Cultural baggage, for the lack of a better word, drives how we tend to approach reality (holistically or by dividing and classifying things, monistically or dualistically, materialistically or idealistically, and so on), and reality includes the very thing under discussion (consciousness, culture).
Shared cultural baggage is perhaps the thing that makes us believe another being is conscious (i.e., shares similar aspects of self-awareness). Shared culture manifests itself in an infinity of fine details of one’s behaviour; looking like a human but not behaving like a human can be a great horror movie trope, depending on how carefully shared culture is violated[0].
This carries over to animals, to a degree. A dog is social to an extent that many would consider it conscious. An octopus is legally recognised as sentient in some countries—thanks to it behaving in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of ourselves. Same reason we call ravens smart.
Most humans anywhere on the planet, though, share enough cultural baggage that we do not question whether others have what we consider consciousness; though I think some people are more sensitive to how much shared cultural baggage another human possesses, the small lack of which could lead to fear, cautiousness, and/or a feeling that they are in some ways subhuman (closer than a dog, but not as human as their peers in local community) relative to them, which eventually contributes to exclusion, racism, and so on (well demonstrated in both Japan and parts of the US).
[0] Arguably, “behaving sufficiently like a human while being not human at all”, which we have plenty of examples of now in the last year or two, is another such trope.
Majority of people are sleep-walking as machines driven by imitation, habit and external forces. We live in a dreamlike, mechanical state lacking the awareness of this itself. apropos: Gurdjieff
Are they rote-students imitating or copying memes and as such are driven by inadequate-ideas or are they students who understand the subject from its first assumptions and as such are driven by adequate-ideas. In the quote above, the suggestion is that majority are rote-students.
Even if someone never becomes sufficiently interested to dig deeper into some academic subject and sticks to imitating, I wouldn’t say they are somehow worse and have no awareness. They may have other interests and joys in life, there’s many fulfilling things outside academia. Why would you expect everybody to be like you?
Which can, of course, be random, self-reinforcing, etc.
Culture, by and large, isn't random nor arbitrary. Culture is obviously influenced by the past and the environment, but it's mostly artificially created by the elites. Once established it is self-reinforcing.
> Of course, why and how we converge on those norms is mysterious, and the anthropologists, the psychologists, and etc. can have a go at explaining those parts. I can't.
It's not mysterious. Monkey see, monkey do. We see the higher ups do it and we mimic. Or we are told this is how we do things and we obey. This applies to nations, corporations and families.
What is your epistemological basis for this claim? Any proof of this?
And just for extreme clarity note: at no point have I made a claim yet
Materialism is a theory, not a reality, but its adherents can't tell the difference.
Unfortunately there are quite a few things of that nature. In no case does it justify blindly picking one of the options and then following up with bold claims based on an arbitrary assumption.
Therefore excluding “materialist way of looking at stuff” from the question of social theory
I have still yet to hear any elucidation with any type of philosophical rigor of why about the questions of humanity should exclude materialist lenses
Further, at no point was there a epistemological foundation laid for the claim that consciousness is the foundation apriori from materialism
"Be not arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned, for the limits of skill are not attainable."
This is not unique to Germany, of course. We long ago gave up on the four humours theory. We long ago gave up on burning women who wear pants. We long ago gave up of many things that used to be European culture.
The culture of queuing in Japan works because you are looked down upon if you don't participate and because it is better than the random stuff we do in the West. However, it would probably disappear pretty soon if it wasn't also a good solution.