Egalitarianism vs. evolution

[ThatGuy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but egalitarianism and evolution seem to be at odds. Allow me to elaborate.

Selfishness is a survival strategy. We are selfish, because keeping more resources to ourselves gives us the means to lead a safer and healthier life and create more offspring. As other psychological traits, selfishness also seems to be hereditary:

http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v1...hdy20112a.html

So why is there altruism in the world? Simply put, because humans work much better in teams than they do alone, that's why we have and have had families, tribes and enterprises. Altruism and selfishness can coexist, because the main form of altruism that we practice is solidarity, which is a tit for tat kind of relationship. We support other people when they are in need, because we're convinced that they will support us back if we need it. Those who only take, but don't give back when it's their turn to give, are thus excluded from cooperation and will slowly fade from the gene poll.

This is where it gets interesting with egalitarianism. Taken to its extreme, egalitarianism means the complete sharing of resources of all people with all others, and thus requires complete selflessness on the part of people to work. However, the more that a society is egalitarian, the less incentive there is to be altruistic. If people freely share their resources, and you get them automatically, regardless of you putting in any effort or not, then it will be easier to survive for those people that are less productive in society, because production carries risks such as injury or death on the workplace and also because it diverts time from other pursuits, that raise the desirability of people as sexual partners. People who spend their whole days socializing and caring about their looks and social status will have a better chance at procreation than people who work all day in a factory to produce the things that people need to survive. That means that the more selfish people will have more offspring and that society will become more selfish as a result. And since egalitarianism requires altruism to even exist, it would follow, that egalitarianism is a self-defeating idea, that will always fail in the long run.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

application of capitalist ethics and practise to evolution

gooooooooooooood

Even Darwin held that evolution wasn't as brutally selfish as its often made out to be, but I think it would be interesting for you to read Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, where he theorises that mutual aid and co-operation are key deciders of survival and the path of evolution even in non-human animals.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

About those twin studies the article references, here is an abstract for one of them:

"Administered 5 questionnaires measuring altruistic and aggressive tendencies to 573 adult twin pairs (mean age about 30 yrs) of both sexes from the University of London Institute of Psychiatry Volunteer Twin Register. Ss included 206 monozygotic (MZ) female, 90 MZ male, 133 dizygotic (DZ) female, 46 DZ male, and 98 DZ opposite-sex pairs. The questionnaires measured altruism, empathy, nurturance, aggressiveness, and assertiveness. The intraclass correlations for the 5 scales, respectively, were .53, .54, .49, .40, and .52 for the 296 MZ pairs, and .25, .20, .14, .04, and .20 for the 179 same-sex DZ pairs, resulting in broad heritability estimates of 56, 68, 70, 72, and 64%. Additional analyses, using maximum-likelihood model-fitting, revealed approximately 50% of the variance on each scale to be associated with genetic effects, virtually 0% with the twins' common environment, and the remaining 50% with each twins' specific environment and/or error associated with the test. Correcting for the unreliability in the tests raised the maximum-likelihood heritabilities to approximately 60%. Age and sex differences were also found: Altruism increased over the age span from 19 to 60 yrs, whereas aggressiveness decreased; at each age, women had higher scores than men on altruism and lower scores on aggressiveness. "

I don't think I even need to spell out the potential problems: ideological definition of "altruism", biased questionnaires, an unrepresentative sample and, most importantly, completely ignoring the role of society in the, well, socialisation of individuals.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, cultures show changes in notions of proper behaviour, including altruism and selfishness, that are obviously on a time scale so short any significant genetic change is ruled out. People don't behave like the parts of a simple model in mathematical genetics, and our motivations are social, not biological.

[ThatGuy]

our motivations are social, not biological.

You have a point in the potential problems with the study itself, but this is definitely nonsense. It's basically what people who say that homosexuality is learned and not biological argue. Of course behavior in people is different through different societies and it's hard to find out what is the result of nature and what is the result of nurture, but saying that the motivation to procreate, which is the only motivation I accounted for is social and not biological is not understanding how evolution works.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

You have a point in the potential problems with the study itself, but this is definitely nonsense. It's basically what people who say that homosexuality is learned and not biological argue. Of course behavior in people is different through different societies and it's hard to find out what is the result of nature and what is the result of nurture, but saying that the motivation to procreate, which is the only motivation I accounted for is social and not biological is not understanding how evolution works.

So what if homosexuality is "learned"? It doesn't matter.

The fact is that societal mores, including those related to reproduction, change on a time scale that is far, far too short for genetic change. So, it seems that you are the one who doesn't understand evolution, since you seem to think evolution happens on the scale of decades.

