>>> [We must use] ...an artificial state of nature. [One that] places
>>> everyone in the original position. The original position is a
>>> hypothetical state of nature used as a thought experiment: People in
>>> the original position have no society and are under a veil of
>>> ignorance that prevents them from knowing how they may benefit from
>>> society. They do not know if they will be smart or dumb, rich or poor,
>>> or anything else about their fortunes and abilities. ...people in the
>>> original position would want a society where they had their basic
>>> liberties protected and where they had some economic guarantees as
>>> well. If society were to be constructed from scratch through a social
>>> agreement between individuals, these principles would be the expected
>>> basis of such an agreement. Thus, these principles should form the
>>> basis of real, modern societies since everyone should consent to them
>>> if society were organized from scratch in fair agreements.
>> well thank bog that isn't the case.
>
> ...if people were somehow raised from birth in an environment devoid
> of most cultural influence, they would construct basic elements of
> human social life ab initio. In short time new elements of language
> would be invented and their culture enriched. Robin Fox, an
> anthropologist and pioneer in human sociobiology, has expressed this
> hypothesis in its strongest possible terms. Suppose, he conjectured,
> that we performed the cruel experiment linked in legend to the Pharaoh
> Psammetichus and King James IV of Scotland, who were said to have
> reared children by remote control, in total social isolation from
> their elders. Would the children learn to speak to one another?
>
> I do not doubt that they could speak and that, theoretically, given
> time, they or their offspring would invent and develop a language
> despite their never having been taught one. Furthermore, this
> language, although totally different from any known to us, would be
> analyzable to linguists on the same basis as other languages and
> translatable into all known languages. But I would push this further.
> If our new Adam and Eve could survive and breed — still in total
> isolation from any cultural influences — then eventually they would
> produce a society which would have laws about property, rules about
> incest and marriage, customs of taboo and avoidance, methods of
> settling disputes with a minimum of bloodshed, beliefs about the
> supernatural and practices relating to it, a system of social status
> and methods of indicating it, initiation ceremonies for young men,
> courtship practices including the adornment of females, systems of
> symbolic body adornment generally, certain activities and associations
> set aside for men from which women were excluded, gambling of some
> kind, a tool- and weapon-making industry, myths and legends, dancing,
> adultery, and various doses of homicide, suicide, homosexuality,
> schizophrenia, psychosis and neuroses, and various practitioners to
> take advantage of or cure these, depending on how they are viewed.
>
> In 1945 the American anthropologist George P. Murdock listed the
> following characteristics that have been recorded in every culture
> known to history and ethnography:
>
> Age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness
> training, community organization, cooking, cooperative labor,
> cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art, divination, division of
> labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics,
> ethnobotany, etiquette, faith healing, family feasting, fire making,
> folklore, food taboos, funeral rites, games, gestures, gift giving,
> government, greetings, hair styles, hospitality, housing, hygiene,
> incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship
> nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic, marriage,
> mealtimes, medicine, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names,
> population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights,
> propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious
> ritual, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status
> differentiation, surgery, tool making, trade, visiting, weaving, and
> weather control.
>
> Few of these unifying properties can be interpreted as the inevitable
> outcome of either advanced social life or high intelligence. It is
> easy to imagine nonhuman societies whose members are even more
> intelligent and complexly organized than ourselves, yet lack a
> majority of the qualities just listed. Consider the possibilities
> inherent in the insect societies. The sterile workers are already more
> cooperative and altruistic than people and they have a more pronounced
> tendency toward caste systems and division of labor. If ants were to
> be endowed in addition with rationalizing brains equal to our own,
> they could be our peers. Their societies would display the following
> peculiarities:
>
> Age-grading, antennal rites, body licking, calendar, cannibalism,
> caste determination, caste laws, colony-foundation rules, colony
> organization, cleanliness training, communal nurseries, cooperative
> labor, cosmology, courtship, division of labor, drone control,
> education, eschatology, ethics, etiquette, euthanasia, fire making,
> food taboos, gift giving, government, greetings, grooming rituals,
> hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, language, larval care,
> law, medicine, metamorphosis rites, mutual regurgitation, nursing
> castes, nuptial flights, nutrient eggs, population policy, queen
> obeisance, residence rules, sex determination, soldier castes,
> sisterhoods, status differentiation, sterile workers, surgery,
> symbiont care, tool making, trade, visiting, weather control, and
> still other activities so alien as to make mere description by our
> language difficult. If in addition they were programmed to eliminate
> strife between colonies and to conserve the natural environment they
> would have greater staying power than people, and in a broad sense
> theirs would be the higher morality.
>
> From On Human Nature by Edward O
Wilsonhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
>
