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Has anthropology/other studies helped you understand people?

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Has anthropology/other studies helped you understand people?
Yes 62%  62%  [ 8 ]
No 15%  15%  [ 2 ]
Not sure 15%  15%  [ 2 ]
I'm not interested in anything like that 8%  8%  [ 1 ]
Total votes : 13

funeralxempire
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27 Apr 2021, 4:56 pm

threetoed snail wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
How is that stuff more useful when your entire experience is a blink relative to the time scales they work on?

They're interesting topics, but largely irrelevant to day-to-day living unless you're working in a field that involves them. I like learning about dinosaurs, but knowing the social behaviour of dromaeosaurs isn't likely to help my life much, knowing about how humans and other apes behave in stressful situations might though since I do occasionally have to interact with other apes (the human sort).

I don't actually know particularly much about those fields, I just mean it in the sense I described it ("everything will be gone" and such), because it helps me disregard irrelevant information that I'm daily bombarded with (as everyone else is). Human patterns become more apparent once that veil is lifted. So I mean it as a primary filter rather than as an explanation or a framework of knowledge in itself. Whenever "lasting significance" is implicitly or explicitly given as an explanation in itself for anything, I can immediately remind myself that that's not really the actual story, and then work from there.


It doesn't matter that everything will someday gone, just the blink you're here for.


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27 Apr 2021, 5:09 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
It doesn't matter that everything will someday gone, just the blink you're here for.

Yes, and that's probably what most people will tell you if you ask them about it (though some will explicitly say that legacy is what matters), but the perception of some timeless cosmic obligation still pervades pretty much everyone's existence and orients their behavior to some degree (usually a pretty significant degree). The fact that everything will be gone eventually is (for me) a very definite reminder (if not a "proof") that that's a self-deception mechanism that was selected for at some point in our evolution. And then the undying 3-year old in me asks: "Why?" :lol: That's the usual process in my head.


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27 Apr 2021, 5:15 pm

My focus when it comes to socialization is more about dynamics and specific subtle processing.

More about being able to 'read' and being aware of things, and then control it than directly expressing.


With anthopology, only baseline verbalized context, and only been practically useful quite recent for me.

The real understanding I got happens if own's foundation of reality goes beyond it's own limits of cognitive logic, and conditioning from circumstances. :lol:

Something not all people can simply attain through brute force of intellect.
Certain 'physics' behind socialization, very relevant to such subjects and therefore anthropology.


So I'd say... I had to get the latter parts first.
Before I understand the depth of the written academics texts related or coming from anthopology.

Otherwise, it's just another glorified version of history to me -- all names and texts, no context, too abstract to theorize, and no real practical concept behind it.
Or, mostly for fun. :lol: Relevant in grander scheme of things, outside my own circle of concern and influence.
But not very relevant in day to day basis.

And in practice, I don't always exactly have the processing power to mentally calculate external based processing and picking up relevant bits, while dealing with countless sensations of intrusive stimuli, thought and emotions as long as I don't have the EF to keep it all in control.


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funeralxempire
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27 Apr 2021, 7:22 pm

threetoed snail wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
It doesn't matter that everything will someday gone, just the blink you're here for.

Yes, and that's probably what most people will tell you if you ask them about it (though some will explicitly say that legacy is what matters), but the perception of some timeless cosmic obligation still pervades pretty much everyone's existence and orients their behavior to some degree (usually a pretty significant degree). The fact that everything will be gone eventually is (for me) a very definite reminder (if not a "proof") that that's a self-deception mechanism that was selected for at some point in our evolution. And then the undying 3-year old in me asks: "Why?" :lol: That's the usual process in my head.


I'm not sure it's a self-deception. It's like why we don't need to have any sort of omnipresent awareness, most of the knowledge gained wouldn't be directly relevant. It might be interesting to consider that any given moment someone is doing (insert action here), but how useful would it be unless it's suddenly contextually relevant (instead of just someone is about to get robbed it becomes i'm about to get robbed if i go around the corner)?


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27 Apr 2021, 8:53 pm

I like philosophy and psychology, especially the intersection of the two. I'm more interested in why people believe weird political and religious things than in daily life.



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27 Apr 2021, 10:33 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
I'm not sure it's a self-deception. It's like why we don't need to have any sort of omnipresent awareness, most of the knowledge gained wouldn't be directly relevant. It might be interesting to consider that any given moment someone is doing (insert action here), but how useful would it be unless it's suddenly contextually relevant (instead of just someone is about to get robbed it becomes i'm about to get robbed if i go around the corner)?

You lost me there. But I probably did the same first, so it's only fair. :)


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27 Apr 2021, 10:39 pm

threetoed snail wrote:
Not only will everybody alive today be dead in a century or so, but also everyone and everything ever will be dead and gone without a trace in another geological blink of an eye and nothing will have mattered. :) Anything is only ever relevant because my senses and instincts make it so.


I was aware of this at four and five years of age. I had a phobia of time and eternity. This was part of it and I used to look at crowds of people and picture that they would all be gone, virtually guaranteed, within 100-110 years like wiping the pieces off a chess board. It took me a long time to realise that our efforts in our lives affect the next generation like scaffolding or building blocks and that we are all important either genetically or in terms of the good we do on this planet. Still, it seems easy to think that nothing actually exists and to feel more solipsistic in my ideology. It puts trauma and trouble in perspective for me.


