Re: Re: language of contempt
On Jun 5, 2006, at 6:43 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
Doug Henwood wrote: >
but isn’t the standard line that men want to be sure any kids are theirs and not some other guy’s, or they won’t stick around to support them?
This would only come into practice in the last 4000 years or so, with the development of a social surplus controlled by a ‘ruling class’ of distinct lineages through which property (control over a laboring popualtion) is allocated. At most one could push this back to fully developed neolithic village culture. It could hardly be relevant to a band of homo heidelbergensis. And we are now dealing with ideology, which presupposes a historical development of conditions which the ideology develops to make sense of. And we don’t have any historical and/or archaeological evidence of when and under what conditions symbolic behavior became complex enough to embody ideological traditions.
Hey don’t blame me, I think it’s all nonsense.
When our delightful little Ivan was born, a couple of people glossed
the frequent observation that he looks like me by saying “it’s
genetic” - to guarantee I won’t run off with a showgirl or something.
So this perception has apparently deeply infected the common sense of
sophisticated secular urbanites.
Doug