What is human nature?

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: Re: What is human nature?

Precisely what is it that's giving me the niggling feeling we're headed backward as a species?

Let me get this straight: George W. Bush was just re-elected by the largest voter turnout in U.S. history, having failed at virtually every measure by which one can judge a leader, and having been caught on film, staring into space like a stunned squirrel for seven minutes after being told that the country of which he had schemed to become commander-in-chief was undergoing an attack of which he had been warned and had done nothing to prevent. And you have a niggling feeling that we're headed backward as a species.

I don't have a clue why you're feeling that, CV. Does that make me presidential?

 

[shereads]

I think the same is true with the rest of creation. We're slowly learning respect. I think you can get a pretty good feel for a person's intelligence by gauging their empathy for other creatures.

---dr.M.

True, our social values are evolving. Until the author of "Black Beauty" started the movement that led to the creation of the Humane Society, people routinely ignored public beatings of cart horses. Animals were worked to death and discarded, and there was no social outrage. At least now we insist that it happen out of our sight.

I think we're struggling with social reform as we are with technology; since the industrial age, so much is changing so fast that we don't know what to accept and what to reject. If homo habilis really did make the same style of stone axe for half a million years, they can't have been big fans of change but they were survivors. We've been here a fraction as long, so there's reason to wonder if we've made a world we aren't equipped to survive. I wondered when I was seven, and skeptical about the value of the "duck-and-cover" defense against a nuclear attack.

Think how far we had come from whacking each other with sticks to inventing songs that would cheer up our children in the event that they were about to be flash-fried by an enemy tribe! No wonder we're all so nervous.

I think what's happening in the U.S. right now is a last-gasp rejection of social change. There are segments of society that are threatened by all sorts of change; if they can't turn back technology, they welcome the promise to turn back social changes that took them down a notch. And there are the Cheneys and Bushes for whom social change is an obstacle to power and an unwelcome challenge to their supremacy. Both groups were offended by the anti-war movement, Civil Rights, and changing gender roles in the bedroom and the workplace. I'd like to think that this is their last hurrah; that social progress is at least as difficult to reverse as technology. But there's nothing in our history that offers an answer.

Maybe cockroaches planned all this as an elaborate practical joke. My dog is certainly enjoying it at my expense. She carries Squeaky President Bush's Head around all the time now.

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is human nature?

Does that make me presidential?

Yes. Even if not, that still should.

And:
Comas are rare phenomena. They're a byproduct of modern living, with almost no known coma patients existing prior to World War Two. People simply died. Comas are as modern as polyester, jet travel, and microchips.

Then:
Dreams have no negative. This is to say that if, during the day, you think about how much you don't want to visit Mexico, your dreams at night will promptly take you to Mexico City. Your body will ignore the 'no' and only pay attention to the main subject. I think we thought daily of avoiding tribulations - and of avoiding loss.

Moreover:
Most people don't learn things along the way. Or if they do, they conveniently forget those things when it suits their need. Most people, given a second chance, fuck it up completely. It's one of those laws of the universe that you can't shake. People, I have noticed, only seem to learn once they get their third chance - after losing and wasting vast sums of time, money, youth, and energy - you name it. But still they learn, which is the better thing in the end.

Plus:
America is so new that it dream only of what the embryo knows.

 

[cantdog]

One's impression of humanity hinges on one's own spiritual progress.

The wise lament neither for the living nor the dead, Krishna tells Arjuna (Chapter two, verse 11, Bhagavad Gita). The Wheel gives you all the time in the world, and a life is but an episode.

The last shall be first, Christ tells them all. With an Afterlife, you can relax when evil is done. God'll deal with them in due time. Judgement is mine, saith the LORD.

But there is no God.

Merely realizing that one's species commits atrocity upon atrocity for any reason and for none is not sufficient.

In my view.

