Hi you are a far more interesting thinker than either Grey or Pinker.Pinker is just a shrill for neoliberalism .I think his idea that the world is more peaceful now than at any point in human history is risible.
Fun stuff, no? Locking up the traditional lands for both Homo sapiens and of course brother mammals. Barbed wire, fences, rock walls, viscious dogs, shotguns, and now, Jewish State of Murdering Raping Thieving Starving Pollutiing Poisoning Occupied Palestine.
CCTV up you ass. Now, well FitBit watches for all, and then we have devolved into all these Oppen-Monster-Heimers, too busy in the brains to shut the fuck up and be, and now? Ellison, Zuckerberg, Altman, Karp, Ackman, Adelson, Brin, and shall I name another million Jews and their Jewish Mafia backers?
Ishmael, the gorrilla, from Daniel Quinn's book, Ishmael -- Adventure of Mind and SPirit:
It’s never easy to catch Mother Culture in her lies – even for me, with all my practice. She teaches that the way we live is the only human way to live, and thinking about other ways is an utter waste of time. The characteristic that Mother Culture attaches to the Leaver lifestyle most predominantly is absence. Leavers lack technology (untrue, but no matter), lack history (what they have is merely prehistory), lack the noble institutions of civilization, lack the opportunities for wealth and luxury that we enjoy. The last of these is one of the trickiest of Mother Culture’s deceptions, because at first glance it seems unarguable. Even very modest Taker households boast amenities that would seem miraculous to our ancient ancestors and that would still seem so to Leaver peoples not yet in contact with our culture. In this light, it’s easy to accept the idea that the Taker way is the way of wealth and the Leaver way is the way of poverty.
The answering trick to Mother Culture’s trick is almost always this: When she holds up a picture of Nothing, look for Something. When she holds up a picture of an Absence, look for a Presence.
The Leaver way is not a way of poverty, it’s a way of wealth — but the wealth of the Leaver way isn’t the wealth of products, it’s the wealth of human support. Mother Culture never has names for things she cannot see, and there is no name in English (or any other language I know) for this support. It’s not comraderie or friendship or neighborliness. It’s motivating origins are not to be found in love or charity or kindliness. In Leaver societies, people look after each other for much the same reasons that people in Taker societies take jobs and have careers. In Leaver societies, people look after one another not because they’re saintly but because looking after one another assures that they themselves will be looked after. If they don’t look after one another, then the community disappears — and no one is looked after.
When the members of Family A fall ill, Families B, C, and D share their food with them, because they all know that someday they too could fall ill. When a child is injured, the nearest adult runs to help it, because that adult knows that someday his or her own child may need help. When an aged person becomes sick and helpless, the family of that person isn’t alone with the problem. All share the burden, because all know they will have a similar burden someday and will need others to share it. Those who give support shall receive support.
It’s an economy. An economy based on support instead of products. It works like the diagram to the right…
The Taker economy, by contrast, works like that on the left…
Everyone knows the Taker economy works, but they find it hard to believe that the Leaver economy works too. This is because Taker wealth is so much more visible than Leaver wealth. Products can be photographed, packaged, and put in store windows, but support can’t. There are many other striking differences between these two kinds of wealth.
Taker wealth can be put under lock and key, but Leaver wealth can’t. For this reason, Taker wealth is inherently divisive. Behind the locked doors of my house are my furniture, my appliances, my television sets, my radios, my computers, my clothes, my records, my books. I’ve worked for them, I’ve earned them, and no one else in the world has worked for them or earned them — and this is the dividing line between them and me, between theirs and mine. The law of every Taker nation in the world confirms all this. Leaver wealth, by contrast, is not divisive but inherently unitive.
Taker and Leaver economies are mirror images of each other. Takers are rich in products but poor in human support; Leavers are rich in human support but poor in products. But note this: Takers complain noisily and endlessly over the shortcomings of their economic system, but anthropologists find that Leavers (until their cultures are undermined by Taker contact) seem remarkably content with theirs.
