For the Felis catus in us -

Humans are the only universal hunter on the planet. From bacteria to Grizzlies, humans actively prey. Does this garner a sense of pride or shame?

I don't understand quite what you mean with universal hunter .

I would say neither and what kind of a question is that any way.?:D

Certain species prey upon certain other species. To over simplify - cats prey upon rodents and birds, killer whales on seals and sea lions, amoeba on bacteria, blue whale on krill, etc. Humans actively hunt and kill all other life - whether for food, pleasure or self-defense.

Would you consider this something to be proud of or ashamed of?

I thought this line of inquiry might encourage some lively discourse.

I would say neither but if I had to pick it would be ashamed. Definately not proud anyway.
Who are we trying to impress? How can we be proud?
For starters there is nothing we did to earn this ability, we just happened to get it and we have used it unbelievably irresponsibly.

We didnt do anything for this planet but to destroy it. So there is no way that i can be proud of what we did. If the animals would have been a little bit smarter they would have unite and destroy us :eek:

Even in the beginnings of evolution there was predator and prey. Why should we be ashamed? Assuming that we are the only species on the planet with conscious thought, we should be even less ashamed.

Alot of humans die everyday. We are not completely separate from other plants and animals. If history wasn't exactly in the state that it is presently in, you wouldn't be here. Death is the only door.

I agree that there is no real reason to be ashamed but the concept of being "proud" seems far more ridiculous to me.

*crack* SIX!!!!

?

Proud, ashamed, right, wrong--these are all relative terms. They are nonexistent without humans to think them. That we kill everything is simply what our species was meant to do. If we were meant to do something else, then we would do something else (i.e not kill everything). But that is not the case. There's nothing right or wrong about it, that's just the way things are.

True. And that is how you consider it. "Sky is blue. Fire is hot." And the others consider it in different shades.

Is there an inkling of primal arrogance about being the most vicious and violent species known?

I think Pollux has effectively shown why this is not a philosophical question, but.....

Is there an inkling of primal arrogance about being the most vicious and violent species known?

Exactly how are we the most "vicious" or "violent" species? Do you mean because we've killed more? That's not at all a sign of violence or viciousness, simply a sign that we have an element of violence and the intelligence to invent things to help our killing. Because we kill for reasons other than food? Again, a result of intelligence. It's not like my fish can comprehend politics to the ends of having a political war, eh?

Wouldn't it be better to forget all the stuff about objective right and wrong? After all where's the yardstick? The better question is simply whether we think we should be doing it. After all it's not like we don't each have a real sense of right and wrong action, regardless of what we can rationally prove about right and wrong. If you see what I mean.

I don't feel ashamed. After all we've only just emerged from the jungle. However it's bloody sad that we carry on killing everything in sight on the basis that we can't scientifically 'prove' that it's wrong, or with some idiotically speculative excuse that nothing else is conscious so what the hell.

Isnt that the normal pattern of the TOP of the Food Chain?

I bet there was one if not many of dino predator species that killed anything it could get its hands on.

Actually nature kills indiscrimintly and is the biggest killer' there is whether it be fires/floods/earthquakes/LARGE ASTERIOD THATS ON THE WAY:eek:

Just my 3 cents (inflation DAMN!!)

I have still not quite decided if the development of human intelligence is ultimately an adaptive or maladaptive trait. I think that it still remains to be seen.

The Bible suggests that it is maladaptive, Tree of Knowledge and all that. Whoever wrote that story was one hell of a philospher and had a wicked way with metaphors.

We didnt do anything for this planet but to destroy it. So there is no way that i can be proud of what we did. If the animals would have been a little bit smarter they would have unite and destroy us

The Animals are smarter than us, they stay in thier forests minding their own business going about their natural way. Then we come in, set the forests on fire, turn the animals into fashion accessorys, start the greenhouse effect combine it with nuclear war and efffectively kill off not only the animals but our selves aswell.

I believe the real question here is not about judging or defining the way we have evolved to be, something that has happend regardless and independently of our individual efforts though our pride will often not let us admit this. But wether we should have pride in the way we have laid claim to the world, even though our ownership is nothing more than illusion. Auspicious or audacious you choose. :(

I vastly perfer bein on top of the foodchain...especially when you consider the alternative. Be nice if we could control ourselves a bit though.

All other mammalian predators -- perhaps all other vertebrate predators -- prey on the weak and ill of their prey species. They pick off the slow ones, the lame ones, the dumb ones, the runts. They act as part of nature, expediting the survival of the fittest.

