Here in Europe most people are indeed worried that the candidate who is a convicted felon and wears orange makeup will become president again. Have his fans all forgotten he mainly played golf, praised dictators and created tax cuts for the superrich? But there is also a bit of hope that a woman will stop him this time. A hundred years ago there was already a group in America that hated Blacks and immigrants. As Timothy Egan writes in his book "A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them" one of the Ku Klux Klan leaders was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson. He was eventually brought down by a woman, Madge Oberholtzer, who would reveal his cruelties, and whose testimony stopped the Klan. When Europe fell into darkness, America was able to stop the con man. I hope it can do it again. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558306/a-fever-in-the-heartland-by-timothy-egan/-J. -------- Original message --------From: Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com> Date: 10/30/24 10:54 PM (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Evolutionary transitions between egalitarian and despotic societies Hi, Jochen, Not sarcastic. It was to show the exploratory nature of such models. I do believe that the most mysterious feature of charisma is the behavior of the charasmees. However this election turns out, almost half the country is about to willingly offer up it's political autonomy to a potential dictator. Whatever my faults, I try, try, TRY not to do sarcasm. I do wonder if we could build models that explore under what circumstances it is better for everybody to do SOMETHING then to take the time to pool information and do the right thing. In general evolutionary history has no actual power to constrain our present behavior. Our behavior is constrainted by present events and present behavioral repertoire. Nick On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 2:37 PM Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net> wrote:In her book "The Social Instinct" Nichola Raihani mentions in chapter 17 the article "An evolutionary model explaining the Neolithic transition from egalitarianism to leadership and despotism" from Simon T. Powers as a model how despotic regimes and dominance hierarchies have evolved in early human societies.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2014.1349It reminds me of our recent discussion triggered by Nick's (sarcastic?) proposal to explain parts of the MAGA movement in terms of evolutionary psychology. Simon T. Powers is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the University of Sterlinghttps://www.stir.ac.uk/people/2013555A more recent article from him about "Modelling transitions between egalitarian, dynamic leader and absolutist power structures" can be found herehttps://www.stir.ac.uk/research/hub/publication/2041639-J.-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ -- Nicholas S. ThompsonEmeritus Professor of Psychology and EthologyClark Universitynthompson@clarku.eduhttps://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
