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posted by chromas on Monday March 25 2019, @07:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-handing-out-infinite-punishment-for-finite-crime,-spread-the-word-and-take-donations dept.

Complex societies gave birth to big gods, not the other way around: study

"It has been a debate for centuries why humans, unlike other animals, cooperate in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals," says Seshat director and co-author Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Factors such as agriculture, warfare, or religion have been proposed as main driving forces.

One prominent theory, the big or moralizing gods hypothesis, assumes that religious beliefs were key. According to this theory, people are more likely to cooperate fairly if they believe in gods who will punish them if they don't. "To our surprise, our data strongly contradict this hypothesis," says lead author Harvey Whitehouse. "In almost every world region for which we have data, moralizing gods tended to follow, not precede, increases in social complexity." Even more so, standardized rituals tended on average to appear hundreds of years before gods who cared about human morality.

When ancient societies hit a million people, vengeful gods appeared

The God depicted in the Old Testament may sometimes seem wrathful. And in that, he's not alone; supernatural forces that punish evil play a central role in many modern religions.

[...] But which came first: complex societies or the belief in a punishing god?

The researchers found that belief in moralizing gods usually followed increases in social complexity, generally appearing after the emergence of civilizations with populations of more than about 1 million people.

"It was particularly striking how consistent it was [that] this phenomenon emerged at the million-person level," Savage said. "First, you get big societies, and these beliefs then come."

All in all, "our research suggests that religion is playing a functional role throughout world history, helping stabilize societies and people cooperate overall," Savage said. "In really small societies, like very small groups of hunter-gatherers, everyone knows everyone else, and everyone's keeping an eye on everyone else to make sure they're behaving well. Bigger societies are more anonymous, so you might not know who to trust."


Original Submission 1 | Original Submission 2

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday March 25 2019, @01:04PM (6 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 25 2019, @01:04PM (#819474) Journal

    As living standards increased, is it a coincidence that the Puritans, Calvinists and others started emphasizing the benefits of hard work?

    The coincidence probably didn't exist in the first place. Work ethic probably preceded Protestantism by a bunch - particularly since you just described older societies which would have needed that work ethic in order to survive.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday March 25 2019, @03:40PM (5 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Monday March 25 2019, @03:40PM (#819576)

    Well that's the kicker, isn't it? If you need to work hard in order to survive, then you don't actually need a work ethic, you just need a survival impulse. And those come installed as part of the standard biological package.

    You don't need a work ethic as a cultural concept until it's possible for people to survive without working hard. Once a society is rich enough for people to survive by begging or by doing some sort of minimum-effort labor, then a work ethic promotes greater overall productivity from society.

    And as an added bonus (or perhaps the primary purpose...), a strong cultural work ethic is also the cornerstone of the popular delusion that your wealth is primarily the result of your own hard work, and that poverty is thus all the result of moral weakness, rather than misfortune and systematic social problems. Which goes a long way toward soothing the conscience of those who had the good fortune to be born into wealth and opportunity, and helps to justify the exploitation and dehumanization of the poor.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:14AM (4 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:14AM (#819852) Journal

      If you need to work hard in order to survive, then you don't actually need a work ethic, you just need a survival impulse.

      Needing to survive doesn't mean you know how to survive.

      And as an added bonus (or perhaps the primary purpose...), a strong cultural work ethic is also the cornerstone of the popular delusion that your wealth is primarily the result of your own hard work, and that poverty is thus all the result of moral weakness, rather than misfortune and systematic social problems.

      Lo! The Narrative appears. I'm not feeling the alleged delusional nature of this.

      Which goes a long way toward soothing the conscience of those who had the good fortune to be born into wealth and opportunity, and helps to justify the exploitation and dehumanization of the poor.

      Funny how fact-free this narrative is.

      All I can say is that I have lived among the poor for decades and so many of them do have those flaws which they are alleged not to have. Again and again, I see this mysterious phenomena happen. People figure out that working hard, putting their finances in order, cutting back on the drugs (including alcohol and tobacco), and other basic stuff makes them not poor.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday March 26 2019, @04:47AM (3 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @04:47AM (#819937)

        >Needing to survive doesn't mean you know how to survive.

        Nope, but starvation goes a long way to motivate you to do whatever is needed. And any individual that fails is eliminated from the gene pool, so if somebody "doesn't know how to survive", it's because we created a society so alien from the natural order that instinct is insufficient.

        > I'm not feeling the alleged delusional nature of this.
        And I'm getting the feeling you didn't work your way up from staving on the street as a dark-skinned child.

        >so many of them do have those flaws which they are alleged not to have.

        I'm not alleging those flaws don't exist, nor that they contribute to poverty. But to someone born to such flawed and impoverished parents, no amount of hard work alone will ever make them ridiculously wealthy. You need a whole lot of good luck as well to be able to climb far up the social ladder. Less now than in eras past - but we're talking about past eras.

