[Malaclypse]

Gorefest, on 11 September 2016 - 08:57 AM, said:

Malaclypse, on 11 September 2016 - 06:22 AM, said:

You don't understand people. We are eminently capable of destroying this place and if you imagine otherwise, you are fooling yourself. [....].Gorefest, honestly, you just lack a firm grasp of the facts but I forgive you for that. If you feel that you have a position that you can defend then we should continue via PM. Nothing would please me more. All of my best friends have given up, quite frankly and I crave fresh meat.

I am truly humbled by your scope for forgiveness, I did not think my blatant ignorance deserved it. However, I think you completely missed my point. I don't think at all that all humans love each other at heart and are not capable of destroying our environs. What I am saying is that most scenarios of global destruction would either build in safe-guards for the destructors to survive or would not be global enough to reach every outpost of human society. I already acknowledged in a previous post that obviously an external cataclysmic force such as a meteor impact or the sun burning out would be the end of humanity at this point, but we are discussing human-driven extinction here. The thing with complete extinction is: you need to drop the population below a certain critical limit for it to be unable to recover. A large-scale destruction event like a nuclear war or a viral pandemic simply drastically reduces the numbers and turns the clock back to prehistoric times, but any survivors suddenly have a wealth of resources and space to bounce back.

And yes, people can be idiots and cruel and nasty, but they are also rational and caring and have a sense of personal self-preservation. And most societies strive to higher goals such as education and health, which compensates to an extent for individual greed or mob rule. Shitty things happen, but there are counter balances and people have an unprecendented capacity to bounce back. See 9/11, see the Bataclan, see the Spanish flu, see world war 2. We struggle and then rebuild. Through every age we have increased our capacity to destroy, yet never in history have there been more people on the planet. A reset may be imminent, but it won't terminate the species, just civilizations. It happened to the Romans, the Chinese, the Greeks, the Etruskans. It will happen to the USA and to Europe and to north-Korea. But something else will take its place.

All good points, if you imagine that resetting the clock can be a good thing. It's human nature that prevents us from achieving liftoff, for lack of a better word. We are inclined towards discord - we envy those who have achieved greater things than us and we seek to drag them down wherever and however we can. SE is a humanist but I am not. Human nature as it is now needs to be defeated. Otherwise we're in for more of the same until something external turns out the lights. It's pathetic how utterly silly we behave in groups. So some remnant of humanity survives and climbs back to a level of sophistication equivalent to today and why would it then proceed any differently from now? What is the point to blasting ourselves back to the stone age and clawing our way back only to do the same thing again? Eventually, an asteroid will come or the sun will burn out. The inability of our species to overcome our own essential madness is the problem and surviving the next apocalypse is not something to be celebrated.

[Malaclypse]

Malaclypse, on 12 September 2016 - 06:09 AM, said:

I think you overestimate human nature.

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And I think you underestimate it. So where does that leave us? Me naive or you nihilistic?

You naive, obviously. If you ever get into a survival situation you'll find this out with the quickness.

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Brandishing your opinion as fact doesn't make it true, it just makes you sound dogmatic. Human nature is a meaningless term, as it implies a single deterministic tendency to react in a specific way when social boundaries are removed.

Fair point. I'm not talking about individual human nature, which of course is highly variable. What isn't highly variable is the way humans behave in groups, whether or not social boundaries have been removed. Most people just sign on to whatever is the accepted norm of the day as imposed by whoever and anyone who doesn't is ripe for abuse from those who have, secure in their majority. Trouble is, most people are fools and are easily led.

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Whereas the reality is that people react in different ways based on the situation and past experiences, the latter component being something that we are exceptionally good at as a species due to our huge frontal cortex. We can reflect and analyse, and we can empathise and predict knock-on effects of our actions. Sure, violence is an important driver of human behaviour and evolution, but so is cooperation and reconcilliation.

Not in a survival situation. I don't know what to say to you here. Have you ever been in a rough situation, alone with dangerous people? I have and it ain't pretty. No amount of reflection or analysis even touches the reality of the situation. People who are willing to hurt you to get their way tend to be opaque to philosophy. My background is archaeology and one of the things I studied in particular was the cycle of civilization and it's clear that civilization breaks before it bends.