Only humans hunt down the biggest, fastest, strongest, bravest, most cunning. For example, the elk that have survived by their wits and strength for so many years that they have the biggest antlers.

Humans act counter to nature, encouraging the demise of the fittest and the survival of the less fit.

Just one more way in which humans have an impact on the world around them far out of proportion to their numbers or needs.

Of this I am ashamed.

Yes
well said
and its all true, I'm glad someone else notices this phenomenon, this is what I mean when I say humans don't work by natures laws. As you said we kill the strong and we can also render a whole species extinct even if it is perfectly adapted to its environment. In the past a species would only become extinct if it were lacking something.
I am ashamed of this also. Or at least it deeply bothers me.

Humm ... interesting concept - instead of hunting elk, humans could hunt down the weak and ill of their own species. More fair? Ah, but humans have always done that, too.

Though, now, looking back over the posts, I'm reminded of something ... I've always been perplexed by the double standard espoused by many. The touted “nobility and innocence” of the animal kingdom. Yet if humans behave in the same manner (eating the young, attacking the elderly to take their place, leaving the sick to die, etc. ) it is the worst kind of depravity. Is it not a type of reverse discrimination. Like right and wrong, what is innocence, what is nature? (Subjective terms are unavoidable, though messy at times. )

originally posted by Dr. Lou Natic
We kill the strong and we can also render a whole species extinct even if it is perfectly adapted to its environment. In the past a species would only become extinct if it were lacking something.It could be said that species like the dodo and the mastodon “lacked” the ability to adapt to their changing environment. An environment that contained a new species that was able to bring about unnatural changes and then adapt much more quickly than they could.

It’s ironic that, in the opinion of many of us, we will ultimately be brought down by the same “predator”: ourselves. The biggest threat to our own species is our inadvertent impact of changing the environment faster than even we can adapt to it. Perhaps we will barely manage to avoid destroying the ozone layer, the rain forest, and the oceanic food chain. Perhaps we will barely manage to avoid loading this spaceship with more passengers than it’s rated for. We still have the monumental challenge of maintaining civilization -- an institution that is built layer by layer upon the wisdom passed down from our ancestors – after constructing a new environment in which the wisdom of even our still-living ancestors is useless.

Our creation of cities packed with people who don’t know or care about each other and whose tribal instincts of mutual support are therefore weakened, our development of metallurgy and metal weapons, our exploitation of fossil fuels that fouled our air and water, our unlocking of the secrets of the atomic nucleus: we may manage to survive all of these flirtations with disaster. What may finally bring us down is the information infrastructure, the rapidly changing computer-dominated environment which has destroyed the process upon which all human culture has always depended: the passing of wisdom from one generation to the next. The stuff I learned about computers fifteen years ago is utterly useless. There's no way I'm going to be able to function as someone's "elder" and pass what I've learned on to a youngster.originally posted by Demo
And that is what totally bogs my mind... WHAT nature is mankind following?This can really get into Kosmic Karma. Humans follow human nature. A tautology but it answers the question. I’ve been out of college way too long to be interested in that argument. But please, don’t let me stop you from having a good time with it.originally posted by Dana D
The touted “nobility and innocence” of the animal kingdom. Yet if humans behave in the same manner (eating the young, attacking the elderly to take their place, leaving the sick to die, etc. ) it is the worst kind of depravity. Is it not a type of reverse discrimination. Like right and wrong, what is innocence, what is nature?My point is merely that what we in simpler times perceived as “nature” is a wonder. Whether you believe it is the inexorable consequence of a rather elegant set of physical laws that have been operating for billions of years, or that it was created by a supernatural being who has an eye for detail and a fetish for consistency that gives new meaning to the term “super,” nature is quite wonderful. It is my yin, my right hemisphere, by inner child, who mourns the disappearance of entire species or even ecosystems, who does not delight in the replacement of trees with concrete and of real animals with virtual pets. This is not a passion evinced by the logician or the scientist in me, and it’s not something I much care to debate. Debating whether it is “destiny” or “just” for mankind to simplify the world in order to make it safer and more comfortable for us is not an issue I am interested in. What I am interersted in is seeing some of that nature before either it or I disappear. I did my obligatory traveling when I was in my 20’s and I saw a lot of marvelous things. But they were human things. Castles, bridges, marvels of engineering. I guess I regret that I didn’t go on the walkabout that many of my contemporaries did, and go out looking at nature instead.