Ever wish you were as secure as a baboon?
The experience of Leavers is one of cradle-to-grave security. This security is not the result of utopian design or nobility of character. It’s the result of eons of evolutionary shaping of their communities. In brief, community structures that did not provide cradle-to-grave security for their members did not survive. The structures we know are the ones that survived. They’re like the species we know: They survived because they worked.
Many readers may wonder if this “cradle-to-grave security” isn’t an exaggeration I indulge in for the sake of making a point. Not so, I assure you. In fact, there’s little reason to be surprised that Leaver peoples should enjoy such security. After all, among our neighbors in the community of life, the very same security is enjoyed in every species whose members form communities. Ducks, sea lions, deer, giraffes, wolves, wasps, monkeys, and gorillas (to name just a few species out of millions) enjoy such security. It has to be assumed that the members of Homo habilis enjoyed such security — or how would they have survived? Is there any reason to doubt that the members of Homo erectus enjoyed such security or that they conferred it upon their descendants, Homo sapiens?
No, as a species, we came into being in communities in which cradle-to-grave security was the rule, and the same rule has been followed throughout the development of Homo sapiens right up to the present moment — in Leaver societies. It’s only in Taker societies that cradle-to-grave security has become a rarity, a special blessing of the privileged few.
In Taker societies, needed support is provided by paid ”professional classes” of support-givers. If your mother becomes ill, for example, your community doesn’t rally round to share the burden of her care. You have to pay people to do that, and the more you spend, the better your mother is cared for and the less heavy your personal burden is. The same is true of any condition that could be alleviated by human support. In Leaver societies, this support is available to everyone in the community, automatically, free of charge. In Taker societies, you pay for it or you don’t get it. And, my oh my, do we ever pay for it!
I haven’t the time or inclination for such research, but it would be fascinating to know how much it costs us to get all the support that is free in Leaver societies. Virtually all services for which we pay taxes are provided for free by members of Leaver societies as an ordinary part of belonging to the community, and they don’t find it especially burdensome to provide them. ”Professional classes” of support-givers are nonexistent or very small; most shamans, for example, do not ”make their living” by healing or by performing religious ceremonies, and most tribal chiefs do not ”make their living” as political leaders.
People sometimes ask if it wouldn’t be possible to achieve the Leaver lifestyle simply by leaping out of the Taker lifestyle into nothing. The answer is no, because the Leaver lifestyle isn’t nothing, it’s an economy — an economy based on a different sort of wealth and on a different sort of economic transaction: not products for products but support for support.
If you’d like to explore the possibility of moving toward a Leaver lifestyle in your community, don’t concentrate on giving up Taker things. To concentrate on giving up Taker things is to concentrate on a negative. The Leaver lifestyle isn’t an absence of Taker things, it’s a presence of something else, and that presence is support.
I’ve conjectured that we can reinvent Leaver-style support systems for ourselves incrementally, bit by bit, by working within our own communities and building on each other’s successes the way inventors of the Industrial Revolution built on each other’s successes. I’ve received a lot of encouragement for this idea, but as yet no one has reported trying it. I suspect the idea of offering any kind of support to anyone makes people very nervous. That’s fine. Don’t start by offering anything. Start by bringing out into the open the fears and reservations you have about the whole idea. That’s progress, because it’s a start.
I have witnessed overpopulations of tent caterpillars, rabbits, grasshoppers, fox, coyotes, ducks & white tailed deer, growing up in rural western Canada.
All faced a die off when they became to many.
The "west" is due for a cull/cleanse.
Some have "branded" this natural process- the Fourth Turning, which is an apt metaphor given the four seasons
Spring- plant/sow
Summer- growth
Autumn- maturity/reap
Winter- death/reset
Of the species I listed above- the "die offs" I witnessed did not happen across the globe- they were relatively localized.
The "west" is headed for something similar to what Russia faced in the 1990's.
Stop worrying about the "world" when only the west is going to suffer this fate at this time.