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We certainly are among the most violent of species, I won't deny that. But we also are among the most empathic and social. The primal instincts are there, but we also have the mental capacity to recognise these instincts and decide to act on them or refrain to do so. Sure, strip the social veneer of humanity and we will be at each other's throat, a great one-liner for the superficial cynic. But that social veneer is exactly what separates us from base instinct driven animals: it's a set of moral guidelines and social codes which educate us in applying our frontal cortex, our homunculus or sense of self, at recognising the instinctive behaviours that are detrimental and those that are constructive to our personal and group improvement.

Good luck with that.

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Choose to focus on the negative aspects and all you will see are negative things. You focus on the innate tendency of humans to harm and hurt and then drive that train of thought to its inevitable terminal which is total species annihilation, because it appeals to your nihilistic world view. If that floats your boat, by all means wallow in fatalism. However, there are many more aspects to human behaviour and evolutionary adaptibility which can lead to a plethora of outcomes. In my opinion it is far braver and more constructive to face such inherent demons and fight them in yourself and your surroundings in an attempt to let nurture beat nature, than to sit there triumphantly declaring the inevitable demise of humanity while looking smug in your self-imposed self-destruction.

We are virtuous and thoughtful when life is easy. The moment it gets hard, virtue is forgotten. I don't need your agreement in this - it's been proven countless times. A lot of smart people just give up and take whet they can from life while they're alive and try not to let the tragedy of human nature get to them. I can't do that, it fucking gets to me. It's not fatalism I aspire to nor nihilism. I aspire to greater things for our species but am powerless to effect any sort of change in the right direction and all I see from the vast sea of the unwashed masses is ignorance and stupidity, a herd easily led and I no longer blame the decision-makers that take advantage of that herd. I blame the individual stupidity of the members of the herd. Especially I blame the pseudo-smart ones who follow the herd but invent reasons for doing so. It's guaranteed that the civilizations of today will fall. It's what happens afterwards that matters and yeah, maybe it'll be sunshine and roses somehow but I'm sceptical.

[Malaclypse]

worry, on 13 September 2016 - 08:38 PM, said:

Seems like both of you are making a lot of assumptions about what constitutes "instinct" in humans. By what evidence are you asserting that a drive to "harm" and "hurt" are innate human qualities, as opposed to impulses derived from other factors?

I'm not talking about instinct at all. I think instinct is an entirely fallacious concept. I believe it stems from this idea of human uniqueness vis-a-vis the rest of the animal kingdom. In the absence of consciousness, you have instinct as a sort of placeholder to describe decision-making in the absence of consciousness because it's so damned important that this notion of recognizing oneself as separate and distinct in the world should be denied all other creatures. Instinct, like race, was always a dumb idea, a lazy idea. In my own field of interest, there was the ice-free corridor fantasy we were told in Grade 8 social studies to describe the colonization of the New World. Five years of Univerity and a particular interest and focus on this question only to find out that sometimes in science, all you get is the most popular theory of the day and OK that's mostly social science which is itself is a laughable notion to you hard science people and I respect that. If I could do it again I would first become a qualified electrician because you'll never be out of work and then I would get into physics because that is where the fucking magic of the universe is explored and there just can't be anything more interesting than that - Anyway, there was never any actual evidence for an ice-free corridor in terms of, say..I don't even fucking know what would constitute good physical evidence of an ice-free corridor! How would you prove the existence of such a thing? So it was nothing more than an educated guess because the oldest Clovis sites were in the midwest US and a hypothetical ice-free corridor, being the gap between alpine glaciers coming down from what is now the rocky mountains and the continental glacier that covered almost all of the rest of the continent past a certain latitude. Far more likely that the continental glacier met the alpine glacier(s) and merged - we're talking ice that is miles thick. And then, when indisputable evidence is discovered at Monte Verde, dating of such impeccable quality in terms of quantity and integrity of sampling, control of variables, etc., absolutely impeccable, that put people 1000 miles south and a 1000 years earlier than the earliest Clovis sites. And a certain element of the scholarship, despite the overwhelming evidence, chose to dig in their heels and deny it to that last breath because their careers depended on it, they'd published books with this ice-free corridor malarkey as a founding principle and so forth. I think it was at that moment, when I finished reading an article written by a person like this, that I lost faith with humanity. Lynch, that was his name. Entrenched conservatism in the scientific endeavour really rattled me. It's such a betrayal of the whole thing, the juice of life, figuring shit out - fuckers who make a career out of making it harder for other people to figure shit out should be shot with balls of their own shit.

