The survival skills of Helena Valero

https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/the-survival-skills-of-helena-valero

by paulpauper • 2 years ago

91 30 2 years ago

woodfromeden.substack.com

From Internet Archive:

Yanoáma: The Story of Helena Valero, a Girl Kidnapped by Amazonian Indians as told to Ettore Biocca (1996, translated from the Italian by Dennis Rhodes)

https://archive.org/details/yanoamastoryofhe0000vale/mode/1u...

jonathaneunice• 2 years ago

The scarcest resource [in primitive society] wasn't food. It was protection.

Interesting meta-claim.

hbarka• 2 years ago

Not so different from modern society. Safety == freedom.

tmtvl• 2 years ago

Now that's an interesting perspective, it makes me think of the (A)GPL and Free compared to Open Source software.

underlipton• 2 years ago

Her insights into a primitive (sic) society is worth more than that of the vast majority of anthropologists, for one simple reason: Helena was there for real, as a member of those societies. She didn't only study stone age life. She lived it.

This reminded me of Zora Neale Hurston, who had taken a similar approach when studying the history and practice of voodoo in Haiti and Jamaica.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/claimin...

arter• 2 years ago

I can't help it but I do not trust many of the told events here. Some of the events have as much twists and turns as a childish cartoon show. I can understand people killing for revenge but someone finding reason for revenge because a toddler took a piece of meat to eat and that led to a dead dog just seems so insane to me. Insane because these same people are capable of hunting, socializing and crafting stuff which definetely require intelligence. Yet the leaps of logic and reason they make to put the blame on someone to exact revenge on are enormous. Maybe it is all true but I cannot comprehend it.

numbsafari• 2 years ago

Have you looked at “our” political discourse?

lovich2• 2 years ago

The concept of zero had to be invented. Inferential logic appears to be a meme that spread early in our development but isn’t an instinctual behavior from our dna.

Without memetic viral ideas like civilization we are very close to our other ape relatives like chimpanzees who live similar to this, in that they live very in the moment with a highly volatile social dynamic. It’s not outside the realm of reason that some random tribe/s of humanity didn’t pick up intellectual technologies that we assume are big standard because of how widespread they are in our civilization.

That being said, I’d also not trust this 100% given the lack of sourcing or veracity and how many human opinions are interjected, I just wanted to point out that the story is plausible

lovich2• 2 years ago

Too late to edit, I meant “bog standard” and not “big standard”

Ifkaluva• 2 years ago

I think the thing to note is that both of her primary partners were chiefs. I think such high-ranking men are probably not representative of the typical Yanomamo man. Rising to the top of such groups likely requires a good deal of psychopathy. A measure of charm, but also a reputation for intolerance of sleights, volatility, and gratuitous violence. The article also explains that she didn't accept any husband except the two men that explicitly threatened to kill her if she refused--so in a sense she was indirectly selecting for this type of man.

An interesting read on this topic is the very book being dissed in the article--Napoleon Chagnon's "Noble Savages". According to this article, Chagnon met the Yanomamo in a state more exposed to our civilization, but even then many of the high-ranking men come across exactly as I described above: charming when they want, but volatile and gratuitously violent. Two episodes from the book stand out in my memory.

- A chief encounters two young men from a rival clan. They are nervous because of this man's reputation, but he calls out to them and offers them food, charms them and puts them at ease. Then he walks behind them and kills them. In his opinion, this is hilarious.

- A man suddenly believes his wife has cheated on him. He drags her out by her hair, punches and kicks her head repeatedly. Chagnon is aghast and almost intervenes. I don't recall whether the woman survives.

fxtentacle• 2 years ago

I also believe that in a sense she was indirectly selecting for this type of man. The article also mentions that she refused the one man where she found the threat to be unconvincing, which kind of suggests that in contrast, her two "accepted" husbands had made even more convincing murder threats.

inglor_cz5• 2 years ago

"I think such high-ranking men are probably not representative of the typical Yanomamo man. Rising to the top of such groups likely requires a good deal of psychopathy. "

It is not at all that clear to me. The thing with psychopathy at least. We have about 15 per cent of psychopaths up there (compared to the societal average of 1 per cent). Contrary to the general myth, even most high-ranking Nazis were paper-pushing conformists rather than psychopaths like Oskar Dirlewanger. Would the Amerindian society fare very differently?

