Richard
https://www.goodreads.com/hallzen
“The more we reflect on this state, the more convinced we shall be that it was the least subject of any to revolutions, the best for man, and that nothing could have drawn him out of it but some fatal accident, which, for the public good, should never have happened. The example of the savages, most of whom have been found in this condition, seems to confirm that mankind was formed ever to remain in it, that this condition is the real youth of the world, and that all ulterior improvements have been so many steps, in appearance towards the perfection of individuals, but in fact towards”
― The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
― The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
“Kroeber did not just deny that social behavior could be explained by innate properties of minds. He denied that it could be explained by any properties of minds. A culture, he wrote, is superorganic—it floats in its own universe, free of the flesh and blood of actual men and women: “Civilization is not mental action but a body or stream of products of mental exercise…. Mentality relates to the individual. The social or cultural, on the other hand, is in its essence non-individual. Civilization as such begins only where the individual ends.”29”
― The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
― The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Richard’s 2025 Year in Books
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