The human species and its disregard for life
The human species is very comfortable with killing. There is a sham morality that says killing can be bad but it carries so little weight in the big scheme of things. All carnivores kill for food, but this is something else.
First of all humans killing humans in large numbers has always been a feature of the species existence. The distortion in public reaction over a mass shooting reveals the way the issue gets compartmentalized Humans are killing each other daily. It is how we are. We fight with lethal force on a number of different levels, among them war and genocide.
We invest time, energy, scientific inquiry and resulting technology, and resources in "improving" our ability to kill. This country budgets far more for killing in various forms than it does in sustaining life.
It is part of our overall disdain for life in nature. Critters bother us and we want cheap efficient ways to eliminate the nuisance. Only those plants that we chose to utilize are saved from the widespread herbicidal attack on nature.
If you remove whatever blinders you use to hide these facts from your conscious, you will be grief stricken for the scale of this is immense.
The issue of Global Warming and Climate Change is only a recent increase in consciousness among some of us. The way we manage the earth defies reason and is clearly an assault on nature.
No one is guiltless when you look with open eyes. Our cultures over the centuries have been relatively consistent.
I reflect on how my way of getting an education was to serve in the military and feign the required desire to kill some unknown "enemy". That experience alone damaged my psyche irreversibly.
The past few days have once again awakened a burning realization of how mixed up we are about our lethal nature. Some more than others clearly and some seem to escape the disease.
We are reductionist by nature. We consistently fail to see how all these things are connected and how one acceptance of killing re-enforces another. We deal with them case by case and the silliness of our behavior never registers.
I am motivated to write a sequel to our book about Global Insanity and the impending collapse of human civilization. It will put that aspect of our doomed evolution into a broader perspective.
Ironically, the fear of death is a big factor in all we do. Yet we fail to deal with this major cause of death. This election year seems to be bringing our failure to organize a decent society into focus like never before. Yet it has not revealed the cause any more clearly.
These are dark times and I hope we can learn something.
Comments
Don,
I read today where some rodent in Australia is the first mammal to become extinct due to climate change.
I am glad I am old.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
yes I am also glad I am
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
Und ich auch ...
viel besser heutzutage alt als jung sein ...
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
Ich freue mich, fur dich.
Old, and had no children.
My little corner of the genome, as well as my family name, ends with me. As it should be, I think.
Naturally selected trait?
As an adaptation to survive and it's gonna kill us all. Irony indeed.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Just as we've been conditioned to believe that...
...freeing capitalism from the burdens of regulation would make us all rich instead of ultimately killing the planet while making only a tiny few of us rich...
I want my two dollars!
Word.
The only sad side of the extinction of the human race, is that we'll take almost everything with us.
We've declared war against earth and mother nature.
We will win neither.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
The earth will be fine.
The earth has recovered from catastrophe before, and probably will again.
Is It Our Nature or the Nature of Our Leaders?
I believe humans will suffer, or perhaps go extinct, until the "good" within us learns they must do the opposite of their nature for our survival. Good must fight evil. Selfishness is responsible for our current state. It is the next stage in the evolution of our consciousness to let go of selfishness.
The Earth will do fine despite whatever we do. I'm just not sure if we're worth saving.
you seem confused
we kill "bad" people so "good" can overcome evil....unfortunately those words have no real meaning
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
"No real meaning".
Perhaps "no objective meaning"?
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
you seem irrelevant
Good and evil are effective motivators. Meaning is the result of action and memory. Meaning is not inherent.
You're a systems guy. Maybe your grasp on the problem domain is clouded by your idealism.
Not sure what your problem is.
Mathematically, the domain of a function f(x) is just the set of values for which f is defined [for example, f(x) = 1/x is not defined for x=0.], so the reals R are not the domain of my function f, but R/{0} is [ ie the reals R less zero.]
The range C of f [in modern parlance, the Codomain of f] is the set of values that constitutes a mapping (not necessarily one-to-one) of D by f to C.
I take the "problem domain" as a set of initial conditions, or "antecedents", D. The range (or codomain) C is a set of "consequences" defined by an "action function" f : D -> C.
