What makes us human?

[Exmortis]

I am tired of humanity, I could easily live amongst the animals.

I think I could turn and live with animals ,

they are so placid and self-contained

I stand and look at them long and long .

They do not sweat and whine about their condition ,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins ,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God ,

Not one is dissatisfied ,

not one is demented with the mania of owning things ,

Not one kneels to another ,

nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago ,

Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth .


Using a poem by Walt Whitman to express a point

 

[Exmortis]

Animals adapt to the world.
Humans adapt the world to them.

 

[Exmortis]

Words

Words belong to Humanity.
Words define Poverty.
Words define Sorrow.
Words define Pain, and Lust, and Hate and Prejudice.

But, Words cannot define Life.

Because Humanity didn't create Life.

 

[IrBubble]

Fourth: It only sounds harsh to stupid people. Sorry. Death is not a fail in nature, but I'm sure you'll never "get it". You buy meat from a bin at the grocery store don't you? Ever fetch any of your own buttercup?

Pathetic ad-hom attacks are pathetic. What you just said is "You can't argue my point because I just said you don't understand it!". This is exactly the argument used to justify why we can't sense god if we do not believe in him.

"Lastly: "I also don't see that image meaning a great deal" I could write an entire thesis on that image, I guess that's just the difference between an intellect and an ignoramus."

I guess it does. You can't see past your weak self to the greater good. I can. You just want to make yourself feel better about what you're doing, where I want to actually affect change that prevents these tragedies and helps the long term survival of the species (koala). Not one furry that it'd make me feel better about myself to help, but long term productive change. Nature cares not for the individual, and neither do I. I know. Makes me look cold, but I'm not. I just think past my nose, where some don't.

Do realize that helping the enviorment of the koalas and helping one koala are not mutually exclusive. Also, these kinds of endeavours encourage other people to help, which means that it actually can have a bigger positive effect for the envoirment than just spending your time trying to help the enviorment.

Standard? I have no standard. I don't see "human" as a goal, I see it as a label.

I never said human was a goal, I said I wanted to know your standard of success so that we could make a comparison.

As ignorant and self centered as I've seen many monkeys (humans) act, I have a lot more respect for many other species that actually (maybe) understand nature and play by the rules.

And these rules are what? Care to be a little bit more specific?

Even if they don't understand it, at least they don't do the shit we're doing. It's madness isn't it? I mean seriously, you can't shit all over your environment, overpopulate to extreme, and commit the atrocities we do every year all in the name of learning a couple mostly useless facts about the nature of fundamental particle physics.

Why can't we? The point of life, if there is such a thing, is survival and reproduction. We need these things to keep surviving and reproducing after the sun is depleted.

Really, what's the goal? Are we trying to win? Win what?!? Are we happier with a iPhone G3 than we where with a flint spear? Can you bury 1/3 of the worlds rain forests and actually wake up being happy with your life? ETC I sure the fuck don't.

Right now it seems like you're just trolling. Stop overromanticising the other species, they are no better than us in terms of morals, they're just not successful enough to be able to overpopulate, polute etc. And even so, you cannot use these as disadvantages for the human race unless you define a standard of which you value different traits, which you earlier said that you didn't.

 

[Witalian]

But, Words cannot define Life.

Because Humanity didn't create Life.

Words can define many things that humans didn't created. And they can define life. This is my deffiniution of life : Any self replicateing patern with the ability to increase it's complexity over generetions.

 

[Exmortis]

Of course there is a word everything, we need to have names for things, but your missing my point.

Misery is a expression that only came into existance when mankind did, lust, hatred and prejudice as roughly the same.
Life existed long before humanity, therefore it is unlikely to capture the entirity of it's essence with our limited knowledge of it.

This is the human definition of life:

The condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

...=\... Now this may just be me but I think life is much more then this.

Now compare it to this:

An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

That is pretty much all there is to prejudice, because we formed that emotion and that word to represent it.


Tell me is there any creature on this planet that presents prejudice, the emotion, not a instint labeled as prejudice and is too vauge to be definate. But a animal constantly showing genuine hatred towards another another animal for no rational reason.




Anyway, have fun pulling apart my flawed argument and..... How ya doin? 8P

 

[encoctmebreu]

I would say that what is typically human is our tendency to "hide our intentions from ourselves".

 

[Skillbus]

Hopefully no Descartes answers, but you never know

We had Descartes, therefore we are human.

EDIT: I mean this in a more than joking sense. I think the ability to recognize existence and question it instead of only thinking about the things contained in it makes us human. Also Descartes was a badass.

 

[Fictionarious]

Our deoxyribonucleic acid.

 

[Exmortis]

Yummy! Deoxyribonucleic acid is great on toast.

 

[Wolfmeister]

I am tired of humanity, I could easily live amongst the animals.

I think I could turn and live with animals ,

they are so placid and self-contained

I stand and look at them long and long .

They do not sweat and whine about their condition ,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins ,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God ,

Not one is dissatisfied ,

not one is demented with the mania of owning things ,

Not one kneels to another ,

nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago ,

Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth .


Using a poem by Walt Whitman to express a point

not meaning to rain on your parade, but thats a city persons view of animals




1. they are not placid and in most cases not self contained but part of a functioning larger body within which they have little free will without being subject to attack by others

2. they certainly DO kneel to others - alot. it's the whole way they establish dominance ordering within their group

3. they eat their own babies (infaticide) often - they eat the babies of others within their pack in many species, or just to bring the females back into heat they will kill all the offspring - babies will also kill each other in the nest to become the one dominant, surviving offspring.

4. they are brutaly & horrificaly cruel in many cases - you are not shown the reality on tv cos it would be too aweful to put on tv

5. they eat the offspring of other species - - havent you ever seen a wild mink eating a nest of baby birds while the mother flaps around in a total panic screeching? not a pretty sight trust me (or sound)

6. contrary to what religious nuts say they DO practice homosexual acts ('bulling' for example in beef herds)

7. they can, will and do decimate the area in which they live - rabbits for example almost starved the uk and australia at different times in history by decimating the land - look up the fence they had to build over australia to try and stop them - elephants, goats, etc etc will decimate any area they feed in and move on

8. they are more than demented about their ownership of territory (or females or herd), killing to maintain that ownership with brutal efficiency

9. They do not sweat and whine about their condition - they certainly do if you put them in the wrong condition - they will drive themselves insane, eat off their own limbs etc



sorry, i'm from the woods and life aint like that at all, although it sounds nice and romantic.

basicaly we are animals. hence we have ALL the same characteristics and behaviour as they do and it's grim and brutal

 

[Zylstra]

Yummy! Deoxyribonucleic acid is great on toast.

wheat, white, or seedless rye?

 

[Exmortis]

Wow, that was sooo insightful and smart; it's a real shame that I DON'T GIVE A CRAP.

...However I will point out that:
1) Animals are far more placid then humans, they may act in a ways considered violent and barbaric, but only in order to assure their own survival and the survival of their offspring.
2) No, they do not kneel to each other, as you said, some animals (lions etc.) live by a code of dominence, biggest, strongest rules the pack, but you will find that other members can challenge the pack leader for dominence. Humans have buildt up a whole system filled with tecnicalities to stop political underdogs from taking power ( to my understanding ).
3) I don't think the poem mentioned any about canibalism.
4) * Redirects you to point (1) *
5) I also don't think the poem mentioned homosexuality.
6) That wasn't mentioned either, reguardless, the damage rabbits do is repairable and minor in conparison to the damage human activity inflicts to the earth.
7) Have you seen Jerry Springer.
8) Oh yeah, If you put a ant queen with a couple workings in a jar filled with dirt and place food in it, they will be pissed, however they adapt and build a new home. That will occur for any living organism, however, animals who are more specialized to a certain enviroment, will have a lower shange of surviving drastic changes in it's enviroment.

 

[Wolfmeister]

lol -

1) Animals are far more placid then humans,

no they are not and if you spent every day 7 days a week with them you'd know.

1) they may act in a ways considered violent and barbaric, but only in order to assure their own survival and the survival of their offspring.

not always, they commit violent acts for the hell of it, often, bullying weaklings in the herd/group to death, etc.


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2) No, they do not kneel to each other, as you said, some animals (lions etc.) live by a code of dominence, biggest, strongest rules the pack, but you will find that other members can challenge the pack leader for dominence. Humans have buildt up a whole system filled with tecnicalities to stop political underdogs from taking power ( to my understanding ).

rubbish - pretty much ALL animals and most birds work under a system which is soley about dominance order and obeyance of that order, and that order/hierarchy is created though violence. Humans work the same way - if you have a big stick you rule, whoever comes with a bigger stick/army/gun rules and takes over.


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3) I don't think the poem mentioned any about canibalism.

5) I also don't think the poem mentioned homosexuality.

i was just adding in a few other falacies people have about animals when they get all romantic or whatever, no worries.

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4) * Redirects you to point (1) *

i was merely pointing out that people wish humans could be soft and cuddly , not horrible & at-one-with-nature etc like they perceive animals to be, but i'm pretty sure you wouldnt want to live in a world where such behaviour was practiced by humans. i dont think you'd like to come home and find your children eaten alive etc - when such things do happen, society is horrified that such acts can happen


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6. well actualy rabbits (amongst others) will just decimate everything until the food runs out and they start to die and collapse. unless you think they have meetings where they plan the use of resources. whether or not that is mrely a consequence of their numbers/breeding versus the available resources is irrelevent - the point is they dont have any restraint when it comes to decimating their environment. i mentioned it cos of the cute notion anilmals are at one with nature and use resources properly (as a comparison to humans)


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8.
Oh yeah, If you put a ant queen with a couple workings in a jar filled with dirt and place food in it, they will be pissed, however they adapt and build a new home. That will occur for any living organism, however, animals who are more specialized to a certain enviroment, will have a lower shange of surviving drastic changes in it's enviroment.

maybe, but it is simply not true that animals never worry or get antaganistic over their 'conditions', they do.