The core point of this article- "we" are responsible for our situation- is true.
What is the point of blaming the Jews or the City of London banking cartel or the media or oligarchs or corrupt politicians?
There is a whole world outside the "west".
In the 1800's & early 1900's, millions of Europeans left their families and communities in search of better opportunities.
At a level I experienced this myself, growing up in Saskatchewan. For several generations over 80% of high school grads left Saskatchewan because there was no work & no opportunity.
Fortunately we had Alberta next door- with tons of jobs & opportunities.
Which is where I went & worked for 30 years, until I started exploring the world outside the west in search of a better life for myself.
Collective compliance, conformity & comfort seeking brought the west to this point.
The way I see it you can whinge about it, do something about it or leave.
I love researching anything I can about Bonobos, they're very interesting. They're very social animals as we are also. Although we like or many of us like periods of isolation. I personally like longer periods of isolation as Ive gotten older. To do my own thing, read a lot, maybe watch a documentary or 2. But I cherish the tone with my close family members more & more as I get older. An observation I've made & it increasingly gets my attention. Is the habit of labelling sections of society or people's into groups. There's always one label or another placed upon everyone. For me there's only 2 kinds of people. Decent people & assholes. No matter what culture, skin colour or religion.
Interestingly, I also started writing about society, but I found that it covers a very wide spectrum and area.
I started about the judiciary because a friend from the pro-Western side told me that he doesn't understand how people (people on the eastern side) can ignore the crimes and accusations of people in politics. Of course, he didn't mention the accusations and crimes of pro-Western politicians.
From the judiciary, through diplomacy, through the party, through the competitiveness of people, I got to a society that is divided into many smaller groups (exactly as you mentioned).
I also mentioned the nation, and gender, and customs, and culture, but most importantly, I came to a point where I could finally go back to the beginning, that is, when I could make a bridge to the beginning.
That point was the intention. So that there is some intention behind everything, for which of course, first of all, you need to know how to listen to the other person to the end, to the point. So negatively affecting sentences can be meant positively and vice versa.
Disagreements are mostly that a person is lazy, does not see the essence, intention, and lets himself be swayed by superficial truths, familiar phenomena of a society that has already been raised by the powers that be, and they consider this to be the most sacred. Thanks to which we also lack the sincerity that would solve the deeper truths of each individual in relation to each other.
And so democracy was created, which is abused to make superficial decency and beauty the greatest value that is supposed to defeat everything lower, imperfect, backward. Of course, even democratic principles cannot win, so assassinations, election disruptions, and the spread of hatred through all the instruments of democracy happen.
The answer to the judiciary is therefore not the judge as such, but morality, which should be above democracy, that is, above politics as such. It should be impartial!
Beautiful and accurate analysis of us. If anybody is really worried about the future of the planet they should take a look at the Chernobyl exclusion zone. It took less than 25 years for mature to return to (almost) normal. But maybe most are worried about themselves rather than the planet, and they should be. The planet can sustain a couple of unmanaged billions, and maybe double that if well managed, an unlikely scenario for this species.
If human beings were as you say, then to paraphrase Camilla Paglia “we would still be living grass huts and weaving baskets” , and probably not even that if what you say is correct.
Go look at some temples, mosques, sacred books etc, even science and tech - none of this and similar could possibly emerge from what you describe.
I think humans mostly conform to the system imposed on them. For example, after almost 50 years of vicious, cutthroat, hyper-competitive capitalism, most Americans are fearful, prone to violence, untrustworthy, nihilistic, always kind of nervous, very conformist (herd instinct) when necessary, short-sighted, uncooperative unless rewarded, and crude (publicly displaying animal-like behavior, at times).
Hi you are a far more interesting thinker than either Grey or Pinker.Pinker is just a shrill for neoliberalism .I think his idea that the world is more peaceful now than at any point in human history is risible.