So where are we going via this discussion?
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
It's Agriculture that started it.
There's a book, Against the Grain, that looks at the evidence of what happened to people when they changed from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society. Inequality exploded, emperors need wars, there were periodic huge famines, and the physical condition and lifespan of the average person, especially women, deteriorated dramatically. You can even compare groups at the same time and in the same area, since they didn't all change to agriculture at the same time.
Even without empires and wars, you can see that effect. There's a site in Illinois that was continuously settled for IIRC a thousand years, that shows the same physical deterioration when agriculture was adopted.
Agricultural society is still malleable.
There is, to be sure, a highly effective study called agroecology, which allows people to figure out how agricultural practices can, for instance, result in no significant loss of soil fertility over thousands of years, as the indigenous inhabitants of the isthmus of Mexico have achieved.
The era of heavy, fast catastrophe started with what my friend Jason W. Moore calls the "long 16th century," in which the disastrous conquest of the Americas killed off so many people that the resultant collapses of civilization set off a "little ice age"...
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
That Makes Sense
Agriculture appears to have evolved into an opportunity for the few to control the many rather than an opportunity to unleash human creativity which should have resulted from the abundance.
People depend on nature, not markets. People who can place themselves as middle men between nature and people tend to enjoy a proportionally unearned revenue stream. Which is why I believe everyone should grow something, anything edible, and share with your neighbors. We need to stop feeding the exploiters.
Of course this ignores selective breeding of crops to induce dependency by exploiting human nature, for example sweeter carrots. Seed selection is important in this regard and it's a battlefront.
People are assaulted on multiple fronts necessary for existence so they become dependent on providers, all the while being fed the message they should be their own person. We're being misled.
It was more food, storable food, but lower quality
So populations could explode, and then of course bust, from famine or disease hitting the malnourished masses.
And so someone could control those food stores, and thereby those malnourished masses.
It is not so black and white
I disagree, and I appreciate PZ Myers' take on it:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/06/03/agriculture-was-a-mist...
Arrr...the laws of science be a harsh mistress -Bender B. Rodriguez
PZ Myers argues for the greater reproductive success
with agriculture. This is the same argument made by those who argue that, in the history of our species, agriculture was a turning point which led to many problems. First of all, agriculture enabled periodic excess of production allowing some people to find alternate "benefits" to the community, such as religion & governance. My understanding is that once we were capable of overpopulating, in terms of resources, we went to war to acquire increased resources, although in some cases, just to satisfy the ego of the rulers.
I base my beliefs on a book, An Environmental History of the Earth, as well as an anthropological film "Last of the Cuiva" http://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cvi...
I personally believe that now that we have the means for reproductive control, as a species, we should grow up & stop warring.
Years ago, while I was concentrating on the cooking I was doing, a call came in from a pollster who asked me first was I pro-life. I immediately said yes. I'm a nature-lover, a bird-watcher, a gardener. I love life in all its bio-diversity. Only after a few more questions did I realize the pollster would have better characterized me as "pro-choice." I tried to explain that my belief in "choice" was fueled at least partly by my belief in the supremacy of all life on this earth.
So do I think that we can give up Ag now? No, but we could do it more ecologically and we should definitely give up war.
Here's a fun ecological link that has a sweet joke:
http://www.nwedible.com/how-to-use-pee-in-your-garden/
I hope we can still smile in these sad times.
Yuval Harari says the same thing, in his book.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Fascinating. I agree with much of what he says, but not all of it, of course. His main thesis, however, is like the Rosetta Stone for me. That humans rose primarily because they were able to invent fictions and agree to them. Religion. Money. Capitalism. Nation states. This extended our ability to work together well beyond our "natural" predilections, which some scientists cap at 150 people, give or take.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
Homo sapiens not very sapient.
