any way, saw the movie.
i was deeply moved by the performances and drawn into the story. i saw myself in this guy and was tearful through much of it… mercy please.
i was especially taken by his last realization, that to share life is meaningful and where purpose comes from. being alone is great for initiation and a powerful way to gain clarity, but it can wreak havoc on anyone… look at our lives, surrounded by millions and so alone and isolated from one another.

But parrots live a long time, and I went away to college, and had to leave it to my parents. He bonded with them, but grew to hate me, because I had abandoned him. That was an act of free will on his part, and on mine. I could respond to simple reason in the matter of minutes, but he could only respond to inputs over months.

That’s ridiculous, Too Human. You’re a smart guy, but it’s pretty clear you’re not really thinking through your recieved wisdom here. You’re talking about a change in your relationship with another person. Do you change a long-standing relationship in a matter of minutes? You respond to sudden things suddenly, but you’re not going to go from loving your wife to leaving her in the next five minutes, are you? By the same token, hit your parrot, and you’re going to get a sudden response, not one you’ll have to wait two months for. Sounds to me like you’re both operating under very similar timelines.

And for that matter, what of your horseshoe crab example? You’ve spent enough time with a parrot to see that it has free will, something most people (who’ve never spent that much time with one) would vehemently deny, insisting that parrots simple operate on programmed instinct. But you know that to be untrue, at least as much as it’s untrue for you yourself (though, consider the possibility that what you experience first-hand as free will may be what preprogrammed instinct feels like). So it seems to me that your perception of whether or not horseshoe crabs have free will has a direct correlation with how much time you spend getting to know a horseshoe crab.

We have free will, more pronounced than the wolf. We are less beholden to instinct than the wolf.

I don’t see any evidence for that. If that were true, wouldn’t the split be something like 50/50, as far as those who settle down, vs. those who strike out on their own? Instead, it’s more like 99/1. Actually, I think that might make us more beholden to instinct than wolves, as I’d guess that they might actually have a higher percentage that break from the usual order. It seems to me that our intelligence and free will have more to do with rationalizing why we follow our instinct, rather than making any kind of actually free, rational decision.

Everybody dies. I disagree that going-it-alone means that you MUST die ‘prematurely’.

Perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s just a 100% positive correlation for some other reason. But the data’s fairly indisputable: go it alone, and you die, sooner rather than later.

You are advocating for a social system that is somewhat different from what we have today, but really it’s fairly conservative.

I think of myself as the ultimate conservative. I’m for the really old-school family values.

Countering all this is a desire to reject others. To me, this is what defines humanity, and you can see this in some other species. Some wolves agree to be submissive and stick around another’s territory; some decide to take their chances on their own.

I still fail to see the evidence for that, though. Like lone wolves, humans who make that choice are very rare, along the same lines of those who develop pathological mutations, which makes it pretty easy to identify this as simply a social version of that. They get themselves killed off remarkably quickly, too, so it’s easy to see this as an evolutionary matter, as well. I certainly can’t see it as a defining aspect of humanity. So much of what we are as a species is rooted in our need for a social context.

Hmmm, in the context of today’s society, I see a strong correlation.

But the homeless and others like them still live in society, participate in it, and yes, even contribute to it. It may not be in a manner that our society condones, but I think we all recognize that our society isn’t very smart, even about what it itself needs. That’s very different from a lone wolf that leaves his pack behind.

It’s a matter of scale, and my claim is that regardless of scale, there has always been opposition. Some people naturally build society; others chafe under its structure, and either tend to tear it down, or leave it. Many in the middle resign themselves to it, but exhibit anti-social behavior. This has been true since pre-history.

I don’t think it has been. Tribal societies insist fanatically upon the absolute, unadulterated potential for each individual to fully express themselves in whatever manner they need, at all times, and anyone who tries to restrict that has committed one of the greatest crimes imaginable. By the same token, tribal people know that they cannot express who they are without being nourished and sustained by a strong, healthy community. The dilemma we face of freedom vs. society only holds when society defines itself in terms of restrictions, and that is a recent innovation. Tribal societies are not collections of restrictions, but collections of supports. For them, there is no dilemma here, any more than there’s a dilemma between an oak growing tall and strong, vs. rich soil for it to grow in. There is no choice to be made; you need one to have the other.