First, the groups are relatively small. 100 to 150 persons at most, not a whole country like Weimar Germany. Given high mortality and the fact that women didn't become chiefs, your purely numeric chance of becoming a chief was reasonably high if you lived to be 35 or so, just from the fact that you lived and had a lot of valuable experience (in an illiterate society, the elders are a vital knowledge source). Also, this was a fission-fusion society: smaller groups separated under their own chiefs, went their own way, then came back and fused for some time again. Which opened some positions of "junior chiefs" to prove themselves.

Too much eagerness to engage in violence will likely get you killed at a younger age. Serious injuries amount to death in the forest, and even many lighter ones. If you really "optimize for max violence", odds are that you will be killed soon. You cannot win every battle, and some of the deaths described by Valero were basically murders from behind.

There was certainly luck involved, but also a mix of other attributes, including your ability to fight. But it is not clear to me that psychopaths would have a decisive advantage. It is fundamentally physically dangerous to be a violent psychopath in a society with zero healthcare.

cm2012• 2 years ago

That kind of motivated reasoning is pretty common in history and today. Look at the Salem witch trials, how Jews have been scapegoated throughout history, etc.

thaumasiotes4• 2 years ago

Try looking at the problem from the other direction:

One of your favorite dogs just died. You need to punish someone for this. Who will it be?

Your options are:

(1) The toddler who fed the dog something that it choked on;

(2) The woman of your household who allowed the toddler to do that; or

(3) Any random person who has absolutely no connection to the events.

All three options look plausible to me, but in particular there's nothing ridiculous about picking (2).

krisoft3• 2 years ago

I don't think we have to look that deep into this. Fusiwe was a man with a short fuse and bad decisions. His dog died, he got frustrated and he snapped at someone. Helena was the one who he happened to hit. I don't think it was likely to be the result of some complicated calculation.

Similarly the article is asking the question "Why did Helena succeed?" Undeniable all the factors they list are true. She was intelligent, perceptive, sociable, made friends, and calculated risks in her life. But the other very important factor is that she was lucky. Perhaps the most important factor. There are thousands and thousand of other alternate histories where we don't hear about her because the jaguar got her, or the poison arrow kills her, or an infection kills her, or Fusiwe hits her on the head instead on the arm and kills her instantly.

xorcist• 2 years ago

While I share your sentiment of not putting too much trust in a single source, I find that particular story complete believable.

It is common display of power, to force everyone to have to accept a post facto explanation for something either directly or indirectly violent. The actual explanation doesn't have to make sense, it exists solely to project power. It's not too far from several contemporary political events.

AnthonBerg• 2 years ago

I have personal experience with people who behave like this. These same behavioral patterns, this same sort of thinking / interpreting the world. The level of violence was different by degree, barely contained by law, by what is commonly accepted, and by visibility.

It so happens that in this case there was a long-time cocaine abuser and addict who I believe also might have traumatic brain injury. Cocaine and traumatic brain injury have a severe impact on the inflammatory response in the central nervous system – increasing inflammation – which is also behavior-modifying, increasing aggression. Environmental stress also has a similar effect on the brain and behavior.

It’s easy to notice multiple examples of severe head injury in the story. Social and environmental stress is severe as well. (I don’t think cocaine is involved; I mention cocaine in the context because it’s something that’s available in our modern enviroment which causes brain inflammation, cognitive impairment, and violence. These effects are provided by other things in the story.)

In the story I also recognize the violent and “dream logic”-like elements from the onset of dementia. I’m sure that hardships such as these people live in will bring about dementia-like effects and alterations. Bodies wear out, and the brain is part of the body. It is not the fundamental nature of the brain to wear out in silence and grace.

These behaviors are all in our nature. All of them. It’s just a question of latent tendencies, of impairment, and what sort of survival mode is brought about by which sort of environment.

