Fw: Re: Organic or Constructed / an aside (Wilson's Question)

What do you all think about Wilson’s question? It seems promising as something that figures into both world historical and world systemic explanations of human activity? How would we bring to bear these other inputs and causal explanations in answering this question? …

The question he asks is a valid one; and I myself would love to see your answers to it. So if you could post some responses, contact me, and/or email Wilson separately with your replies, we both like it very much. Another poster came out with an initial answer …

… but what I’m wondering is, if in light of WST and WH, there’s something to add or some other added factors to consider in the explanation for it.

Very good question. Would you mind if I forward it to my own list and share it with a few other people? Your question here would be a good way of engaging a number of different fields; and it would be neat on this matter to get an idea of what world systems thinkers and world historians think about it.

Just let me know. Thanks

Luke

Wilson <ojibiwe@yahoo.com> wrote:

Luke, y'all, et al.

Reading Luke's post, the questions he was asking, prompted one of my own.

Has anyone else wondered about the seeming coincidence of the broadening application of fossil fuels and the beginning of the parabolic growth of human population on Earth? The idea is that these two points started c.1800 A.D.

Thank you in advance,

Wilson.

Luke Rondinaro <larondin@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Longwaves List,

My name is Luke Rondinaro and I make occasional contributions to the World Systems Network here on CSF and the H-World forum (on MSU’s H-Net). Michael Alexander has responded to some of my material on WSN during the past year-and-a-half. I’ve been subscribed to Longwaves since last Summer.

I have a question that maybe you here on the Longwaves List could take a stab at. When I look at this forum and WSN, I see a definite emphasis on economics and long cycles couched in terms of investment, business, and personal finance. But in World History (and World Systems Theory - as it relates to World History), the emphasis is on large-scale patterns taking place on the level of global and regional scope. In other words, we’re looking at macro-societal trends of the socioeconomic.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse (particularly for any Longwavers like MA who’ve also seen my stuff on WSN), but what’s the fundamental basis of economics and the longwave? Are they just part of a money game we play in human communities (i.e., purely a social construct with no basis in innate human behavior) or are they part of a grander process taking place between the natural drives of human behavior and the dynamics of the physical/social environment [in which we use commodities, share, accumulate, & produce]? Is economics just a great big game of Monopoly that we’re able to play based on shared social conventions and the fact that it is a social construct or is the economy itself, in fact, one aspect of a greater organic operation taking place in human affairs over time?

Obviously, we’re socialized into the economic system our societies are a part of; and so economic activity on the part of people in that context is learned and not innate. But, in general and on the level of a person’s individual economic choices and activities, is economics actually organic (that is, a function of a person’s nature and behavior that works - not by mere social convention, socialization into it, or the command of governmental officials or bankers making adjustments to it – (but) by our being programmed for it when we interact with the human and material world around us)?

I’d love to have your input on these questions.

Best!

Luke Rondinaro