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as i said, not trying to rain on your parade, but y'know, spend some time working with animals, they dont have some monopoly on peacefulness & harmony, although i do get the romantic idea, of course i do.

animal life, like human life in a primative society, is cruel and brutal, thats all i'm sayin; it's just the way it is man. For example, generaly we all abhor violence, but in animal world they dont have arbitration meetings, everything is settled by violence.


we dont yet live in a human society imo, it is still run on entirely animalistic principals. We've just created more complicated & crafty ways of doing the same behaviour.

for example - people starved of resources in , i dunno, er.... darfur... one dominant group or 'pride' or 'herd' has chased the other away from resources and then attacks & harrasses them randomly on top of that

that situation is created obviously by one lot pushing the other lot out from food/water resources

hence we are not 'humans', as in: we are not distinctly different from animals in our group behaviour.

I didnt mean to offend. Thats how it is, sorry. .


Although human infanticide has been widely studied, the practice has been observed in many other species of the animal kingdom since it was first seriously studied by Yukimaru Sugiyama.[120] These include from microscopic rotifers and insects, to fish, amphibians, birds and mammals.[121] Infanticide can be practiced by both males and females. (wiki)

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=infanticide+in+animals&btnG=Search&meta=

 

[Exmortis]

I get where your coming from, Wolf, and I suppose that you do have a lot of truth behind your point ( Animal is primative human society). However, you cannot say that animals are more destructive to their enviroment, because they aren't. Even a rabbit, who exhasts it's resources very quickly, doesn't cause irreversable damage to their enviroment, however, like humans they are doomed to kill themselves. Humans on the other hand, destroy everything and most of those things will not come back and the things that do come back, we find another way to destroy that quility of the planet that didn't exist before, through our technology. ( I.E nuclear weaponary).

.... OMG!... a scenario of the creation of human behavior\morals that doesn't include a God !!!!

 

[Wolfmeister]

I get where your coming from, Wolf, and I suppose that you do have a lot of truth behind your point ( Animal is primative human society). However, you cannot say that animals are more destructive to their enviroment, because they aren't. Even a rabbit, who exhasts it's resources very quickly, doesn't cause irreversable damage to their enviroment, however, like humans they are doomed to kill themselves. Humans on the other hand, destroy everything and most of those things will not come back and the things that do come back, we find another way to destroy that quility of the planet that didn't exist before, through our technology. ( I.E nuclear weaponary).

.... OMG!... a scenario of the creation of human behavior\morals that doesn't include a God !!!!

sure humans have ability to decimate more thru technology, but the root behaviour is just identical. Generaly tho, human decimation if left to it's own devices will repair over time just as animal decimation does - i mean decimation like deforestation/denuding of flora, fouling of water resources etc - of course chemical and radiation etc type of decimation/spoiling is another matter, but as i say, thats mrely a consequence of technology; the base motivation/behaviour behind it is identical; to animals.

anyways, thats just one aspect of animal behaviour. For example, most decent people frown on the local thug who settles every dispute down the pub (or at home with the family) with violence - we'd all generaly hate to be around someone like that, but thats how animals do it every time.


I DO get the angle of the O.P of course - frankly YES, i'd always prefer animals over humans if it comes to it, cos humans are usualy nothing but trouble; but it just irks me when city people talk romanticised fluffy rubbish about nature and animals thats all.

people are generaly utterly detatched from nature, and view similar behaviour in humans as abhorrent, violent, aggressive, sexist, etc etc.



we'll leave 'Jah' for another time eh

 

[GoodKat]

Animals adapt to the world.
Humans adapt the world to them.

I guess beavers aren't animals then.

 

[Exmortis]

No, bevers aren't animals, soon they shall be your masters and overlords and will force you to work in their massive wooden human enslavement dams.

Bevers want to be the supreme masters of the earth and will do whatever nessarsary to achieve that... even trying to....

DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL
DESTROY US ALL

* For more mindless ranting press one; For more transparent quotes press two; For Exmortis to start saying 'The tyre that you took is worth ten tons in tin' with a jamacan ascent press three; to disconnect this call please hang up now. *

 

[nasher168]

Normally, I would say that if it thinks like a human and shares our physical characteristics, then it's human in my book. I would not, for example, call an artificial intelligence human as it does not have a human body.
But then I'm not sure what to do about people with learning difficulties, as they are very much human in every way, yet they may not always think like a "normal" human.

 

[Exmortis]

And hence, we have an age old dilemma.

The ability to identifly... how do you suppose we do it.

It has plauged the A.I designers for years, mostly because, for example, a computer programmed to avoid a rock may not recognise a rock as a rock if it has a turf of grass growing in front of it, and therefore will not be able to identifly that object as a rock, so it will run into it.

It is in my oppinion, that lifeforms that have reasonable interlect use complex reasoning to identifly the grassy rock, breaking down what quilities it has, examines it from various angles, than makes a calculated assumtion concluding that this is a rock with grass growing in front of it.

Let me break this down:

Algorithum A.I : Examination of new object ---> Scans new object ---> Searches programmed data for closest match to new object ---> Crosschecks results, identiflies or unknown

Human\Intelligent bioform : Examination of new object ---> Inspects new object closely ---> Takes note of quilities (dangerous, benefital or otherwise) and puts them to memory

This isn't accurate, but it gives you the idea.