Fun stuff, no? Locking up the traditional lands for both Homo sapiens and of course brother mammals. Barbed wire, fences, rock walls, viscious dogs, shotguns, and now, Jewish State of Murdering Raping Thieving Starving Pollutiing Poisoning Occupied Palestine.
CCTV up you ass. Now, well FitBit watches for all, and then we have devolved into all these Oppen-Monster-Heimers, too busy in the brains to shut the fuck up and be, and now? Ellison, Zuckerberg, Altman, Karp, Ackman, Adelson, Brin, and shall I name another million Jews and their Jewish Mafia backers?
Ishmael, the gorrilla, from Daniel Quinn's book, Ishmael -- Adventure of Mind and SPirit:
It’s never easy to catch Mother Culture in her lies – even for me, with all my practice. She teaches that the way we live is the only human way to live, and thinking about other ways is an utter waste of time. The characteristic that Mother Culture attaches to the Leaver lifestyle most predominantly is absence. Leavers lack technology (untrue, but no matter), lack history (what they have is merely prehistory), lack the noble institutions of civilization, lack the opportunities for wealth and luxury that we enjoy. The last of these is one of the trickiest of Mother Culture’s deceptions, because at first glance it seems unarguable. Even very modest Taker households boast amenities that would seem miraculous to our ancient ancestors and that would still seem so to Leaver peoples not yet in contact with our culture. In this light, it’s easy to accept the idea that the Taker way is the way of wealth and the Leaver way is the way of poverty.
The answering trick to Mother Culture’s trick is almost always this: When she holds up a picture of Nothing, look for Something. When she holds up a picture of an Absence, look for a Presence.
The Leaver way is not a way of poverty, it’s a way of wealth — but the wealth of the Leaver way isn’t the wealth of products, it’s the wealth of human support. Mother Culture never has names for things she cannot see, and there is no name in English (or any other language I know) for this support. It’s not comraderie or friendship or neighborliness. It’s motivating origins are not to be found in love or charity or kindliness. In Leaver societies, people look after each other for much the same reasons that people in Taker societies take jobs and have careers. In Leaver societies, people look after one another not because they’re saintly but because looking after one another assures that they themselves will be looked after. If they don’t look after one another, then the community disappears — and no one is looked after.
When the members of Family A fall ill, Families B, C, and D share their food with them, because they all know that someday they too could fall ill. When a child is injured, the nearest adult runs to help it, because that adult knows that someday his or her own child may need help. When an aged person becomes sick and helpless, the family of that person isn’t alone with the problem. All share the burden, because all know they will have a similar burden someday and will need others to share it. Those who give support shall receive support.
It’s an economy. An economy based on support instead of products. It works like the diagram to the right…
The Taker economy, by contrast, works like that on the left…
Everyone knows the Taker economy works, but they find it hard to believe that the Leaver economy works too. This is because Taker wealth is so much more visible than Leaver wealth. Products can be photographed, packaged, and put in store windows, but support can’t. There are many other striking differences between these two kinds of wealth.
Taker wealth can be put under lock and key, but Leaver wealth can’t. For this reason, Taker wealth is inherently divisive. Behind the locked doors of my house are my furniture, my appliances, my television sets, my radios, my computers, my clothes, my records, my books. I’ve worked for them, I’ve earned them, and no one else in the world has worked for them or earned them — and this is the dividing line between them and me, between theirs and mine. The law of every Taker nation in the world confirms all this. Leaver wealth, by contrast, is not divisive but inherently unitive.
Taker and Leaver economies are mirror images of each other. Takers are rich in products but poor in human support; Leavers are rich in human support but poor in products. But note this: Takers complain noisily and endlessly over the shortcomings of their economic system, but anthropologists find that Leavers (until their cultures are undermined by Taker contact) seem remarkably content with theirs.
Ever wish you were as secure as a baboon?
The experience of Leavers is one of cradle-to-grave security. This security is not the result of utopian design or nobility of character. It’s the result of eons of evolutionary shaping of their communities. In brief, community structures that did not provide cradle-to-grave security for their members did not survive. The structures we know are the ones that survived. They’re like the species we know: They survived because they worked.
