Sunday, 3 March 2019

Post No. 1,288 - Cross post: Humans, Humanity, and Human Rights - Intro and Chapter 1 (A)

These posts are copies of the index part of my "Humans, Humanity, and Human Rights" project at my political blog. I've now added the actual content (as of 19th March, 2019).

*****
This project commenced with a conceptual outline, published on Saturday 1st December, 2018, at: https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2018/12/humans-humanity-and-human-rights.html
I’ve decided I’ll post each chapter in its first, raw state, and you, Dear Reader, can see if my later research (probably long after I've finished this first version, in my retirement, should I be fortunate enough to do so) led to any change. (You can also think about the points I am making.) 
I've come up with an initial (no guarantees it won't change) structure of the book, and will add the links to each chapter in the latest installment as they are published. Owing to the size of each chapter, I will have to publish this using the sub-chapters.
  • Foreword (https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/03/humans-humanity-and-human-rights-intro.html)
  • Chapter One – Introduction to Concepts and Early Humans
    A.  Human Evolution and Human Rights (https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/03/humans-humanity-and-human-rights-intro.html)
    B. The benefits of human rights
    C. Words - definitions of human, human rights, and humanity
    D. Potential Criticisms of the Idea that Decency and Fairness are Beneficial
    E. Our genetic neighbours, early (gatherer-hunter) humans, and being humane
    F. What perspective does psychology and other modern thinking contribute?
    G. What perspective does modern human rights theory/understanding contribute?
    H. Summary / conclusions
    Chapter One: What I don't currently know to my satisfaction
  • Chapter Two – Civilisation: The Domestication of Humans
  • Chapter Three – Empire: The Concentration of Power Begins
  • Chapter Four – Human Rights: The Concentration of Overarching Power Unravels
  • Chapter Five – What Does the Future Hold in Store?
  • Chapter Six – The Soul: The Influence of Spirituality and/or Religion on Human Rights
  • Chapter Seven – For the Pragmatist: Using / Applying All This “Stuff”
  • Chapter Eight – Change: the Soul and the Bane of Humans, Humanity, and Human Rights
  • Chapter Nine – My Last Trick: Ending . . .

Foreword

I am not a professional historian. I have a degree in an entirely different field, but that isn’t of any relevance whatsoever here, so I won’t mention any details.
I am, however, interested in history – I have had a passion for it throughout most of my life. It was one of my favourite subjects in high school, but I couldn’t see a way to earn a living through it, so it has been a hobby – a pastime passion – until I could get the time to start this project.
I have another passion: human rights.
That passion is based partly on my personal experience of receiving discrimination, partly on the discrimination I have seen others subjected to, and partly on principle. My parents taught me well, taught me respect for people and for human rights, but all my spiritual / religious paths have also always emphasised human rights.
When I reached a situation in life where my personal history of advocacy, life circumstances, and accessible books came together appropriately, I started to study human rights more formally. (Had I known that politics and the law had human rights opportunities, I might have considered them back in the 1970s when I had to start choosing my life path in early high school. Had I had more of my later experience of individual growth and the various forms that healing takes, I might have added that to the potential mix of choices as well.)
This current project grew out of a speculation: what, I wondered, is the history of human rights when it is pushed back into the realms where pre-history combines with human evolution?
And are there any useful lessons we can draw from that?
We’ll see.
Two final notes.
Firstly, I am an Australian (no, that’s not in Europe * ), and thus have used Australian formatting conventions and idiom. Some of that, such as the phrase “a fair go” is not seen as constructive by everyone. I tend to agree, but it is a useful turn of phrase for communicating with those who have power.
Secondly, to borrow from the famous TV children’s show, this book has been brought to you by . . . the “Oxford comma” J *
Kayleen White
 * I’ll also see how much of my sense of humour survives into and beyond the final editing process if this is ever professionally published . . . J

The First Edition

This first edition is what I am referring to as my “un-researched” edition. By that, I mean that this is based on what I have been able to come up with, using the materials I have readily at hand, including via the internet (which has a range of issues I’ll discus later), and from what I have learned in six and a bit decades of living. Should I live long enough, I intend to produce a version where I have extended by knowledge by more formal (maybe even – shudder – academic) research and/or study (I have started working through some of the openly available political science courses, for example).

