Possible topics / Paul's recent bookmarks...
Cooperation- cooperation
- cooperation
- language
- cooperation
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Language
- Orcas team up with dolphins to hunt salmon, study finds | Environment | The Guardian
- Social and Economic Underpinnings of Human Biodemography - Sociality, Hierarchy, Health: Comparative Biodemography - NCBI Bookshelf
- In Ohio, a Solar Co-Op Helps Families Go Solar for Less - NYTimes
- Religion in the Air| Stump | Substack
- But there is another aspect to religion that is relevant to how we were able to form larger communities. Chimps keep the peace by grooming each other. It rids your grooming partner of fleas and parasites, but more importantly the physical touch releases the feel-good endorphins between each other. That does really well at fostering goodwill and group cohesion. But it’s limited to those you can have that kind of physical relationship with. We needed to develop a way of forming group cohesion without physical contact.
It turns out that language, music, laughter, and especially group rituals are a kind of “vocal grooming.” They produce the same kinds of endorphins as physical touch, but can scale up our bonding mechanisms way beyond those we’re in physical contact with. Experiments have been done with people singing together and this effect was noticeable. Take a group of hooligans at a soccer match: their songs create group identity, so that even if I don’t know you, if you’re wearing the right scarf and singing the right songs, we are “brothers.” - ‘The Interview’: Ocean Vuong was Ready to Kill. A Moment of Grace Changed His Life. - NYTimes
- I’ve been interested in this idea of kindness without hope. What I saw working in fast food growing up in Hartford County was that people are kind even when they know it won’t matter. Where does that come from? I watched co-workers get together and dig each other out of blizzards. They could just dig themselves out and leave, go home sooner, hug their families, but they all stayed, and they dug each other out. What is kindness exhibited knowing there is no payoff?
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