Exploitation and human nature

[rdem]

is exploitation of others is a part of our nature. If there is such a thing since the early history, i think that's what human is. Will any person has power above others want to lose it?

[Nibb31]

A competitive behaviour is favoured by evolution, so I think it makes sense that competition is part of our nature. The "strongest" gets to reproduce and perpetuate the species while the "weakest" tends to get left behind (and eaten by predators). We got where we are because of competition. The actual qualities that make you "stronger" or "weaker" than your fellow humans are going to vary depending on the environment or the culture. They could be physical strength, beauty, intelligence, humour, knowledge, religious fervor, charisma, or pretty much anything else.

Competition necessarily leads to some dominating others. Whether that domination is leads to exploitation or a more benevolent attitude depends more on each individual. I suppose it's possible to reach a dominant position without exploiting your fellow humans.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Nibb31

[KSK]

28 minutes ago, rdem said:

is exploitation of others is a part of our nature. If there is such a thing since the early history, i think that's what human is. Will any person has power above others want to lose it?

Possibly, but like many other things that are supposedly 'part of our nature' it can be overridden or constructively rechanneled by social or cultural forces. Otherwise democracy would never have gotten off the ground.

I also have to disagree with Nibb31, or at least add a big fat 'sometimes' to his assertion that competition is favoured by evolution. There are examples where cooperative behavior has demonstrably been favoured (termites and bees for example) and plenty of other examples where symbiosis has been favoured instead.

[Green Baron]

It comes, as said, with competition. Be it shortage of resources, money, might over others. It is more a state of the mind, culturally induced or an outcome of personal experience/education than a built in thing. Not everything is controlled by the genes ;-)

But i must object to one thing: it's not allways the physically strongest that comes to reproduction, it's more complicated. Many other factors apply, beauty is a relative thing and there is more about attraction, a smell could signal the compatibility of genes or past experiences from earlier years have a strong influence on the choice of partners.

By "nature" humans are extremely good in co-operation, that's what made us spread all of the world. Over 2,5 million years tribes rather had to co-operate than compete. "Naturally", i would say that people are rather peacefull since co-operation is far more successfull than competition. Sociapathic behaviour is an outcome of property, shortages, and pressure from population, an individual thing.

And that's is what the archaeological record strongly suggests, intraspecies violence seems to be an "invention" in conjunction with early settledness and shortages.

 

Today it's all about exploitation of ressources, be they human, natural. monetary or technological. Our species does not care for the next generation (any more), they become competitors and usually leave home when grown up. See for example the oil price thing: just to keep prices low and drive out competition the gulf states pump out the ressource that fuels our lifestyle with ever greater acceleration, without regard to the outcome.

 

So to your question: the problem is not part of our nature but acquired through civilisation. It exists since early history but early history is very young compared to the presence of humans. Will any person give up might .... example: O. from the West will, P. from the East not. It's an individual state of mind or whatever, not built in behaviour.

:-)

 

Edited September 29, 2016 by Green Baron
Had to skip the reference to Nibb because he edited his statement

[Neil1993]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

There are examples where cooperative behavior has demonstrably been favoured (termites and bees for example) and plenty of other examples where symbiosis has been favoured instead.

Or, as unlikely as it may seem sometimes, cooperation is at the core of all human endeavours.

[kerbiloid]

Just pure mathematics plus rodent instincts.
When there's not not enough food for a whole population, there will nevers stay exactly how many species could be fed. There will die 90%, and 10% keep fine.

Example 1.
2 tribes, each 10 persons. Every of them have food enough for 6.

Step 1.
Tribe A. Everyone gets 0.5 food. Result: 10 weak and hungry persons.
Tribe B. Three bullies get 5 food, 1.5 portion each (and 0.5 lost). Two minions get each 0.5 food. 5 get nothing. Result: 3 fat and strong bullies, 2 weak and hungry minions, 5 corpses.

Step 2. Tribe B comes to Tribe A. 3 bullies easily beat 8 weak neighbors. (Other 2 vs 2 minions annihilate). Result: 2 survived bullies from B with 2 captured girls from A. Tribe B wins.

