guy in a wheelchair was employed there. It seems like he was helping others despite his limitations that I perceived.

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>I’m sure you would have a view on how your life should interact with other lives. I think that’s the crux of the issue here.

"I’m sure you would have a view on how your life should interact with other lives. I think that’s the crux of the issue here."

Actually, no. I do not have a view on how my life should react to others'. The point, as I understand it is, as whether the ancients thought "a self-examined life is worth living." My answer did not agree. It is not the act of self-examination that gives our life meaning.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, but honestly, I don't have any idea what you've said.

I tried this to see if the argument follows. I pretend I have a completely deterministically simulated universe with one entity (person A) speaking in this way to another (person B).

Person A says "We should only believe the truth". I say to myself "it makes sense that this person's synapses make him say this; societies that flourished were ones based on trust and trust comes from a history of honesty with each other and oneself".

Person A then says "Whatever you (person B) should do is something you can do". Person A's synapses may have been motivated to say such a thing because societies that flourished held people responsible for what they did. They did not overthink one's ability to actually dictate their future which I know to be false. This statement by person A is therefore false.

Show us where these records show this is a universal form of governance in hunter-gatherer societies.

Egalitarian hunter-gatherers are extremely well established across the global archaeological record, and the pattern for how populations go from that to state-level societies is equally well trodden scholarly soil.

Generally speaking, societies went from having decision-making power shared between individuals and family units; to recognizing one "big man," typically a charismatic leader figure who pops up during crises. His family didn't retain recognition after he died, but once they did, chiefdoms arose. State-level societies arise as the needs of a population become too complex to handle with just crowd logic.

The apes are an even worse analogy. Bonobos, who as far as primatologists are concerned are more closely related to us than Chimpanzees are, live in massive polycules and are well recorded to be non-violent. While we can get some evolutionary info about ourselves based on their modern behavior, we're just working on a different wavelength.

Take an intro to anthropology course.

You should tell the Hadza that their society is defined by hierarchy.

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I read the new CNN piece on this and I do actually empathize to some extent with the author's main point, at least as I understood it. Interestingly, the author started out with a particularly broad interpretation of digital blackface (the implications of which are the most absurd), but gradually wound their way down to a much, much more narrow and nuanced interpretation of the term. It was hard to believe it was all written by the same person.

The main idea was that white people wanting to meme a strong emotion go straight to black representations of that emotion, as they think it will be exaggerated, funny, or something to that effect. Frankly, this probably is true in some cases. However, that this phenomena exists isn't a very compelling reason to completely prohibit (intellectually/socially) white people from using a meme with a black person if the meme expressed a strong emotion. There are also countless examples of people using white faces for this - the Vince McMahon faces meme, anyone? Possibly -the- most popular example used for exaggerated facial expressions. So if a white person uses a black face to express some strong emotion in a meme format - is that blanket banned across the board? What about if the use of a black-faced meme isn't being driven by the dynamic above (i.e., "I need a face that expressed exaggerated emotion --> black people are cray and always have the most extreme faces")?

All in all, it reads as an absurd idea to me with absurd implications that wouldn't be good for anyone. As it always does, the pendulum can and will swing too far on its return journey.

There’s an article on CNN regarding digital blackface, it is very well researched and the author has steadily and thoroughly walked down the wrong path. Absurd. White people posting memes that contain black people is just normal behavior. Much like black people may post memes containing white people. #overwoke

I’m sorry but this is nonsense. The luitenant would kill you? Is this how you think social animals live? I’m not saying elephants are casting ballots but what you’re missing here is the social structures are not just reinforced by threat of death.

This is pretty much nonsense. We have a lot of knowledge of forager societies (there are none now that live in a 'pre-contact' way), and none were run like dictatorships. A very common pattern is that any male who tried that path was killed - usually by the entire band so that no one person was responsible. There were people - mostly male - who were acknowledged as the best warrior or shaman or hunter, but they had to be careful not to push the boundaries. Not that societies were equal - arrangements varied, but males were ahead of females, and elders over the younger, and adults over children.