Prior post: Rise and fall of empires: genetic version? (2017) I found this stuff a while ago, and tweeted it, but I wanted to save it properly so it doesn't get forgotten again. Blogging is extended memory. I reckon my mortality risk at Twitter is about 30% each year. Accounts have been banned for less. With that gone, I lose ability to search my own past thoughts so easily! In prior times, cyclical theories of history were quite popular.
I heard Camille Paglia state that end phase cultures tended to exhibit art that depicted sexual ambiguity. After searching with words matching such a concept, I came to Unwin's Sex and Culture.
Unwin appeared multiple times to attribute civilization advance to the displaced constructive energy resulting from sexual limitation, an idea he attributes to Freud.
But what strikes me is the clear reference to eugenic practice that accompanied absolute monogamy. Unwin mentions abortifacients and infanticide in many cultures when pre-nuptial pregnancies occurred. This would have had the effect of strongly selecting for those less impulsive and more able to think about the future.
What is the relationship of future orientation to intelligence? Is there another personality trait or brain physiology that regulates longer term think and prediction?
It occurs to me that Unwin's categories seem unrelated, but have a big factor in common, which was future orientation. Monogamy had a future orientation of child-rearing, treatment of the dead was a future oriented recognition of mortality, and 'weather control' a future orientation of inevitable variations of weather.
These categories seem to fit within models of 'Slow Life Strategy'.
In reading Unwin, but replacing discussions of displaced sexual energy with evolutionary biology describes: civilizations rise with eugenics and fall with dysgenics, which of course, you allude to.
If you have any comments or ideas, I would gladly receive them.
Emil, thanks for the insights.
I heard Camille Paglia state that end phase cultures tended to exhibit art that depicted sexual ambiguity. After searching with words matching such a concept, I came to Unwin's Sex and Culture.
Unwin appeared multiple times to attribute civilization advance to the displaced constructive energy resulting from sexual limitation, an idea he attributes to Freud.
But what strikes me is the clear reference to eugenic practice that accompanied absolute monogamy. Unwin mentions abortifacients and infanticide in many cultures when pre-nuptial pregnancies occurred. This would have had the effect of strongly selecting for those less impulsive and more able to think about the future.
What is the relationship of future orientation to intelligence? Is there another personality trait or brain physiology that regulates longer term think and prediction?
It occurs to me that Unwin's categories seem unrelated, but have a big factor in common, which was future orientation. Monogamy had a future orientation of child-rearing, treatment of the dead was a future oriented recognition of mortality, and 'weather control' a future orientation of inevitable variations of weather.
These categories seem to fit within models of 'Slow Life Strategy'.
In reading Unwin, but replacing discussions of displaced sexual energy with evolutionary biology describes: civilizations rise with eugenics and fall with dysgenics, which of course, you allude to.
If you have any comments or ideas, I would gladly receive them.