Be nice, now. You yourself said things like - without paying any attention whatsoever to sexual selection. The theory that humans will evolve to lose their sexual dimorphism is not well supported, since in many places people appear to have been effectively "bred" by sexual selection to fit a cultural ideal. Also, your idea about "more advanced" species is a mite questionable in an evolutionary context. Speaking of sexual selection... most sexual selection in birds acts on the male, which produces the flamboyant and (in some cases) deleterious traits in male birds which the females often do not have. This means that mate selection is being made by females and not males. So... since the old assumption that the male bird was "superior" to the female comes from an examination of their fine plumage et cetera... maybe the whole inherited concept of gender superiority is a little bit flawed.
"Reading" people is not a female-only skill... they just get better training as kids. Anyone can learn... after all, what do you think "The Godfather" was about?
"in many places people appear to have been effectively "bred" by sexual selection to fit a cultural ideal" very perceptive. you should start a thread on social evolution, i'd like to hear your ideas.
Well, it's a little difficult because of the prominence of Lamarckian genetic ideals in breeding... but I'll see what I can do.
With this sort of argument yo can look at it from a Humanity Earth POV ( No discrimination) or at a human microism and allow discrimination. AS I see very little value in the looking for discrimination I tend to refer theses types of questions to the Humanity Earth department. There fore it's not a question of superiority or inferiority. But of course if one looks at the question in the context it was asked, I wouldn't answer it because the Humanity Earth perspective takes priority.
Fraggle: But the further up we go and still further towards the Sapien with his moral imperatives, we find this 'equality' played up to a silly game of saying one thing and doing quite another. There is and will never be an equality of gender the more developed we become as a species- we can however say the the playing field has broadened and now Sandra Harding gets to scream as loud as she wants to. However, we've chronically bred an inferior race (woman) too comfortable in her chains to get rid of them. You can't force a willing slave out of his little 'ordeal'. You're a day late buddy! http://www.nature.com/nsu/040419/040419-8.html Rosa: The flame of superiourity we can detect in babies and toddlers. Swedishfish: Oh. She played the wildcard- Women Can Make Life. So can headlice. And?
Regarding your 1st example...... .....yes Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Sorry, I haven't even bothered reading the rest of the thread!
I can't speak for all of the species, but there are plenty who have been studied for generations and who ornithologists tell us do mate for life. I think the Canada goose is one of them. Parrots have not been captive-bred for very long. Except for the really small ones like budgies and cockatiels, there was no psittaculture to speak of as recently as 200 years ago. The larger parrot species take about five years to reach sexual maturity, so there simply haven't been enough generations bred in captivity to have accidentally selected for a behavior no one was even trying for. In my opinion no one has bred a significant change of any sort in their behavior. A wild-caught chick stolen from the nest and hand-fed grows up to be pretty much the same as a captive-bred chick whose parents allow the humans to take over the incredibly tiring work of round-the-clock feeding and just drop in on their babies once in a while to see how well the humans are doing. Yes of course there are species where the mates stay together to raise the chicks and then separate. I just found a baby bird (sorry, I'm temporarily on the East Coast and I don't know the names of many of the common species out here) that fell down into the window box of my basement apartment and couldn't get enough lift to fly back out. I crawled down to rescue him, but I almost dropped him because these two adults came out of nowhere, just battering my head and screaming at me. They thought I was a predator. This bird was fully fledged and no longer sleeps in his parents' nest and can probably do a halfway job of feeding himself, but his parents are still together and still keeping an eye on him. Admirable behavior. Dogs are a completely different story. We've been captive-breeding them for at least eight thousand years, and unlike parrots they reach sexual maturity in one year so that's a lot of dog generations. As I've said, the most obvious differences between the domestic and wild dog/wolf populations (one single species) are in areas that put the dog at a tremendous disadvantage if it ever has to live as a predator -- not just a garbage dump scavenger but a true hunter. Their teeth are not shaped right for ripping flesh, so it would be difficult to eat the game they bring down before the hyenas and jackals muscle in and take over. And their brains have decreased in size due to the lower-protein diet of an omnivore, so they wouldn't be as clever at outwitting their prey as a wolf is. Add to that the peculiar traits that have been bred into the Lhasa Apso and you've got a dog designed only for living in partnership with humans. They're practically blind, even for dogs, which as a species have terrible eyesight. Even if you comb the hair out of their eyes they can barely see anything. Their sense of smell is nothing to rave about. They're guard dogs, so their keenest sense is hearing. They can hear a human jogging down the highway half a mile away -- and dutifully warn us that the Mongolian Hordes are on their way. Since their most recent place of residence was Tibetan monasteries in the Himalayas, they are incredibly sure-footed like mountain goats. They can chase each other up and down a snowy, rocky cliff face, looking like a bunch of skateboarders on a ramp. Not a particularly useful ability for a hunter unless they were turned loose in the Himalayas. Would a female Lhasa Apso, or any female dog, be a good pack leader? Hard to say. There are plenty of animals in which that is the case. Most ungulates, from domestic cattle to bisons and elephants, have a lead cow that the herd follows from one feeding ground to another. The males only try to pull rank in the breeding season and then (in many species) they spend most of their energy trying to kill their rivals so they can have all the girls, rather than watching out for lions. Something that we breeders don't always talk about, Lhasas are killers. We've lost a couple of birds to ours. I'm sure they'd be enthusiastic about hunting down small game. But dogs in general have far too many disadvantages already bred into them, there's no way they would fare well in a true wild milieu. As opposed to simply running loose on the fringes of civilization like coyotes, raccoons, and bears, using their knowledge of human habits and their lack of fear of humans to out-scavenge the wolves and cougars.