'Twas ever thus. I don't know how quickly humans will become extinct, but I really can't see us hanging around forever.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
we seem to be in a hurry
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
So we act like the (mythical) lemmings
And those of us saying "no, wait..." are unfortunately in the front of the onrushing hordes?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I don't get the complete disconnect
The United States is one of the most deadly violent nations on the planet. From complete genocide of Native Americans to illegal wars of choice to collective punishment of large civilian populations to endless chaos causing loss of life. We not only have built the world's most lethal military but we have no qualms about using it. Ask the poor Iraqi conscripted soldiers retreating to leave Kuwait and go home. Howard Zinn used to talk about vindictive bombing at the end of WWII. Fire bombing civilian populations near the end of WWII. And of course the use of a nuclear weapons on civilian populations.
Yet we hold ourselves up to the world as the model of a moral society. How can this possibly be?????
We can't possibly fix ourselves until we come to terms with who we are. I fear that this will never happen.
As far as terrorism is concerned, they don't hate us because of our freedoms, as W would say, they hate us because we kill their people. We have been lucky so far, one to two million Vietnamese dead and they did not seek revenge. Our luck seems to have come to an end. I would like for once to see the US media demonstrate the empathy for those we have killed as great as our concern for those of us who are victims of "terrorism". Until we learn how to do that we cannot be a moral society. "We came, we saw, he died, ha ha ha", the face of the ugliest side of America.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Vindictive retribution has always been, and still is
part of the Amero-Puritan heritage.
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
My question is why so many Americans believe the hype
That the United States is the best country in the world when it comes to spreading peace and democracy.
The countries that have democracy are the ones most threatened to be overthrown and have a brutal dictator put in place.
Like the coup in Iran when the CIA overthrew Iran's government and installed the Shah. And why did that happen? Because the current leader wouldn't let British oil into their country.
And that's what is behind every coup. Getting the corporations in to other countries so that they can take their resources.
The former president of Ukraine may have been corrupt, but that isn't the reason why he was removed. It was so that the corporations he wouldn't let in would be allowed in.
I found some great articles on this website and was blown away by the information on it.
I thought I was well informed about who runs our government, the dealings with the terrorists in the Middle East and which country's governments were behind ISIL and other groups, but the website showed me that I knew half of what I thought I did.
The gullible people who are believing that the massacre in Orlando was a terrorist attack by ISIL and also believe that every Muslim is a terrorist would be very surprised to learn that our government and our allies were the ones that created Isis in the first place. Just like they did Al Quada, who by the way is being armed, funded and trained by the US and its allies. Again. And that they are fighting alongside our troops to help overthrow Assad.
Now if you had fought against them during the Iraq war and saw your buddies killed or dismembered, wouldn't you be a little pissed if you suddenly found yourself fighting alongside them a few years later?
The site also shows how powerful the pharmaceutical industry is.
Take a look at it.
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2015/11/big-pharmas-latest-most-sicken...
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Howard Zinn
I have just been reading his book, "The People's History of the United States" which was published in 1980 but I had never read before. What an eye opening book that is. I wish I had read it long ago, but better late than never.
And yes, they hate us because we kill their people and we don't seem to want to just get out and leave them alone. And the ugly irony there of fighting endless wars for oil - the very thing that will kill us and so many other species. That's when I start to cry, thinking of all the innocent animals that will die because we are stupid and greedy.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Our problems are not rooted in "human nature"
Rather, people are naturally clever, and our cleverness has in this era set a rather nasty trap for ourselves and for everything else. The name of this trap is "capitalism." We thought we were so clever in creating capitalism and in making it the only possible way that we turned Earth into a roach motel, only we're the roaches.
Human beings have existed on the planet for 200,000 years. Agricultural society started at the earliest at around 8000 BCE, more or less ten thousand years ago. Capitalism has existed for 500 years. So this is a recent problem, not an innately human one.
One might argue that precapitalist civilizations did not have the reverence for live we do not have. Some of them in fact did, and some research into "traditional ecological knowledge" will reveal this to be true. Others did not -- but their predatory tendencies were not immediately catastrophic. Only capitalist society conceives of the whole Earth as a realm of total and immediate exploitation. Please see the works of Jason W. Moore on this -- there was a vast difference between the feudal exploitation of western Europe and the French exploitation of Saint Domingue, now known as Haiti.
