Cowards, violence and the Brave

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by PsychoticEpisode, Jun 4, 2009.

  1. PsychoticEpisode It is very dry in here today Valued Senior Member

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    Why are some people willing to put their lives in danger and some not? Is cowardice actually a built-in survival skill? Is there a advantage in being a coward? Does the species benefit from cowards in their midst? Is running away more of an intelligent decision than risking your life for a cause?

    Personally I don't know but if I had to give an answer then I would be inclined to think that cowards have more of a chance of survival than the so-called brave. I wonder if bravery and cowardice are genetic. I'm not sure if cowards are less violent however. As an example, how many times have you heard of a wife-beater referred to as a coward? It seems a violent person can either be a coward or brave but for someone who is neither brave nor violent....is that person more worthy of survival than any person who is or can be persuaded to be violent?
     
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  3. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    I don't think that a coward has a better chance at survival than someone who is taking action to insure survival.

    A interesting point I saw in Vietnam, was that 3/4 of the KIA's I flew out of the jungle hadn't fired their weapons.

    It isn't a matter of worthiness, it is a mater of survival, and the aggressive have a better chance of survival.

    And as a matter of fact, survival denotes worthiness, the right to pass on your genes.
     
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  5. PsychoticEpisode It is very dry in here today Valued Senior Member

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    That's an interesting statement and I have to think there is some validity to it. I think many view the human race as aggressive. A wide range of aggressiveness from bullying to deadly confrontation. Aggressiveness is also found in business, sports, and debates for example.

    I've seen arguments on whether humans possess an aggressive gene. I suppose it might be necessary to have such in order to survive. I wonder if genetically, some people who are non aggressive share their lineage with ancestors who basically ran away when danger was present. Discretion over valor type of thing.

    Unfortunately today, there isn't too many places left to run to and avoiding aggressive behavior is next to impossible. Presently when these people are forced to deal with it, passivity no longer is an option. If you are not meant to be aggressive then I can see the odds of failing to successfully deal with aggression becoming pitifully high. As a result there are now more aggressive people in the world? At least I hope that's not the way it's going.
     
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  7. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    But is it coward or is it survival? Let us say there was a fire, burning out of control and inside the house that was burning you heard screams from a child. You would probably not make it in and out alive even if you did ever find who was screaming. The choice is simple to many, to let one person die, not two. There are however a very few people who would risk their lives and try to save the person who was screaming and that's their own decision to make.
     
  8. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Intelligence is more important. In Buff's case it was still intelligence. You are in a war, you are in a fight - FIGHT or die.

    In other cases if you can walk away and it doesn't affect you, then it's better to not take necessary chances.

    It's calculated risk, some of us are good at it and some are not. (like darwin award winners - some were very brave).

    However we exist in civilization, lots of people, probably the majority of peopel are able to survive well beyond what they should in the natural world. The dynamics of survival for individuals operation withing the confines of civilization are very different. Another in thread example. Buff put his life on the line, while many Americans did not have to and probably are alive and continue to be able to have children because people like him are willing to do that. Meanwhile, as a fantasy example - Buff maybe not have had any kids himself, perhaps even because he was simply disgusted with the world in general(though he is a "good" gene holder)
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Homo sapiens is a pack-social species like dogs, horses, dolphins and most of the other apes. We're not solitary like tigers and orangutans, and we're not herd/flock-social like cattle, sheep and pigeons. That means we have the instinct to both depend on and care for our pack-mates.

    When we lived a pack-social lifestyle in the Paleolithic Era, traveling in clans of a couple of dozen people who had known each other since birth, it was easy to manifest the pack-social instinct. We would risk our lives to protect our pack-mates, not just because we cared about their individual survival but because we cared about the survival of the pack. During a lean year when food was scarce clans might fight over it and killing members of the rival clan was the only way to ensure our own pack's survival.

    But the development of agriculture and then civilization brought about a couple of major changes in our lifestyle. One was that there was now surplus food, so there wasn't as great a need for clans to fight over it. The other was that we had to learn to live in larger communities, ultimately in today's world living in harmony and cooperation with anonymous strangers. The definition of a "pack-mate" has changed dramatically and now our lifestyle is more herd-social than pack-social.

    But instincts don't always evolve quickly so we still have the pack-social instinct. And we never quite know how to manifest it. Would you risk your life to rescue a stranger who fainted in traffic? Would you attack someone who appeared to be harming a stranger or stealing his food?

    Our leaders--most notoriously our religious leaders but also our political leaders--take advantage of this confusion and try to manipulate our pack-social instinct into a tool they can use to increase their power. In one breath they tell us that people a thousand miles away are pack-mates who we must risk our lives for. In the next breath they insist that people a little farther away are rivals who want to destroy our pack or steal our stuff or make us subservient to them.

    So we end up with wars.

    Nonetheless I see hopeful signs that we are successfully transcending our pack-social instinct and becoming a true herd-social species. Herd-social animals don't love their herd-mates the way pack-social animals love their pack-mates, but they treat them with civility and they strive to ensure the survival of the herd. I am immensely gratified that my fellow Americans recently overthrew our government (by peaceful means of course) because we didn't like the uncivil way they were treating people clear over on the other side of the planet--people who are nothing but abstractions to us, people whom, to be honest, we really don't even like very much. They are our herd-mates and we demand that they be treated with a minimum level of civility, for the survival of the herd.

    This feeling is spreading. For centuries the "packs" in Europe fought among themselves like wolf packs or worse, yet today they have made peace. Ditto for Latin America. Unfortunately this trend has not yet reached some parts of the world, but as I said, I'm hopeful.
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Reproduction, not survival, is evolution's standard.

    On the one hand, faint heart never fucked the cook, and heroes get more girls of their own choice.

    On the other hand, the children of the aggressive are often poorly cared for, and the solid home life of the strong but less aggressive is conducive to successful childraising. So the reliable and capable but timid get their share of nooky, partly in payment for supporting the hero's orphans and abandonments.

    In the long run, the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy probably involves a mix of behavioral biases, both personally and among a community - so has one type becomes rare, the payoff for being one rises.
     

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