Irony of Humanity

yes, everything we do could be contrived to a selfish motive.  even when helping another person at direct expense to yourself, it could be said that it is so that you can"feel good about yourself" or respect your self.  and then there's that "warm, fuzzy feeling" that some people say they get when helping others.

Others, who end up dying for a cause, is often either a) because they think that doing so will give them a better "afterlife" or b ) because they think that they made a difference, so they will be respected/admired/looked up to

There are no good people, only bad people who make good choices. And then the "good" choices aren't really good either.

Samurye.

Not only do I agree with this, I have made this exact argument many times. 

It is instintual to think of ourselves/our bloodline first, because without this instinct, we may never have advanced as far as we have.  Whether this is good, or bad, is debatable, but it is true, none-the-less, and it's ironic that humans think that they are so above other mammels that act on instinct. 

I don't know if I agree with this.  Our decisions may not be based on good motives, but they can indirectly/directly have a good consequence.  Of course, this depends on your definition of "good."

I think the main problem comes when you mix selfishness with stupidity: just look at wall street/detroit.

Instinctual*  (My pc is not letting me edit for some reason.)

Selfishness is in us all, and even a little stupidity.  Yet we always try to delude ourselves into thinking we, or the ones we deal with/trust, are above that.

Actually, we ARE above other mammals simply because we CAN debate our morality.  You can say sentience/intelligence is just another tool in the war called survival of the fittest, but you can't deny that it's probably the best tool that currently exists.

How can you know this for sure though?  We assume that other life-forms aren't as intelligent as we are, because we use our knowledge of the way that our minds and bodies work as a basis to compare.  Just something to think about.

No, I can't deny that.  But of course we may only believe that because we compare other creatures to ourselves, and base our beliefs off of that.

Morality is definitely present in some species.  However, the distinct lack of it is present in many of the supposedly more intelligent ones.  Certain birds mate for life, some herd animals will protect the young of even another species at the expense of their own life, while dolphins regularly rape and kill each other despite the typical warm and fuzzy reaction to us humans.  They rival humanity in every aspect of immorality, genocide, wholesale slaughter of their own young, and gang rape.  Of course, with flipper for a PR rep, who wouldn't go on a murdering spree...

This is why Americans have the right to own firearms. Because selfish and stupid people exist, the kind with such a large dose of both that they threaten the whole of humanity.

But usually, it is the selfish and stupid people who wind up owning the firearms...

Try [ctrl][F5] with the page you want to edit open.

Humans are only smarter than other animals in the respect that we use ITEMS against them, if we are pitted with no weapons against a tiger, we loose, and thats why we are NOT at the top of the food chain in that aspect.

there natural instinct is much more enhanced than ours is today, with everything we have now-a-days we've lost alot of the naturall evolution in us, we become dependent on our "things".

Without technology we woulnt be what we are today. u could argue we are much more, or we are slightly less.

Scoutdog should view guncrime statistics with legally owned firearms in perspective with the number of legally owned firearms.  The ratio of cops committing crimes are higher.

I disagree with this, there are good people, yes everybody makes some some bad choices but then we try to use the mistakes we to learn from them and not to make them twice, what makes them good people is that they learn from the mistakes. Its rare nowadays but there are people you are selfless in the things they do.

There is one more c) To protect the ones they love, to make a difference to their loved ones in the world.

I agree with you on this for a and b, dying for them is pointless, there are bigger things in the world then themselves, admiration is not worth dying for, and chances are they are admired already from there loved ones.                                   

Living in the modern age,
death for virtue is the wage.
So it seems in darker hours.
Evil wins, kindness cowers.                                                                                                                                        

-The Book of Counted Sorrows

.

And one could argue that our technology is just another part of out evolution. Albiet a somewhat more Lamarckian part.

IMO morality is just a slightly more long term version of selfishness. Morally correct = good for society. If society collapses, everyone loses. It will not be as instantaneous as a selfish decision, but it will have much more implications for the future. Morality is just a code by which we preserve the bonds (primarily trust) which allow a society to fuction.