What is most unfortunate about this picture is that ecology is such a recent art -- the original definition of the term is from Ernst Haeckel, from the mid-19th century, and the major proto-work of ecology (at least in North America) is George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature, published in 1864. Thus of the 500 years we've spent under capitalism, we've had at most 150 of those years, 54 of them if you only count modern ecology (beginning with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962) to think with any seriousness about how seriously capitalism has screwed things up. And by that time the world had already become what Moore calls "abstract social nature."
So things look scary. But, if anything, human nature offers us a way out, rather than a scapegoat. It will take all our cleverness to overcome capitalism.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
It will be just as easy
to overcome greed.
Snark intended.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
It does sound like something
from Harry Potter. Hecate suggested using Morning Dove as a new Bible. Maybe Harry Potter could be the new Testament, or the Old Testament.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
innate traits are in the background as evolution proceeds
there is no such thing as "human nature"..... we live in a complex context and are part of it as it is part of us....the study of human existence has not even begun
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
Killing...
I am not much for religion, but I have always liked this quote.
A friend gave me a copy of The Vampire Lestat way way back, so I devoured it in a matter of hours and later read Interview. While everyone else was in love with Louis, I was seeing things through Lestat's eyes as I read Interview.
And the story of creation retold in Memnoch the Devil was a very enjoyable thing to read.
I enjoyed that series too
I started with Interview for some reason and it made the first book make more sense.
I have heard that she found religion and tried writing from a religious perspective, but failed miserably.
Now she is writing about the vampires again.
Have you read The Witching Hour . Great book about the history of witches being controlled by a dark entity.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
And now here we are talking about books.
I liked Seveneves until the end. that was not satisfying. I liked Cryptonomicon too.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Cryptonomicon was great. Anathem is my very favorite
Stephenson book. One of my favorite books in general actually. I loved it. It was kind of slow-paced, but well worth reading.
I haven't read Seveneves, I didn't love the premise. Is it worth reading, even with it's unsatisfying end?
Yes, a good thought experiment.
What would you do if the end of the world was imminent, like in a given number of days? I will have to pick up (or download) Anathem on your rec. TY
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
My sister and I read all the Lestat
series years ago, I loved those books. I still love watching Interview With The Vampire whenever it comes on the boob tube. And The Witching Hour was a great one too.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Our assault on nature of all species is painful and senseless.
This is often the reason many people will not remove their blinders. The acknowledgement is too frightening. It's tragic, how fearful people are of the obvious truth, and the immobility it produces in being able to correct things.
The good news:
There have been in the past and there currently are peaceful societies:
People have to be taught violence (imo). What does the constant wars of the US teach its children? What does allowing police killing various groups based on race teach children? As far as our wars go, it is easy to blame them on corporate greed, but the fact is we as a people allow it.
The most peaceful countries are socialist. They care for each others needs and are willing to share.
The Bad News
Out of 162 countries studied, the US is listed in 2015 as 92. Iraq and Syria are at 161 and 162. However, whose fault is that?
[video:https://youtu.be/watAHldDB9g]
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
I live in #4
which still also has a long way to go, but this is promising ...
Walk a mile in his shoes is such a
humanist proverb. While I can appreciate the effort, a week would be a lot more effective. = )
#4...must be all that waltzing. = ) Do you find watching news from or about the US to be jarring?
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
You're right, a week would be far more effective
but hey, a little step is better than none ;;')
I'm not sure how much waltzing NZ does compared to Australia, but they do great Reggae!
Being an American watching from a distance, there's not much I find jarring anymore.
I love the Aristotle quote you include in your sig.
Lol, my brain was taking a break when I typed that...
about the waltzing. I cannot listen to your music at the moment. I have an Internet channel on an Irish Pub channel that I just discovered tonight and am enjoying it way too much atm. = ) But I do like a lot of Reggae, so I will get back to it.
I find it jarring, and I live here.
Thank you. I still need a lot of practice. = )
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Like this?
video::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCgcZ0efAA
OK what am I doing wrong
followed instructions 
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
What a great voice!
