Why do we strive for survival?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Jewwy, May 19, 2011.

  1. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    It's all lies.

    An alien conspiracy. They planted us here for future use, with promises of leisure and orgasms, to keep the species evolving until we reach maturity and then they come and take us away to another planet were we will be used as slaves.:zzz:
     
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  3. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    I was wondering when someone would trot that pony out of the stable, the as yet untried 'multi-verse theory'. Interesting to contemplate.

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    Rather simplifies the origins of life if we contemplate that it could have come about as an imported organism on a meteor, though where the meteor originated becomes the new fly in the ointment.

    Now whole other universes affords us much greater numbers of hypothesis for origins.

    One of the hypothesis I have come across regarding why life struggles to exist is precisely because it is so rare, on the scale of habitable planets immediately near to us, (to the best of our present knowledge) though where it is plentiful, as on our planet, species come and go with extinctions just another mechanism to free up habitat for the next arrival.

    As one who gardens and has raised horses and other species, I can remark that the will to live is present from the moment that each seedling emerges and each creature born. I have nurtured them in their efforts and I know that my efforts have made a difference at times between life and death for some.

    That's reason enough for me.

    Perhaps not of great significance, yet my life makes a difference to some.

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    In the universe of change, Life makes a difference.
     
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  5. Gustav Banned Banned

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    lets see what the preacher man is going to prattle about
    who wants to bet "paradigm shift"?

    /snort
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Obviously. An organism that does not have a survival engine (whether it's a primitive prokaryote getting by on some interesting biochemical patterns or a vertebrate consciously searching for food and evading predators) will, by definition, on the average not survive. If the individuals of a species have a low survival rate, they may not live long enough to reproduce, and even if they do their reproduction rate may not be high enough to counterbalance the death rate.

    In other words, the ability to survive is a characteristic of life.
    Well for us mammals, and especially those of us with the enormous forebrains, it is several "somethings" in our brains. Much of it is instinct, pre-programmed into our synapses. Our autonomous nervous system (which is actually one level below instinct) causes us to breathe when the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in our blood is too low. We feel a semi-conscious urge to eat when our stomach is empty, to seek shelter when our body temperature is too high, to flee from something that causes pain. We clearly have an instinct to run away from a large animal with both eyes in front of its face, like almost all vertebrates have. But as we mature we develop conscious motivation to avoid starting a fight with an armed adversary, to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, to visit a doctor when something strange is wrong with our body, to buy medical insurance to make sure we'll be able to afford that doctor's appointment. Still, this is all motivated by the instinct to survive so that the species will survive. We even have the instinct to procreate, although in an advanced civilization in which population has grown too large that can be overridden by a motivation to be an elder, a mentor, someone to lead his people into a better kind of life.
    Perhaps it's a rare coincidence and only exists on this planet. But since it does exist on this planet and it has evolved into an intelligent species that can contemplate such matters, it stands to reason that this is the one place in the universe where creatures exist who can ask this question. The fact that you are one of them is an existential issue more suitable for the Philosophy board. If you were not you, then someone else would be, and that other person would still be asking the question.
    Uh... dude that sounds like a flagrant violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Certainly it allows for spatially and temporally local reversals of entropy, with no limit on their size. But it does not require them. It certainly does not require a local reversal of entropy the size of the Big Bang. Much less of the complexity of the appearance of living organisms.
    "Small" is not the same as "zero." In a space-time continuum that is infinite both spatially and temporally, there is no reason to postulate that any event you can describe, so long as it conforms to the natural laws, cannot occur.
    But we only understand how the DNA-based life, of which we are an example, works. And not very well at that. We have no idea whether a universe with an entirely different structure could not be hospitable to another type of life that we can't possibly imagine.
     
  8. Gustav Banned Banned

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    i wonder who that could be?


    /chuckle

    run for the hills everyone. the end is nigh. the species, doomed!
     
