The word “decide” is a reference to the subjective/ internal element of a human being: that most of us generally accept that we exercise some degree of “will” in every conscious action we take, so that when a man opts to be the one to go out and hunt and fight, and a women opts to be the one to stay in the village, cook, and raise kids, we say they have made a decision.

What you, and possibly Dawkins, are doing, is reducing all references to subjective internal realities to objective external descriptions: this is called material reductionism, which I reject for a number of reasons, one being that it takes personal responsibility right out of the picture by making internal states, or “choices” irrelevant.

D,

Do you differentiate between “personal responsibility” in animals vs. humans? Because my point is that “patriarchy” first came about in our line more than 1.5 million years ago if we’re going off the evolutionary record, and if we were mere animals back then without human cognition to aid us, then “personal responsibility” wouldn’t apply to us.

I accept personal responsibility in humans, but if my dog poops on the floor, I tend to blame myself for not walking him. I have the privilege of personal responsibility, my dog may or may not.

The word “decide” is a reference to the subjective/ internal element of a human being: that most of us generally accept that we exercise some degree of “will” in every conscious action we take, so that when a man opts to be the one to go out and hunt and fight, and a women opts to be the one to stay in the village, cook, and raise kids, we say they have made a decision.

What you, and possibly Dawkins, are doing, is reducing all references to subjective internal realities to objective external descriptions: this is called material reductionism, which I reject for a number of reasons, one being that it takes personal responsibility right out of the picture by making internal states, or “choices” irrelevant.

We are all subject to external evolutionary pressures, always, including now; if we don’t kill ourselves, our level of self/other awareness in a thousand or so years will be far beyond what it is today. If I took your position that external evolutionary pressures effectively wipe out the will, or decision-making component of human action, in less aware societies, then even right now, we wouldn’t be able to judge or hold anyone responsible for anything, because everything would be what it is, and everyone would be who they are: we couldn’t hold a racist, or sexist, a murderer, a rapist, a homophobe, whatever the case, personally responsible for their thoughts and feelings today, because their conditions were certainly influenced by environmental/evolutionary conditions.

As for the bonobos, yes I actually read quite a bit about them last summer; the best explanation I’ve read for their matriarchal structure is also biogeographical (which is, I admit, obvious to say, as biogeographical factors would account for the behaviour of all animals, including humans up to industrialized societies, where we become much more “free” - but never totally free - with how we structure ourselves). Bonobos hang out in nutrient-rich areas on the ground, enabling the females to band together in groups which can’t be dominated by males, whereas chimps hang out in trees all day where females can’t get into big groups and males end up dominating them one on one.

Hmm interesting, that sounds about right. I mean the sexual dimorphism between the Bonobo sexes is minimal and they have few predators right? So I could see how the females could gang together against the males.

“Decision” doesn’t imply conscious, calculated, self-reflectively rational choice, independent from environmental factors. It refers to the fact that the “patriarchy” is a social structure that we as a people came up with. The way you’re approaching it, Jaehwan, is similar to saying that I can’t “decide” to work, because I have to work, but it’s still a decision. I can decide to not work and die. (Your physical evolution analogies don’t hold water, because we’re talking about social structure and roles.)

If we were able to evolve physically over the last 1.5 million years, starting with Homo Erectus, although it probably goes back even further than that, why should social structure and roles be free from evolutionary influence? An organism with a pathological or unhelpful physical trait is just as likely to face extinction as one with a pathological or unhelpful social trait.

A good example of this was in Richard Dawkins’s “The Selfish Gene.” (I don’t have a copy of the book right now, but I remember being blown away with the explanation.) He talks about genes being the units of life, and therefore, he argues, whether we’re talking about “groups” or “organisms” makes no difference since they all serve the purpose of progagating genes.

The example he used was a beehive. In a beehive, bees use ritual dances to tell each other about food, and they have a very militaristic culture that revolves around the queen and her eggs. It’s a system whose purpose is the propagation of genes, much like the human body propagates genes, through reproduction. Dawkins says that it doesn’t matter if you treat the bees themselves as organisms or the colony as an organism because they both serve the same purpose.

So how does evolution work on a social structure level?

Let’s say Groinpull sees a beehive, and let’s say he is hungry for sweets. “Mmm, honey!” he thinks to himself. He walks up to the beehive and sticks his hand in.

What happens? Thousands of drones get militaristic. They get mad. They swarm him, stinging him all over, until he leaves and goes hopping into the lake. The queen doesn’t get involved in the action–she stays within the confines of the hive–but the drones do. They assume their social roles as protectors of the hive.

Keep in mind that on an individual level, swarming makes no sense. Honeybees have barbed stingers, and the soldiers usually die when they sting since it pulls out their entrails. However, swarming protects the queen and the eggs, which helps the genes of the colony propagate. This is why Dawkins treated the colony as an organism.

Had there been bees in the past who did not swarm, they probably would’ve died out because Groinpull would’ve eaten their honey and saved nothing for the babies. Some of these colonies may have had cultures where the drones just didn’t care, and as a result, those colonies would die out. This is the evolutionary pressure that social structures face.