Heh. OK. I don't propose that the drive to hurt or harm are innate human qualities. I assert that the drive to hurt or harm is innate in all animals, if not all of life. A strawberry plant wants to conquer the whole world - you spend enough time with strawberries and you know this to be true - they throw out daughters and granddaughters, etc. etc. with shocking speed - you have to pinch off the granddaughters and all but twelve (I think?) of the daughters to get a nice productive plant with big berries. In the wild there is so much competition for the strawberry plant that it doesn't get out of hand and in fact, needs its aggressive reproductive strategy in order to compete with everything around it. Bindweed, some people call it morning glory - this fucking plant wants to strangle everything it encounters - we don't notice because it's moving in slow motion but imagine you're a tree, watching this thing coming for your life over the course of months and years.

"Impulses derived from other factors"?! English motherfucker, do you speak it? Honestly, what the fuck does this mean?

[worry]

It means an impulse derived elsewhere than heredity. A simple contrast with "instinct".

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Vengeance, on 22 September 2016 - 02:02 AM, said:

Rugby is a real mans sport. Which is why the ALL BLACKS are the worlds best. Cause Kiwies are real men!!!!

NOTICE OF TEXT MODGOD DELETED BECAUSE KEEP YOUR BRO'ISM TO YOURSELF.

At my undergraduate university, as a spectator sport, women's rugby was probably more popular. My freshman year roommate had played USo.An football in highschool and was the only freshman to make it onto the (male) rugby A team; he said he chose to stick to rugby because the training was less intense. But that was (obviously) in the USo.A....

MODGOD DELETED BECAUSE SAME AS ABOVE.

This post has been edited by Abyss: 22 September 2016 - 06:51 PM

[Vengeance]

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 September 2016 - 05:08 PM, said:

Vengeance, on 22 September 2016 - 02:02 AM, said:

Rugby is a real mans sport. Which is why the ALL BLACKS are the worlds best. Cause Kiwies are real men!!!!

NOTICE OF TEXT MODGOD DELETED BECAUSE KEEP YOUR BRO'ISM TO YOURSELF.

At my undergraduate university, as a spectator sport, women's rugby was probably more popular. My freshman year roommate had played USo.An football in highschool and was the only freshman to make it onto the (male) rugby A team; he said he chose to stick to rugby because the training was less intense. But that was (obviously) in the USo.A....

MODGOD DELETEDBECAUSE SAME AS ABOVE.

Are there any women on the ALL BLACKS!! No then your argument is invald. As It was obvious that I was referring not to the general rugby that is played in colleges around the world but to the bloody World Cup. Of which the ALL BLACKS are the best.


GO ALL BLACKS!!!

[Abyss]

Vengeance, on 22 September 2016 - 06:49 PM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 September 2016 - 05:08 PM, said:

Vengeance, on 22 September 2016 - 02:02 AM, said:

Rugby is a real mans sport. Which is why the ALL BLACKS are the worlds best. Cause Kiwies are real men!!!!

NOTICE OF TEXT MODGOD DELETED BECAUSE KEEP YOUR BRO'ISM TO YOURSELF.

At my undergraduate university, as a spectator sport, women's rugby was probably more popular. My freshman year roommate had played USo.An football in highschool and was the only freshman to make it onto the (male) rugby A team; he said he chose to stick to rugby because the training was less intense. But that was (obviously) in the USo.A....

MODGOD DELETEDBECAUSE SAME AS ABOVE.

Are there any women on the ALL BLACKS!! No then your argument is invald. As It was obvious that I was referring not to the general rugby that is played in colleges around the world but to the bloody World Cup. Of which the ALL BLACKS are the best.


GO ALL BLACKS!!!

Do the haka Veng.

You know you want to.

[Abyss]

Wait wait wait back the thread up....

Malaclypse, on 21 September 2016 - 11:38 PM, said:

...

Azath Vitr (D, on 21 September 2016 - 03:52 AM, said:

...


Including this:


...

...

This epitomizes what is wrong with the world and its occupants, imo. ...