On the YouTube page, select Share and copy the Embed code. In c99, click the second icon on the Comment bar (Insert Video). Paste the code in the Video Url box, click OK.
[video:https://youtu.be/mhCgcZ0efAA]
For non-YouTube videos, you usually just need to copy the embed code and paste it into the c99 Comment box/area.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Many thanks! nt
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
For some reason, that I don't understand
embedding videos for me now requires an additional step. I now have to copy the share code from you tube, paste it in the video box, and then place it in block quotes. The block quotes step is the extra one.
What happens if you do not use the
block quotes?
I was going to write a facetious remark that it had to do with your accent, but decided not to. = )
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Enjoy!
We are all constantly practicing. It's the practice that cultivates the excellent habits. And it's the repeated act of excellence that allows and makes us happy to be the best of who we are.
Good night WindDancer ...
That was really cool!
I watch most videos in full screen, and this looked great. Thanks for sharing it. I will have to check out some of their other songs.
Now for something different. = ) This is a song that I heard on the Irish station tonight and thought it was so apropos for our times. So glad I could find it on YouTube.
[video:https://youtu.be/yd7UUoBAZ9Q?list=PLy2TgRlmFIO2RTMU72jsV7H0Aju6vgBEk]
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Thanks for that.
The music, and of course the accent, are both quite catching.
If you like reggae, then I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in listening to more of Fat Freddy’s Drop. For a start …
The graphics on the Blackbird one are really great,
though scary. It reminded me of pictures from WWII with the overhead shots of the bomber formations. I will listen to the album while I work today. I see I will also be doing a lot of downloading today. = )
On a different note. Here is a Celtic tune sung by a Serbian group, Orthodox Celts.
[video:https://youtu.be/B_e7QbWc5mI]
Speaking of accents, I often have to go look up lyrics to make sure I her the words right. So here is the first verse (the rest can be found here):
In the merry month of June, From my home I started,
Left the girls of Tuam, Nearly broken hearted,
Saluted me father dear, Kissed me darling mother,
Drank a pint of beer, My grief and tears to smother,
Then off to reap the corn, And leave where I was born,
Cut a stout blackthorn, To banish ghost and goblin,
In a brand new pair of brogues, go rattling o'er the bogs,
Frightening all the dogs, On the rocky road to Dublin.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Oh my gosh!
I must build a stone circle. I have the stone. I have remnants of three raised beds, the second-generation of green-sawn hemlock boards rotted and it got too shady to garden vegetables other than herbs. My daughter calls them the giant graves. How magical a circle would be...
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
How can Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan be the top three
Without the US being the top of the top? Those are our messes.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Yes, the US is the number 1 factor for why
those countries are the least peaceful; however, the index is partly based on the violence happening within a country's borders. So while the US may be responsible, the bombings and killings are not happening on our soil. On the other hand, the US being at 92 with no ongoing war within its borders is a sad reflection on our society and its values.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
My signature says it all.
My signature says it all.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
Enjoy!
We are all constantly practicing. It's the practice that cultivates the excellent habits. And it's the repeated act of excellence that allows and makes us happy to be the best of who we are.
Good night WindDancer ...
Here in Kruger National Park, South Africa
we occasionally reflect on such thoughts and wonder at human species dominance. As much as possible we choose to focus on the peaceful acts that our violent rapacious species somehow is able to commit at times. That means limiting media consumption.... Oh well.
Thanks for the post.
http://caucus99percent.com/imce?app=bue|imceload@bueImceLoad|#
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Killing for Tribal Supremacy or Sport is not Human Specific
It's an old myth that only modern humans kill for sport and war. Harper's reported on a biology study a number of years ago that showed that tribal murder was far higher in primates. Chimpanzees regularly kill other Chimpanzees and their children. They form regular hunting teams just to hunt other Chimps. As a percentage, human tribal violence has been drastically reduced in modern times. Even accounting for two horrendous world wars, the violence per number of people has dramatically declined in the 20th century. See Steven Pinker. Not only is killing for sport a very common and, yes, *natural* thing amongst a lot of species on earth, humans, very unnaturally so, have actually managed to bring these violent urges down through intellectual and sociological development.