Chapter One – Introduction to Concepts, and On Early Humans

A.  Human Evolution and Human Rights

Although there are no doubt a few hold outs, I think it is fair to say that it is generally accepted that the physical form we call “human” evolved. We had a starting point, as we morphed from earlier forms of life into what we now term “human” – more prosaically, we morphed from primates to human (technically, through a number of homo species to homo sapiens) [1] .
We’ve kept changing in some ways since then – for instance, Cro-Magnons were “more robust” and had larger brains, I understand [2], than modern humans, but most spectacularly of all, how we use our ability to think has evolved, mostly for the better, but perhaps not always. The richness of language, the elucidation of human rights, and the development of medicine and democracy are, in my view, examples of “better” developments, whereas pollution, warfare, and dictatorships are examples of changes for the worse.
But how did all that process start? At what point did a former primate (or several primates – I am inclined to the view that developments may happen simultaneously but independently in multiple locations, with the widely accepted view that Darwin and Wallace developed their descriptions of natural selection simultaneously and independently [3] being perhaps the best example) start the thinking process that led to what we now term “human rights”?
It was, in my opinion (IMO [4]), a thinking process initially. Furthermore, it is arguable whether it was a process of inventing something new (as James Watt did with the steam engine [5] ), or a description of something already existing – as Newton did with gravity [6] and Einstein did with gravity, light and the way we view “physical reality” (in the sense of space-time) [7].
If we consider how people (and that is what we mean – “human” means people, or persons [8] or individuals, if you prefer, although, to be a viable species, there was certainly more than one or, for the biological pedants, more than one breeding couple J ) probably lived in small, mostly related groups. These are often termed – in casual conversations I’ve listened to - tribes, but initially they were probably more like extended families than the modern conception of “tribe”.
In visualising those small groups, I have a tendency to think of them in terms of modern gatherer-hunters – the Sān [9] of southern Africa (pre-mandatory modernisation of the 1950s to 1990s), who used to be called “Bushmen”, or Australia’s indigenous people (pre-1788) [10], but that may not be accurate, as there may well have been changes over the millennia – and the culture of Australia’s indigenous peoples dates back at least 45,000 – 50,000 years (possibly 60,000 – 80,000 years, making it, I understand, the oldest continuous culture), and it probably took time and trial and error to learn how to live in harmony with the environment in both the short and the long term (which requires the establishment of a society [“Social order”, if you prefer] that is capable of doing so).
(Then again, the controversial Amy Chua’s book “Political Tribes” demonstrates quite well, IMO, that tribal thinking and behaviour is still with us – still plaguing us, until we learn to work constructively with those characteristics, as she also discusses. [Ref. 8] – Note: the hyperlink will take you to a section where I have collected information on books I have used as references)
The Britannica reference (see footnote above) on Australia’s indigenous people includes the following:
“It has long been conventionally held that Australia is the only continent where the entire Indigenous population maintained a single kind of adaptation—hunting and gathering—into modern times. Some scholars now argue, however, that there is evidence of the early practice of both agriculture [11] and aquaculture by Aboriginal peoples. This finding raises questions regarding the traditional viewpoint that presents Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples as perhaps unique in the degree of contrast between the complexity of their social organization and religious life and the relative simplicity of their material technologies.” [12]
and
“It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years. On the basis of research at the Nauwalabila I and Madjedbebe archaeological sites in the Northern Territory, however, some scientists have claimed that early humans arrived considerably sooner, perhaps as early as 65,000 to 80,000 years ago. That conclusion is consistent with the argument made by some scholars that the migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa and adjacent areas of Southwest Asia to South and Southeast Asia along the so-called Southern Route predated migration to Europe. Other scholars question the earlier dating of human arrival in Australia, which is based on the use of optically stimulated luminescence (measurement of the last time the sand in question was exposed to sunlight), because the Northern Territory sites are in areas of termite activity, which can displace [artefacts] downward to older levels.”
The Survival International (an organisation for the survival of indigenous people across the planet) reference (see footnote above) includes the following:
“Evidence suggests that these communities managed their environment carefully to ensure a steady supply of food, bringing wild yams into gardens which they irrigated, for example, or building artificial dykes to extend the range of eels.
Those Aboriginal tribes who lived inland in the bush and the desert lived by hunting and gathering, burning the undergrowth to encourage the growth of plants favoured by the game they hunted. They were experts in seeking out water.
 . . .
Many, particularly in the northern half of the continent, have managed to cling on to their land and still hunt and gather ‘bush tucker’.”
The Australian Museum website (see footnote above) includes the following:
“These extended family relationships are the core of Indigenous kinship systems that are central to the way culture is passed on and society is organised.
 . . .
Kinship systems define where a person fits in to the community, binding people together in relationships of sharing and obligation. These systems may vary across communities but they serve similar functions across Australia. Kinship defines roles and responsibilities for raising and educating children and structures systems of moral and financial support within the community.”
The indigenous Australian culture was probably fairly quickly, IMO, adapted to the Australian environment, but also had some impact on the environment. In addition, could some time have been required to evolve a kinship system that enabled adaptation to Australia after arrival tens of thousands of years ago?
