How many people think men and women would think the same if not for culture?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I wonder if lions would still form prides if they weren't raised by other lions.

It seems like the heart of your question is "is being a social animal a fundamental drive or a learned behavior" and the answer is, it's a fundamental drive. If you deprive social animals of socialization they suffer innumerate deleterious effects, from developmental damage to death.

Would overcrowding them be the same thing, or does that work on a separate mechanism altogether?

Utterly different.

Okay.  The reason I asked is that a behavioral sink makes it impossible for socialization to function.

I thought there might be a link.

Overcrowding is very relative. Humans can function quite well in crowded environments, as long as the environment is friendly and there is little hierarchichal disparity.

I am thinking of the 6 man cells in private prisons.  Nobody has territory or anything resembling the chance to reproduce, so they all become functionally insane.  China has recently seen some very odd behavior for the same reasons (though different causes).

And so I was just wondering if the mechanism was the same...But you have, in fact, already answered.

DOUR,
Training his heels out of digging.

[LMNO]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC285801/

And of course, if you would like to never sleep again, there are the orphanages in Romania.

Just clicked the Pit of Despair. I was abstractly horrified.


And then I thought of Bradley Manning.

And of Supermax prisons in general.

Now I want to crawl inside a bottle.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I wonder if lions would still form prides if they weren't raised by other lions.

It seems like the heart of your question is "is being a social animal a fundamental drive or a learned behavior" and the answer is, it's a fundamental drive. If you deprive social animals of socialization they suffer innumerate deleterious effects, from developmental damage to death.

Would overcrowding them be the same thing, or does that work on a separate mechanism altogether?

Utterly different.

Okay.  The reason I asked is that a behavioral sink makes it impossible for socialization to function.

I thought there might be a link.

Overcrowding is very relative. Humans can function quite well in crowded environments, as long as the environment is friendly and there is little hierarchichal disparity.

I am thinking of the 6 man cells in private prisons.  Nobody has territory or anything resembling the chance to reproduce, so they all become functionally insane.  China has recently seen some very odd behavior for the same reasons (though different causes).

And so I was just wondering if the mechanism was the same...But you have, in fact, already answered.

DOUR,
Training his heels out of digging.

Yes, you can have six people living in one room... a Neolithic family, for example... and it's just fine because it's a nurturing context, nobody is being deprived of basic needs, and there is no hierarchy threat.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC285801/

And of course, if you would like to never sleep again, there are the orphanages in Romania.

Just clicked the Pit of Despair. I was abstractly horrified.


And then I thought of Bradley Manning.

And of Supermax prisons in general.

Now I want to crawl inside a bottle.

We are a society that perpetuates evil.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

We are a society that perpetuates evil.

I'd make a snarky comment about how that's a human thing.

But it isn't.  I know this because of Norway and Italy and Ecuador and Denmark and many other places that you rarely hear about because they aren't deliberately evil.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

We are a society that perpetuates evil.

I'd make a snarky comment about how that's a human thing.

But it isn't.  I know this because of Norway and Italy and Ecuador and Denmark and many other places that you rarely hear about because they aren't deliberately evil.

Yeah.

I know humans aren't inherently awful, because there are all these cultures out there that just quietly go around being decent.