One can deferintiate humans from animals in one major way: Where animals adapt to the world around them, humans make the world adapt to them. That is why we have risin to become the dominant species of this planet. Because of our aggresiveness. That aggressiveness is what prompted us to build cities, to till the land, and it is what has prompted us to expend more energy on trying to destroy our own species that any other species know to exist. That aggressiveness is what tells us to go where none have gone before.

Samurye.

We build houses, a gazillion critters dig holes.  The lowly ant does the exact same thing people do, just to a lesser degree.  Beavers even match humans when it comes to terraforming.  You put those little shits into a relatively flat area that drains well and has heavy rainfall, and it will be a swamp when they get through with it.  People drain them, beavers create them.  They even have the edge in building material over a depressingly large portion of the world.  Mud and sticks be a superior building method to concrete and no steel.  In earthquake, concrete and no steel go poof and kill everyone.

There is no scientifically provable advantage over all the other critters.  All we have is scale, we don't actually do anything even remotely unique.  They've been claiming one bit of nonsense after another, and every bit of it has been shown to be just that.  Animals dream, create art, invent tools, form social structures, have spoken and written languages, pass knowledge on to their offspring.

While there may be no scientifical proof of us having advantages over animals.  There is how ever a more creative way of looking at the advantages we have over animals.  Our main advantages are easy to remember by the "three C's".  They are creativity, choise, and change. Go back to the beaver. When any beaver creates their dam its always the same as the one before, it is the same as the one there parents made, and there parents made, all the way back to when the speceis first apeared. We how ever are always reinventing our homes making them better. When it comes down to chose what is a beaver going to do with his life, he going to make a dam. When it comes to chose with us and our lifes what can we do, heal peope, build homes for people, protect people, theres such a wide varity of things to do. Last is the fact that the human race changes. In the 1700 when fur trapper fond beavers they were making dams. 100 years later we figure out the power of steam to move object 1000 of times heavier than us. weres the beaver, making dams. Another 100 years and we figured out how to fly a feet acomplished by very few speices. weres the beaver, still making dams. Another hundred years and we had done some thing no other speices has done nor probalily will ever do and that is probeling our selfs off the planet to space. weres the beaver, still making dams. What makes us superior is the fact that we are able to evolve faster than any speices know to man kind.

How fast a species evolves is somewhat based on how well suited to their environment. Based on your argument, beavers are more well suited to their environment than we are to ours. The reason beaver dams are the same is purely functionality. If you make a beaver dam any different it just wont work.

were perfectly adept to our environment, as a matter of fact we create our own environment as we see fit.

as in we dont look for a suitable environment but take an environment and make/recreate the environment to be suitable to us.

for example, we actualy evolved to wear clothes!

Indeed. This concept of changing the world as opposed to adapting to it is what makes us unique. It is what makes us truly human.

Huh? Animals manipulate their environments just like humans do.

Animals build nests from, or in, nearby surroundings.

Lemon Ants kill all but one species of plant, thus providing themselves with more nesting sights (the plant type that survives their poison).

Various species of ants will basically farm aphids as livestock; moving them from one feeding ground to the next and feeding off of the honeydew produced by the aphids. In turn the ants protect the aphids and provide them with ideal feeding grounds.

People are animals, we've just taken these things to a whole new level. I think an important trait that people have, that animals don't is Synesthesia.

Exactly. Intelligence works on a sliding scale, as opposed to being some sort of binary quality.

i was thinking the same thing about the termite hills in afrika, wich in scale are bigger than anything we have ever build.

however, a termite hill is like a city for these termites and i have yet to see a termite hill containing a baker, butcher, restaurant, casino, red light district or cinema and such.

animals only "edit" to their primal needs.

a nursery, a birth chamber containing the queen etc.

like a honeybee only eats honey and a honeybee will never think: i think i'll eat something else tonight...i think i'll eat my honey spicey today.

so we dont just recreate our environment to just suit our survival needs, we recreate it to pleasure us aswell, we recreate it to our own "eden".

also ants and termites dont really rest, they "work" 7 whole days per week without ever taking or amagining taking a vacation.

its as if the difference between us and animals is being able to "think outside the box".