However the tightly bound groups always have power over the individuals, and make rules such that the individuals are subjugated to the group. It doesn’t matter if you are a group of 150 ‘egalitarian’ HGs, or 300 million first-worlders. In the small group there are elders, and positions of power or respect; then there are the people growing up, not all of whom wish to participate.

You are fundamentally misunderstanding the role of elders in a tribal group here. You’re projecting power structures from our society onto another society where they don’t exist. This is precisely what I meant by conflating “our society” with “all society.” In tribal societies, individuals are not subjugated to the rules of the group, that’s precisely the point.

But in my opinion, social organization is as much at fault for the condition of today’s world as agriculture. Agriculture didn’t happen by accident. It happened because groups of people wanted more.

Actually, what people wanted had very little to do with the spread of agriculture—it really spread in spite of what people wanted, but that aside … I can certainly see why you would hold that opinion. The only society you’ve ever experienced certainly holds to that model. But our society is not the only way a society can operate. It will take some in-depth study, but if you follow it, you’ll see that tribal societies do not hold to the parameters you’re projecting onto them at all. That’s why they worked for millions of years.

What I meant in general is that some people exhibit behaviors outside the accepted mainstream, and society–whether ours, or all, tribal or family or modern–exerts pressure on those people to conform.

A good example. In our society, we have a very narrow definition of accepted roles, and we expect people to conform to them. They’re much more narrow than the range of human diversity, so the pressure to conform can be quite unpleasant.

This doesn’t exist in tribal societies, at least, not in a form like what we have. The roles there are much broader, and much more fitting human nature (example: the Two-Spirit). The pressure is not to conform to society’s model, but to fulfill your own orenda to the utmost. Rather than lay down limitations and rules to make you conform to their vision of what you should be, the purpose of their society is to provide as much support and aid as possible to make sure that you can express yourself fully. I used the term orenda because really, the Haudenosaunee term means exactly that, and there’s really no English word for it. That alone should say something.

However I sense that too little attention is paid to the roles that free will and individual choice have taken in shaping civilization. I agree with Jason that environmental constraints are the most significant factors in shaping human existence. But compared to other animals, humans have a much greater capacity to choose to deliberately change their behavior, and this has played a signficant role in shaping the world as we know it. I suggest that unless this element is given credibile treatement, the Anthropik view on what humanity will look like after the collapse will be somewhat lacking.

First, I’d need evidence that we actually have free will. I think that assumption’s taken for granted far too much.

Then, I’d need evidence that it’s relevant. Because even if we do, we certainly don’t act like it. Give us more food, and our population goes up as surely as a herd of cows. Really, even if we individually have free will, wouldn’t that alone eliminate its relevance on a large scale? After all, if we have free will, then with nothing else impacting us, 50% will say yes, and 50% will say no, so the only thing that tip a population one way or another is the same, “hard” factors we’ve been looking at. Even if we do individually have free will, it seems evident to me that free will is self-eliminating at the social scale, at least.

olitude can play a crucial role in deprogramming, without which positive individuation as well as positive social integration can’t take place.

I can certainly see that. In fact, even tribal societies will have individuals seeking some solitude to straighten things out for a little while. Well, not solitude, but shifting your companionship from human persons to other-than-human persons for a while. But that’s never something you go to do for the rest of your life. It’s a kind of Campbellian Hero’s Journey, and the Return with the Boon is an essential part of that cycle.

And I think that’s what McCandless was trying to do–deprogram. Judging him by his wilderness survival abilities seems way off base to me.

Great site you’ve got here, btw.

Really, the reason I was interested in commenting about it is this: I’ve read a good portion of the posts on this site (not all of it yet), and in general I think it is a well constructed view of one possible future of humanity, an exciting and worthwhile topic indeed. However I sense that too little attention is paid to the roles that free will and individual choice have taken in shaping civilization. I agree with Jason that environmental constraints are the most significant factors in shaping human existence. But compared to other animals, humans have a much greater capacity to choose to deliberately change their behavior, and this has played a signficant role in shaping the world as we know it. I suggest that unless this element is given credibile treatement, the Anthropik view on what humanity will look like after the collapse will be somewhat lacking.

anti-social behaviour does not equate to introversion

being an introvert (which i am) actually says nothing about your stance in relation to society

i think our society confuses the issue by painting introverts as “shy” or “wallflowers” or “Ted Kazinsky” or “potential serial killer” etc.