No so, Norman, sapiens is 200,000 years old, and for most of that time, we shared, cooperated closely, and kept a close watch on those who would take advantage. The anthros call this system “vigilant sharing.”
Yeah, I don’t argue that a lot of pillaging for personal benefit goes on. At the same time, not only does it take people with similar stature to turn a blind eye, but it requires a large part of the populace to be giddy enough in the spoils they get to give de facto approval for the pillaging and theft to go on (I’m talking about first world countries rather than places like Nigeria). Perhaps I’m being naive, but that’s why I tend to think (hope?) that as cultures inevitably become more localized, people will have a better opportunity to have a more direct role in their communities and become accountable to one another. I’d say that the re-emergence of commoning will be the most viable way of keeping those with such reprehensible tendencies in check.
@vera_old-system Apologies about your comments not going through straight away. Once I approve your first comment the rest are supposed to just go through automatically. I don’t know why yours are the exception.
One might say that ‘grabbing for oneself’ came about with the advent of farming.
Land is the ultimate capital, and if one individual has worse land (or none) than another, in order to produce sustenance, then the incentive is there for conflict.
Taking that point, we are faced with capitalism as the problem. Everything I’ve mentioned in previous comments has been about acquiring capital, that didnt start until the concept of capital came into existence—ie the enclosure of land, and rolling that up into the creation of nations.
we wil become more ‘accountable’ to one another certainly, but only when the means to be anything else has been exhausted.
we have ‘learned’ the seeming benefits of conflict, even though that learning has been a dead end–literally. we cannot ‘unlearn’ it, so for many years to come there will always be those who are prepared to use warfare for gain.
eventually that must cease—’‘when’’ is the great unknown for ‘localised cultures’ read prehistoric settlements maybe?
Yeah, I can’t deny that warfare will continue to be used for gain, particularly in the upcoming years when people find themselves with less and less booty than they were previously accustomed to. Hell is going to have no wrath like somebody being forced to make an honest, non-fossil fueled, non-slave-based living. For those trying to somewhat make their way down “to [not] be anything,” I suppose that the best options available in the meantime will be commoning, and crossing your fingers in hopes that your neighbors over in the next township are also kind of nice.
Whew! Allan, glad you told me, I was about to ***** about having been put on moderation. 
Another good lesson for keeping my beak shut at least some of the time!
@Norman_Pagett_old-system, it came about with the advent of luxury surplus. Before farming.
Allan, gotta do better than crossing our fingers. 
Well I’m glad we have half of it straightened out, but I still can’t see what I can do on my end. I’m using an open source comment script called Commentics (which I host myself and get to control), and this is the first issue I’ve come across. Like I said, once your first comment goes through, everything else is supposed to automatically as well. If I’m not mistaken your second comment went straight through, but none of the rest. I’ll keep looking, and worst case scenario I may just reset the whole thing again, which would mean that I’d lose my list of blocked spammers that I’ve built up. We’ll see.
And yeah, I was being a bit facetious there with my cross our fingers comment, although at the same time I was kind of acknowledging that we don’t always control all the circumstances around us.
That’s a weird one, Allan…
I have to share this funny story. When I was falling asleep yesterday, my mind went went, hey! They censored b…ch (synonym for complain)! You look away and there is another politically correct deletion from my vocabulary. If this keeps going, I will have to abandon English, it having fallen prey to the language police, and cleave unto Lithuanian. Or Finnish? Haha!
Well, when it comes to my two backgrounds, Danish and Colombian, I do know all the swear words and can name all the food in their respective languages, as well as cook a few dishes. I’ve got a strong feeling that that’s really all our unauthentic multiculturalism comes down to.
Eagerly looking forward to your post on refugees. What a mess! If you need input into anything you’ve written, just ask. We all sorely need some perspective on this issue.
Two to four posts a month?
Forget about Gretaway. The Greeks will be begging the EU hat in hand to do something about their border until the lights go out.
I hear a bus run you over. Man… I am in mourning…
Sorry for the tardy reply (see the first comment in the next post). I’ll try and get to a post or two on the refugee thing once I get rid of the backlog I’ve now got.
And yeah, you’re right about Gretaway being a long shot. But it’s worth mentioning.
Sorry about the silent absence (see the first comment in the next post). Irregularly scheduled FF2F posts are now in swing again.