Example 2.
Fallout. 2 vaults, each 10 persons. They must remove radioactive scrap to keep the vault safe. Overall dose 1000 rad.
Vault A. Everyone does the work and gets 100 rad. Nobody dies. 10 persons, ill and weak. 2 die later, 3 stay ill, 5 repair.
Vault B. 2 bullies and 6 good citizens make 2 unpleasant persons do all work. They get 500 rad each. 1 dies, 1 ill, gets thrown out from the vault and dies too. 8 healthy persons.

Example 3.
2 kingoms, each 100 persons.
Kingdom A. A gentle king with 100 more or less equal peasants training from time to time.
Kingdom B. 10 bullies training all day long, 20 minions, 70 hardly working hungry peasants.
Sparta vs non-Sparta.

Just instead of these calculation, Mother Nature uses Aggression(Discomfort) function and Monte-Carlo method with large experimental sampling.

[magnemoe]

41 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

It comes, as said, with competition. Be it shortage of resources, money, might over others. It is more a state of the mind, culturally induced or an outcome of personal experience/education than a built in thing. Not everything is controlled by the genes ;-)

But i must object to one thing: it's not allways the physically strongest that comes to reproduction, it's more complicated. Many other factors apply, beauty is a relative thing and there is more about attraction, a smell could signal the compatibility of genes or past experiences from earlier years have a strong influence on the choice of partners.

As @Nibb31 said, by "nature" humans are extremely good in co-operation, that's what made us spread all of the world. Over 2,5 million years tribes rather had to co-operate than compete. "Naturally", i would say that people are rather peacefull since co-operation is far more successfull than competition. Sociapathic behaviour is an outcome of property, shortages, and pressure from population, an individual thing.

And that's is what the archaeological record strongly suggests, intraspecies violence seems to be an "invention" in conjunction with early settledness and shortages.

 

Today it's all about exploitation of ressources, be they human, natural. monetary or technological. Our species does not care for the next generation (any more), they become competitors and usually leave home when grown up. See for example the oil price thing: just to keep prices low and drive out competition the gulf states pump out the ressource that fuels our lifestyle with ever greater acceleration, without regard to the outcome.

 

So to your question: the problem is not part of our nature but acquired through civilisation. It exists since early history but early history is very young compared to the presence of humans. Will any person give up might .... example: O. from the West will, P. from the East not. It's an individual state of mind or whatever, not built in behaviour.

:-)

 

Back before agriculture it was lite exploration with the probable exception of some fight over hunting areas. Far less dangerous to hunt than try raid another tribe for food. 
Loosing too many people in an small tribe would be bad and it was hard to get an good upper hand and if you had a bad year your neighbors probably had too. 

As you say we cooperate very well in large groups. One issue is that we also used to see people outside the group not as real people so raiding or enslaving them was not evil.
Seeing all humans as real people is an pretty new thing at least as general attitude just a few generation old.

Resources is an totally different issue. Here it has been a lot that people did not know, you also have the tragedy of the commons.Take lake with fish who is free for everybody to fish, fishing increases a lot, now it make sense for you to fish as much as possible before its fished out even if everybody would get more fish over time with restrictions and fishing limits.
The oil price is good example but here its also lots of politic. 

[rdem]

52 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Just pure mathematics plus rodent instincts.
When there's not not enough food for a whole population, there will nevers stay exactly how many species could be fed. There will die 90%, and 10% keep fine.

Example 1.
2 tribes, each 10 persons. Every of them have food enough for 6.

Step 1.
Tribe A. Everyone gets 0.5 food. Result: 10 weak and hungry persons.
Tribe B. Three bullies get 5 food, 1.5 portion each (and 0.5 lost). Two minions get each 0.5 food. 5 get nothing. Result: 3 fat and strong bullies, 2 weak and hungry minions, 5 corpses.

Step 2. Tribe B comes to Tribe A. 3 bullies easily beat 8 weak neighbors. (Other 2 vs 2 minions annihilate). Result: 2 survived bullies from B with 2 captured girls from A. Tribe B wins.

Example 2.
Fallout. 2 vaults, each 10 persons. They must remove radioactive scrap to keep the vault safe. Overall dose 1000 rad.
Vault A. Everyone does the work and gets 100 rad. Nobody dies. 10 persons, ill and weak. 2 die later, 3 stay ill, 5 repair.
Vault B. 2 bullies and 6 good citizens make 2 unpleasant persons do all work. They get 500 rad each. 1 dies, 1 ill, gets thrown out from the vault and dies too. 8 healthy persons.

