'Freak With Bullhorn' Visits Verizon CEO > Bullhorn Freak Just Made My Day.

Bullhorn Freak Just Made My Day.

I guess I would need you to explain:

"For most of human history, everybody knew most everything about everyone they would ever interact with."

Because I do not see how you reach this conclusion.

Yeah that doesn't make sense. His assessment of human history if just completely off-base.

reply to Lazlow
Go back 100 years.

You live in (or around) Winchester VA, Norvalspont SA, Bolkhov RU or one of countless other small towns. You're most likely to grow up, old and die with the same people. You're also most likely to know most everything about them; whether they want you to or not. Whatever you might not know, could be found out by asking someone you already have access to.

Go back a 1000 years, 5000 years and it's the same thing.

What we think of as privacy was uncommon in most places on Earth until cheap travel started to move families apart. Now that we've gotten about as far apart as we're going to, technology is obeying our wishes and restoring the access to personal information that had been there since the beginning (last few generations excepting, of course).

That's what I meant.

NV
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In my perfect religion, a giant hole appears and sucks up all the lousy people.
I call it the Crapture.

Having grown up in a very rural area, you vastly overestimate what your neighbors know. Just to be clear our nearest neighbors were 4 miles away, the closest town(pop 3k) was twenty miles away and was the largest town in a ninety mile radius. The nearest city of more than 40K was 250 miles. None of my neighbors had my SSN or my unlisted phone number(the listed one they did have) nor did they have access to my credit information. When all the farmers went belly up in the early 80's everybody was shocked by who went under and who survived. While the myths about the old days are true to some extent, one did know who ones neighbors were, that does not translate to you knowing the details of their lives.

People are of the same basic nature today as there were 1000 years ago. Nothing that you have posted is really all that different except in perception. For instance it is probably actually HARDER today to emigrate from outside the US than it was 100 years ago(or longer). Basically back then you showed up and moved in, now you show up and get sent back(when caught). If one did not fit in with a particular community you tried another, if that failed there was always out west.

Micro-politics heavily influences what you do and what your relations succeed at today as well. Contracts with local, state, and federal agencies are all HIGHLY dependent on ones relationships (micro-politics) with those people in power. Just as always, it is more about who one knows than what (or how much) one knows. A prime example of this would be all the busts today in NJ. Entrances to prestigious universities is of the same nature.

Yes, you have to alter your perception to the time. For instance; the technological elite(seen as a % of the whole) 1000 years ago could read, today they are (arguably) those who are well versed in computers. While there is a huge difference between the two in an absolute sense, they are very close in a relative sense(ie they both represent the technological elite of their day). The same applies to most of society. While on an absolute scale they are at a totally different place than they were a 1000 years ago, in a relative (to their respective time) sense they are VERY similiar. It is very similiar to the classic bell curve used in grading. The center of one instructors curve may be at 50% and the center of another instructors curve may be at 70% but the distributions of both curves is (usually) very similar. While the high and low ends of where a society has shifted but there is still a high and low end. Further, the relationships between the high end and the low end of those curves(in the two societies) are virtually identical.

People all throughout history have migrated, if they had not we would all be living in the same place as our ancestors. Look at the Romans they had contact with a huge percentage of the world (70%?). Look at the Vikings, all of northern Europe and North America. The Muslims controlled most of Continental Europe for a time. I have no idea where you get the idea that early peoples did not interact with other societies. Even when you look at Native Americans there is evidence that there was trading going on from north to south and east to west. People do not and never have live in isolation. For good, bad, or otherwise we wander around.

A migration, is a slow transference of an entire community. Most people grew up never having experienced a migration.

For the ancient societies to be the equivalent of today's society, most communities wouldn't migrate at all. Instead, most family members would scatter in different directions, and then be settled there for a period. They'd form new families with whoever was around and within a generation, most of those families would scatter again.

Within 2 or 3 generations most communities would lose the remnants of most family lines.

Would you say that is an accurate description of how nearly all the human race conducted itself for the 7500 years following 6000BC?

I don't recall any history texts that gave that account. Nor does that match up with the couple thousand years of genealogical records that reflect communities that were stationary and populated with folks that died in the towns they were born into.

Perhaps you have different sources that show that the ancient world really was a mirror of the modern one?

NV
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In my perfect religion, a giant hole appears and sucks up all the lousy people.
I call it the Crapture.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_migration

You are looking at this as an all or nothing situation and it is not. Often the eldest sons stayed home and continued as their parents did. The younger sons went out into the world and started their own families. Sometimes this was done just down the road and sometimes it was MUCH farther. So yes, many people died in the towns that they were born in, but not all. You still see this to this day.

Another example is the black Irish:

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish

Specifically looking at the Iberian connection. Genetically we see the connection but socially you would be hard pressed to see it. When a small number of people move (migrated) into a larger population they do(and almost always have) get socially absorbed by the larger population. This is not a new phenomenon nor an isolated one. Another easy example is what we generally consider as Mexicans. They are not Spanish. They are not Native American. They are a mix of multiple blood lines and multiple cultures. When the Romans conquered an area they recruited soldiers from the defeated armies(and any other warm body around). When those legions returned home, those soldiers(and their blood lines) returned to Rome and were absorbed into the population.

I think you are trying to say that the emigration that occurred to the US in the 1800s and 1900s, where cohesive groups of people stuck together, is the norm for emigration. History show that this is not the way it generally works. Romans, Muslims, Turks, French, Vikings, Spanish, Dutch, are just a few that I can think of off the top of my head that did not follow this pattern. In all these cases a relatively small number came into an area and integrated with the existing society. I think the major difference in how much influence this "mixing" effected the existing societies is mostly dependent on ratios. In the case of Mexico you can see a huge Spanish influence in the society. For the most part this can be accounted for by the large amount of the native population that was killed off from disease and unfortunately treatment. On the other hand without looking at architecture it is really hard to see much of the Muslim influence (in the past) on continental Europe.