Humans are primates, though.
I don't know the behavior of every species, certainly, but those I'm familiar with - wolves, felines, canines - generally do not kill their own members for sport or tribal supremacy. Usually fights of dominance are just fights - but rarely to the death, and the loser slinks off and leaves. Or infanticide, for reasons of genetic supremacy or because the infant is injured in some way. But I'm not aware of any species outside of primates that engage in wars, or senseless killing of other members of the same species.
People say that animals kill their prey for "sport" and will kill prey even when not actively hungry, but I don't think we're justified in calling it sport, as we don't really know what animals are thinking. But regardless, that is killing of another species, not members of their own species.
I fully admit I could just be unaware of it - but is there a pattern of wide scale, random interspecies killings in the animal world outside of primates?
I have seen a Country Club's pool after a minor landslide
full of mud and frogs (probably Rana pipiens). It was frog-eat-frog. Biggers eating smallers, head-first. Rather horrifying.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
How can we call ourselves evolved?
How can we call ourselves evolved when we violently kill millions of animals every single day for their flesh when we no longer HAVE to. Going to a vegetarian diet is not only healthier for us, it's healthier for the planet.
The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.
Please read up on Palm Oil industry
Palm Oil is huge for most vegetarians and vegans. Because it's "animal cruelty free"... and it's one of the biggest lies ever.
The palm oil industry has destroyed more than 70% of the forest and wildlife.
Orangutans will thank you. As will those who are trying to save them and almost every other animal that is being starved and burned out their habitat.
Doritos uses palm oil, too. MOre and more it's in everything. Because it's "cool factor".
But I do agree vegetarian diets are a must. Just we must be vigilant and aware.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
you are using "evolved" as a value.....it is simply a process
as we say in our book:
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
So we build a box
that becomes constraint? We are painting ourselves into a tiny corner of the cube?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
"So What do you think
of the human specie?" my dad would always ask. We finally took to calling it "the human feces."
Raised our children to try and make a difference
now I realize we need to help them find a different country so they can exist.
The USA is a violent, bloody country. We are not #1 in anything good.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
I think it's a very small percentage of humans who want to . . .
hurt or kill one another. I think the vast majority want to live in peace with their neighbors, eat, drink, be merry and make love.
It's really the alphas and outright sociopaths who push the killing. For their own power and control over others, land, money, etc. etc.
And, I think we humans fall for the bogus propaganda THEY feed us, which basically projects their own pathologies onto everyone, which normalizes it and naturalizes it. In reality, it really only fits for that tiny fraction of society. Maybe 1% or 2%. Then you get their management teams, and those who fall in line from there.
People do horrible things to others not out of some innate drive, but generally, through history, out of fear of punishment for NOT doing it. End our system of political and economic bosses and neck-breaking hierarchies and I just don't see humans engaging in so much harm to one another. True democracy, including the economy, would radically reduce it. The absence of hierarchies would radically reduce it, IMO.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
Wise words
My grandfather was a world war 1 vet, he joined the marines when he was underage and off he went to France and later occupied Germany. He always said it was the governments that were the problem, most people are just people trying to get on with their lives.
He also came back from the war a vegetarian and later became a Buddhist so he was regraded as a very odd duck in rural upstate NY. A title he reveled in.
I will always be grateful for having him in my life for so long to counter the bs.
Well, yeah
This:
"First of all humans killing humans in large numbers has always been a feature of the species existence. The distortion in public reaction over a mass shooting reveals the way the issue gets compartmentalized Humans are killing each other daily. It is how we are."
We are no different from all those other species that kill and eat each other every day.
The veil of civilization is just that.
We just like to think we are somehow different . All evidence to the contrary.
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
I live near the Air Force Museum
And one of my first impressions was how quickly we had found a way to use the new flying machine for war purposes. The fighting plane is the next exhibit right after the original Wright Brothers plane. It's been years since I've been there but that really struck me at the time. I told friends that I realized humans were a warring people. It's part of us.