Consider: moving from the wet tropical climates of south east Asia to the wet tropical climates of northern Australia would probably not have been a major change, but wouldn’t moving into temperate, eucalypt base forests and arid or desert conditions have required learning and adaptation of technology, and could that possibly have been associated with some change of culture- perhaps changes to ensure a lower population density?
I’m not in a position to answer that question – nor am I in a position to comment on current (rich and varied) indigenous Australian culture: I’ve had too limited contact [13].
In terms of older European cultures, which has been the bias I’ve grown up within, my visualisation of their (much younger than Australian indigenous J ) culture has been influenced by the Earth’s Children series of books [14] written by Jean M. Auel [15] (and several made-for-the-public documentaries).
This series of books is entertaining, well-written (IMO), and seems to have some kernel of truth – spiced up with drama. However, some questions come to my mind, given that I have not read the sources Ms Auel used. I also note that the Wikipedia article on her Earth’s Children series of books includes the following:
“As a whole, the series is a tale of personal discovery: coming-of-age, invention, cultural complexities . . . It tells the story of Ayla, an orphaned Cro-Magnon girl who is adopted and raised by a tribe of Neanderthals and who later embarks on a journey to find the Others (her own kind) . . . In the third and fourth works, they meet various groups of Cro-Magnons and encounter their culture and technology. . . . The series includes a highly detailed focus on botany, herbology, herbal medicine, archaeology and anthropology, but it also features substantial amounts of romance, coming-of-age crises, and—employing significant literary license—the attribution of certain advances and inventions to the protagonists.
In addition, Auel's series incorporates a number of recent [archaeological] and anthropological theories. It also suggested the notion of Sapiens-Neanderthal interbreeding.
The author's treatment of unconventional sexual practices (which are central to her hypothesized nature-centered religions) has earned the series a top twenty place on the American Library Association's list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999.”
The “notion” of “Homo Sapiens-Neanderthal interbreeding” mentioned in that series of books is, IMO, well supported by recent DNA evidence showing that many modern humans have some residual Neanderthal genes [16] (and there is also evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans lived together for tens of thousands of years in at least one place [17] ), but, not having done any formal study, or even much reading of the original scientific literature, I’m not sure how well we can say we understand how people lived.
I consider re-enactors are improving our appreciation of the technology of ancient people –although no doubt any ancient [18] would be highly amused by the clumsy (but brave – and unquestionably serious and genuine) attempts of people who haven’t grown up in a culture where a significant amount of knowledge was probably absorbed by osmosis J However, I am not confident that re-enactors would be increasing our knowledge of the social values (i.e., mores [19] ) of those ancient cultures. (If you want an example of the influence of bias, see Derek Sivers’ TED talk from November 2009 titled “Weird, or just different” – URL https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_different.)
How did ancient peoples (aka “the ancients”, with apologies to a few science fiction series J ) think about things such as “the utilisation of resources” (which is ‘economic-speak’ for ‘the advantages of not discriminating’)? I’ve heard a lot of people talk about “protecting women because they bear children”, but gatherer-hunters largely lived in harmony with the extent of their resources – if they didn’t, they starved. While starvation no doubt occurred from time to time[20], I’m inclined to think, having seen how well modern gatherer-hunters achieve the “living in harmony with resources” aspect, that the strong emphasis on “protecting women because they bear children” came later, when empires started competing against each other.
In the ancient, pre-agricultural times that I am considering, I speculate (I’m not in a strong enough position intellectually to say “I postulate”) that:
·         interaction between different groups had benefits –particularly the prevention of in-breeding, but also the sharing of technology, and thus there would have been interactions between different groups [21];
·         to ensure resources are not over-used, and that living spaces required by each group were not intruded upon (which, apart from harming the survival of one group, would likely have led to conflict, and possibly violence – and later did, as populations grew [22]), the interactions would have included limits, and groups would possibly have developed systems that (perhaps inadvertently) regulated population growth and kinship type interactions between these groups – during early (low population) and settled (e.g., Australian indigenous) stages of our evolution, at any rate: population pressure probably had a fair bit to do with humans emigrating from Africa.
(I am also thinking, as I write this, of a TV documentary I saw, in the pre-Internet era, which suggested that the Australian indigenous practice of “spearing” [23] , which seems a harsh form of justice to many non-indigenous people, was set up in such a way that the risk of death or injury was not major [vigilantism is probably more likely to result in serious injury or death], but the emotions of anger etc were given a way of being expressed while minimising the risk of division, violent conflict, or war.)
In my inexpert opinion, the rules around those interactions are possibly the earliest form of human rights, based largely around what are now termed economic, social, and cultural rights, but also the right to life.
There are possibly other matters within each group that could be considered an early form of human rights – for instance, ensuring that people with particular skills are able to use those skills. There’s not much point having, say, an excellent flint worker, and then insisting they go on animal hunts / foraging rather than using their skills for the benefit of all (i.e., ensure the benefit of skill resources are best used for the benefit of all, in accordance with good modern economic theory J ). In  terms

