A microcosm of society/responsibility

Bbucko

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In a survival situation, people of limited skill sets typically don't thrive. All of the roles you've described in the initial scenario, I am capable of performing, and then some. I would do it all. Anything I overproduced, I would trade with others.

Specialization is for insects.

This is the correct answer. In the hundreds of thousands of years that modern homo sapiens has been in existence, most was spent not cultivating specialized skills but rather being as well-rounded as possible for the sake of the survival of yourself and your family.

Specialization is a by-product of agriculture and urbanism, not survival in a true wilderness.
 

Drifterwood

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Several flaws in the premise. Whilst you put them in a survival situation, there is no limit to the availability of food, but if they were needed to find that food, then they would soon learn that they needed to be involved. If the food is easy come by then they don't need to go hunting. They can sit around and invent the internet.
 
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deleted213967

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True. Wanna know what bothers me? I work all my life and pay into Unemployment INSURANCE..

Actually, the employer finances much of SUI too. Rates are determined by "experience" and vary from employer to employer.

For the long-term unemployed, the federal government has been footing the bill lately, to allow for multiple benefit extensions.

Still, this safety net is there for a reason. The only objections to unemployment benefits I've ever encountered centered around abuse cases.




 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Interestingly in primitive human societies of the upper Paleolithic which conform to some of the parameters in the OP there were layabouts who contributed nothing of value to the survival of the Kin group or "clan" as the OP puts it.

Any ideas who these parasites were? They were the first Shamans, witchdoctors and proto-priests. They did nothing but tell stories and commune with the animals and sit by the fire scaring their fellows into providing them with food and shelter with tales of evil spirits which could only be held off by the shaman's interventions.

All these tens of thousands of years later these social parasites are still with us, contributing nothing but superstitious poison and self-serving illogic to human society, and they got really good a conning us into paying them to exist.
 

ManlyBanisters

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Oh don't be so fucking blinkered, hilaire. If it weren't for the 'shamen' of the Dark Ages practically nothing of the knowledge and learning amassed in Europe prior to then would have survived. The 'shamen' are not parasites, they serve a useful function.
 

Pendlum

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I think of priests etc as the human appendixes of society. It's harmless and maybe even beneficial until it becomes infected, in which case it needs to be removed and you are still able to function perfectly well without it.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Oh don't be so fucking blinkered, hilaire. If it weren't for the 'shamen' of the Dark Ages practically nothing of the knowledge and learning amassed in Europe prior to then would have survived. The 'shamen' are not parasites, they serve a useful function.


Though historians recognise something known as the Christian Dark Ages in Europe which followed the fall of the western Roman Empire and lasted till the beginning of the Renaissance, in which scientific advancement and cultural and social development sunk to levels which are comparable to that found in societies which precede the first civilisations. In fact only in Byzantium and the Muslim world was the wisdom of the ancient world preserved and that because in both cases powerful civil authorities regarded that knowledge as vital for the maintanance of a strong and and vibrant society. Even in Byzantium the Church attempted (with varying degrees of success) to suppress that knowledge in an attempt to enforce doctrinal purity on the people of the old eastern Roman empire, a process which historians agree contributed to the gradual decline and fall of Byzantium.

The Reformation in Europe followed by the Renaissance saw the rise of civil society and the collapse of the power of the Church, and the rediscovery of ancient knowledge and the following centuries of progress based on that rediscovery were based not in the Church but in the ever increasing power of civil society. It was secular philosophers and scientists and thinkers who sought out the precious tomes containing almost everything we know about ancient Greek mathematics, philosophy and science saved from the sack of Constantinople, it was secular doctors and surgeons who practiced the first dissections in the 16th century, it was in the Universities of Italy that academics not priests re-discovered how the solar system works, it was laymen who began the process of re-educating the masses by teaching them to read and write and encouraging them to think for themselves. And at every stage the Church in Europe opposed these processes, not passively mind you, but by auto de fe and heretic burnings, the suppression of banned books and the enforcement of ignorance. The fewer monasteries Europe had to parasitise it and force ignorance and superstition on it the more dynamic, and more advanced it became.


Honestly take a look at any of the most priestbound societies in history, or even in the contemporary world, they are almost always societies which are mired in ignorance, poverty and social and cultural stagnation.

There may have been a brief period at the beginning of civilisation, where religion acted as a kind of inspiration, but even during that period the excesses of priests caused untold misery to untold generations of human beings.

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/9364/darkages.gif
 
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ManlyBanisters

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I think you're putting a very skewed perspective on something that is not that black and white. I expect a little more intellectual integrity from you. But this isn't really the thread to discuss it so I'm going to bow out.
 

b.c.

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What all of these arguments and postulations suggest is that, as Drifterwood noted, the premise is seriously flawed to begin with, either naively so, or deliberately. In typical fashion, it omits so many variables and details as to render any (presumable) comparisons useless.

For example the premise doesn't address whether all of the island's occupants came there willingly, or whether they were all treated equally once there. Did some of the inhabitants enslave a few under forced labor for a hundred years, then for another hundred years enacted discriminatory law, enforced various forms of disenfranchisement from mainstream society, and allowed for inequality of opportunities for all their inhabitants? Assuming there were forms of remuneration for their work efforts, were all members of the society paid equally for doing the same job, and offered the same opportunities for advancement? Were they all treated equally under the laws of the land? Were there even enough JOBS to go around for all of them?

I could go on, except that it'd be wasted effort for some, because there is no explaining such subtleties to bigots, assholes... or those who are both.
 
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B_starinvestor

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What all of these arguments and postulations suggest is that, as Drifterwood noted, the premise is seriously flawed to begin with, either naively so, or deliberately. In typical fashion, it omits so many variables and details as to render any (presumable) comparisons useless.

For example the premise doesn't address whether all of the island's occupants came there willingly, or whether they were all treated equally once there. Did some of the inhabitants enslave a few under forced labor for a hundred years, then for another hundred years enacted discriminatory law, enforced various forms of disenfranchisement from mainstream society, and allowed for inequality of opportunities for all their inhabitants? Assuming there were forms of remuneration for their work efforts, were all members of the society paid equally for doing the same job, and offered the same opportunities for advancement? Were they all treated equally under the laws of the land? Were there even enough JOBS to go around for all of them?

I could go on, except that it'd be wasted effort for some, because there is no explaining such subtleties to bigots, assholes... or those who are both.

Good point. Yes, 7 sex slaves with no legs or arms were beaten and taken to an island by 3 evil, tea party conservatives.:rolleyes: I should have been more clear.

10 normal people of equal ability are dropped off anwhere - the wilderness, an island, etc.
 

b.c.

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Well, since your analogy discounts all the other variable aforementioned, the closest parallel I can come up with to match that situation would be perhaps the latest episode of Survivor.

In the game there were two who spent all day laying about in bikinis and sunning themselves. They seemed to fare quite well, comparatively speaking, because the powers that were used them to oust others (including those who contributed to their survival)...anyone who they felt was a threat to their own authority.