Noted, but is our conscious connected to the fact that we need to survive even if we are unaware of doing so? Do we make things better for ourselves or for our society or our kind?
natural?
- Thread starter laladopi
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Noted, but is our conscious connected to the fact that we need to survive even if we are unaware of doing so? Do we make things better for ourselves or for our society or our kind?
All three, they are not mutually exclusive.
By improving your society/species you are indirectly helping yourself, just like everyone around you.
By improving your society/species you are indirectly helping yourself, just like everyone around you.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
You mean "prior to civilization." You already know that pre-civilized people had societies from reading this thread. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have societies. This is the sort of thing that causes people to complain about your writing. You make mistakes and you don't bother to go back and find them so you can correct them, and then we have to stumble through them and try to figure out what you meant to say. That's called "proofreading" and you need to start doing it, as a courtesy to the other members.
In the Mesolithic Era--the "Middle Stone Age," when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers with no permanent settlements and no agriculture--quite often nothing helped! That was just the point. A lot of people simply died. Most people did not survive to be as old as you are, and possibly as many as half of them died before reaching their first birthday. There were times when the population of Homo sapiens--the species of "modern humans" to which we belong--shrank. In fact, all of the other related species of humans, such as Java Man, the Neanderthals, etc., shrank completely and died off.
The one and only thing that put a stop to this was the invention of the technology of agriculture. People discovered how to cultivate plants and domesticate animals so they could grow more food than was growing naturally. This both permitted and required them to give up their nomadic lifestyle and settle in permanent villages. It also permitted and required them to overcome their primitive pack-social instinct and learn to live in harmony and cooperation with larger groups of people who were not close family members.
This was the first "Paradigm Shift" in the history of our species. The Mesolithic paradigm was life in small nomadic extended family units--clans--who were forced to regard other clans as enemies because they were competing for the scarce resource of a hunting and gathering territory. This gave way to the Neolithic paradigm (the "Late Stone Age"), often referred to as the Agricultural Revolution. This occurred in multiple places, independently, at different times. The earliest archeological record is in Mesopotamia around 9500BCE (cultivated figs), but within about 3000 years it also occurred in what is now China, Egypt, India, Central America and Peru, and eventually spread to most of the globe.
This was not civilization because the technology of city-building had not been invented. People still knew their neighbors even if they weren't family. There was no major surplus productivity to manage. "Government" functions were done by tradition and ritual. There was no writing so communication was still primitive, and no wheels so transportation was also still primitive, so the villages were not able to organize into a larger and more sophisticated structure.
Nonetheless, this was the first step toward building civilization, and in vernacular speech laymen often incorrectly refer to this as civilization because it was a quantum improvement over the Middle Stone Age: We finally had something to "help us through the ice age, hunger, disease, predators and other natural based causes," as you put it, and that "something" was the first glimmer of the idea that ultimately built civilization.
You've lost me in your writing, an example of why you should edit it more carefully. What are you referring to as "the inevitable?" We have made great strides in conquering the risks to survival that you listed.
For me, it has provided the technology to have an enormous variety of professionally performed music available at any time and in any place. I would not wish to live even two hundred years ago, when most people were only able to hear music performed decently in church on Sunday and in the tavern on Saturday night, plus the occasional traveling show; people with music and other arts are better people. I would also not want to live without my dogs, the domesticated predators whom we used to regard as rivals; living with dogs taught us to be better people who could then experiment with the idea of living with other clans. I would not want to live without chocolate as we know it, which can only be manufactured by industrial processes; people with chocolate are better people (being a little silly here but don't bother me on a day when I haven't had my chocolate, it makes me a better person). I could probably not live at all without the medication that mitigates my asthma; medicine doesn't just make me a better person, it makes me a living person. I would certainly not want to spend 100 hours per week working on a farm, or spend my entire life chasing animals through the forest for food; being less exhausted and having more time for activities not directly related to survival makes us better people.
