I often see these words used interchangeably, though as I understand it there is a difference between the two ideologies, no?

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[–] 22 points 4 months ago (6 children)

This is an excellent question IMO, and I'm sure you'll receive plenty of excellent (and energetic) responses, but I do want to point out something which chronically gets overlooked, as part of these discussions. Ready?

Homo sapiens is traditionally a tribal, social, and clan-based animal, not unlike our cousin chimpanzees, and others such as wolf & dog packs, elephant herds, parrot flocks, and a couple other examples. Our organisation upon such likely goes back at least 2.4Myrs, when biologists and those in related fields first classified "Homo" as a distinct genus. But arguably, such goes back perhaps as long as our common ancestor of chimps, maybe 7Myrs ago or so. Or earlier!

My point is-- modern humans' natural state is to exist in smallish, commune-like situations, and that is a fact. That's literally in our DNA upon a multitude of levels, and literally spans the entire length of H. sapiens ~300Kyr history.

Meaning? That we're naturally communists of a kind, and my take on "socialism" is that it's roughly an attempt to make our traditional style work, when organised upon regional and national levels.

THAT SAID: I think it's good to also observe how things happen in the wild. For example, my mentors Robert Sapolski and Jane Goodall famously observed our fellow apes & monkeys being total assholes towards each other, amidst hierarchy-type situations. It's a complicated discussion, anyway, and maybe not hard to imagine why so many of our fellow rich, needy, powerful human monkeys are such total, narcissistic assholes towards everyone else.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    i would be a bit more careful when ascribing general character traits to all humans because frankly, humans can be extremely different depending who you're interacting with.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I suppose that's an interesting point in general, Gandalf, but I was speaking to species-wide instances. If you have a more efficient method of framing such things, then please be my guest...

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    i mean i agree that most people prefer to live in small groups. i was just pointing it out for reasons that i now forgot.

    also, Johnny, it's really weird to be called by name somehow. especially mid-conversation.

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