Many readers may wonder if this “cradle-to-grave security” isn’t an exaggeration I indulge in for the sake of making a point. Not so, I assure you. In fact, there’s little reason to be surprised that Leaver peoples should enjoy such security. After all, among our neighbors in the community of life, the very same security is enjoyed in every species whose members form communities. Ducks, sea lions, deer, giraffes, wolves, wasps, monkeys, and gorillas (to name just a few species out of millions) enjoy such security. It has to be assumed that the members of Homo habilis enjoyed such security — or how would they have survived? Is there any reason to doubt that the members of Homo erectus enjoyed such security or that they conferred it upon their descendants, Homo sapiens?
No, as a species, we came into being in communities in which cradle-to-grave security was the rule, and the same rule has been followed throughout the development of Homo sapiens right up to the present moment — in Leaver societies. It’s only in Taker societies that cradle-to-grave security has become a rarity, a special blessing of the privileged few.
In Taker societies, needed support is provided by paid ”professional classes” of support-givers. If your mother becomes ill, for example, your community doesn’t rally round to share the burden of her care. You have to pay people to do that, and the more you spend, the better your mother is cared for and the less heavy your personal burden is. The same is true of any condition that could be alleviated by human support. In Leaver societies, this support is available to everyone in the community, automatically, free of charge. In Taker societies, you pay for it or you don’t get it. And, my oh my, do we ever pay for it!
I haven’t the time or inclination for such research, but it would be fascinating to know how much it costs us to get all the support that is free in Leaver societies. Virtually all services for which we pay taxes are provided for free by members of Leaver societies as an ordinary part of belonging to the community, and they don’t find it especially burdensome to provide them. ”Professional classes” of support-givers are nonexistent or very small; most shamans, for example, do not ”make their living” by healing or by performing religious ceremonies, and most tribal chiefs do not ”make their living” as political leaders.
People sometimes ask if it wouldn’t be possible to achieve the Leaver lifestyle simply by leaping out of the Taker lifestyle into nothing. The answer is no, because the Leaver lifestyle isn’t nothing, it’s an economy — an economy based on a different sort of wealth and on a different sort of economic transaction: not products for products but support for support.
If you’d like to explore the possibility of moving toward a Leaver lifestyle in your community, don’t concentrate on giving up Taker things. To concentrate on giving up Taker things is to concentrate on a negative. The Leaver lifestyle isn’t an absence of Taker things, it’s a presence of something else, and that presence is support.
I’ve conjectured that we can reinvent Leaver-style support systems for ourselves incrementally, bit by bit, by working within our own communities and building on each other’s successes the way inventors of the Industrial Revolution built on each other’s successes. I’ve received a lot of encouragement for this idea, but as yet no one has reported trying it. I suspect the idea of offering any kind of support to anyone makes people very nervous. That’s fine. Don’t start by offering anything. Start by bringing out into the open the fears and reservations you have about the whole idea. That’s progress, because it’s a start.
It has been over fifty years since I read it, but I seem to recall that "The Naked Ape" by Desmond Morris covered a lot of this. or?
We aren't killing the planet.
We are killing ourselves.
Nature will never permit us to kill the planet.
Nature will cull us, if we don't do it ourselves.
I have witnessed overpopulations of tent caterpillars, rabbits, grasshoppers, fox, coyotes, ducks & white tailed deer, growing up in rural western Canada.
All faced a die off when they became to many.
The "west" is due for a cull/cleanse.
Some have "branded" this natural process- the Fourth Turning, which is an apt metaphor given the four seasons
Spring- plant/sow
Summer- growth
Autumn- maturity/reap
Winter- death/reset
Of the species I listed above- the "die offs" I witnessed did not happen across the globe- they were relatively localized.
The "west" is headed for something similar to what Russia faced in the 1990's.
Stop worrying about the "world" when only the west is going to suffer this fate at this time.