You need to read up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Pre-civilized people spend most of their lives stuck on the first two steps: survival and security. They're lucky if they make it to step three: love. Civilization allows more of us to achieve step four: esteem, and step five: fulfillment. This makes us better people.
Up until the last few centuries, there were plenty of places where people lived like that. Very, very few people chose to leave civilization and join them, whereas there was a steady stream of migration in the opposite direction. The fact is that people prefer life this way and they vote with their feet. The reason members like you and Baron Max can fantasize about how wonderful it would be to live in the Stone Age is that that option is unavailable. Five hundred years ago you would actually have had to make a choice: Do I really want to go off and pursue this fantasy, living with the Indians or the Maori or some African or Siberian tribe? Or shall I just put a sock in it and be grateful for what I've got here?
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I fully apologize for the way I write in this forums. To an extent I feel the way I write is raw material for others to think about it in such a way, also sometimes I do not even catch my mistakes I feel like my words work fine in such a manor, but I will try to have more intact sentences to explain to others what exactly I am trying to say.
Death of one's self.
True, see now what I'm saying is what has been given to us and what some do not realize is the gratuity of it all. "Some" remain on a level of forward thinking on their own self indulgence. I am grateful for what I have do not think other wise, What I see is a tainted system. Where purity isn't a priority and selfishness is. How some know the ability to take advantage of people's lively hood and soul if you will. Now I do not think every soul is to be held accountable for some have been given values that pertain to such problems I "think" are going on. No body is perfect this is true, but if one is unable to realize what is going on around them or what they as a human being are doing in this world then they remain empty, if they believe that money is the answer to live than they will on money's behalf. I do not think I am righteous and I do not judge, these are my thoughts and if I am wrong I would like to hear otherwise for I am a truth seeker and want to learn as much as possible.
The reason members like you and Baron Max can fantasize about how wonderful it would be to live in the Stone Age is that that option is unavailable. Five hundred years ago you would actually have had to make a choice: Do I really want to go off and pursue this fantasy, living with the Indians or the Maori or some African or Siberian tribe? Or shall I just put a sock in it and be grateful for what I've got here?
It may be a fantasy for I will never be able to experience the stone age but I would like to because I am curious and I wont be able to be certain about my opinion till I experience otherwise.
I don't understand why I would have to put a sock in it if I am grateful.
I think this departs from your generally unbiased attempts to describe and understand nature. In attempting to maintain an understanding of the system of humanity, it seems unnecessary to presume negativity regarding monotheism.
Perhaps functionally, it actually increases the overall strength of the species by encouraging a culling of disparate ideology. While divided, we are weak, when culled - strong and as such, more likely to survive.
En la unidad esta el progresso.
And once a mind fully invests in its ideology, the tendency toward unity is diminished. if this trend leads to...
well I'm sure you can see what i mean.
and it's not that i necessarily think this is true, but that it's perhaps a less biased approach to understanding the problem.
if it isn't, please tell me why...
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Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Societies don't have to be unnatural. It depends on your definition.
As for that connection.. it has been lost a looong time ago.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Civilization is unnatural. Anybody wanna complain about that?
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Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Civilization is unnatural. Anybody wanna complain about that?
Yes. Me
Edit: I probably took that the wrong way lol
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A matter of perspective, perhaps
I'll take a swing at it: Civilization is a product of nature.
One aspect of the issue is by what terms we define natural. There is, without question, certain utility to be found in separating humanity from nature in our rhetoric. But the separation isn't actually real; we are a part of nature.
An example would be an anime I watched once upon a time. (Bubblegum Crisis?) Or, more specifically, my reaction to it. An episode of this sci-fi cartoon featured a group of high school girls discussing what cybernetic enhancements they wanted to get. In other words, it was trendy to be artificial. And why not? If you could replace your eyes, so that you could zoom in on objects a mile away, would you?