But hey, if you have an "evolutionary" explanation of filial cannibalism in the Choseon dynasty or the modern disdain for large families, I'm all ears.

[ThatGuy]

So what if homosexuality is "learned"? It doesn't matter.

If it is learned it could potentially be unlearned, but all the signs point to this not being the case at all.

The fact is that societal mores, including those related to reproduction, change on a time scale that is far, far too short for genetic change. So, it seems that you are the one who doesn't understand evolution, since you seem to think evolution happens on the scale of decades.

But hey, if you have an "evolutionary" explanation of filial cannibalism in the Choseon dynasty or the modern disdain for large families, I'm all ears.

Don't get me wrong, what is attractive is definitely shaped by society to some degree. People shape their sexual preferences by imprinting the first encounter with sex from their childhood, definitely. What I am saying, is that there can't possibly exist a society that doesn't value or perform reproduction, because it will die out. That's why all living beings ever reproduce one way or another and this is the only assumption about motivation that I make. If you're trying to say that hard work might become sexy in the future, that might make sense, but we have no way of predicting that and of course even then, only the appearance of hard work would be fetishized, since it's impossible to judge who contributes the most to production objectively. Oh god is this turning into an objective value debate?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

If it is learned it could potentially be unlearned, but all the signs point to this not being the case at all.

No, that doesn't follow. Mathematical ability, for example, is also the result of socialisation, but that doesn't mean it can be "unlearned". At best it can atrophy due to a lack of use. Probably the same goes for sexual behaviour as well.

The problem with people (mostly liberals) who insist on homosexuality being genetic in political arguments is that they seem to be implying that homosexuality is wrong but hey, the gay people can't help themselves.

Don't get me wrong, what is attractive is definitely shaped by society to some degree. People shape their sexual preferences by imprinting the first encounter with sex from their childhood, definitely. What I am saying, is that there can't possibly exist a society that doesn't value or perform reproduction, because it will die out. That's why all living beings ever reproduce one way or another and this is the only assumption about motivation that I make. If you're trying to say that hard work might become sexy in the future, that might make sense, but we have no way of predicting that and of course even then, only the appearance of hard work would be fetishized, since it's impossible to judge who contributes the most to production objectively. Oh god is this turning into an objective value debate?

No, I don't see what "objective value" (a nonsense term if there ever was one) has to do with anything. It's just that the above paragraph is a bit of a non-sequitur. Alright, more than a bit of a non-sequitur. (Incidentally, there have been societies that have not valued reproduction, early Christian Europe and North Africa for example.) You jump from "reproduction occurs in every society" to "people constantly try to increase their reproductive fitness", which simply is not the case.

[Diirez]

You have it wrong about evolution. When I was taught evolution by creationists they used the same argument. Darwinian Evolution means that everyone is for themselves and therefore evolution supports Nazi Germany, eugenics and murder.

This is not true at all. The evolutionary purpose of life is to pass along your genes and keep your species alive for another generation. Now here's the thing, if we were all doing what's best for ourselves and screwing over everyone else, then we're risking not having our species survive a new generation and risking our offspring. So altruism in a population is preferable because if group protects each other they're going to survive longer than individuals only looking after themselves.

[Tim Cornelis]

The evolutionary purpose of life is to pass along your genes and keep your species alive for another generation.

Evolution has no purpose though, it's goalless and random.

[BIXX]

Also there was that guy who studied the chimpanzees who seems to have discovered that altruism and mutual aid are distinct evolutionary traits, kinda confirming Kropotkin's theory. He also demonstrated that was it determined to be "nature" can change.

[Diirez]

Evolution has no purpose though, it's goalless and random.

I didn't mean that evolution or natural selection have a set purpose. I meant the purpose of an individual in a species. You and I's purpose evolutionary speaking is to pass along our genes and further our species.

[Tim Cornelis]

Also there was that guy who studied the chimpanzees who seems to have discovered that altruism and mutual aid are distinct evolutionary traits, kinda confirming Kropotkin's theory. He also demonstrated that was it determined to be "nature" can change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal

I didn't mean that evolution or natural selection have a set purpose. I meant the purpose of an individual in a species. You and I's purpose evolutionary speaking is to pass along our genes and further our species.

Nope. That would imply evolution created us with the intent for us to procreate. We have no purpose. Procreation is just a random outcome that happens to be required for the survival of a species, but it's not a goal or purpose for species or individuals.

[Tenka]

Tim is right. What we call evolution is just the byproduct of our ancestors surviving and passing on their little mutations to offspring (byproduct? maybe the thing itself). I have found it is oddly mystified by much of the godless public. Purpose is all in the minds of humans.

