being productive

I've noticed a set of people I find intriguing - I am thinking of them as "industrious" people. I think of them as being post-post industrial revolution, in a sense.

Before the industrial revolution which centralised labour at the location of large machinery, many more kinds of work was done in the same space where the workers lived. The industrial revolution permitted the better paid workers to effectively separate home and work, increasingly permitting a working man to support a wife and children in a home designed for the purposes of family and leisure.

Given the stigma of poverty in a class society, it's easy to see why any who could afford it had homes with space. Space and idleness were indicators of wealth and status. Given that it was shameful for a wealthy family to be 'reduced' to working with their hands, if work had to be done in the home, it was highly desirable to be able to hide any trace of it of from visitors.

Class aspiration is still reflected by the way people strive to keep a house dedicated to empty space and impractical decorating choices. It's as though people are still running scared from the stigma of working in the home - or verily, working at all. We are permitted to display the machinery of our entertainment. In conventional homes, home cinemas and billiard tables are shown off, but sewing rooms are kept tidily concealed. Hobbies are to stay in a hobby room whilst so called living areas are kept free from clutter so that they look right.

The "industrious" people I have observed have either failed to acquire, or have cast off, these constraints of correctness regarding their homes. Their homes are given over to industriousness. The equipment is set up where it is most practical; Sewing on the kitchen table. Loom in the middle of the lounge room. Vegetables in the front yard. Solar panels on the roof.

These things do not sit comfortably with the 'idle rich' aesthetic, but industrial people don't notice or care.

I love that industrious people spend their resources being productive, rather than creating the illusion that they are not.

Group selection as Dawkins dismisses it is different to group selection as I use the term. Terms like 'for the good of the species' are involved in his concept of group selection, but not in mine. I will use terms like 'not to the detriment of the group' where the group is of fundamental importance to the perpetuation of the genes in the individuals in the group.

Dawkins describes the gene as being the persistent entity which survives through successive generations of selection of individuals. Individuals are 'survival machines' for genes. I say... then where individual survival machines thrive better in a group, doesn't the group form an 'outer shell' for the genes? The well being of this 'outer shell' is important to the genes in the individuals in the group.

Behaviours of individuals in the group where those behaviours benefit the individual but cause the eventual failure of the group are not of ultimate benefit to the genes concerned. Where a group becomes extinct because of some genetic effect that gives advantage to the individual but dooms the group, the group has been selected against.

There is a rule here... I don't know how to phrase it.

"Genes in individuals in 'mutually beneficial'* groups will only survive where behaviours of individuals which benefit the individual are not of detriment to the group."

Does that sound right?

Ha! - odd implication - The stronger the group is, the stronger the individual within it can be without compromising the group on which they depend. This suggests that individuals working for 'the good of the group' are actually raising the threshold to which they can advantage themselves. Perhaps another angle for examining altruism?

*'mutually beneficial'... not the right term. What is the right term?

Group Selection is bunk because.... ?

I read The Selfish Gene, but I still cannot complete the sentence "Groups selection is bunk because..." I do need to re-read the book, as my ability to absorb information from books is still not up to scratch. Right now though, I can say that I read Dawkins arguments and I believe I take his points, but I still don't see how group selection is not a valid means of evolutionary culling.Still, as I see it, genetic groups go extinct regularly, and memetic groups do indeed compromise their potential for perpetuation by drinking the kool aid.

Similarly - and this is something that has bothered me for some time - memetic mutations such as a certitude that 'we' have an obligation to convert or eliminate all who are 'other' do arise, and tend to eliminate milder memes.

I notice that throughout the history of humankind, resource strapped populations have two options; learn to exist within the existing resource limits or expand territory to obtain more resources. To my knowledge, populations which find a sustainable balance are inevitably overwhelmed by an expansionist culture. I can see no way for humankind to break out of this cycle - peoples who would expand their territory do so by subsuming those who move toward sustainability. Yes, some of the genes and the memes for striving for balance and sustainability will persist, but with each iteration, be more scarce. I fear that the closer we get to the end game, the more violent and bloody minded the victors will have to be, therefore the less well adapted the victors/survivors are likely to be for reaching a sustainable equilibrium amidst what remains of the world. Am I wrong?

I have a vivid image of waves in my uneasy mind. Waves descend filled with power and foaming chaos, but are quickly subdued by the sand. As they lose their impetus and soak into the sand, finally edging back toward equilibrium, another wave rushes over the top and it as though the previous wave never was.

I wonder if what I see as waves are simply analogue of Dawkins' game theory experiments oscillations? I don't expect the stillness of a mill pond, but if boring, ordinary oscillations are heralded by genocide... it feels very dire and doomed.

Belief belief.

An interesting discourse has caused me to wonder whether my belief that I cannot choose what I believe is cause or effect, for if I do choose what I believe, being conscious of that choice would leave me aware that it really is only me - fallible me - who is crafting my reality. If I do choose what I believe in, it would certainly help my certitude to leave that selection and decision-making 'behind the curtain'.

It's a disconcerting thought.