(There is science on the claims I make here. There are papers out on this. Google Scholar suggestions: neuroinflammation + aggression + cytokine, cocaine + tbi + cytokine, cocaine + neuronflammation. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) in particular is an interesting cytokine with profound roles.

There are also parallels with malignant narcissism and the lack of object constancy. “Lack of object constancy” is specific and almost technical. Haphazard take on that: Reasons for senseless actions are not necessarily derived from the grounded reality of memory. Rather, sometimes with humans the reasons for violence are on-the-fly ad-hoc justifications fully experienced as memories by the person, generated “live” by, say, fear and anger and the hunger for power and dominance.

My apologies for not supplying actual citations. I wish I had the oomph. I appeal to your curiosity.)

revert_to_test• 2 years ago

This isn't about intelligence, this is about how you view other people. And what are your beliefs about emotion control - is it your responsibility to control yourself, or is it others people responsibility to not make you angry.

Anecdote : your comment striked me, as I was in almost the same situation (but with dead chicken, instead of dog) and my family member, very intelligent, highly respected engineer screamed at the child and hit the mother because "It was their fault". And this was one of the more "sane" reasons for their abuse.

MichaelRo2• 2 years ago

I think I read this sort of "Fusiwe" tribesman story before but can't remember where. Anyway, the level of retardness is unbelievable. I dunno if anyone gave these guys an IQ test or if it's at all possible to conceive one for them but they are definitely not in the "average 100" range. More like 70-60, way smarter than any animal but too stupid to foresee consequences.

> Fusiwe located the Pishaanseteri and promised to kill the first man he encountered. That man turned out to be an old friend of his, a young man who had brought Fusiwe's family a lot of game in the hope of marrying some daughter that any of the wives would give birth to. The young man had parted with Fusiwe in grief when the group split. Nonetheless, Fusiwe chose to kill his former friend, because he happened to be the first Pishaanseteri he saw.

Add being a psychopath in addition to severely mentally challenged and you got the perfect combination.

inglor_cz5• 2 years ago

I don't see how this is reflective of low IQ.

Ancient mythologies all around the world are full of stories of heroes whose oaths have turned on them. Heck, even Tolkien included the Oath of Fëanor in his mythology, and Fëanor and his sons were no morons.

Boasting or tempting fate seems to be a common disease of males everywhere, and in a premodern society, your word is basically your only property and value. Breaking it is bad, similar to getting thrown into Alcatraz and having all your property confiscated bad.

MichaelRo2• 2 years ago

So .. someone steals from your garden and instead of investigating who is the culprit you decide killing a random person, first random person that you stumble upon? Well, that should send a message but still, first random person that you meet is an old friend and ally, one that has helped you in the past, can investigate in the present who's actually behind those ransackings and will definitely be a valuable asset in the future. Yet you keep true to the "oat" and kill him. Brilliant move, genius!

> Ancient mythologies all around the world are full of stories of heroes whose oaths have turned on them

First those are dreamed up facts and not the real world, are you aware? Secondly, the "heroes" in that ancient world are a lot closer to "much muscle little brain" typology than such as Euclid and Einstein.

And who the fuck is Fëanor? Some made up fantasy guy? Yeah, that definitely proves your point!

scotty79• 2 years ago

I think this neatly illustrates why intelligence occurred in humans. Looking at other species we might see that intelligence isn't particularly useful in struggle against environment, it's not greatly important, above certain level neither for predators nor prey. It's more economical to invest in other stuff than abstract intelligence.

But when you have dense populations where individuals pose more threat to each other than other things threaten them with outside pressure of mildly dangerous environment that forces the population into groups despite that you just bound to end up with self referential highly advanced reasoning.

In such environment there is a selective pressure to develop brains capable of modelling other brains in order to survive and keep your offspring alive. But as your brain gets smarter and more capable so do the brains you are trying to model.

This causes tight (rather pathological in the context of living things in general) feedback loop that doesn't develop when predator and prey are of different species.

So it really wasn't diet, or tool use or verticality, or brain facial air cooling. It was mostly just that murderous species bread to the point of being its worst enemy.

The survival skills of Helena Valero

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