[1] There is an interesting PBS Eons (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzR-rom72PHN9Zg7RML9EbA/featured) video on this, and the developing changes around who was or wasn’t human: “The Humans That Lived Before Us”, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ANNQKKwWGk
[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=European_early_modern_humans&oldid=874929543#Physical_attributes,   https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cro-Magnon,   and   http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/cro-magnon-1. Incidentally, when I read “more robust”, I initially wondered how much of that is attributed to a more physically active life, but then I recalled that a relatively sedentary lifestyle is a largely recent, and predominantly Western, change.
[3] If you’d like to check that out, the links below may be of interest. Incidentally, as a guide, I’ll use on-line links (including Wikipedia, which is not as bad as some make out * [although I have some concerns which are not of particular relevance here] ) for minor levels of proof, and more formal references (where I can find them) for more important matters
 - https://theconversation.com/explainer-theory-of-evolution-2276, which clarifies that Wallace and Darwin both proposed the “natural selection” aspect of the theory of evolution
 - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Natural_selection&oldid=870484159
 - https://www.britannica.com/science/natural-selection
By the way, there were/are ‘competitors” / variations to the theory of evolution (e.g., see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lamarckism&oldid=875706132), and we’re probably where physics was after Newton’s work – we have a workable, testable, useful tool, but the biological equivalents of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and quantum mechanics lie ahead of us (although https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epigenetics&oldid=872594375 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Somatic_hypermutation&oldid=861514420 and, more controversially, http://www.thesecondevolution.com/intro-teem-theory/ may be steps along the way).
 * See the following:
    - https://www.cnet.com/news/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/,
      which suggests the accuracies are similar
    - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249362832_Comparison_of_Wikipedia_and_other_encyclopedias_for_accuracy_breadth_and_depth_in_historical_articles,
      which suggests that, in at least one specific field, Wikipedia is 80% accurate, as compared to
      authoritative sources, and
    - http://scivenue.com/2017/11/17/wikipedia-vs-britannica-encyclopedia/,
      which is an interesting commentary on the differences and possible uses of Wikipedia and
      authoritative sources.
[4] Get used to that TLA (three letter acronym): I’ll be using it a fair bit  J
Also, I detest end notes where one has to flick forwards to find a reference, and then backwards to where one was reading (although that does create a cooling breeze to help deal with one’s annoyed, flushed visage), so I’ll be using footnotes (although it does change the “effective” reading height of pages), with formal acknowledgment of references and the like at the end for the pedants (luv ya work, pedants J ).
[8] The term “person” grates on my sensibilities, largely because, as I grew up, I seemed to hear it mostly in the inhumanely unemotional pronouncement of a (in that era, inevitably male) police officer droning on about “persons of interest”. I know the word “impersonal” is meant to be an indicator that “person” is a very human term, but I consider “people” to be the human (or personal) term, and “person” to be utterly impersonal.
[13] Apart from my involvement in reconciliation activities, my birth sister (I was adopted at a few weeks old, as a result of social pressures) was married to an indigenous man in the Kimberley of north western Australia, but her husband had passed away before I found my birth family. My birth family brother has ongoing contact and involvement with indigenous people, but I haven’t discussed these matters to any significant degree.
[16] See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans&oldid=875173532#Neanderthals   (or the more general https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans&oldid=875173532),   http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals/interbreeding,   https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/effects-of-neanderthal-dna-on-modern-humans-30787,   and   https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/neanderthal-viruses/572056/.