[Tim Cornelis]

Related to that is:

Apparent teleology is a recurring issue in evolutionary biology,[12] much to the consternation of some writers.[11]
Statements which imply that nature has goals, for example where a species is said to do something "in order to" achieve survival, appear teleological, and therefore invalid. Usually, it is possible to rewrite such sentences to avoid the apparent teleology. Some biology courses have incorporated exercises requiring students to rephrase such sentences so that they do not read teleologically. Nevertheless, biologists still frequently write in a way which can be read as implying teleology even if that is not the intention. These issues have recently been discussed by John Reiss.[13][page needed] He argues that evolutionary biology can be purged of such teleology by rejecting the analogy of natural selection as a watchmaker; other arguments against this analogy have also been promoted by writers such as Richard Dawkins.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology#Biology

[Rafiq]

Of course evolutionary development is vicious and the summation of the individual struggle to survive. Of course the struggle for control over territory, resources and so on actively contributes to biological history and whatever.

The question is an ideological one: What FORM does this take with regard to human social development? Those bourgeois cowards, reactionaries will have us believe this takes the form of individual agents competing against each other within the paradigm set forth in our society, which apparently came out of nowhere. The reality is that the form the struggle for survival takes as far as humans, which are social animals, go - is CLASS struggle. What is class struggle, if not different collective agents with different relationships and interests to the basis of life and survival actively competing and fighting?

Furthermore, this leads to a larger problem with bourgeois ideology today, which is the worship of cosmology and ecological mysticism. If anything humans have proved, it is that we are not mystically bound by the patterns found in nature, else we would have remained in the cyclic process of the alpha male. Class society is not pre wired into our very being, it is simply the result of our social development which you CANNOT draw any cosmological implications from. Let's be consistent here, everything is an accident, there is no 'meaning'. Of course logically the bourgeois scum would reject this basic truth, for it entails their utter decline, it entails that they are a class which is not entitled to total universality.

What distinguishes humans from other animals (whose struggles take the form of individual, personal conflicts on a small, simple level) is that they are social animals who express the struggle to survive through very complicated SOCIAL struggles, hence why we are so significant geographically, why our social organization is so complex and specialized.

[Rafiq]

Another narrative is that we on a personal level are like animals, we fight over mates, we engage in violence, brawls and whatever, that in specific circumstances the 'alpha male' cycle is expressed, in organizations, gangs, whatever. But that simply the sheer power of our social existence, the summation of our social relationships trivializes all of this to the point where it has no significance in the grand scheme of things. In other words, our social dimension outgrew our 'natural' one.

[Blake's Baby]

Culture, as Lewis Binford points out, is our extra-somatic means of adaptation. Culture changes rapidly. Evolution is slow. Anatomically-modern humans have been around about 250,000 years. Class society has been around for about 8,000. About 3% of the time humans have been around.

Of course, it's only in the last couple of hundred years (co-incidently, the time capitalism has been around) that it's been demonstrated that our 'nature' is to be aggressive and competitive. Previously, such as in the medieval period in Europe, it was supposed that humanity had three natures, fitting it to one of three tasks (fighting, praying and working). Strangely, this conformed to the division of society in the middle ages in to a military aristocracy, an ideological priest-caste, and a peasant agricultural base (no capitalists in the middle ages, such a thing was unthought of).

What does this prove? I think, that trite generalisations about what humans 'are' will support the status quo. That, after all, is what they're for.

Egalitarianism isn't opposed to solidarity. We help others because we want them, in the future, to help us. But it doesn't matter if they don't. If we don't need help, we don't expect it anyway. It's not like buying something. I don't lend you 50 quid for two weeks to pay your gas bill thinking that, in six months time, you'll lend me 50 quid for 2 weeks, whether I need it or not. Solidarity is not accounted.

But the 'egalitarianism' you espouse is a strawman anyway. We tend to espouse 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their need' around here. Not just, 'to each according to their need'. People have to contribute to society as well as take from it. If we believed otherwise, we'd be fine with capitalism.

[Rafiq]

Egalitarianism isn't about helping others, and it does not spawn from empathy. Egalitarianism is not some extra imposition upon our society, it is the recognition that the legitimacy of ruling class's claim to power, domination and so on is void. That the existing order is the real imposition. Saint Just once said that every king was a usurper - this is the kind of logic we need.

[Црвена]

Total egalitarianism is the last stage of social evolution, when people no longer need their survival instincts because they have created a society where it is possible to be altruistic and survive at the same time. This is what evolution will lead to.