 

[shereads]

There were comas. They looked like death, so we invented the wake. In Savannah, Georgia and other places decimated by cholera a couple of centuries ago, fear of contagion led to the practice of burying the dead-ish as soon as they seemed, well, dead. With no wake to help guard against being buried alive, the wealthy were buried with access to bell-pulls so they could ring for help if they woke up underground. According to the guide on our Ghost Tour, a few bells rang in the cemetery but no one was dug up.

Comas: never a good thing, but better now than then.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I think there's reason for hope.

Humans evolve through their culture faster than we evolve biologically, and culture is often more influential in shaping who and what we are than our biology. Culture tells you what's right and wrong and who you are.

The evolution of culture over the past few hundred years shows a growing sense of empathy between us and the rest of creation. It wasn't that long ago that we considered other people to be fair game for extermination because they weren't really human. The idea that blacks and Indians and even women were just as human as white European males was pretty revolutionary, and still is to some people.

I think the same is true with the rest of creation. We're slowly learning respect. I think you can get a pretty good feel for a person's intelligence by gauging their empathy for other creatures.

---dr.M.

I have to agree with you on that, Doc. Even many of the comments on this thread seem to be saying the same thing. The extermination of the dodo, the Carolina parakeet, the black malmo and, although it wasn't mentioned, the passenger pigeon, happened long ago. Decimation of the American bison and the overfishing mentioned happened in the 19th century or before. What are we doing now? Going to great lengths and expense to preserve endangered species. Leaving large areas of land fallow and undeveloped because they are the habitat for burrowing owls. Putting up with heavyl osses of livestock in order to preserve bears, pumas and wolves.

Racism and Sexism have never been practiced solely by white males of European descent. Most cultures have traditionally considered females to be inferior, even sub-human, and fit only to serve men. Most tribes or nations or races have considered members of other tribes or nations or races to be inferior and therefore proper targets for oppression or victimization.

 

[shereads]

What are we doing now? Going to great lengths and expense to preserve endangered species. Leaving large areas of land fallow and undeveloped because they are the habitat for burrowing owls. Putting up with heavyl osses of livestock in order to preserve bears, pumas and wolves.

We were, until recently, making progress in cleaning the air and water. We've made precious little progress in trying to slow the tide of species extinction. There are tens of successes, and the number of failures can't even be charted. In the rain forests alone it's estimated that dozens of undiscovered species - some that might have held disease cures - are being destroyed on a weekly basis. We attempt to restore things like the Everglades and natural predators only when we learn - usually too late - that there was a benefit to us in the way things were. Predators kept the populations of other animals healthy by weeding out the sick and weak; the natural flow of fresh water from the Everglades to the sea was responsible for South Florida's weather patterns and provided the precise, seasonal salt/fresh water mix that made Florida Bay and the Keys a nursery for every kind of seafood. Gestures like the ones you mention here are only that; we have repeatedly failed to restore ecosystems to healthy balance, because we thought of them as plots of land with political borders that could be protected as national parks. We failed to plan for animal migrations and waterflow; politically, no one is willing to promote a healthy ratio of predators to prey animals in the American west. The Everglades and the Yellowstone Eco-System are museum relics, artificially manipulated and as dependent on us as your city zoo. Floridians are warned not to eat fish caught in the Everglades because the mercury content is now sufficient to cause birth defects. I recently heard the same warning about farm-raised salmon and popular ocean fish like tuna. Think about that: freely roaming animals in the open ocean are exposed to enough pollutants that pregnant women are advised to avoid them.

It's too soon - and too late - to congratulate ourselves for our sudden environmental awareness. Many of the species we don't decimate with our greed for cheap fuel, exotic lumber and places to dump unprocessed waste, global warming will take care of. Everybody but the Heritage Foundation predicts that 1/3 of the plant and animal speces with which we are familiar - forget the ones yet to be named and studied - will not survive another 40 years of global warming.

Racism and Sexism have never been practiced solely by white males of European descent.

