Anthology of Ideas

David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, stated that morality is based on sentiments rather than reason. He concluded this after he developed his “theory” of knowledge which stated that everything we could know was observable by the senses — he was a naturalistic philosopher. He then looked at situations in which he thought that there was an obvious “wrong” and he tried to identify the “matter of fact” vice in the situation.

“Globalism is a most vile institution that rapes weaker cultures of the world and homogenizes them into a single unit devoid of variety.” Agree? Disagree? Agree somewhat? While most would not agree with the statement, many agree with the sentiment. Opponents of globalism often see it as the forcing of a super-power’s culture onto other smaller cultures. Not to be blunt, but it isn’t. The spread of the most powerful culture to the rest of the word has been occurring for all of history.

It started with a post on Aardvarchaeology which was then linked by Pharyngula and responded to with a post on Uncertain Principles. Martin Rundkvist, of Aardvarchaeology, declares that US Politics Have No Left Wing which was quickly responded to by Chad Orzel, of Uncertain Prinicples, who retorted that it could just as easily said that European Politics Have No Right Wing. I agree with their base statements: Europe is left of America which is right of Europe, Europeans and Americans both got where they are through trial and error, and that many American politicians are very right-wing, but…To argue that higher taxes are fundamentally better than lower ones, and that certain political positions are better than others, and that religious politicians — regardless of how they publicly use their religion — are inherently inferior to their counterparts is a little too broad for my tastes.

Some people search search engines by using a few keywords, but others ask entire questions. This series of posts is dedicated to them. Over the next couple weeks I’m going to pick full questions from my logs and answer them. It is the least I could do. The first question in this series comes from an American using Windows and Internet Explorer, and they ask “What religion did the People of the Roman Empire follow?” Well I’m glad you asked that… um…let’s call you Fred… while your search landed on a very popular article entitled Causes and Effects of the Popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, I’m afraid that it won’t answer your question entirely.

Areté literal translates to English as virtue or excellence, but to the ancient Greeks it is the concept of being the best at anything. Originally only applied to soldiers and their combat prowess, the concept eventually spread throughout Greek society to apply to anyone who was good at a skill– a potters areté was pottery. However, the term was not just a word the the Greeks, it was the driving force of the culture, and promoted the isolationism and the patriotism of the individual Greek polies.

Abstract

In non-human mammals, the family group is a heterologic system. Only three percent of mammalian species are monogamous with their mates and have both parents involved in the raising of the young. Humans rank in this three percent. Humans require both parents to ensure the survival of the young and humans, across all cultures, form pair bonds. This leads to a family group far removed from the groups of other mammals. The creation of the human family rests on three foundations: (1) the cultural phenomenon of the human family group evolved because of the instinct to protect ones genes; (2) the basis of the family group, the pair bond, is the result of the female desire to have an economically supportive mate during the developmental years of her offspring’s lives; it is also a result of the males desire to have a suitable mate for multiple children and ensure all offspring are genetically his, and (3) the extended family group is a result of the desire to pass on ones genes through any means available even if it means helping blood relatives to reproduce [kin selection], the extended family is also preferable because social and instinctual taboos prevent mating with blood relatives, thus further protecting the pair bond. The result of these instincts for modern humans is the cultural family unit, the provision of resources for offspring, and to pass on genes.

David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, stated that morality is based on sentiments rather than reason. He concluded this after he developed his “theory” of knowledge which stated that everything we could know was observable by the senses — he was a naturalistic philosopher. He then looked at situations in which he thought that there was an obvious “wrong” and he tried to identify the “matter of fact” vice in the situation.

“Globalism is a most vile institution that rapes weaker cultures of the world and homogenizes them into a single unit devoid of variety.” Agree? Disagree? Agree somewhat? While most would not agree with the statement, many agree with the sentiment. Opponents of globalism often see it as the forcing of a super-power’s culture onto other smaller cultures. Not to be blunt, but it isn’t. The spread of the most powerful culture to the rest of the word has been occurring for all of history.

It started with a post on Aardvarchaeology which was then linked by Pharyngula and responded to with a post on Uncertain Principles. Martin Rundkvist, of Aardvarchaeology, declares that US Politics Have No Left Wing which was quickly responded to by Chad Orzel, of Uncertain Prinicples, who retorted that it could just as easily said that European Politics Have No Right Wing. I agree with their base statements: Europe is left of America which is right of Europe, Europeans and Americans both got where they are through trial and error, and that many American politicians are very right-wing, but…To argue that higher taxes are fundamentally better than lower ones, and that certain political positions are better than others, and that religious politicians — regardless of how they publicly use their religion — are inherently inferior to their counterparts is a little too broad for my tastes.

Some people search search engines by using a few keywords, but others ask entire questions. This series of posts is dedicated to them. Over the next couple weeks I’m going to pick full questions from my logs and answer them. It is the least I could do. The first question in this series comes from an American using Windows and Internet Explorer, and they ask “What religion did the People of the Roman Empire follow?” Well I’m glad you asked that… um…let’s call you Fred… while your search landed on a very popular article entitled Causes and Effects of the Popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, I’m afraid that it won’t answer your question entirely.

Areté literal translates to English as virtue or excellence, but to the ancient Greeks it is the concept of being the best at anything. Originally only applied to soldiers and their combat prowess, the concept eventually spread throughout Greek society to apply to anyone who was good at a skill– a potters areté was pottery. However, the term was not just a word the the Greeks, it was the driving force of the culture, and promoted the isolationism and the patriotism of the individual Greek polies.

Abstract

In non-human mammals, the family group is a heterologic system. Only three percent of mammalian species are monogamous with their mates and have both parents involved in the raising of the young. Humans rank in this three percent. Humans require both parents to ensure the survival of the young and humans, across all cultures, form pair bonds. This leads to a family group far removed from the groups of other mammals. The creation of the human family rests on three foundations: (1) the cultural phenomenon of the human family group evolved because of the instinct to protect ones genes; (2) the basis of the family group, the pair bond, is the result of the female desire to have an economically supportive mate during the developmental years of her offspring’s lives; it is also a result of the males desire to have a suitable mate for multiple children and ensure all offspring are genetically his, and (3) the extended family group is a result of the desire to pass on ones genes through any means available even if it means helping blood relatives to reproduce [kin selection], the extended family is also preferable because social and instinctual taboos prevent mating with blood relatives, thus further protecting the pair bond. The result of these instincts for modern humans is the cultural family unit, the provision of resources for offspring, and to pass on genes.