Opinions - Drugs and Crime Go Hand in Hand

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

FuBai: "quote : I'm with Freud on this one - the concept of Jung's collective subconcious is ridiculous in any litteral sense. Any real conception of a collective subconscious involves specific social conditioning and the predication of actions by the particular shared events - it is in no way universal and humans are essentialy divided by it rather than unified by a sense of cominality, in fact the reverse is often true - racisim is an obvious example, but we naturally identify different characteristics and assign values pertaining to that difference; this is the source of play ground bullying and name calling. If anything men come together and are unified against an accepted sense of difference - whites against black, talls against shorts, Southerners against Northerners - the examples are endless."

I totally disagree with this analysis. I'm not aware of the tall-short battle you describe except possibly Pygmies v some other tribe or Clowns v Dwarfs at the circus. Playground examples count for nothing, children are not human in a political sense, they are merely humans in the making - the suggestion that their actions are somehow closer to the essential nature of man is wrong. Man is made and so is racism and the feuds you talk of are the feuds of a primitive culture needing to grow up, not the essential nature of man, but poor politics.

I think most people with experience of entheogens such as ayahuasca, cacti, iboga to name but 3 key "drugs" have some insight into what I am talking about with a unified spirit, in fact almost all religions recognise this, do you not appreciate what is meant by ONE as in the Lord thy God? It doesn't matter if you accept this or not, the point is that these are widely held views and are more positive than the notion that we are merely discrete beings, I think this needs to be a new thread really.

I had assumed that you would understand that tall vs short was not neccesarily an extant example, although examples may be found - I am not sure. I was simply trying to show characteristics around which people may gather and, perhaps, the stupidity of those characteristics. The history of humanity is defined by division and adveristy, not by a shared sense of similarity. Wars and battles, this group versus that group and the hatred of difference is a defining characteristic, if not quite the only one. Playground examples are demonstrable of the genisis and almost inherent nature of those feelings; feelings which, when taken forward to adult life are only masked by more sophisticated arguments rather than disapearing alltogether. Your incessant talk of cultures needing to mature highlights, I think, a fundemental flaw in your understanding of the human condition. We are not moving towards a goal, we are no nearer a utopian future than we ever were. The evolution of human morality is not predicated by any sort of fixed ideal towards which we move - there is no Zion, there is no gold at the end of the rainbow, there is no culmination nor greater perfection of our moral principals than that which we see now, nor a hundred years ago, nor a thousand before that. The fact that morality changes is no demonstration of an eventual culmination, it is a demonstration of the essentialy chaotic nature of humanity - as Heraclitus said; 'All is Flux'. The idea that 'man is made' is a ridiculous one, ignoring every thing that we know and understand about the nature of the universe we live in. The concept of a unified spirit is laughable at best - there is no evidence for such a thing and, if there were, it would be against everything that we have so far discovered in our philosophical (in it's original sense) discoveries about the universe which we inhabit. You can describe no mechanism by which such a thing could come about, and certainly not in the terms you stated it in. If you are to take a merry jaunt down the avenues of uninformed faith and basless beleif then we shall come to an impasse - I ask for proof, based on a pragmatic acceptance of Witgenstien's 'Hinge principles', whilst you seem to have wondered off into conjecture.

[Bikelbees]