Did you guys get colonized by another culture, and did they send missionaries to make your religion more amenable to subservience, and were entire populations of white males of European descent exterminated to make room for the expansion of someone else's civilizatiion? Those chapters were missing from my pathetic public-school history books.

 

[gauchecritic]

What's your own theory about human nature? Is violence without any apparent motive really an abberrant behavior? Or is violence inherent to our nature, and something we work to overcome?

Two words, one provided already by Alpaca: emergence and the other: balance.

An emergent society, idea, sense, intelligence or extelligence (societal intelligence) must by definition be constantly changing or evolving. We live in an emergent society. A stable or stultified society quickly dies. (eg Roman empire)

Any society must have balance. Balance, however stable, is not passive, it is always dynamic. You can't know good without evil, yin must have its yang, only through war can you know peace, yadda yadda yadda.

So, in order that society fulfil its definition it has to grow (be emergent) then it has to be stable and in balance with itself.

All organisms consume other organisms. Back when you had to input games by hand on your computer (usually in basic) there was a demonstration of a mathematical/biological concept called something like Fox and Geese.

Fox eat geese. The demo started with equal populations of fox and geese. The little pixel foxes would eat the pixel geese and their community would grow, until there weren't enough geese to go round. Then the foxes would die out and the geese would flourish until their community was large enough to support a larger number of foxes, which then proceeded to kill off the geese and so it went. Dynamic balance.

Modern society has largely eliminated the need to kill off other organisms and also eliminated the necessary die back thus caused.

So what we now have (and must have learned a long time ago, inately) is a self inflicted balance which produces amongst other things intollerance. Because if you tollerate everything, that is to say take no action against things which threaten extelligence, then not only you but your society will die, with no hope of your many predators (human, animal, bacteriological etc) dying back because of the loss.

 

[Guest]

My ten bucks.

Perdita

 

[Boxlicker101]

Did you guys get colonized by another culture, and did they send missionaries to make your religion more amenable to subservience, and were entire populations of white males of European descent exterminated to make room for the expansion of someone else's civilizatiion? Those chapters were missing from my pathetic public-school history books.

As a matter of fact, yes. Parts of Europe, including Great Britain, were conquered by Persians, Carthaginians, Romans, Germans, Normans, French, Huns, Tatars, Mongols, Ottoman Turks, Russians, British, and others. Frequently these conquests involved enslavement and imposition of the conquerors religion. Your history books must have been sadly lacking.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: What is human nature?

Gauche:

Have we really achieved a self-imposed balance? Or just the illusion of one? An epidemic of Swine Flu killed more people in a few months than than died in WWI. Resistent bacteria strains are already outpacing the discovery of new antibiotics. HIV, ebola and the occasional news-making mutant virus seem to be proof that nature has surprises in store.

Two words, one provided already by Alpaca: emergence and the other: balance.

An emergent society, idea, sense, intelligence or extelligence (societal intelligence) must by definition be constantly changing or evolving. We live in an emergent society. A stable or stultified society quickly dies. (eg Roman empire)

Any society must have balance. Balance, however stable, is not passive, it is always dynamic. You can't know good without evil, yin must have its yang, only through war can you know peace, yadda yadda yadda.

So, in order that society fulfil its definition it has to grow (be emergent) then it has to be stable and in balance with itself.

All organisms consume other organisms. Back when you had to input games by hand on your computer (usually in basic) there was a demonstration of a mathematical/biological concept called something like Fox and Geese.

Fox eat geese. The demo started with equal populations of fox and geese. The little pixel foxes would eat the pixel geese and their community would grow, until there weren't enough geese to go round. Then the foxes would die out and the geese would flourish until their community was large enough to support a larger number of foxes, which then proceeded to kill off the geese and so it went. Dynamic balance.

Modern society has largely eliminated the need to kill off other organisms and also eliminated the necessary die back thus caused.