The scene adequately repulsed me at first. On the one hand, I'm not sure I would do such a thing. But then, if everyone else is doing it ... well, it's not so much that, but there would come a point when enough people were "enhanced" that it would cause problems getting a good job, or interfere with other aspects of mundane life. Imagine being mugged, for instance, by the Bionic Man.
So it struck me that there would be immediate reasons to seek that enhancement. Still, the idea seemed repugnant. Part of me even recalled the frantic parents of the '80s and '90s who worried that if their child didn't get into the right preschool, they would never be accepted into Harvard. ("How can she compete if we don't give her every advantage?" But she's only four, and you want to mortgage the house to replace the muscles in her legs!)
It seems nearly dystopian, but that's from a late-'90s perspective. Of course, I don't like it any more in the twenty-first century, but over time a thought occurred to me: What does it mean to nature? And the answer is absolutely zero.
We tend to draw a boundary between what we consider artificial and what other animals do. Part of this is because we use machines to make things as opposed to using the produce of our bodies to construct our homes. So brick and plastic seem, to us, fundamentally different than the manipulations of natural elements by which bees construct a hive, for instance. However, if we classify broadly enough, we can say that plastic is nothing more than a human manipulation of nature. To us, it is artificial. To the Universe, though, one could define it otherwise.
So imagine a generation of humans that is cybernetically and genetically enhanced, something like we might find in Stand Alone Complex, maybe. To our perspective, it's artificial, but what happens when that becomes the entire species? Has humanity evolved? After how many generations would it become impossible to go back to what we were?
And at that point, we would still be a product of nature manipulating nature. Yes, I would call it artificial, but that's now. If I had cybernetic eyes, polymer muscles, alloy bones, and processors integrated into my brain, would I think of myself as artificial? I'm not sure.
Civilization is unnatural only from a certain perspective. Evolutionarily speaking, there is a reason we tend to gather into societies, develop customs and laws, and so on. If the species was better off without civilization, we would have selected differently in nature. And while it is useful in vital contexts to regard asphalt, tempered glass, synthetic-fiber carpets, electric lighting, microprocessors, and such as artificial, that utility only occurs in certain contexts.
And, indeed, imagining ourselves as separate from nature has caused us no small amount of trouble over time. Take the global warming debate; some people would insist that human endeavors on the scale we have achieved have absolutely no impact on natural cycles.
Fraggle Rocker said:
Civilization is unnatural. Anybody wanna complain about that?
I'll take a swing at it: Civilization is a product of nature.
One aspect of the issue is by what terms we define natural. There is, without question, certain utility to be found in separating humanity from nature in our rhetoric. But the separation isn't actually real; we are a part of nature.
An example would be an anime I watched once upon a time. (Bubblegum Crisis?) Or, more specifically, my reaction to it. An episode of this sci-fi cartoon featured a group of high school girls discussing what cybernetic enhancements they wanted to get. In other words, it was trendy to be artificial. And why not? If you could replace your eyes, so that you could zoom in on objects a mile away, would you?
The scene adequately repulsed me at first. On the one hand, I'm not sure I would do such a thing. But then, if everyone else is doing it ... well, it's not so much that, but there would come a point when enough people were "enhanced" that it would cause problems getting a good job, or interfere with other aspects of mundane life. Imagine being mugged, for instance, by the Bionic Man.
So it struck me that there would be immediate reasons to seek that enhancement. Still, the idea seemed repugnant. Part of me even recalled the frantic parents of the '80s and '90s who worried that if their child didn't get into the right preschool, they would never be accepted into Harvard. ("How can she compete if we don't give her every advantage?" But she's only four, and you want to mortgage the house to replace the muscles in her legs!)
It seems nearly dystopian, but that's from a late-'90s perspective. Of course, I don't like it any more in the twenty-first century, but over time a thought occurred to me: What does it mean to nature? And the answer is absolutely zero.