Originally Posted by FuBai

I had assumed that you would understand that tall vs short was not neccesarily an extant example, although examples may be found - I am not sure. I was simply trying to show characteristics around which people may gather and, perhaps, the stupidity of those characteristics. The history of humanity is defined by division and adveristy, not by a shared sense of similarity. Wars and battles, this group versus that group and the hatred of difference is a defining characteristic, if not quite the only one. Playground examples are demonstrable of the genisis and almost inherent nature of those feelings; feelings which, when taken forward to adult life are only masked by more sophisticated arguments rather than disapearing alltogether. Your incessant talk of cultures needing to mature highlights, I think, a fundemental flaw in your understanding of the human condition. We are not moving towards a goal, we are no nearer a utopian future than we ever were. The evolution of human morality is not predicated by any sort of fixed ideal towards which we move - there is no Zion, there is no gold at the end of the rainbow, there is no culmination nor greater perfection of our moral principals than that which we see now, nor a hundred years ago, nor a thousand before that. The fact that morality changes is no demonstration of an eventual culmination, it is a demonstration of the essentialy chaotic nature of humanity - as Heraclitus said; 'All is Flux'. The idea that 'man is made' is a ridiculous one, ignoring every thing that we know and understand about the nature of the universe we live in. The concept of a unified spirit is laughable at best - there is no evidence for such a thing and, if there were, it would be against everything that we have so far discovered in our philosophical (in it's original sense) discoveries about the universe which we inhabit. You can describe no mechanism by which such a thing could come about, and certainly not in the terms you stated it in. If you are to take a merry jaunt down the avenues of uninformed faith and basless beleif then we shall come to an impasse - I ask for proof, based on a pragmatic acceptance of Witgenstien's 'Hinge principles', whilst you seem to have wondered off into conjecture.

FuBai: You do paint a very depressing picture in that you seek to fix the future based upon the past and denounce those who believe in a better , more moral future. All radical change involves transforming the past systems into new ones. If every scientist followed your example of "what was, is what is, and what will forever be" many new things would not have been discovered; in fact great minds have had to fight the sceptics all the way, even in science the old school become so fixed in their ways as to become closed to new and fantastic possibilities. Do you think in humanities dark past they could of ever imagined space travel as a reality? To really be rational you have to be open to fantastic suggestion as a possibility as well as adhere to scientific rigour (if you can square those two seemingly opposite notions).

Believe it or not, I am with you on science, science trumps all; the problem which is depressing is that despite the fantastic ingenuity and genius of man - really our methodology is just not up to understanding the universe by scientific enquiry, sure we have a go, but the scale of the universe means that even with an improbable system to travel at the speed of light, we would need to be held in time for hundreds of thousands of years to travel to distant galaxies, and sadly we encounter our biological limit.

I now think that philosophy, religion and drugs all have a role to play in filling the vacuum left by the inevitable failure of science to either provide the answers. Science without social progression cannot even offer emancipation to humanity as the fruits of science and the intellectual property of science significantly and wrongly become the private property of individuals and corporations.

I accept that faith or conjecture is truth's faint shadow, and I say truth as you would presumably define it as the best knowledge that we have at any moment in time. What was truly true at the time of Copernicus is now not true, and so even scientific truth is relative and constantly re-negotiated - in fact science really proves nothing, but can disprove ideas. Of course science cannot disprove the existence of God, and by its own rules insists that the burden is on the devout to prove such existence, whereas in fact such a burden is wrong on two counts, firstly for the reason I just said, that science only offers evidence to support a theory and is better suited to trashing falsehoods, and secondly that the very nature of faith does not fit into such discipline, clearly truth negates the need for faith absolutely.

Drug induced reality is an anathema to scientists as is faith, but who is to say that the exploration of inner space with DMT for example is any less of a bona fide scientific experiment than some cutting-edge string theory experimental data that could be nothing more than background noise? Truth requires objectivity, and I can say that I have read numerous testimonies suggesting many common themes emerging from drug use that do seem to suggest that the chemistry of the mind does hold locked information that extends beyond a subjective hallucination. I appreciate that if someone is told they will meet their ancestors on this drug that such a suggestion influences the enquiry, but nevertheless I believe there is common ground to suggest something beyond the physical exists, some of which is open to proof and some of it never will be, just in the same way as you nor any of your descendants will never travel to another galaxy to actually prove it exists in the way thought. If you are fair and consider what has been learned since the dawn of man, then you must be open to the possibility of other dimensions on earth where realities and the laws of physics are different. I'm not saying that you should believe in faeries without proof for example, I'm saying you cannot refute it in such absolute terms, for to do so is just not scientific.