So what we now have (and must have learned a long time ago, inately) is a self inflicted balance which produces amongst other things intollerance. Because if you tollerate everything, that is to say take no action against things which threaten extelligence, then not only you but your society will die, with no hope of your many predators (human, animal, bacteriological etc) dying back because of the loss.

 

[shereads]

As a matter of fact, yes. Parts of Europe, including Great Britain, were conquered by Persians, Carthaginians, Romans, Germans, Normans, French, Huns, Tatars, Mongols, Ottoman Turks, Russians, British, and others. Frequently these conquests involved enslavement and imposition of the conquerors religion. Your history books must have been sadly lacking.

Yes, and they were written and published by white guys of European descent. If the Ottomon Turks had written them, there might have been a different slant.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Human nature?

If we're to say that nature is everything (mechanics, determination, etc.), then its entirely human nature to do everything that humans do. But, I don't guess that's answering the question so much as explaining some of the bounds of it. It can be ordained or just process, but unless we can identify what "human artifice" is, its all natural (even plastic and poetry become products of developed nature).

Personally, I think its natural. The dodo dies because we kill it probably isn't very new to the ecosystem, as a cause-effect. If we get into "well, other species may have been eradicated due to the acts of yet other species, but they didn't do it out of meanness", we have to first establish that "intention" is a significant factor on a truly universal scale. If I step on the last of a rare bug because I decided to just take a walk through the forest, is that unnatural eradication? What if I'm doing it because I'm bored and decided to go running? Food? Panic? Curiosity? At what point does it become a metaphysically significant intention?

May not be one, really.

I will say, I think its part of our nature--assisted by the tools of evolution like intelligence and thumbs--to take the defiance of nature to really strange extremes.

From a broad standpoint, it is remarkable how hard we work, how many natural resources we eat up, and how much of our intellect goes to keeping people alive--despite "nature" trying to kill them. Genetic heard disease, cancer, AIDS, even smallpox. In one sort of view, every advance in medical technology is a defiance of natural selection, where would we be--as a species--had we not developed some things? Would we be using up so many natural resources? There'd be fewer of us, I should think. We'd be stronger, health-wise.

I always wondered why people make such a fuss about a species going extinct, raise hell about the symptoms (like logging companies or pollution), but fail to start at the beginning... we clear-cut forests because we, as a people, need a lot. Less people is less needing. Curing cancer will not create less people.

That's a bit callous, but maybe significant.

 

[shereads]

Welcome back, Joe W. Where have you been?

I agree that overpopulation is at the core of most of our problems. Once the planet became crowded enough that people saw the need to defend their resources - and to take more resources from those who didn't defend them capably, we've been in a race to forestall with new inventions what would easily have been cured with universal acceptance of just one: birth control.

Human nature?

If we're to say that nature is everything (mechanics, determination, etc.), then its entirely human nature to do everything that humans do. But, I don't guess that's answering the question so much as explaining some of the bounds of it. It can be ordained or just process, but unless we can identify what "human artifice" is, its all natural (even plastic and poetry become products of developed nature).

Personally, I think its natural. The dodo dies because we kill it probably isn't very new to the ecosystem, as a cause-effect. If we get into "well, other species may have been eradicated due to the acts of yet other species, but they didn't do it out of meanness", we have to first establish that "intention" is a significant factor on a truly universal scale. If I step on the last of a rare bug because I decided to just take a walk through the forest, is that unnatural eradication? What if I'm doing it because I'm bored and decided to go running? Food? Panic? Curiosity? At what point does it become a metaphysically significant intention?

May not be one, really.

I will say, I think its part of our nature--assisted by the tools of evolution like intelligence and thumbs--to take the defiance of nature to really strange extremes.

From a broad standpoint, it is remarkable how hard we work, how many natural resources we eat up, and how much of our intellect goes to keeping people alive--despite "nature" trying to kill them. Genetic heard disease, cancer, AIDS, even smallpox. In one sort of view, every advance in medical technology is a defiance of natural selection, where would we be--as a species--had we not developed some things? Would we be using up so many natural resources? There'd be fewer of us, I should think. We'd be stronger, health-wise.