We tend to draw a boundary between what we consider artificial and what other animals do. Part of this is because we use machines to make things as opposed to using the produce of our bodies to construct our homes. So brick and plastic seem, to us, fundamentally different than the manipulations of natural elements by which bees construct a hive, for instance. However, if we classify broadly enough, we can say that plastic is nothing more than a human manipulation of nature. To us, it is artificial. To the Universe, though, one could define it otherwise.
So imagine a generation of humans that is cybernetically and genetically enhanced, something like we might find in Stand Alone Complex, maybe. To our perspective, it's artificial, but what happens when that becomes the entire species? Has humanity evolved? After how many generations would it become impossible to go back to what we were?
And at that point, we would still be a product of nature manipulating nature. Yes, I would call it artificial, but that's now. If I had cybernetic eyes, polymer muscles, alloy bones, and processors integrated into my brain, would I think of myself as artificial? I'm not sure.
Civilization is unnatural only from a certain perspective. Evolutionarily speaking, there is a reason we tend to gather into societies, develop customs and laws, and so on. If the species was better off without civilization, we would have selected differently in nature. And while it is useful in vital contexts to regard asphalt, tempered glass, synthetic-fiber carpets, electric lighting, microprocessors, and such as artificial, that utility only occurs in certain contexts.
And, indeed, imagining ourselves as separate from nature has caused us no small amount of trouble over time. Take the global warming debate; some people would insist that human endeavors on the scale we have achieved have absolutely no impact on natural cycles.
"Take the global warming debate; some people would insist that human endeavors on the scale we have achieved have absolutely no impact on natural cycles"
And some may say - as an extension of your argument - that whatever impact there may be is perfectly natural.
And some may say - as an extension of your argument - that whatever impact there may be is perfectly natural.
For such a society is not highly advance. There exist no "harmony" of things which is the true determining denominator for an advance society. Such examples like money is not evil buy itself, it is the concept which it is rooted in that is evil. The same goes for humanity it is not evil buy nature, but buy ignorance. For humanity is a concept a paradigm that can always change and does always change in the framework of the fourth dimension.
Well exactly, human's created society so the society depicts which it will grow on.
Money and ignorance or truth, love, knowledge.
So for a society to grow, you use tactics to keep the "values" going.
So whether the "values" are good or bad, the society will maintain in such a direction do to "trial and error"
dixonmassey
Valued Senior Member
Humans have used an extra source of food/energy (provided by technology) to multiply well beyond original carrying capacity. That's precisely what locust or any other life form does, it multiplies to take advantage of abundant food supplies, then crash comes. Of course, had locust been intelligent it would call population growth "progress" and "civilization". Also, it would have come up with belief system claiming infinite capacity of the locust to come up with new energy/food sources to beat the big Crash.
I don't get original posters. Humans behave in highly natural ways as far as expanding in response to the increased food supplies is concerned. Of course, locust don't come up with worship of Holy Swarm who gave locust the dominion over Earth and its resources. However, locust have natural enemies to control its population. Humans behave in highly natural way in the absence of major predators and controllers other than humans themselves. That's a real problem. Humans understand the need to control themselves (instead of lions), yet the call of nature prevent them from doing so. It's much more comforting to put the faith in braniacs or sweet baby Jesus.
dixonmassey
Valued Senior Member
Unabomber manifesto critiques modern industrial societies too.
http://www.newshare.com/Newshare/Common/News/manifesto.html
Lots of reasonable point. It's a pity that such a smart guy could come up with a few homemade mail bombs to stop the all consuming monster.
http://www.newshare.com/Newshare/Common/News/manifesto.html
Lots of reasonable point. It's a pity that such a smart guy could come up with a few homemade mail bombs to stop the all consuming monster.
What are you suggesting?
For a highly advance civilization would not conflict with it's surroundings or need tactics to perpetuate it's existence. For it will simply exist eternally efficiently eventually in a perfect singular effort. without trial and error (010) Harmony.
So a highly advanced society does not exist, for there are imperfections.
Harmony, balance? how could a society get to such a "being".
So it must be the people in a civilization that come together in peace?