The core point of this article- "we" are responsible for our situation- is true.
What is the point of blaming the Jews or the City of London banking cartel or the media or oligarchs or corrupt politicians?
There is a whole world outside the "west".
In the 1800's & early 1900's, millions of Europeans left their families and communities in search of better opportunities.
At a level I experienced this myself, growing up in Saskatchewan. For several generations over 80% of high school grads left Saskatchewan because there was no work & no opportunity.
Fortunately we had Alberta next door- with tons of jobs & opportunities.
Which is where I went & worked for 30 years, until I started exploring the world outside the west in search of a better life for myself.
Collective compliance, conformity & comfort seeking brought the west to this point.
The way I see it you can whinge about it, do something about it or leave.
I love researching anything I can about Bonobos, they're very interesting. They're very social animals as we are also. Although we like or many of us like periods of isolation. I personally like longer periods of isolation as Ive gotten older. To do my own thing, read a lot, maybe watch a documentary or 2. But I cherish the tone with my close family members more & more as I get older. An observation I've made & it increasingly gets my attention. Is the habit of labelling sections of society or people's into groups. There's always one label or another placed upon everyone. For me there's only 2 kinds of people. Decent people & assholes. No matter what culture, skin colour or religion.
Interestingly, I also started writing about society, but I found that it covers a very wide spectrum and area.
I started about the judiciary because a friend from the pro-Western side told me that he doesn't understand how people (people on the eastern side) can ignore the crimes and accusations of people in politics. Of course, he didn't mention the accusations and crimes of pro-Western politicians.
From the judiciary, through diplomacy, through the party, through the competitiveness of people, I got to a society that is divided into many smaller groups (exactly as you mentioned).
I also mentioned the nation, and gender, and customs, and culture, but most importantly, I came to a point where I could finally go back to the beginning, that is, when I could make a bridge to the beginning.
That point was the intention. So that there is some intention behind everything, for which of course, first of all, you need to know how to listen to the other person to the end, to the point. So negatively affecting sentences can be meant positively and vice versa.
Disagreements are mostly that a person is lazy, does not see the essence, intention, and lets himself be swayed by superficial truths, familiar phenomena of a society that has already been raised by the powers that be, and they consider this to be the most sacred. Thanks to which we also lack the sincerity that would solve the deeper truths of each individual in relation to each other.
And so democracy was created, which is abused to make superficial decency and beauty the greatest value that is supposed to defeat everything lower, imperfect, backward. Of course, even democratic principles cannot win, so assassinations, election disruptions, and the spread of hatred through all the instruments of democracy happen.
The answer to the judiciary is therefore not the judge as such, but morality, which should be above democracy, that is, above politics as such. It should be impartial!
Beautiful and accurate analysis of us. If anybody is really worried about the future of the planet they should take a look at the Chernobyl exclusion zone. It took less than 25 years for mature to return to (almost) normal. But maybe most are worried about themselves rather than the planet, and they should be. The planet can sustain a couple of unmanaged billions, and maybe double that if well managed, an unlikely scenario for this species.
If human beings were as you say, then to paraphrase Camilla Paglia “we would still be living grass huts and weaving baskets” , and probably not even that if what you say is correct.
Go look at some temples, mosques, sacred books etc, even science and tech - none of this and similar could possibly emerge from what you describe.
I greatly appreciated this post. I also saved the prior one that Dr. Bob wrote.
"Our civilizational models are destructive but in the end the planet will likely survive the ongoing catastrophe of civilization. Just, we won’t."
Sadly so true. Just skim this:
https://climateandeconomy.com/2025/07/05/5th-july-2025-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
I think humans mostly conform to the system imposed on them. For example, after almost 50 years of vicious, cutthroat, hyper-competitive capitalism, most Americans are fearful, prone to violence, untrustworthy, nihilistic, always kind of nervous, very conformist (herd instinct) when necessary, short-sighted, uncooperative unless rewarded, and crude (publicly displaying animal-like behavior, at times).