Did Dunbar make any extrapolations, speaking to the topic of on-line
communities?
And, to the notion that he posits that we're hardwired for religion, (which
I've sensed to be accurate for some years now) I'd offer:
Credit
I credit
god
and that god's stories
warning myself:
never forget
otherwise I
credit
the real world
as I steep myself
in a sense of
reason
still applying
my prayers to
it, still that
reverence...
Cheers,
Gerald S.
>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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