Are we JUST animals?

[Betrayer0fHope]

Disregard the debate that's inherent with the topic, and stay on topic. People(almost never vegetarians, though) frequently use the argument, animals do this or that in the jungle, why can't we do it in society?

Is this a valid argument?

 

[Simon Anders]

It is a very strong argument if the opponent is saying something is unnatural.

If they have other objections to the behavior it might be missing the mark.

If someone says that homosexuality is unnatural and God does not like it, pointing out that there are numerous examples of homosexuality in nature
1) seems to indicate it is natural and
2) makes God's behavior seem odd: why make a lot of animals be drawn to homosexual acts (and even long term homosexual pairings) if you do not like this.

But animals also rape. And to say that it is OK to rape because animals do it runs into other problems.

But to argue that rape is unnatural is probably not the best line of reasoning.

 

[draqon]

biologically we are animals. Our actions make us more than just animals, for sure.

 

[mikenostic]

Our actions make us more than just animals, for sure.

No they don't. We are just another animal going about its routine. Just because we have higher intelligence than other organisms, doesn't mean we're not.
We're not 'animals' in the sense of how some people use that term in the context of being savages with no morals or civilization. But in the true sense of the word, we are merely just another animal on this planet.

 

[Baron Max]

... People ...frequently use the argument, animals do this or that in the jungle, why can't we do it in society?

Is this a valid argument?

Sure it's a valid argument. But the valid counter-argument is that "we human animals" have created laws, rules and social behaviors to prevent exactly those same actions within human societies.

And if you do much research into animal life in the wild, you'll discover that family groups or herds will also have some "rules of behavior" for living together.

Baron Max

 

[cosmictraveler]

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contained illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont.[1]

The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle."[2] Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.[3] The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of an abandoned 'man cub' Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler.


http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&star...s6DpCg&usg=AFQjCNFcSAzMp9V-ZMWb65I5dvZhrjIQRQ

 

[mikenostic]

Sure it's a valid argument. But the valid counter-argument is that "we human animals" have created laws, rules and social behaviors to prevent exactly those same actions within human societies.

And if you do much research into animal life in the wild, you'll discover that family groups or herds will also have some "rules of behavior" for living together.

Baron Max

Wolves, crows and non-human primates come to mind.

 

[Baron Max]

Wolves, crows and non-human primates come to mind.

Yep. And I think it's truly unfortunate that humans view themselves as so much higher than the other animals, because they then fail to see how those other animals have existed basically peacefully for gazillions of years. That's a difficult aspect for humans to ignore, yet we do so by making claims of "higher intelligence" and such garbage.

Humans could do lot's worse than to live like a wolf pack or a herd of bison!

Baron Max

 

[visceral_instinct]

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I just agreed with the brain disorder known as Baron Max.

Someone give me adrenaline, I'm going into anaphylaxis.

I agree, animals are not brutes that do what they want even if that is raping your sister. Animals have rules of behaviour too.

 

[Betrayer0fHope]

I'd like to see proof that any tribe of a species has never fought another tribe or that species have never been involved in long term conflicts, in either a specific area or larger. Cats versus Dogs come to mind.

 

[Baron Max]

I'd like to see proof that any tribe of a species has never fought another tribe or that species have never been involved in long term conflicts, in either a specific area or larger.

The only possible example of that that I know of was a territory in Africa that was the traditional hunting grounds for one particular group of baboons.

During a major drought in the region, another group of the same specie of baboons moved into the area for food and water. They had no where else to go ...and the "owners" of the territory didn't want them there. The ensuing "fight" lasted for years between the two groups. And they did, indeed, fight on a regular, almost daily, basis.

I think it was National Geo that documented, filmed and photographed that "war". But believe me, there very few fatalities and only an occasional physical injury.

But I know of no other such event ever happening on any scale like that.

You mentioned dogs and cats, but those two live together in an uneasy truce not much different to lions and leopards on the African plains ...they simply avoid each other.

Baron Max

 

[Betrayer0fHope]

So how can you claim all animals have been living peacefully for gazillions of years?

 

[Baron Max]

So how can you claim all animals have been living peacefully for gazillions of years?

Yep. That's correct.

Even the gazelles and the lions live relatively peacefully together. The lions cull the herds of weak, sick gazelles so that the gazelles can continue living without having to worry about the weak, sick ones.