There are also more controversial theories on this from outside academic orthodoxy, such as Danny Vendramini’s theory of Neanderthal Predation, outlined at http://themandus.org/: that is worth an unbiased read, IMO, but, as you do so, keep in mind https://sciblogs.co.nz/bioblog/2010/10/31/killer-neandertals-does-this-one-really-stack-up/   and   https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/a-review-of-neanderthal-the-strange-saga-of-the-minnesota-iceman-part-2/. I’m inclined to think there are aspects of the Neanderthal Predation (NP) theory which may be valid, but the higher percentages of Neanderthal DNA found in modern humans I recent years and the identification of characteristics associated with specific genes raise doubts in my mind about how much of the NP theory applies – if the interaction was based on a few rapes where the victim wasn’t also killed/eaten, as the NP theory predicts, I would expect the percentage of Neanderthal DNA to be lower, but it would need a statistician-geneticist to comment authoritatively about that. (Also, we were known to be prey to other species – see the PBS Eons video “When Humans Were Prey”, URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_hl804lSfc.: could that have been responsible for the developments that Mr Vendramini attributes to NP? [The video has some interesting comments about re-evaluations of attributions of hominin aggression.])
[18] In this context, I am using “ancient” to mean “member of a pre-historic culture”.
[20] Something which struck me when I read it is a comment that the members of an English exploration party in Australia led by Burke and Wills starved to death, from the perspective of the local indigenous people, in their equivalent of the middle of a supermarket. In Europe in the Middle Ages, when population had grown because of agriculture and political pressure to do so (perhaps disguised in the form of religion), near starvation was an annual event. For a smaller population of hunter-gatherers, I have doubts that it would be annual – but it would occur over longer periods, in response to natural fluctuations in seasonal rainfall, etc, as well as events such volcanic eruptions affecting weather – see, for instance https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-volcanoes-affect-w/.
[21] As an example of this, see the second episode of the 1999 documentary “Secrets of the Stone Age”, a Granada (now ITV Studios) Production for Channel Four, presented by Richard Rudgley (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Rudgley&oldid=858013154), based on his 1998 book (Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Stone-Age-Prehistoric-Journey/dp/0712684522).
[22] The work by Steven Pinker * (presented in his book “the Better Angels of our Nature”, Penguin, 2012, ISBN-10: 014103464 ; see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steven_Pinker&oldid=881617732, https://stevenpinker.com/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5X2-i_poNU#t=03m40s, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature&oldid=885247328, and https://www.amazon.com.au/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0141034645/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1551569129&sr=8-1) is the source I most trust on this. In an interview (see https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/11/the-decline-of-violence) Pinker said “[During] the transition from tribal societies to settled states, there was a reduction from about a 15 percent chance of dying violently down to about a 3 percent chance in the first states.” I have a vague recollection (possibly from documentaries about tribal violence in the Papua-New Guinea highlands) of a decline in violent deaths from 5% of all deaths to, in modern times, 1% of all deaths, but I can’t find anything to back that up, so I’ll go with the Pinker quote. (Another link on this is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War_Before_Civilization&oldid=883362425.)
One thing I would question is Pinker’s lack of data over the tens of millennia of indigenous occupation of Australia.
 * For a soundly-based and nuanced critique of Pinker’s work, see https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-a-look-at-the-data-5af708f47fba?gi=bbc336242f4f. I would also be interested to know how these various death rates from violence compare with those of primates – who are not as peaceable as once thought.
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