So I’m not entirely sure how accurate this is. Suggesting that humans of the modern day are born “broken” in a sense. I mean the whole things reads of the sort of nonsense I saw in Freud or Jung. I haven’t heard of Berman before but I looked into him a bit and the reviews on his books seem mixed to say the least, and not that many to be honest. I haven’t read the book “wandering god” and likely won’t given my history with reading new stuff. Just wondering how true it is.
I took a brief look at the link you posted, but I have to say the print is very small and the prose is very dense. Could you please summarize the main points of that article?
Isn’t the murder rate in hunter gatherer societies something like 100x higher than in the west? So how can anyone claim those societies are more psychologically healthy?
It sounds like the noble savage fallacy to me. I don’t see a lot of evidence for any of these arguments that hunter gatherers are better people.
I’m not getting the ‘born broken’ message you mention, but agree that it sounds Freudian. Apparently having our period of breast-feeding cut short from an ideal four years (?) results in us spending the rest of our lives trying to patch up this psychic pain with religion, leader-worship, pursuit of romantic love, charisma (?), etc.
As with the other thread about that noble Amazonian tribe, I can’t help but think that these hunter-gatherer societies aren’t really superior to modern, neurotic, civilisation. Their societies are simpler and infinitely-less culturally rich; so less neurotic, but going nowhere in particular. Without toilet paper.
So somebody calling themselves J.A. Heffernan decided to create a website where they could write up some theories, and you’re assuming that carries any weight?
From the fact that evolution never reaches an equilibrium to the concept of Original Sin, there are a zillion arguments to be made that we are born broken. Why is less than ideal existence a news story, anyway?
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The above is a review I read about the book he cites in the link. Again I’m still not entirely sure how true this is. It still sounds like airy psychology and when I asked the author about it he just told me to read his books (and by that I guess buy them since I don’t see them in my library). But like I said, amazon shows the books have a very small audience and the reviews are mixed. So ultimately I’m not sure what to think on this.
BS. Just to mention one point. My DIL was going to try to nurse her son for as long as he was interested, but he totally lost interested around age 2. Of course he was eating a lot of solid food by and already cut down to a “night-time nip”.
Anyone who thinks hunter-gatherers are interested in “balance” is full of balloon juice. Hunter-gatherers are interested in where their next meal comes from. That’s why they hunt and gather.
And it’s not like they sit around the fire at night and bond with each other, either. They’re mostly looking out for predators who want to eat their food and/or drag away their young.
That appears like part of the fall of humanity through Adam and Eve in the Bible, and somewhat similar in the Quran and has made it’s was into other faiths as well including Buddhism though in a different format, but the same darn thing. Yes we are broken as a human, not complete in ourselves, and helped by other broken beings (typically parents and other authority figures), who do what they can but can’t help everything and thus humanity stays broken. However there is a way out of it, a connection to something beyond us but also within us. And I have seen this pattern in psychology also, as people shift from blaming others to looking at themselves for answers to questions they have had in their lives. The convergence of these faiths and studies seem to point to this is a universally true principal.
OP, you seriously need to quit reading this garbage.
Okay, new strategy: How’s about just thinking and people watch til you can determine your own conclusions as to why folks are like they are.You’ll never know all the mysteries of life and people. That’s just how it is.
And let’s not even get into understanding the opposite sex. That’s a real rabbit hole.