Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Virtual Reality communities and the loss of sense of Self tied to the local land: radical anthropology talk on the Hadza

So this anthropologist discusses the Hadza in Tanzania - video

Basically they have been pushed out of their traditional culture.

The Q and A gives more details

So the Hadza are relying on cell phones to try to survive - and rations from farm food.

So their foraging/hunting diet is no longer sustainable.

Also they are afraid to practice their traditional spiritual training (from the original Bushmen culture) - since the Westerners may attack them.

So this is tragic but not surprising.

Meanwhile the internet is driven by lower emotional algorithms with people creating "virtual communities" based on banning those who ask the wrong questions or do not fit into the immediate "common sense" views of such communities.

So what makes these communities "viable" is their perception of "feeding" off a wide variety of "information" - when in fact their sources of information intake are actually quite limited. And then to make this information seem viable it is "glued" together with lots of lower emotional bonding rituals as if it's a "real" living community tied to a "real" space.

Conversely - to take in a truly wide range of information from a wide variety of sources necessarily precludes someone from "bonding" into a certain virtual community. And again the "bonds" of the community are then dependent on virtual "walls" being created by the moderators or "owners" of the space.

So just as people as primates through patriarchy "defended" or "Expanded" their real space on Earth's land - now people feel the need to do the same with certain domains now seen as "continents" on Earth - like Google or Amazon or Facebook or Twitter, etc.

So based on "Network" theory we can say 20% of websites get 80% of traffic and keep breaking it down so 20% of the 20% get 80% of that traffic, etc.

Meanwhile life on Earth as a traditional forager-hunter culture, that used to be the NORM for humans for thousands of different cultures, is NOW non-existent - VANISHED. Poof.

It's quite obvious which culture is tenable and which one is ephemeral.

Because humans are social primates then we have to maintain SOME sense of the semblance of "community" with "friends" in virtual reality even though it is fake. Personally I try as least as possible to maintain any kind of adherence to a "community" of "friends" in virtual reality (despite that already throwing up alarms of being some kind of misanthropist, ironically, in a "virtual" reality).

The Hadza are possibly THE OLDEST community of humans on Earth - modern humans - from before 70,000 years ago!!




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