Originally posted by googlefudge
just popping in...

I agree that Jesus as represented by the bible was a proponent of ideas that today we would regard as communistic.
Which is why the American Christian Right's embrace of capitalism is so entertaining.

As for your evils of civilisation.... Some are not products of civilisation, or are when civilisation breaks down,
some I don't ...[text shortened]... u would suggest we have instead of civilisation that would make the world a
better place.

As long as capitalism and consumerism reign supreme, then they will inexorably lead civilization to its ultimate doom. If nothing else, environmental devastation is a certainty. The only way for mankind to sufficiently reform civilization for the future is to find a synthesis between their primitive communist past and their unsustainable, market-oriented present. A modern communism that does not fetishize limitless growth as the standard for success. I have put forward the Hutterites as perhaps being the closest approximation of what that synthesis might look like in practice.

Originally posted by googlefudge
you may not have a term for it, but the leader of a group (in primitive societies) is
often the big bloke with the club who decides what the group does because he is
stronger than everyone else.
If you look at small 'tribes' of other great apes they almost invariably have a leader
but no term for it.

Not so. Mankind is related equally to both the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Chimpanzee behavior is well known to be aggressive and warlike, with 'alpha' males in charge. Bonobos are another matter entirely. They have a much more matriarchal and egalitarian society where aggressive conflicts are much rarer.

Originally posted by rwingett
Not so. Mankind is related equally to both the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Chimpanzee behavior is well known to be aggressive and warlike, with 'alpha' males in charge. Bonobos are another matter entirely. They have a much more matriarchal and egalitarian society where aggressive conflicts are much rarer.

"If there's one thing you can say about Mankind, there's nothing kind about man."

Originally posted by rwingett
As long as capitalism and consumerism reign supreme, then they will inexorably lead civilization to its ultimate doom. If nothing else, environmental devastation is a certainty. The only way for mankind to sufficiently reform civilization for the future is to find a synthesis between their primitive communist past and their unsustainable, market-oriented pr ...[text shortened]... s as perhaps being the closest approximation of what that synthesis might look like in practice.

I will certainly agree with you (and have said so before on these forums) that
exponential growth (either economic or population) is by definition unsustainable
and counter productive to improving the lives of anyone but the already rich.

And that capitalism needs to be tempered with socialism and we need to base
our societal goals on happiness not raw wealth.

However, I am not sure we would agree on what the cure for the problem is.
You will have to expound on what you mean by a hutterite like society.

Originally posted by rwingett
For about 95% of human history, mankind lived in egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers. There was no private property and no hierarchical social structure. It was what Marx and Engels referred to as "primitive communism."

If you go back far enough we all lived in ponds. Get real.

Originally posted by rwingett
Not surprisingly, I disagree. You can have a de facto communist society without having any knowledge of what communism is. I have frequently contended on this forum that Jesus was a de facto communist (or socialist if you prefer). At any rate, I have qualified hunter-gatherer societies as having "primitive communism" to distinguish them from Marxist communi ...[text shortened]... rable will your glorious civilization be when it has made the planet completely uninhabitable?

For an apparently intelligent person, when provoked, you spout more idiocy than any of the theists you decry. I'm not sure what child's colouring book you get your prehistoric history of mankind from, but if you believe that it was some kind of pseudo-harmonic non-violent culture you must be completely deluded.

Originally posted by divegeester
For an apparently intelligent person, when provoked, you spout more idiocy than any of the theists you decry. I'm not sure what child's colouring book you get your prehistoric history of mankind from, but if you believe that it was some kind of pseudo-harmonic non-violent culture you must be completely deluded.

Yea, I say unto you, divegeester, that it was the Garden of Eden. But we were expelled from that paradise and condemned to till the soil from which we were taken. And we suffer under that curse to this day.

Originally posted by divegeester
If you go back far enough we all lived in ponds. Get real.

I'm only going back as far as Homo sapiens. About 200,000 years, or so.

Originally posted by rwingett
Yea, I say unto you, divegeester, that it was the Garden of Eden. But we were expelled from that paradise and condemned to till the soil from which we were taken. And we suffer under that curse to this day.

