Douglas you failed to mentioned what you fed the cat
Not much hope for us if it all depends on religion or poets for that matter
This collapsed shaman now having breakfast
Patrick the freeloader of flawed brain
Ps cat is pondering Theory of Mind-will report back
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Douglas Clark
Sent: 14 February 2005 22:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: poets and shamans
I went to a lecture on region tonight by the evolutionary psychologist Robin
Dunbar. There wasnt much new in it but it did draw the threads together.
Our brains are programmed for us to live in communities of less than 200 and
it appears that each community has its own shaman. (He exampled army
companies being the largest viable military unit) As approximately 1% of the
population is psychotic the inference is obvious. My calculations years ago
re poets calculated that 1 in 5,000 is a poet so shamans are not shamans
because of their linguistic abilities but because in their trance states
they can contact other worlds. So that is 25 shamans to a poet, near enough.
Robin Dunbar conceded that we were hardwired for religion. (I have spent the
day reading Michael Ruse's Darwin and Design which demolishes the
Intelligent Design people but he will not commit himself to a Dawkins
approach preferring some sort of Gaia approach). What Robin Dunbar was
stressing was that in large groups of people the problem was with
freeloaders who took all the advantages without giving anything back. These
were the people who manipulated such structures as religion for their own
ends. One of the reasons we have developed dialect is to minimise their
influence. (This was new to me).
There are several books which point out that the human brain is
fundamentally flawed which is why we have such a thing as religion which
Theory of Mind makes us capable of. But the chimps of Gombe demonstrate that
we are not alone in being nasty bits of work.
Now I must go feed the cat. I thought Liz would appreciate this report.
Douglas Clark, Bath, Somerset, England ....
http://www.dgdclynx.plus.com
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