Main Entry: ad•dic•tion Pronunciation: &-'dik-sh&n, a- Function: noun 1 : the quality or state of being addicted 2 : compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a…
In this 1971 article, Judith Jarvis Thomson suggests that we’ve spent way too much time and emphasis on the issue of whether a developing fetus is fully human. She doesn’t concede this point (she argues that acorns are not oak trees). Yet she prefers to bring the conversation to what…
As human animals, we are condemned to live with great ignorance in an unpredictably violent world. To compensate, most of us work hard to develop an extraordinary expertise to protect ourselves from considering our precarious existence. We work hard to pre-screen toxic thoughts. We rarely contemplate our own inevitable deaths, for example. We are often successful at protecting ourselves from real-life things that would terrify us if we dared to squarely consider them.
Once in a while, though, we get a terrifying glimpse of unvarnished reality. For instance, we sometimes suddenly realize that we are affixed to that Conveyor Belt of Life, a “belt” that inexorably moves us toward a time when we will be old if we’re lucky, then lifeless. Whenever this terrible thought brings shivers, we quickly change channels to consider something less macabre. Yet we are all strapped onto that Conveyor Belt, even our precious young children. In 150 years, everyone currently living on Earth will be dead. It is difficult to conjure up more disturbing thoughts.
What other toxic thoughts occur when our mental guard is down? How about the thought that we are not meaningfully different from each other. Or that the world is full of mobile intestinal tracts–walking talking intestinal tracts. Or that our bodies are rife with parasites. And that we are animals. Or that we are breathing, thinking meat, a point directly yet elegantly made by a touring entourage of corpses known as BodyWorlds. And here’s another toxic truth most of …
For those of you who waded through my post of last week about my day trekking through the federal bureaucracy on a quest for documents, I have two things to add. First, thanks for taking the time to wade. Second, I got an update from my friend. Remember those records…
When are we likely to share resources? At first glance, some of us might say that we share when we have more of something than other people around us. It’s not that simple, however.
In “Evolutionary Psychology, Moral Heuristics in the Law,” Leda Cosmides and John Tooby discuss moral heuristics and the evolution of the legal system. It is a well-written article throughout, though I’d like to focus on one aspect of the article that I found especially interesting. I’d like to focus on their discussion the circumstances under which people are willing to share and when they are not.
Cosmides and Tooby note that the “hunter-gatherer life is not an orgy of indiscriminate sharing, nor is all labor accomplished through collective action.” On the other hand, the hunting of large animals often is a social activity and the meat, whether caught by a few or by a large cooperating group, is often shared throughout the social group. These transfers of meat are “not characterized by direct reciprocation in any obvious way.” Cosmides and Tooby go so far as to suggest that the sharing of meat may be closest to that predicted by Marx’s belief that hunter-gatherers “lived in a state of primitive communism, where all labor was accomplished through collective action and sharing was governed by the decision rule,’ from each according to his ability to each according to his need.'”
The widespread sharing of meat appears to challenge the evolutionary model, which would hold that “selection …