Damn... that is some deep hamdog symbolism there.

[Abyss]

Malaclypse, on 22 September 2016 - 12:01 AM, said:

Abyss, on 14 September 2016 - 02:47 PM, said:

What, you hate sandwiches? What else do you hate? Freedom? Puppies?

You're just doing the amateur version of 'taking the piss' - you mock in a childish way. I lived for ten years, give or take a few months, among an ethnic group who have elevated mockery to an artform. The British are the funniest people on Earth in my opinion, because they are inclined to viciousness and they intend it in a companionable way for the most part. You lose by taking offence, they just pile on if you take offence, it's like rugby or cricket. Show weakness and you're finished. You have to learn to take your lumps and deliver your own but you have to play by their rules because they are in the majority. I faced that and figured it out. This..whatever it is, seems to be just obfuscation - avoid the subject at hand with nonsensical details and yeah, I find that childish.

I know you are, but what am I?


Also, 'British' isn't an ethnic group.

[Vengeance]

Abyss, on 22 September 2016 - 07:01 PM, said:

Malaclypse, on 22 September 2016 - 12:01 AM, said:

Abyss, on 14 September 2016 - 02:47 PM, said:

What, you hate sandwiches? What else do you hate? Freedom? Puppies?

You're just doing the amateur version of 'taking the piss' - you mock in a childish way. I lived for ten years, give or take a few months, among an ethnic group who have elevated mockery to an artform. The British are the funniest people on Earth in my opinion, because they are inclined to viciousness and they intend it in a companionable way for the most part. You lose by taking offence, they just pile on if you take offence, it's like rugby or cricket. Show weakness and you're finished. You have to learn to take your lumps and deliver your own but you have to play by their rules because they are in the majority. I faced that and figured it out. This..whatever it is, seems to be just obfuscation - avoid the subject at hand with nonsensical details and yeah, I find that childish.

I know you are, but what am I?


Also, 'British' isn't an ethnic group.

I thought that it was a cuss word like... OH my fucking god the British are coming..

Direct quote from Paul Revere.

[Abyss]

Vengeance, on 22 September 2016 - 07:06 PM, said:

Abyss, on 22 September 2016 - 07:01 PM, said:

Malaclypse, on 22 September 2016 - 12:01 AM, said:

Abyss, on 14 September 2016 - 02:47 PM, said:

What, you hate sandwiches? What else do you hate? Freedom? Puppies?

You're just doing the amateur version of 'taking the piss' - you mock in a childish way. I lived for ten years, give or take a few months, among an ethnic group who have elevated mockery to an artform. The British are the funniest people on Earth in my opinion, because they are inclined to viciousness and they intend it in a companionable way for the most part. You lose by taking offence, they just pile on if you take offence, it's like rugby or cricket. Show weakness and you're finished. You have to learn to take your lumps and deliver your own but you have to play by their rules because they are in the majority. I faced that and figured it out. This..whatever it is, seems to be just obfuscation - avoid the subject at hand with nonsensical details and yeah, I find that childish.

I know you are, but what am I?


Also, 'British' isn't an ethnic group.

I thought that it was a cuss word like... OH my fucking god the British are coming..

Direct quote from Paul Revere.

"Calm down Paul, they're just breathing heavy."

- historically overlooked bystander response.

[worry]

He actually didn't exist. Total tall tale, like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Liberace.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Abyss, on 22 September 2016 - 07:01 PM, said:

Malaclypse, on 22 September 2016 - 12:01 AM, said:

Abyss, on 14 September 2016 - 02:47 PM, said:

What, you hate sandwiches? What else do you hate? Freedom? Puppies?

You're just doing the amateur version of 'taking the piss' - you mock in a childish way. I lived for ten years, give or take a few months, among an ethnic group who have elevated mockery to an artform. The British are the funniest people on Earth in my opinion, because they are inclined to viciousness and they intend it in a companionable way for the most part. You lose by taking offence, they just pile on if you take offence, it's like rugby or cricket. Show weakness and you're finished. You have to learn to take your lumps and deliver your own but you have to play by their rules because they are in the majority. I faced that and figured it out. This..whatever it is, seems to be just obfuscation - avoid the subject at hand with nonsensical details and yeah, I find that childish.

I know you are, but what am I?


Also, 'British' isn't an ethnic group.