Could i crudely sum up the rwingett doctrine as 'No violence till civilisation'?

Originally posted by Proper Knob
Could i crudely sum up the rwingett doctrine as 'No violence till civilisation'?

Don't be foolish. It would be no organized violence till civilization.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I will certainly agree with you (and have said so before on these forums) that
exponential growth (either economic or population) is by definition unsustainable
and counter productive to improving the lives of anyone but the already rich.

And that capitalism needs to be tempered with socialism and we need to base
our societal goals on happiness no ...[text shortened]... cure for the problem is.
You will have to expound on what you mean by a hutterite like society.

Well, it's like this:

The Hutterites are a branch of Anabaptists like the Amish, except that they live communally and use more technology than the Amish. They practice a near-total community of goods within each colony. All property is owned by the colony, and provisions for individual members and their families come from the common resources. Every colony is virtually self-sufficient. Also like the Amish, they are complete pacifists. But one of the key things is that each colony (of about 200 people or less) is its own self-governing entity. There is no over-arching state apparatus. So instead of being organized from the top-down, as with all modern, industrial societies, they really are run from the bottom-up.

So in two key factors - shared resources and small organizational units, they have managed to (unconsciously) replicate the benefits of hunter-gatherer society, while managing to avoid the rampant depredations of consumerist society.

I could go on for days, but that'll get you started...

Originally posted by rwingett
Well, it's like this:

The Hutterites are a branch of Anabaptists like the Amish, except that they live communally and use more technology than the Amish. They practice a near-total community of goods within each colony. All property is owned by the colony, and provisions for individual members and their families come from the common resources. Every colo ...[text shortened]... epredations of consumerist society.

I could go on for days, but that'll get you started...

I remain to be convinced that this is a feasible system when you scale up from a small number of 200 strong Hutterite communities to roughly 6,800,000,000/200 (i.e. about 34 million of them) Hutterite communities. I am inclined to think the same greed and heartless competition for resources will always prevail.

Originally posted by Agerg
I remain to be convinced that this is a feasible system when you scale up from a small number of 200 strong Hutterite communities to roughly 6,800,000,000/200 (i.e. about 34 million of them) Hutterite communities. I am inclined to think the same greed and heartless competition for resources will always prevail.

Also the Hutterites almost went extinct till they moved to America and got its
protection.

This is a society that only functions because it is in a larger society that tolerates
and protects it.

We don't have enough space on this earth for everyone to live like this.

We need people to largely live in big cities so that there is enough countryside
left to have both wilderness and agriculture to sustain us.

Also that kind of society can't support the kind of projects we need to survive.

Communities of 200 strong people can't support a space program for example.

If we don't find a viable way of this rock, we will never get the population on it
down to sustainable levels (minus massive war/steraliseation) and the next
major catastrophe that comes along will wipe us out.

EDIT: Also they are very highly religious which I find objectionable all on its own.

Originally posted by Agerg
I remain to be convinced that this is a feasible system when you scale up from a small number of 200 strong Hutterite communities to roughly 6,800,000,000/200 (i.e. about 34 million of them) Hutterite communities. I am inclined to think the same greed and heartless competition for resources will always prevail.

Until you can think of society from the bottom-up, as one autonomous communities of 200 individuals repeated 34 million times, instead of 6.8 billion organized from the top-down, then you will wander to the east of Eden, forever lost. The Hutterites manage a population of 42,000 that way. I fail to see why it couldn't be expanded indefinitely.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Also the Hutterites almost went extinct till they moved to America and got its
protection.

This is a society that only functions because it is in a larger society that tolerates
and protects it.

We don't have enough space on this earth for everyone to live like this.

We need people to largely live in big cities so that there is enough countr ...[text shortened]... out.

EDIT: Also they are very highly religious which I find objectionable all on its own.

I admit it would be difficult to transfer an arrangement with a homogeneous population with a shared religious principle to a heterogeneous population without such a binding principle. But no one ever said saving the world was going to be easy.