Upright Posture: The Primary Categorical Human Trait

Filed under: Evolution, Language, Uncategorized

This blog maintains that upright posture is the sine qua non human trait because: 1) humanity is defined by a shift to collective functioning; 2) collective function requires a “public” communication system to coordinate the behavior of individuals; and 3) upright posture enabled the face-and-upper-body to become the instruments of the simultaneous-and-continuous communication that is …

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Justice

Justice

Filed under: Justice, Uncategorized

The species of our Genus Homo eventually became predominant hunters because they refined instincts for justice as an “immune system” against individual dominance, which is a pathology for organic teamwork. Modern hunter-gatherers are egalitarian (Pringle, 2014), and justice (punishing dominance) has been observed in far-flung hunter-gatherers,not influenced by wealth-creating agricultural practices (Boehm, 1999). There have been …

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The Dawn of Everything

Filed under: Evolution of Emotion, Evolution of human motivation, Evolutionary psychology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity in which David Graeber and David Wengrow assemble a vast array of archeological evidence from prehistory, much of it recently discovered, and interpret it in a wholly original way. The book, published in 2022, offers an alternative to the widely accepted Rousseauian narrative that, about …

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The Stigma of Mental Illness

Filed under: Uncategorized

In the course of my wife’s rising career in the administration of a university, I was placed in the position of being the chatty spouse of an increasingly important player in the state politics that is part of a large public university. One of the main venues was the president’s box at football games, to …

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