  9. synthesizer-patel Sweep the leg Johnny! Valued Senior Member

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    2,267
    the latest evidence suggests that many of the most basic processes and chemical structures that are required for life will form spontaneously under the right conditions.
    So to answer the question "Where does matter come from and why does it evolve into life?" the answer would seem to be; because it is an emergent property of the inter and intra molecular forces that arise when certain physical and chemical conditions occur.

    here's a link to a youtube video that explains the latest science behind this in a simple and succinct manner (feel free to skip the creationist bashing at he beginning and get to the main points which start at around 2:40)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg
     
  10. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    4,634
    I gots to see whey the hub dub Gustav is so dang low I say so dang low .
    Perfect bribe is right spot on . Cronyism is a bribery system of economics that excludes
     
  11. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    sex slaves like Charles Ing. I think that was his name . He would knock Woman out , throw them in the trunk and take em home, drag em to the basement where he and his partner David Lake would film torching and raping them until they killed em . They buried them in the back yard. The foot hills of California on there little mini ranch . They got busted and David Lake took a suicide pill at the Police Station while Charley Ing escaped to Canada . We got him back in the end . I don't know were He is Now. They probably let him due to bugit cuts . Me murder friend he killed 2 people about 14 years apart and last time I say him he was out. That was years ago so he is probably dead now
     
  12. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Its nicely pigeonholed as the instinct for self preservation and avoidance of fear and pain [an instinct being something of indeterminate origin over which you have little or no control] - its also termed a "psychological" instinct, although a cursory look at anti-predator mechanisms in the not so self aware "lower orders" would indicate it is more biological than psychological. However, what psychology does is provide the means to override it in the higher animals hence the presence of suicides
     
  13. dhcracker Registered Senior Member

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    196
    You know I've worked at hospitals and old folks homes and heard that 1,000 times, yet when the time comes I see it written all over everyones face.. they are scared of dying. Lots of us aren't thrilled with living, however ALL of us will be scared when it comes time to check out.. its like wanting to breathe when your underwater.. its instinct. Its easy to say "I'm not scared to die" when its not something your about to do. I would say anyone without a real fear of death will check out early for sure and probably didn't enjoy life more than they didn't fear death.
     
  14. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    and orgasms,

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  15. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

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    How many of them knew or stated they were going to die, and then died shortly after (~24 hours) ? I've always been curious about this.
     
  16. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Can you cut me a break...I was basically saying we started with hydrogen(or even less) and now we got like 200 types of atoms. yes things are getting more complex.
     
  17. Wisdom_Seeker Speaker of my truth Valued Senior Member

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    Fraggle Rocker doesn't cut breaks, he cuts people emotions scientifically
     
  18. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

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    hahaha. Yes I strive to survive on sciforums for posts like these.
     
  19. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    The group is semi-immortal; it needs its components in order to function. So we're usually part of a society that makes us feel guilty about dying without a fight, via all sorts of cultural storytellings like: "You'll suffer damnation after death" (Abrahamic religion) or "You'll be evaluated by us as a complete loser if you just give up" (non-theist) or "You have obligations, responsibilities, people that need you" (family, business, organizations). That's in addition to all the personal goals, desires, addictions, and interests that people acquire over the course of life that tugs on them by the nose rings; and whatever innate urges to hang around until breeding is accomplished that evolution may have wired us with.

    Even if one wound up being a lonely castaway on a harsh, uninhabited island, all the "telling-each-other-stories" stuff would have already infected one and would still be rattling away in private thoughts. In addition to holding-out for rescue, no matter how soon or distant a possibility it might be.
     
  20. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    People who don't have children are far more likely to kill themselves...we do kind of live for others...
     
  21. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Can you provide some documentation for that statistic. I knew a girl when I was in high school who had a father that went into his garage put a 12 gauge in his mouth and spread his brains out for the family to find when they came home. Not very considerate if you ask me.
     
  22. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Sorry, having trouble finding real scholarly articles on it.

    Bottom link is best, but all pretty crappy:

    http://www.newportpsychotherapy.com/psychology_topics/depression_suicide_psychologist.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_suicide

    http://family.jrank.org/pages/1660/Suicide-Protective-Effect-Children.html

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  23. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Well I meet all of those and a few more that you haven't listed, except 'empty nesters' and I don't think much about checking myself out of this life.
     

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