At least I had the satisfaction of seeing Hawaii in 1976. I’ve never met anyone who’s been to Hawaii twice, who didn’t say, “My god, I’m sure glad I saw it that first time before we ruined it.” And we have saved five acres of redwood trees, the good old-fashioned red-blooded American way: We fucking bought them. Nobody can cut them down until we die, and even then if we get our act together we will will them to the Nature Conservancy.

nothing is inevitable. what was before does not always have to be. do the vegan thing, cooperate instead of compete, make love not war. how hard is this? nothing is cast in stone. wake the fuck up!

Originally posted by Pollux V
If we were meant

But "meant" is the most relative term of all.

Originally posted by spookz
nothing is inevitable. what was before does not always have to be. do the vegan thing, cooperate instead of compete, make love not war. how hard is this? nothing is cast in stone. wake the fuck up!

Some of us find your ideal world excruciatingly boring Spookz.

nothing is inevitable. what was before does not always have to be. do the vegan thing, cooperate instead of compete, make love not war. how hard is this? nothing is cast in stone. wake the fuck up!

I'd imagine that very little "making love" would be done in such an ideal world. Truth be told, it sounds pretty much like the American bourgois ideal - no struggling, no fighting, no fucking, no nothing. Just you, a pint of Haagen Daas and reruns of "Friends".

To live is to interfere with the will of another. The strong realize this, the weak retreat into slavish fantasies about what the world would be like if there were no strong people.

Dr. Lou Natic
I am ashamed of this also. Or at least it deeply bothers me.

Ashamed or afraid?

how sweet! you two fucktards hang out on a bbs and have delusions of grandeur? can you really hang with the big boys or is it just a vivid imagination that is been exercised here? what do you really know of competition and strife? tough, loudmouthed posters invariably turnout to be little sissyboys so please rap your shit on a kiddy board. you cant fool me

My, my, Spookz, for someone who doesn't advocate competition and strife, you certainly do use some harsh language.

Shouldn't you be saying something like "Please, I do not agree with your point of view and I feel it is both my right and my duty to correct your apparent shortcomings, may I present my views in an attempt to sway your opinion"? Then, you could like hand me a quiche or something and embark on a major, and I mean major, leaflet campaign to make sure all the bad dudes go away and leave you alone.

Instead, you went for abuse and conjecture. Interesting, not to mention hypocritical, and you didn't use any terms of abuse that were even vaguely inspiring. You're like a small dog yapping from behind the safety of the fence... annoying, but essentially harmless.

Originally posted by demo-
...but it *was* effective...

I agree Demo.. I hadn't smiled quite that widely in a couple of days.

*edit - actually I do like quiche quite a lot, especially the ones with little bits of bacon in them and a lot of cheese and herbs. I in no way meant to imply that quiche is for wimps and extend my apologies to quiche eaters all around the world. With the single exception of Spookz... I hope his quiche has maggots in it which he doesn't notice until he tastes that slightly nutty flavour and feels them wriggling in his belly. All in all, he's probably lucky I'm not Heliogabalus. Heliogabalus, I'm sure, would present Spookz with something a lot worse than maggot-infested quiche.

spookz:

what do you really know of competition and strife?

Growing up raised by a junkie welfare queen and whatever abusive boyfriend she was fucking at the time, or maybe it was ending up in upper-middle class schools to be tormented for years by the mini-preppie brats whelped by the bourgouis.

Now do you care to reply to the issues I raised or would you rather go back to fantasizing about a world where the big boys don't give you wedgies?

Well, this is lively. Though a bit off topic ... or is it? Philosophical hunting and prey. At least a little violence and conquest is apparent in nearly all activities of humans. Pity the species that cross them, now or in the future.

Most humans grow their food on farms. We devourer domesticated species. The only places we still hunt for food is in the oceans, yet even this is changing with the increasing use of fish farms.
I make an effort not to eat wild animals.

We now hunt for sport. It is not for me to judge the cultures that enjoy the sport.

Originally posted by Xev
Ashamed or afraid?
Just noticed this little number.
What do you mean xev?
Afraid of what?
If you are implying that I am in fear for my own well being then your question makes no sense, at all, whatsoever.
You know, I am a human too believe it or not.
Don't mind the flipper;) my parents were related.

But if you mean afraid humans will uglify and cheapen earth then yeah, I am a little afraid of that, and afraid on behalf of all the other species as a collective maybe.
Or at least I would have been afraid when the destruction was pending, now I'm just injured and pissed off.