:...making the world even more like Venus than it already is. The Venusian from The Twilight Zone had 3 eyes. I think I'll invest in contact lenses!
: SDF: Easter Island wasn't even THAT interesting. Human civilization will simply die with a whimper.
Yes, but there will me much screaming and violence before the last remnants whimper out.
: SDF: Now you're thinking about enculturation, the main problem from the beginning for humankind.
Perhaps, but what if the Semai, a homogenous group of people (one assumes) were genetically predisposed to less aggression? Stop shaking your head, it might be the case. I also asked whether they were geographically isolated because I'd like to know if they could maintain a peaceful existence if forced to fight more hostile peoples. Extrapolating from that scenario, once learning the art of war and the thrill of the kill, would they remain peaceful among themselves? I'll read up on them myself.
: SDF: With humanity, it can be discounted. People don't have claws, nor fangs, this wasn't an accident.
Aggression, however, requires neither claws nor fangs, simply the will to be aggressive.
: Besides, groups such as the Eskimo that eat lots of meat also die early. You can't call that an evolutionary advantage...
I've never understood the Eskimo. Okay, so the Bering Straight is frozen, and you cross over it in pursuit of caribou and other game, and you enter a vast, cold and hostile environment, and you: a) keep going until you reach California, or b) build an igloo. I'm sure the Eskimo had their reasons for staying (hostile renegade Semai migrants gone bad in Alaska, perhaps?), but still, there have to be better alternatives to sitting on a block of ice eating muktuk.
: : Also, in human relations, reasoned discussion is effective, but threatening to beat the shit out of your opponent is too.
: SDF: Doesn't work on the internet.
To be honest, SDF, I don't think anything works on the Internet. The net is great for looking up words like "muktuk" and seeing Pam Anderson's naughty bits, but changing minds? It's an exercise in frustration.
Alright, it helped organize the battle in Seattle, but those people were converts already!
: : : Too much has been made of the "nature red in tooth and claw" version of Darwinian population biology popularized by T.H. Huxley. The Origin of Species is primarily a book about niche theory, about how animals and plants find places where they can survive.
: : I'll take your word for it, but nature is indeed RIT&C
: SDF: No it's not. Competition is not all-out, otherwise Earth would have no rainforests, no coral reefs.
You talking about symbiosis? Okay, that's a good point if you are. Anyway, it's good you bring it up now; the 3-eyed SDF of the future won't even know what rainforests and coral reefs are, since they'll all have been wiped out.
: SDF: My point is that humanity is experiencing a systemic crisis, one which will deepen as the years of the 3rd millenium march drearily onward... if we are to get to the real business of social change, the bad systems must go.
Can't argue with that. But others surely will...enjoy.