So, I am guilty of conjecture, well I do trust SWIM and SWIM has stepped out chemically, SWIM may be delusional according to science, but he reckons there is some positive understanding and wonderous insights to be had in terms of unlocking a chemical destiny; and its just a bit more interesting than his science degree. Even if we look at this in terms of liberty we need to accept that personal truth labeled as faith is legitimate, even if it is escapism from the nightmare of eternal strife you describe. Its also not a bad thing as surely more people believing in a benevolent spirit of man or life can only create more harmonious individuals aware of the consequences of their actions and not necessarily dis-empowered from the obligations of daily life?

Reputation Comments on this post:

Excellent post, brother...FS

[El Calico Loco]

Bikelbees:

The Geoist economic axiom doesn't imply laziness, per se - only that people won't expend any more effort than they have to. Why would anyone? If one can live happily on wages that come from working five hours a day, then why work six? The axiom doesn't preclude some from working fourteen hour days because their desires and ambitions are great - certainly, there are some who do. Many, particularly scientists and artists, work for the love of the work itself.

Nor can we abstract from man all but selfish qualities in order to make as the object of our thought…what has been called ‘economic man’, without getting what is really a monster, not a man. - Henry George


FuBai:

I have to disagree on the collective unconscious. Humans look very different across the world, but all (save those with injuries or birth defects) have some things in common - two eyes, two arms, two legs, one head. I think it's possible that the same can be said of human consciousness, at some level. We all have different personalities, influenced by our genetics and environment and culture, but I think it's likely that our minds are all fundamentally similar in some abstract ways. I think this is what Joseph Campbell was getting at in his observation that all societies, however different they might be from one another, do share some very similar myths and mores (such as the Hero's Journey or the prohibition of murder).


ECL

[zera]

Originally Posted by English_T

As an aside....Is it true that in American jails prisoners are regularly raped/abused/beaten by fellow inmates??

Yes unfortunately this is true. Thankfully after tons of political pressure some legislation has been passed to try to reduce prison brutality, but its still a major problem. Some quotes from an article about it:

Activists argue that rape in American prisons is an endemic problem, with as many as 200,000 or 300,000 rapes behind bars every year. Other experts question those figures. A review of the literature by Gerald G. Gaes of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Andrew L. Goldberg of the National Institute of Justice, published by the latter agency in March 2004, found that estimates of how many male inmates experience forced sex during incarceration range from nearly 10 percent to less than 1 percent...

Even lower-end estimates given by correctional organizations suggest that 20,000 to 40,000 inmates are sexually assaulted in American prisons every year. Those are figures no civilized society should accept.
http://reason.com/news/show/119234.html

And the worst of the matter is that drug offenders and other nonviolent offenders suffer a disproportionately high incident of rape at the hand of their fellow violent criminal inmates. Its in my opinion pretty shameful that such a serious problem often is only brought up humorously in our culture. In what kind of twisted Dickensian-sadistic bastards head, sexual assault will lead to rehabilitation is beyond me.

[Bikelbees]

Gasp FuBai! You say it is our nature for whites to see blacks in terms of "us and them" and vica versa. I cannot accept it is our nature; our minds and conscience transcended all instinct tens of thousands of years ago (even if it could ever be argued to be a vestigal survival instinct which I refute anyway) to make the whole idea of innate behaviour meaningless. The idea of race is a total myth, its a social construct, everyone in the West is a massive mix of genes whether externally apparent or not. What about olive skins, light brown, medium brown - do whites feel naturally closer to the lighter shades and feel ever increasing revulsion to the darker ones until very dark black being totally beyond the pale? If you feel that this is right in your bones, please don't rationalise it as normal innate feelings (I assume you are white), these feelings are the result of the racism endemic in your culture which cannot be erased easily, for you especially when you almost justify it by saying its natural and blacks are similar genetically. Melanin genes count for nothing about a person and all significant genes are identical between the so-called races. Or are you in support of the likes of Charles Murray (author of "The Bell Curve") whom claims to have proven that the blacker a human group is, the lower its average IQ?

