It's Only Natural
Or do we really value our individuals desires more, even if that inevitably leads our own extinction?
We've quite naturally evolved the ability to make this choice. Whether we value peaceful co-existence over violent confrontation and painful compromises over self-righteous intractable growth of our smaller and more parochial self-interests these are what comprise the nature of the choices ahead.
I really do Blog for peace, as much as to keep track of my own philosophical and educational progress (not to forget for simply ranting just to clear my head or have a good time!) I really do hope that, somehow, I can add to our silly and sublime species' evolutionary continuation.
Regardless of its efficacy, I'm keepin' "my fingers crossed" that we wind up making the right choices in the long run. I really do hope that I sometimes offer some valuable means of doing so right now.
Mass extinctions occur with surprisingly regularity over the long haul. During the last 250 million years, there's been a big die-off roughly every 26 million years.
Adam Lipowski, a researcher at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, suggests the extinctions might sometimes be driven not by climate change or impacts from space, but by the emergence of super predators.
In 2005, Lipowski developed a computer simulation representing a population of many species competing for food and living space. Much of the time, "medium efficiency" predators prowled the virtual world and their numbers fluctuated only slightly in response to changes in prey population size.
But every so often, mutations would lead to the evolution of a super predator that quickly devours an entire prey population, which in turn leads to its own extinction.
The critters that survived the "predatory apocalypse" gradually mutated to fill new ecological niches, and the cycle began anew.
Look in the mirror
Humans could be considered today's super predators.
I don’t believe religion’s a necessity as much as an inevitability (like politics and war). Humans have a lot of questions about life, the universe and everything, questions without answers that they can comprehend. Having an explanation for these things is a pacifier for them, makes life easier, and being the provider of the explanations gives one power. The “explainer” will be an authority figure – whether it’s the tribal leader, priest(ess), or simply a parent.
ReplyDeleteIt’s really much harder to try and think for oneself, and be willing to continually ponder the questions while leaving them unanswered.
Looks to me like humans have done fairly well for themselves but it has come at a large expense for others. We are weapons of mass destruction to nature.
ReplyDeleteAre humans a part of nature?
ReplyDeleteNietzsche "Will to Power"...
544 (1885-1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888)
Increase in "dissimulation" proportionate to the rising order of rank of creatures. It seems to be lacking in the inorganic world-- power against power, quite crudely cunning begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The highest human beings, such as Caesar, Napoleon (Stendhal's remark on him), also the higher races (Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus); a thousandfold craftiness belongs to the essence of the enhancement of man-- problem of the actor. My Dionysus ideal--The perspective of all organic functions, all the strongest instincts of life: the force in all life that wills error; error as the precondition even of thought. Before there is "thought" there must have been "invention"; the construction of identical cases, of the appearance of sameness, is more primitive than the knowledge of sameness.
In the battle between the grass and the tyranosaurus... guess who won?
{ S T R E T C H } All right, Guess it's time to go mow the dinosaur.
ReplyDelete{-;
Im glad I saw graemfinsons piece about Spain in 39. Sure we can, folks.
ReplyDeleteCommemorate!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up, Troutsky.
Steve Hawkins said recently mankind wouldnt last another 100 years unless we colonized Mars or the Moon.
ReplyDeleteCheerful, eh?
Dig it, Steve. He's right if we allow our big wigs of all psychotideologies to keep goin' the way they are.
ReplyDeleteOne of the few reasons I support an oversized Military Industrial Complex is for benefits to space exploration from new engineering it provides.
That reason goes out the window when they're spending so much on killing people to "protect our future" that there're no ideas OR money left for space.
Bainsey-
ReplyDeletehttp://sheabirdno1.blogspot.com/2006/07/its-gay-gay-gay-gay-gay-gay-channel.html
Check the comments-
all in good fun, all in good fun...
You have a good point there MB. Religoon as I know it is so twisted up in it's own underwear that it's about useless. Given the good that humans CAN do, I predict we will turn this thing around. I'd hate to see us go out and mess up outer space.
ReplyDeleteWell ya bring me add peace if that counts.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, there is a camp that believes we have come to this point at least 7 times in human history and failed to do the right thing all times. I think it's 7 or it could be that this is the 7th try. It's been a while since I read it.
ReplyDeleteYeppers, space politics is gonna be just as fun, eh.
ReplyDeleteIt counts for A LOT to me, Tonya. Thx!
I don't know 'bout those 7 Campers' ideas, but the movie Seven was awesome! {-;