Jukka Aakula’s Reviews > Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create > Status Update

Excellent discussion on family. E.g., "A matrilineal society is not a matriarchy. The fact that descent is traced through mothers does not put them in power. In matrilineal societies, as in other lineage societies, ultimate political authority is the prerogative of senior men. So, in political terms, it would be more appropriate to say that children become members of their mother’s brothers’ group."

"There is one domain, however, where this retreat from animism and anthropomorphism still meets considerable resistance, and that is human behavior. When we try to explain why people do what they do, our natural inclination is to see them as persons.

...That is just as wrong for a SCIENCE of people as for science of rivers. There is of course nothing wrong in treating people as persons when we INTERACT with them."

Sometimes you read a book when you are not quite ready for the book yet.

I started that's why to reread this book after 1) understanding finally the tools of making cooperation work well enough (after 40 years of reading on the subject, making simulations etc.) and 2) reading the other book by Boyer "Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens: Essays in Evolutionary Cognitive Anthropology".

One interesting question discussed in this book is why we talk so much about values and intentions instead of the results and efficiency of the politics. Seeing values as the central question of politics is very problematic. Conflicts in values then transform politics from a non-zero sum game to a zero-sum game.