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28 Apr 2021, 12:37 am

IsabellaLinton wrote:
I was aware of this at four and five years of age. I had a phobia of time and eternity. This was part of it and I used to look at crowds of people and picture that they would all be gone, virtually guaranteed, within 100-110 years like wiping the pieces off a chess board. It took me a long time to realise that our efforts in our lives affect the next generation like scaffolding or building blocks and that we are all important either genetically or in terms of the good we do on this planet. Still, it seems easy to think that nothing actually exists and to feel more solipsistic in my ideology. It puts trauma and trouble in perspective for me.

I guess maybe it sounded like a negative thing when I said it, but to me it's only positive. I find it comforting. The thought of being important imposes a responsibility on me that I don't know what to do with. Once I realized that I'm simply not important (because ultimately nothing is), it was a huge relief. I stopped feeling like "actual life" was only something temporally located in the future. I could finally allow myself to do things that had no tangible goal, meaning or impact (aka: life). I didn't have to justify my existence anymore (which as far as I'm concerned is a bizarre phenomenon anyway; I didn't ask to be here, I just am).

At face value this is going off topic, but it isn't really. It's just hard to describe how exactly this informs the way I interpret and understand people and their behavior. But it does. I guess it always starts with something not making sense to me, and then I follow that thread until I get it. With some things it doesn't take long, with some other things it takes years, it depends. But I think in any case this sense that nothing ultimately matters helps me sort of juggle and understand conflicting perceptions that people have about "what matters" in life and society and everyday situations, because I'm aware that my own priorities are incidental (because existence is incidental).

One major roadblock that this doesn't help me with though is fanaticism (which of course is ever more relevant today). Things that clearly don't matter but somehow are supposed to matter a lot -- to certain people. Anytime my impulse to try to understand people leads me down that rabbit hole, it's just disturbing and not at all illuminating. I don't understand why anyone would subject themselves to that. It seems like a fundamentally unhappy state of being. It seems like trying to cure unhappiness by making as many people as possible unhappy too. It's layers upon layers of the opposite of anything sane.


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28 Apr 2021, 2:12 am

HeroOfHyrule wrote:
Has anthropology or other studies regarding humans helped you understand people better, and possibly helped your ability to mask? What fields are the ones that have helped you?

Having an interest in anthropology and human evolution has helped me understand other people a lot better. Learning the "logic" behind human behaviour and how our behaviour is similar to other apes/primates has given me a better appreciation for the things people do that used to confuse me. I think I am better able to empathize with others and can mask easier. I probably wouldn't "function" as well as I do socially if I never had an interest in anthropology and primatology.

ya the studies of sociology and psychology helped me understand mankind more but not anthropology.



Last edited by Texasmoneyman300 on 28 Apr 2021, 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

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28 Apr 2021, 2:25 am

No as I still don't experience the same emotional repsonses as them or understand their need for worthiness on a deeper level.

Yes I understand it intellectually but it runs no deeper than that and never has. Actually I never encountered such a thing until my thirties after I moved to Norfolk in the UK. Before that I lived in the midlands and tended to be more oblivious socially. I had absolutely no idea that other humans spend their days thinking about how worthy they are all day and that they needed the permission of others to like anything about themselves.

It's like letting everyone else decided whether you should like strawberry trifle for you.

It shocked me and I am still not over the shock, especially as they think I think in the same way as they do.

I am not able to as I cannot concentrate on what I am doing with my hobbies or work if I have to spend the whole time focused on myself and not the task itself etc.

I am also horrified by a society that wants people to hate themselves for not being perfect or for having a disability etc...I see it as a global sickness that is spreading out of control.

It's put me off seeking a partner because I want someone whom enjoys my company not someone I have to constantly worry about being worthy of. I don't think worthiness has anything to do with whether you like or love someone, it's really weird.



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28 Apr 2021, 5:43 am

It’s ridiculous to have to “justify” your existence.

Like another person stated, we are “here” through no “fault of our own” :P



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28 Apr 2021, 10:11 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
It’s ridiculous to have to “justify” your existence.

Like another person stated, we are “here” through no “fault of our own” :P

Yep. Upbringing can do weird things to your head. (Which of course is another key point I keep in mind when trying to understand people. :))

I guess some of these things are obvious, but to me at least what really makes the difference is the way how those ideas relate to my own experience, and that's usually not something I can get from other people's theories. What other people's theories do help me with sometimes is when it comes to organizing my perceptions into clearer thoughts that I can mentally archive and retrieve and communicate (even if only by contrast, in many cases).


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30 Apr 2021, 11:06 pm

As a lad, I had a strong sense of everyone being evolved for tribal society, and having trouble coping with life in a large, agricultural society. I thought that having so many people to deal with was hard on everyone, but there was no fair way to thin the herd.
When I read about Sociobiology in the 90s, so much began to come clear to me about the evolutionary pressures we are programmed for that I've been writing about it frequently it ever since. Even the opposition to the field fits into the predictions perfectly.