Gee, this forum is a whole lot more civilized than it was just half a year ago. Telling someone that he's right to admit that he doesn't know anything about birds wouldn't even have counted as an insult back then. Sorry. I'm all for civlized behavior, so I should lead by example. Please forgive the insult. It's really difficult to learn much about birds without simply spending a lot of time with them, and they're not easy to get next to.
Ok, I'm not going to read that whole post but I'm going to assume your right. When did I take that as an insult? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
What makes a human better then another? Opinions? Strenght? Intelligence? I think neither of those. I think, the superior person is the one who can argue for what he or she think is right. And there's still other opinions on what people think is superior and not. Btw, wasn't it Aristoteles and NOT Socrates who thought Men were better then women?
Aritotle (apparently) thought that women were unfinished men. Here is a quote Niccolo Machiavelli. (Notice that is not a Greek name. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) "Fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to keep her down, to beat her and knock her about. And one sees that she lets herself be conquered by men of this sort more than by those who proceed coldly. And, therefore, like a woman, she is always the friend of the young, because they are less cautious, fiercer, and command her with more audacity." There is some truth, even in that sexist statement. As for for weaker, stronger, smarter, dumber, etc. I contend that everything is a matter of timing. Sometimes we as individuals are strong; other times we may be weak. Our inherent qualities and exterior circumstances play a great role, more I think than gender. pmt
Bullshit. First of all, Fortune is a friend of people like Dick Cheney, who is old enough to require occasional heart surgery. Let a youngblood go and wave his sword at the front desk of Haliburton's, and see how long it takes for him to get arrested. Old men point, and young men go and die, and it was no different in Machiavelli's time. Second, the theory that women like men who are abusive and rapacious is held by 1) men who believe that "women only like jerks" - which is naive - and 2) women who like jerks, usually because they are bored. Both of these attitudes come from a lack of education about human nature; in Machiavelli's time, gender education was a nonentity... sort of like today. This I agree with.
Someone spoke up on your behalf. I think it was the guy with the blue head. I'm glad that you weren't insulted, but it was still kind of a rude way for me to make my point. As a genuine "elder" on this board I have to set a good example for you young whippersnappers.
BBB...writes, "Bullshit." Then he writes: First of all, Fortune is a friend of people like Dick Cheney, who is old enough to require occasional heart surgery. Let a youngblood go and wave his sword at the front desk of Haliburton's, and see how long it takes for him to get arrested. Old men point, and young men go and die, and it was no different in Machiavelli's time. Uh, excuse me. I think Machaivelli is dead now, so he probably cannot hear you. (Remember, it was a quote.) BBB wrote: Second, the theory that women like men who are abusive and rapacious is held by 1) men who believe that "women only like jerks" - which is naive - and 2) women who like jerks, usually because they are bored. Both of these attitudes come from a lack of education about human nature; in Machiavelli's time, gender education was a nonentity... sort of like today. You are wrong. I am thinking that maybe you did not understand what it was with which I found some agreement. If you will notice, he was comparing men that knocked women around to men who proceeded coldly, (not "naive." Both of these examples would be abusive men. Men who proceed coldly often evoke hate and resentment. Men who knock their women around, usually manage to convince these women that much (or all) of the abuse is caused by them. Now, there are variables, and I am no expert on such problems. I do know that cold, calculating men can really work up a hate program! I think you misread it, but that is okay. Good to hear from you. You did not even call me names this time! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This quote is primarily about FORTUNE, not about women, mkay? Secondly, are we talking about things as they ARE or as they SHOULD BE? Maybe, in theory, men are not superior to women. As for practice -- for example, look at the paychecks for the same job description: women get less for the same work. Who IS superior IN PRACTICE? Men. Also, it is men who ARE superior to women when it comes to physical force: on the average, men are physically stronger than women. And yes, men do use this power.
Rosa: I did not realize that you would need an explanation, dear heart! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The quote I gave clearly depicts the attitude toward women by an Italian, sort of in answer to the comment that inplied that Greeks had no monopoly on sexism, by BigBlueHead. Does this help you?