As a cultural descriptor it arguably applies even more to the Scottish (and almost certainly helped shape Donald Trump, through his Scottish immigrant mother... though his Scottishness is one of the few almost positive things about him, and the Scottish have piled on to taking the piss out of his shit gloriously).

http://www.thedailyb...tish-roots.html

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

worry, on 22 September 2016 - 08:48 PM, said:

He actually didn't exist. Total tall tale, like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Liberace.

(Some Scottish people complained about "British" lumping them in with English "hooligans" in this meme... and were met with statistics showing the Scottish are, on average, even moreso....)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 22 September 2016 - 10:01 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

worry, on 21 September 2016 - 11:47 PM, said:

Find meaning in the meaningless is my mantra.

"What I want to teach is to move from the implicit nonsense to the explicit nonsense" - Wittgenstein

"There are still songs to sing beyond mankind" - Celan

[worry]

I don't get it.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

worry, on 22 September 2016 - 10:23 PM, said:

I don't get it.

'I am reminded of the story that Stephen Spender told of T.S. Eliot. At a meeting of the Oxford poetry club, an undergraduate asked, "Mr. Eliot, what did you mean by the line 'Lady, three leopards sat under a juniper-tree'," and Eliot answered, "I meant 'Lady, three leopards sat under a juniper-tree. They were so very properly British, their pubic hairs were bloody topless towering crowns of thorn, set in the pulsing mini black hole Hotburger sand wicks of their glans-veins (waving like US-oAn flag-stripe-gutters on fire)"'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glans

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 22 September 2016 - 10:40 PM

[Vengeance]

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 September 2016 - 09:47 PM, said:

Abyss, on 22 September 2016 - 07:01 PM, said:

Malaclypse, on 22 September 2016 - 12:01 AM, said:

Abyss, on 14 September 2016 - 02:47 PM, said:

What, you hate sandwiches? What else do you hate? Freedom? Puppies?

You're just doing the amateur version of 'taking the piss' - you mock in a childish way. I lived for ten years, give or take a few months, among an ethnic group who have elevated mockery to an artform. The British are the funniest people on Earth in my opinion, because they are inclined to viciousness and they intend it in a companionable way for the most part. You lose by taking offence, they just pile on if you take offence, it's like rugby or cricket. Show weakness and you're finished. You have to learn to take your lumps and deliver your own but you have to play by their rules because they are in the majority. I faced that and figured it out. This..whatever it is, seems to be just obfuscation - avoid the subject at hand with nonsensical details and yeah, I find that childish.

I know you are, but what am I?


Also, 'British' isn't an ethnic group.

As a cultural descriptor it arguably applies even more to the Scottish (and almost certainly helped shape Donald Trump, through his Scottish immigrant mother... though his Scottishness is one of the few almost positive things about him, and the Scottish have piled on to taking the piss out of his shit gloriously).

http://www.thedailyb...tish-roots.html

Hey don't be racist and lump that ass in with the Scottish. The fault with him lies with his nazi nanny.

[Malaclypse]

worry, on 22 September 2016 - 04:22 AM, said:

It means an impulse derived elsewhere than heredity. A simple contrast with "instinct".

So, an impulse derived from anyplace other than heredity...such as experience, whether it be lived experience or observed experience? Yeah, seems reasonable to me, given my observation of modern culture. Do you actually disagree with anything I've said?

[Malaclypse]

Azath Vitr (D, on 22 September 2016 - 05:08 PM, said:

Vengeance, on 22 September 2016 - 02:02 AM, said:

Rugby is a real mans sport. Which is why the ALL BLACKS are the worlds best. Cause Kiwies are real men!!!!

NOTICE OF TEXT MODGOD DELETED BECAUSE KEEP YOUR BRO'ISM TO YOURSELF.

At my undergraduate university, as a spectator sport, women's rugby was probably more popular. My freshman year roommate had played USo.An football in highschool and was the only freshman to make it onto the (male) rugby A team; he said he chose to stick to rugby because the training was less intense. But that was (obviously) in the USo.A....

MODGOD DELETED BECAUSE SAME AS ABOVE.

I just want to have it noted that I viewed and ignored this offering from Azath Vitr because I feel like s/he would have defeated their own argument had they continued. No hard feelings