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Old 01-31-2008, 04:16 AM   #184 (permalink)
abaya
 
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Location: Iceland
I see it as pointless because no one's ever going to budge on their points of view. If you inherently believe that modern, complex societies are unconditionally, on every level (controlling for socio-economic status and distribution of wealth), less violent to live in than modern hunter-gatherer societies, I just don't know what to say. We're talking apples and oranges here (especially when you start bringing in the genetic view) and nothing that either of us says on this little forum is going to change those views.

I've collected data in the Philly ghetto, and collected data in rural, dirt-poor Zambia. Let me tell you, I'd rather be living in rural Zambia on a day-to-day basis than spend a few nights in the Philly ghetto.

The reason I asked you to cite studies (and I do appreciate you doing that, btw--it gave me a better context to understand where you got your ideas from) is because you opened this section of discussion with a statement about "anthropologists." I wanted to know which anthropologists you were talking about, because most anthropologists I know are hard-core believers in cultural relativism. Not extreme relativism, mind you, but at least some degree of relativism, of looking at the behaviors of each society (and by extension, individuals in those societies) within their own particular contexts. I can't cite this as a "study" in anthropology, since it's a theoretical orientation that informs pretty much every study in the field... going back to good ol' Franz Boas, the founder of the modern discipline. So, for that, check The Mind of Primitive Man, Franz Boas, 1911.

I'm really just tired of arguing about this right now. No one on this thread is ever going to change their personal "gut feelings" about race, intelligence, etc... and every time I come back here, I just get fired up and waste my energy. That's all. Hopefully other people are reading the discussing and gaining some insight, but they're not posting here, so I don't know.
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