I always wondered why people make such a fuss about a species going extinct, raise hell about the symptoms (like logging companies or pollution), but fail to start at the beginning... we clear-cut forests because we, as a people, need a lot. Less people is less needing. Curing cancer will not create less people.

That's a bit callous, but maybe significant.

 

[amicus]

Lurking...

 

[shereads]

Lurking...

I knew you were there, you sly man. I heard you trying to stifle a cough earlier.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Yes, and they were written and published by white guys of European descent. If the Ottomon Turks had written them, there might have been a different slant.

It's a good thing they weren't because history books are written by the victors. If the Turks had been victorious at the Battle of Vienna, we might all be speaking Turkish; the women might all be weiring veils and some of the men would be eunuchs.

 

[shereads]

It's a good thing they weren't because history books are written by the victors. If the Turks had been victorious at the Battle of Vienna, we might all be speaking Turkish; the women might all be weiring veils and some of the men would be eunuchs.

Were there any volunteer eunuchs, I wonder? Any boys who said, "I want to be a castrato with the Viennese Opera when I grow up?"

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Were there any volunteer eunuchs, I wonder? Any boys who said, "I want to be a castrato with the Viennese Opera when I grow up?"

I'm sure if you found someone after a particularly stinging encounter with the opposite sex or after fucking up their life because of their dick willing to vaugely agree after a night of heavy drinking. But they usually aren't so happy in the morning when they find out what happened.

Hmm, human nature. <insert expletive filled rant about the love of slaughter, the ease of committing evil, and the everpresent massive overdoses of complete idiocy>

Okay, that done I'd say the author who best described human nature was Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. And it's not just because I'm a biology freak.


P.S. Yeah, the human environmental record is pretty piss poor, but that's only because humanity is pretty piss poor. They really are most alike to a parasite or virus in their relationship with nature, but I'm sure they'll get the idea some day. Mother Nature can easily survive humanity and can so easily punish us for our arrogance.

 

[shereads]

Yeah, the human environmental record is pretty piss poor, but that's only because humanity is pretty piss poor.

Not entirely true.

The day after tomorrow, for example, there will be a temporary shortage of homeless people at Miami's downtown homeless shelter. Too many volunteers to serve Thanksgiving dinner, and not enough hopeless street people to keep us busy...Well, it's not that exactly. There aren't enough plates. But still, it's heartening that one day a year, there's a waiting list to do good deeds.



Wish me luck! All they need is two or three more street people or a donation of plastic flatware, and I'm in! Good karma for the remainder of the holidays.

 

[gauchecritic]

Re: Re: Re: What is human nature?

Gauche:

Have we really achieved a self-imposed balance? Or just the illusion of one? An epidemic of Swine Flu killed more people in a few months than than died in WWI. Resistent bacteria strains are already outpacing the discovery of new antibiotics. HIV, ebola and the occasional news-making mutant virus seem to be proof that nature has surprises in store.

Now you are asking a different question. Does man have predators? Yes, yes he does, the most unbalancing and persistant one being himself.

The viral predators are simply taking advantage of a ready supply but aren't (so far) nearly virrulent enough to cause a shortage or to unbalance society as a whole.

The balance isn't self imposed, it is part and parcel of the emergent dynamic. Stability without dynamism is the biggest threat. Lying flat on the ground means you won't fall over but everything is out of reach.

 

[amicus]

Somewhat off subject...

I just saw a news report on CNN about the prevalance of HIV in the senior retirement centers in South Florida.

The report said that 1 in 6 over 50 years of age were infected.

The report further added that 39 million people, not sure if that was world-wide or USA, carry the virus and that the 'pandemic' continues.

The report explained by noting that senion women outnumber men by seven to one, seven women for every man in south Florida's senior population.