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

Gasp FuBai! You say it is our nature for whites to see blacks in terms of "us and them" and vica versa. I cannot accept it is our nature; our minds and conscience transcended all instinct tens of thousands of years ago (even if it could ever be argued to be a vestigal survival instinct which I refute anyway) to make the whole idea of innate behaviour meaningless. The idea of race is a total myth, its a social construct, everyone in the West is a massive mix of genes whether externally apparent or not. What about olive skins, light brown, medium brown - do whites feel naturally closer to the lighter shades and feel ever increasing revulsion to the darker ones until very dark black being totally beyond the pale? If you feel that this is right in your bones, please don't rationalise it as normal innate feelings (I assume you are white), these feelings are the result of the racism endemic in your culture which cannot be erased easily, for you especially when you almost justify it by saying its natural and blacks are similar genetically. Melanin genes count for nothing about a person and all significant genes are identical between the so-called races. Or are you in support of the likes of Charles Murray (author of "The Bell Curve") whom claims to have proven that the blacker a human group is, the lower its average IQ?

It is undoubtable that "blacks" tend to have, on average, a lower IQ - however IQ is a white construct. The Chinese and Japanese tend to have a higher average IQ than Indians, Indians tend to have a higher IQ than whites and whites tend to have a higher IQ than blacks. This does not mean that Blacks are more stupid, it only means they rate lower on a scale that is, as I have said, a white construct and not a fully comprehensive assesment of 'intellegence'. Your attempts to paint me as a racist, if that is your intention, are unfounded. Your focus on the individual examples I have illustrated is to miss the point. Those are abstract examples and are meant to illustrate rather than to be true, neccesarily, in and of themselves. Don't try and reduce it to any particular characteristic; focus, as I have done, upon general difference rather than specific. I do not see how you can possibly say that, in general terms, humans are united by a sense of shared humanity, especialy when you look both at the present day and our history.

[Bikelbees]

FuBai, if IQ is a white construct, why do the Orientals fare better as you say they do? The rationale for the results is purely based on socio-economic factors, immigrant groups living in deprived inner cities did badly in the tests because poverty affects development.

I think if you look around you you will find more examples that suggest people can live together harmoniously irrespective of colour. I didn't say that you are a racist, I say your arguments are the product of a racist culture. I'd like now to wait for some other contributors to throw their hats into this debate now.

[Broshious]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

FuBai, if IQ is a white construct, why do the Orientals fare better as you say they do? The rationale for the results is purely based on socio-economic factors, immigrant groups living in deprived inner cities did badly in the tests because poverty affects development.

I think if you look around you you will find more examples that suggest people can live together harmoniously irrespective of colour. I didn't say that you are a racist, I say your arguments are the product of a racist culture. I'd like now to wait for some other contributors to throw their hats into this debate now.

I have to agree with you on it being a product of a racist culture. I find myself feeling leary of blacks on an unconscious level without having any direct feelings against them. I don't feel this same way about other racial groups. I barely notice if someone is Hispanic, and while I do notice if someone is Asian I don't get any of the same negative feelings I get from blacks. I'm surrounded by images on TV, and elsewhere, of black people being viscious "gangstas" and in general just not the kind of people I'd like to be around.

[El Calico Loco]

I'll bet you don't feel threatened by Bill Cosby, though. I suspect it's probably not so much latent racism as it is fear of The Other. Plenty of black folks feel the same sense of unease towards country whites because of idiot rednecks.

It's not just white and black. English and French murdered each other for centuries, and that's where white met bread. English murdered Scots. When the English weren't around, the Scots fought with each other. And there were probably factions within each Scottish clan. You can see the same old shit in Asian or African history.

It's just the tribal nature of primitive man and his tendency to focus on the greatest degree of difference, whether that's a different colored skin or a different colored flag. If you spend any time around a group, the fear of them tends to diminish. That's why they have to keep us separated. Can't have us all getting along - we might wake up and realize who's really fucking us!


Bikelbees: some people are driven, true, but that drive is still an attempt to satisfy some desire (for knowledge, for glory, or to save others) that can't be satisfied with anything less than total commitment. If a doctor could cure a patient by flipping a switch - and got paid the same either way - then he wouldn't bother with drugs or surgery unless these things fulfilled some other desire (surgery is fun!).