Baron Max

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Of course humans are animals, but we are unique animals. Our brains are qualitatively larger than any other animal (in proportion to size, which really matters since much of it is a communication network with nerves, muscles, etc.). The extra brain cells are all in our forebrain, something all vertebrates have but it's so small that the lower "animal" portions of the brain exert dominance. Our forebrain is so large and powerful that we can wrestle control away from our lower brain and base our behavior largely on reasoning and learning, rather than on instinct and repetition.

This means that we don't HAVE to behave like the other animals. Whether we WANT to is up to us.

But over the millennia we have consistently chosen not to. We have diligently differentiated ourselves from the other animals by developing and adopting complicated behaviors controlled by our forebrains. In the Mesolithic Era that extended to toolmaking and a few other endeavors such as making clothes. But in the Neolithic area that trans-animalistic behavior exploded.

We actually overrode one of our most powerful instincts with reasoned and learned behavior. We gave up living in nomadic packs of extended family members we had cared for and depended on since birth, and learned to live in villages, in harmony and cooperation with people we didn't know so well. This was the invention of agriculture, which both allowed and required us to settle down in larger "packs."

Then about two thousand years later we made another break with our instinct and invented cities. These required us to learn to live in harmony and cooperation with total strangers--the people who back in the Mesolithic Era we instinctively regarded as hated enemies, competitors for the scarce resources of our hunting and gathering range. Civilization creates a surplus, so there was no more need to compete for scarce food, and civilization encourages division of labor, so we all had to cooperate to produce that surplus and keep the city running.

Eventually we combined the cities into city-states, then into nations, and today we have trans-national communities like the EU, the Sunni-Arab hegemony, and much of Latin America. This is a complete dismissal of our pack-social instinct. For all practical purposes we now live as herd-social animals, trusting and cooperating with anonymous strangers.

This is a commitment. When you live in a herd, you cannot behave like a pack animal, distrusting strangers. That is to say, when you live in a civilization that includes people on the other side of the planet who are nothing more than abstractions to you, you can't live by the morality of a nomadic hunter-gatherer. You have to follow the rules that you and your herd-mates have, in aggregate and over thousands of years, enacted to allow the herd to prosper and for civilization to continue to advance. That way everybody comes out ahead, at least on the average.

So the answer to the question, "Why can't we perform some particular animal behavior in our society?" the answer is, "Because in aggregate, over the millennia, we've chosen to live in a different way and we all have to agree to abide by the decision or it won't work for anybody."

In particular, we can never initiate violence. One of the fundamental principles of civilization is that we don't have to worry that our herd-mates are scheming to kill us. If they were, we'd have to devote so much of our time, energy and other resources to simply protecting ourselves against each other, that there wouldn't be enough left to keep civilization running.

All bluster about going out and hunting deer aside, all grumbling about income taxes aside, all frustration with traffic and fast food aside, almost none of us would really rather live in the Mesolithic Era, with no roof, no pets or draft animals, no way to own anything we couldn't carry on a 20-mile daily one-way walk, no furniture, no medicine, no musical instruments, no way to communicate with anyone except our immediate family, no way to travel outside the valley that all the other tribes acknowledge as "ours" except maybe once a year for the summer get-together when we get drunk on a meager supply of fig or pomegranate wine, tell the same stories we heard last year, and then clean up the gene pool by mating with the folks from other tribes.

So we put up with the constraints of civilization in order to have the benefits of civilization.

It works for me!

 

[Baron Max]

..., almost none of us would really rather live in the Mesolithic Era, with no roof, no pets or draft animals, no way to own anything we couldn't carry on a 20-mile daily one-way walk, no furniture, no medicine, no musical instruments, no way to communicate with anyone except our immediate family, no way to travel outside the valley that all the other tribes acknowledge as "ours" except maybe once a year for the summer get-together when we get drunk on a meager supply of fig or pomegranate wine, tell the same stories we heard last year, and then clean up the gene pool by mating with the folks from other tribes.

Geez, I don't know, Fraggle, you sure make it sound damned enticing! Can I go back, huh, huh, please ....can I, can I?!

So we put up with the constraints of civilization in order to have the benefits of civilization.

Why don't you tell it honestly, Fraggle? We're FORCED to put up with "civilization" ...there is no viable alternative that "civilization" has permitted or will permit. In a word or two, we're all fucked ....and there ain't nothin' we can do about it.

Baron Max

 

[Pronatalist]

Humans don't even have the luxury of behaving like animals. There's way too many of us now upon the planet, for humans to behave like animals. Human populations can be, and can enjoy becoming even far denser and vaster, but surely to do so, requires some sort of civilized cooperation, in expecting people to submit to "family values" and such.