It said with the advent of Viagra and Cialis (sp) single seniors were continuing a sexual life into their 60's and 70's and were of a generation loathe to use condoms.

Amicus of course blames Franklin Delano for causing the immigration of grandpa's and grandma's to Florida to spend their Social Security checks.

Amicus wonders about all the grandkids not having the benefit of an 'elder' in the house hold...but then again, with working mothers and latchkey kids, half of whom have no fathers, I guess it doesn't matter anyway...

(amicus grins and smiles at shereads for her noticing the 'lurker' amoungst us)

http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=171925

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1413731007/reviews/202-3273501-3819824

regards... amicus...

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: Re: What is human nature?

Now you are asking a different question. Does man have predators? Yes, yes he does, the most unbalancing and persistant one being himself.

The viral predators are simply taking advantage of a ready supply but aren't (so far) nearly virrulent enough to cause a shortage or to unbalance society as a whole.

The balance isn't self imposed, it is part and parcel of the emergent dynamic. Stability without dynamism is the biggest threat. Lying flat on the ground means you won't fall over but everything is out of reach.

I hate it when you remind me how much I don't understand. I need an easier argument while I recover from Nov. 2, so have mercy.

I have to mull this over for an hour when I'm not taking cold medicine. My dynamic isn't emergent tonight, but I'm flat on the ground.

 

[shereads]

Amicus, I have to agree that sex in senior citizens' homes is probably rampant. All those nurses's uniforms and implements, and everyone's in bed most of the time anyway. I've personally seen my 75-year-old sweet little white-haired mother butt-groped by an 85-year-old man who was, at the time, teaching her to play hymns on his electric organ and had forgotten that her daughter was in the room. (Must it always be a younger woman?)

Please, Smoove A, be nice to me no matter the topic in the future, out of respect for the traumatic event I'm about to reveal. (For context, you should know that my mother had never used the word "sex" in my presence; when I was a girl at the age where there was no longer any way to avoid the birds/bees issue, Mom explained it by hiding a booklet in my underwear drawer. We were church people.)

A couple of years ago, my mom - then a widow of 8 years - finally agreed to go out on a date with this persistent older gentleman. The next day, we had this phone conversation:

Me: "What did you two do on your date?"

Mom: "He talked me into going over to his house to see his organ. You wouldn't believe how much fun we had playing with that thing!"

Me: "............!?!............."

It took several seconds for my verbal memory to locate a possible context for the word "organ" that didn't make me want to put out my mind's eye with a blowtorch and run screaming through the streets.

By the time the old dude copped a feel of my mother's ass while playing Amazing Grace, I was immune to surprises, as long as only one organ was in sight.

Now they're about to move into adjoining apartments in a retirement community. As long as he doesn't get her pregnant or cause her pacemaker to short-circuit, I wish them all the fun they can handle. It's got to beat bedsores, right?

QUOTE]Originally posted by amicus
Somewhat off subject...

I just saw a news report on CNN about the prevalance of HIV in the senior retirement centers in South Florida.

The report said that 1 in 6 over 50 years of age were infected.

The report further added that 39 million people, not sure if that was world-wide or USA, carry the virus and that the 'pandemic' continues.

The report explained by noting that senion women outnumber men by seven to one, seven women for every man in south Florida's senior population.

It said with the advent of Viagra and Cialis (sp) single seniors were continuing a sexual life into their 60's and 70's and were of a generation loathe to use condoms.

Amicus of course blames Franklin Delano for causing the immigration of grandpa's and grandma's to Florida to spend their Social Security checks.

Amicus wonders about all the grandkids not having the benefit of an 'elder' in the house hold...but then again, with working mothers and latchkey kids, half of whom have no fathers, I guess it doesn't matter anyway...

(amicus grins and smiles at shereads for her noticing the 'lurker' amoungst us)

http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=171925

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1413731007/reviews/202-3273501-3819824

regards... amicus... [/QUOTE]

 

[cantdog]

Safe sex, mom. Here's to ya.