        Conversely, most wealthy people are born into that state, and the only virtue implied by remaining there is a lack of irredeemable incompetence. A virtue shared by the majority of the population, who would be able maintain their wealth just as easily, had they been fortunate enough to be born into it.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:39PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:39PM (#820082) Journal

          Nope, but starvation goes a long way to motivate you to do whatever is needed. And any individual that fails is eliminated from the gene pool, so if somebody "doesn't know how to survive", it's because we created a society so alien from the natural order that instinct is insufficient.

          Well, that's what technological and infrastructural advancement does. Fortunately, the alien nature is to make it easier to survive. So we can use that non-instinctual brain matter for figuring out what we really want instead of merely to survive. That's where things like work ethic can kick in.

          And I'm getting the feeling you didn't work your way up from staving on the street as a dark-skinned child.

          It's almost like my society figured out some shit already even though we didn't have a proper UBI, isn't it?

          I'm not alleging those flaws don't exist, nor that they contribute to poverty. But to someone born to such flawed and impoverished parents, no amount of hard work alone will ever make them ridiculously wealthy. You need a whole lot of good luck as well to be able to climb far up the social ladder. Less now than in eras past - but we're talking about past eras./quote> Did they want to be ridiculously wealthy? It seems absurd to talk about things that the vast majority of humanity doesn't try for even on a lesser scale as if everyone wants it. Bottom line, everyone wants lots of money, but the majority of them don't want the work it would take to get it.

          Conversely, most wealthy people are born into that state, and the only virtue implied by remaining there is a lack of irredeemable incompetence. A virtue shared by the majority of the population, who would be able maintain their wealth just as easily, had they been fortunate enough to be born into it.

          Or rather lose their wealth just as easy. We also have studies [brandongaille.com] (there's some contradictory studies such as 1% bankruptcy rate combined with supposedly 70% bankrupt at a future time, but the rate is much higher than the norm) which indicate people who get suddenly wealthy via lotteries or windfalls like high paying sports jobs, lose that money real quick with a high rate of bankruptcy.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @11:55AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @11:55AM (#821263)

          But to someone born to such flawed and impoverished parents, no amount of hard work alone will ever make them ridiculously wealthy. You need a whole lot of good luck as well to be able to climb far up the social ladder.

          ridiculously wealthy indeed requires a great amount of luck (and yes the easiest way to be lucky is to have ridiculously wealthy parents)

          regular wealthy does not require luck, absent ridiculously bad luck, that's achievable for everyone in western society
          it does require the self-discipline to be financially responsible, and not do dumb things like becoming a parent out of wedlock, or not finishing highschool.

          f you look around there's plenty of examples that proof the above to be true (any succesfull black american over 50, and most of the succesfull first-generation immigrants for starters)

          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 28 2019, @02:35PM

            by Immerman (3985) on Thursday March 28 2019, @02:35PM (#821329)

            >regular wealthy does not require luck, absent ridiculously bad luck, that's achievable for everyone in western society

            Not so - our current economy requires a large number of low-wage workers in order to operate as it does. It's just not structurally possible for everyone to be middle-class, there's not enough middle-class jobs available for them. Which means that, at a minimum, you need to be lucky enough to be born with enough aptitudes, opportunities, and drive to out-compete everyone else trying to be middle-class. That was the original motivation of minimum wage laws in the U.S. - anyone willing to work a full-time job should be able to live a comfortable, upwardly mobile life (and conversely, anyone whose business requires exploiting workers so that they *can't* live that way, should not be allowed to exist).

            There's also the cultural component - if you're born to middle-class parents you learn about all those financially responsible behaviors on your mother's knee. As you enter adulthood, you also have access to easy routes to comfortable jobs such as parental networking, college, and unpaid internships that poor people just can't afford to donate time to. If you can't afford to pay for college yourself, then you have to rely on being able to compete your way into limited financial-aid slots - colleges are for-profit businesses that routinely give preference to legacy students and those able to pay their way over much superior students that require assistance.

            If you're born poor, you also have to be willing and able to basically completely ignore a constant bombardment of advertising based on well-tested psychological manipulation techniques to get you to spend money like you're in the middle class, as well as a media saturated with displaying upper-middle-class lifestyles. Financial responsibility comes at a much higher cost for the poor.

            It's not that it's impossible to climb the economic ladder - it's just that the lower you start, the more difficult the climb. A slacker born to middle class parents will be able to keep their life on a mildly-upward trajectory with the same amount of effort and aptitude that would send them into a vicious downward spiral had they been born poor instead.

            If you want proof - look around at just how few successful Americans climbed out of poverty, compared to the number who started out middle class. The majority of the U.S population is born poor to lower-middle class - if the system wasn't strongly biased against them, that would mean that the majority of successful Americans should have started there.