Humans grew so numerous, by God's providence, but also because humans behave far better, well at least most moral humans, than mere animals. Sure we may enjoy mating naturally "like animals," with our proper committed spouse, but then we must provide proper care and love for our offspring, and train them up with proper/moral/God's ways. That there's so many of us upon the planet, is all the more reason to push for the proper social graces, say like holding doors open for strangers, and voting only for freedom-loving, people-of-faith Christian conservatives.

 

[Sciencelovah]

I think that whether we are an animal or not is only a matter of labeling. If labeling is really matter, then one should define first what is an animal, and whether we fit in the definition or not. The purpose of labeling itself is to classify an object so that it is easy to be identified or to be characterized.

 

[Simon Anders]

Humans don't even have the luxury of behaving like animals. There's way too many of us now upon the planet, for humans to behave like animals. Human populations can be, and can enjoy becoming even far denser and vaster, but surely to do so, requires some sort of civilized cooperation, in expecting people to submit to "family values" and such.

Humans grew so numerous, by God's providence, but also because humans behave far better, well at least most moral humans, than mere animals. Sure we may enjoy mating naturally "like animals," with our proper committed spouse, but then we must provide proper care and love for our offspring, and train them up with proper/moral/God's ways. That there's so many of us upon the planet, is all the more reason to push for the proper social graces, say like holding doors open for strangers, and voting only for freedom-loving, people-of-faith Christian conservatives.

Animals, for example pack animals, do engage in cooperation.

Humans have the amazing ability to destroy their own ecosystems.

 

[Balerion]

Which animals rape, Simon? And are you sure that's proper animal behavior? Are you sure that animal isn't lacking something that the rest of them have?

You seem to love the idea of rape, as you bring it up so often, and even said "rape is the rule" in the other thread (which is completely untrue). So I'm curious where you get this idea from.

 

[Pronatalist]

So let human life naturally (and pets and farm livestock) proliferate and grow more prolific, for the benefit of man.​

Animals, for example pack animals, do engage in cooperation.

Humans have the amazing ability to destroy their own ecosystems.

But are we talking of the cabal-conspiring NWO power-mad globalists, or of humans in general? Most people aren't trying to monkeywrench the economy to harm the working poor. Most jobs alter nature to better support ever more people, as most jobs directly serve people.

Humans don't have so much a "parasitic" relationship with nature, nearly so much as a "symbiotic" relationship. Humans help nature to better hold and support ever more people, because it's largely our own progeny that would benefit.

I do not believe in "culling the herd" with people, but rather in welcoming the herd to grow ever bigger and denser, for the greater good of the many.

Cities do serve as mild population arcologies, and why should nature have any objection to cities, if they are properly built? Humans are a part of nature, but also transcend nature, and for humans, natural increase is quite natural. So not only would humans be part of nature, but also the cities it takes to hold so many of us, and so I consider cities "natural" in that sense as well. Ants live in crowded anthills, and bees in beehives, so why can't humans have their crowded "hives," so to speak?

Even our dogs probably recognize humans as the ultimate "pack leaders." We must be quite smart, for humans seem to somehow find "unlimited" food, so dogs have no objection to human population growth, as more pets can also exist, when human populations naturally grow and swell.

Genesis 1:28 speaks of God giving dominion to man, over nature and other creatures. Is that because humans are supposedly so smart? Or because "we can?" No, I think it was largely about sheer numbers, that God would eventually cause humans to grow so incredible numerous that we would have no other options left, but to dominate nature, just because there's just so many of us. That's not something to feel "guilty" about or to fear, but something to celebrate such "progress" for the natural and wise advancement of the human race.

Just because humans have grown so numerous, is no excuse to deny people enjoying having their "traditionally very large" families. Humans are social creatures, and still quite capable of breeding naturally, even within huge cities or inside of cramped housing conditions. If society is to remain healthy, people must feel free to enjoy procreating their babies, and allow babies to happen as they happen. There's ample means by which to ADAPT to even dramatic further increases in the already "huge" size of the human race. Such a "force of nature" that human reproduction may seem to be becoming, was never something meant to be "controlled" by man, or for over-educated moron NWOs to foolishly try to manipulate.

And the planet can in fact, more easily bear the rising human population "pressure," than humans can be expected to struggle against nature to curb their powerful reproductive urges. So welcome the baby booms to come, persist, and spread, without any effort to resist them, as more and more people benefit by coming alive and being welcome to be born.