Example 3.
2 kingoms, each 100 persons.
Kingdom A. A gentle king with 100 more or less equal peasants training from time to time.
Kingdom B. 10 bullies training all day long, 20 minions, 70 hardly working hungry peasants.
Sparta vs non-Sparta.

Just instead of these calculation, Mother Nature uses Aggression(Discomfort) function and Monte-Carlo method with large experimental sampling.

That's what happens if only thing matters is phisycal power.  Humans are far more complex to simplify like that. Just an idea can change the balance of power easily.

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

 One issue is that we also used to see people outside the group not as real people so raiding or enslaving them was not evil.
Seeing all humans as real people is an pretty new thing at least as general attitude just a few generation old.
 

That's most probably an acquired civilisational behaviour, and the view on others as belonging to humanity or not changed often in historical times. Romans where extremely tolerant (persons from everywhere could make carreer in the military service), spaniards not (conquista killed everyone who wasn't catholic). At the end of the last century it looked as if we had overcome the differences of skincolor. The lates news wake some doubts. I doubt that seeing others as "people" or not is an indicator, it changes too rapidly.

 

Imagine humans in the savanna or later ice age mostly wandered in small groups, a few dozens, last hunter gatherers in the magdalenien maybe a few 100s. Small groups are likely to risk inbreeding, so when groups met they rather performed some form of ritual to chase away the "bad spirits" and interchanged people and information. It probably rather was a joy to meet another group in the wide open.

The work of ethnologists in the last century supports that, they had the chance to visit the last "primitive" peoples.

 

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Resources is an totally different issue. Here it has been a lot that people did not know, you also have the tragedy of the commons.Take lake with fish who is free for everybody to fish, fishing increases a lot, now it make sense for you to fish as much as possible before its fished out even if everybody would get more fish over time with restrictions and fishing limits.
The oil price is good example but here its also lots of politic. 

 

True, but is the principle "grab it before someone else does" a recently acquired behaviour or was it always like that, since the first humans wandered about. Primitive tribes valued the environment through rituals (see: shamanism), and i think we can assume that a similar thing existed in prehistory as well.

It is impossible to prove, there are only hints from ethonological observation and archaeological findings.

 

Edited September 29, 2016 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

27 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

That's most probably an acquired civilisational behaviour, and the view on others as belonging to humanity or not changed often in historical times. Romans where extremely tolerant (persons from everywhere could make carreer in the military service), spaniards not (conquista killed everyone who wasn't catholic). At the end of the last century it looked as if we had overcome the differences of skincolor. The lates news wake some doubts. I doubt that seeing others as "people" or not is an indicator, it changes too rapidly.

Imagine humans in the savanna or later ice age mostly wandered in small groups, a few dozens, last hunter gatherers in the magdalenien maybe a few 100s. Small groups are likely to risk inbreeding, so when groups met they rather performed some form of ritual to chase away the "bad spirits" and interchanged people and information. It probably rather was a joy to meet another group in the wide open.

The work of ethnologists in the last century supports that, they had the chance to visit the last "primitive" peoples.

 

Yes probably a lot of it is cultural. Rome was an empire and knew other people was not like them. On the other hand Romans was very brutal.
En small village might not know, around 1700 an monkey was washed ashore from a ship in England, The villagers hanged it as an french spy.

And if you don't see other people you will usually welcome the rare strangers. 
 

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, rdem said:

That's what happens if only thing matters is phisycal power.

That's what happens if social power matters. Any of that bullies could be stopped by other 9 members.
Do you want to gather radioactive scrap yourself? No problem, 500 are yours, every of those two will be happy to exchange with you.

Exploitation is a way of limited resources redistribution, allowing to accumulate it into a high-concentrated pack, capable to be used for a breakthrough , rather than if those resources would be uniformly distributed.
The greatest benefit of civilization is that it allows to produce much more resources, making inequalities unessential for every member of society and defeating the personal exploitation purpose.

Edited September 29, 2016 by kerbiloid