It’s the same thing with human cultures in the absence of cognition. Perhaps the hominids who didn’t have patriarchal structures got murdered by those who did. Or maybe some other evolutionary pressure forced them out of the propagation game, much the way big men forced out little men. You’re right in saying that we came up with patriarchy, much the same way bees came up with the swarm mentality, but I think “decide” is the wrong word since we’re talking about organisms that didn’t have much mental capacity to decide. “Evolved” would be much more accurate.

Also, think about the word “decide.” what do you think of when you hear “decisive?” Usually you think of something discrete and final. You usually don’t think of something that has been around for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.

And again, you don’t have to agree with the exact modes of causation espoused in any article; as long as you understand the idea of biogeographic causation as it affects social structure. Also, we’re not talking about any one particular tribe; we’re talking about surveys of all known tribes, and again, pre-agrarian, whether a tribe is led by men or women depends much more on local conditions than agrarian, which requires a male lead in production.

I still don’t like the Farrell article, but yes, I agree with all your main points. It is an interesting discussion though, and if we have evidence that brings us closer to what really was, it’s fun to compare evidence.

“Decision” doesn’t imply conscious, calculated, self-reflectively rational choice, independent from environmental factors. It refers to the fact that the “patriarchy” is a social structure that we as a people came up with. The way you’re approaching it, Jaehwan, is similar to saying that I can’t “decide” to work, because I have to work, but it’s still a decision. I can decide to not work and die. (Your physical evolution analogies don’t hold water, because we’re talking about social structure and roles.)

(This actually goes into a whole other discussion about where “free will” fits into evolutionary/ biogeographical determinism, but staying within normal language, using the word “decision” is fair.)

And again, you don’t have to agree with the exact modes of causation espoused in any article; as long as you understand the idea of biogeographic causation as it affects social structure. Also, we’re not talking about any one particular tribe; we’re talking about surveys of all known tribes, and again, pre-agrarian, whether a tribe is led by men or women depends much more on local conditions than agrarian, which requires a male lead in production.

As for the bonobos, yes I actually read quite a bit about them last summer; the best explanation I’ve read for their matriarchal structure is also biogeographical (which is, I admit, obvious to say, as biogeographical factors would account for the behaviour of all animals, including humans up to industrialized societies, where we become much more “free” - but never totally free - with how we structure ourselves). Bonobos hang out in nutrient-rich areas on the ground, enabling the females to band together in groups which can’t be dominated by males, whereas chimps hang out in trees all day where females can’t get into big groups and males end up dominating them one on one.

It occured to me that in the age of cognition, cognitive abilities enable us to create real constructs in our minds that alter our value system. No other animal would consider killing himself or herself after a stock market speculation gone bad, but we’re able to associate it with death. And if you consider that bad investments in the stock market could imperil you or your family, it’s very real.

Similarly, George W. Bush isn’t the biggest guy on the planet, but with his title of Commander in Chief and his ability to drill for oil on protected land, he’s a pretty scary and intimidating guy.

When you enter the age of cognition, your values not only change, but your values also become changeable. Only with cognition can people actually create values. Before that, big is big, and dangerous is dangerous.

Relating this to D’s original post, we create our values.

Now you’ve got me thinking…Homo Erectus had stone tools, but religion, deeper communication, and everything else where we take control of nature probably came from Homo Sapiens, so perhaps any control over our animal nature probably comes from us.

Okay, I need to stop. I’m not a vegetarian, but yesterday I ate a vegan meal for dinner, and I woke up hungry in the middle of the night. Hunting animal meat may or may not have more calories, but it definitely keeps a person full for a longer period of time…

Jae, if you’re saying that no one made a conscious decision, you’re pretty much saying that women were retarded weaklings who just let shit happen to them.

There was a social contract. We can’t look at history without remembering the context.

Shades,

Of course I’m not saying that.

The context is exactly what I’m talking about. We’re not talking about conscious decision-making because when that schism occurred in labor division, it was long before we had even had conscious decision-making abilities.

Did giraffes “decide” have long necks? Did cockroaches “decide” to breed in really big numbers? Of course not. Evolution “decided” that for them. I think it’s the same thing with humans and the division of labor. It’s circular, but we evolved according to the way we evolved. According to Wikipedia, agriculture is about 10-12,000 years old, while we homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years old. Homo Erectus was around even longer than that. If you look at the sexual dimorphism or Erectus (one of the criteria we’re discussing), Erectus was even more male-centric polygamous than we were. (And yes, I know that now would be a good time to make a joke about Erectus, but no, I’ll abstain, thank you.)

I agree with the main point that D and others are making here about men not being oppressive assholes. I think the evolutionist’s way to look at it, however, is not saying we “decided,” but saying that that is just the way we evolved before we had cognitive abilities. I’m not saying flat out that we didn’t “decide,” but given the fact that Erectus was even more sexually dimorphic than we were, that, to me, would indicate at least the existence of “patriarchy” among that species. Of course I wasn’t there, but it would seem to me to be an educated guess. I don’t know what came before homo erectus, but based on the other primates we see, it looks like that is how most of us evolved.

Look at when the roles are reversed. A female Praying Mantis will sometimes get hungry during copulation and will bite off the head of the male. Does this make the male “retarded?” I guess it depends on how you look at it, but I would say that that is just the way the species evolved.

Now with cognition, the entire game changes, which is where we find ourselves when we talk about how to improve relationships and power dynamics.

There was a social contract. We can’t look at history without remembering the context.