ECL

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

FuBai, if IQ is a white construct, why do the Orientals fare better as you say they do? The rationale for the results is purely based on socio-economic factors, immigrant groups living in deprived inner cities did badly in the tests because poverty affects development.

I think if you look around you you will find more examples that suggest people can live together harmoniously irrespective of colour. I didn't say that you are a racist, I say your arguments are the product of a racist culture. I'd like now to wait for some other contributors to throw their hats into this debate now.

It was construtced by whites who held certain values to be more demonstrable of intellegence than others. orientals tend to do better on those values - I did not say it was a malicious white construct attempting to repress other races, I simply said that it was made by whites. The rational for the results are based on genetic factors as well as social factors such as the 'maths culture' in China. However IQ does supposedly asses basic and unadulterated intellegence, so it is more the genetic factors that are influential. 'Blacks' as a race evolved in an area that had different prevailing factors than that of Europe or Asia. It is the geographic regions that our great ancestors colonised that shaped the evolution of our minds. In Africa the drive was always to survive; the ground was difficult to cultivate, animals had to be kept moving to find new fodder - life was about getting through today, one day at a time, so they evolved to get good at that. In more fertile regions there was a greater ability to settle and colonise; North Africa, Arabia, Europe and East Asia were more suited for settlement and this gave people greater luxuries in terms of time to think and consider and build, so they became good at that. Whilst I disagree with alot of what Jared Diamond says, he has got this bit right in "Guns, Germs and Steel" where he looked at the differences and inequalities in humanity today and traced thier roots back to the geographical situations that cultures were founded in.

You seem to think we have built a world in which humans are forced to do unnatural things - we naturaly built the world we live in today; it flowed together because of those very self-same simmilarities you are vaunting - humans are geneticaly simmilar; so two humans, even in total isolation, will often forumlate the same systems as each other - because they flow naturaly from thier shared genetic heritage. Those systems and the vestigaes of those systems are what we have today; no culture was ever naturaly communist or socialist - there is only one ancient culture I can think of that approached that; that of the Indus Valley. All humans compete, as the person above me just said. First we compete against those closest to us, then outwards in an ever expanding circle. We pit ourselves against each other in competition because that's how the darwinian world works. Not that we should introduce social darwinism, but it does demonstrate that competition and adversity are inherent not only to humanity but to every living thing on this world.

[grandbaby]

There's a nice Arab saying: "Me against my brother. My brother and I against our cousins. My family against our village. Our village against our country. Our country against other countries." That's human nature (and Bikelbees, if you think our chimp heritage disappeared the minute we invented writing, religion and money, you'd best get reading - "human nature" is unfortunately alive and well, despite the best attempts of Rational Man to do away with it). Not to say we shouldn't strive for harmony, but we are animals that run in packs -- too often for worse, rather than for better.

But what I wanna know is: do drugs and crime go hand in hand?

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Good use of that saying and well pointed out.
	Great quote.

[Bikelbees]

Originally Posted by grandbaby

There's a nice Arab saying: "Me against my brother. My brother and I against our cousins. My family against our village. Our village against our country. Our country against other countries." That's human nature (and Bikelbees, if you think our chimp heritage disappeared the minute we invented writing, religion and money, you'd best get reading - "human nature" is unfortunately alive and well, despite the best attempts of Rational Man to do away with it). Not to say we shouldn't strive for harmony, but we are animals that run in packs -- too often for worse, rather than for better.

But what I wanna know is: do drugs and crime go hand in hand?

You could try asking a chimp. I think we had the answer earlier "in part yes they do go hand in hand for a significant proportion of offences, but much of this is because drugs are illegal".

This discussion then kicked off about human nature and I'm finding it challenging - I know in my heart that to progress we have to have a positive view of humanity and its very difficult when it has become so in vogue to trash it due to its constant failures. The pervasive point is that we are talking about the future or potential, and yet we have a series of contributions insisting that as we have a bleak past, then this miserable ape is destined on this evidence to a bleak future. Anyone more optimistic is ridiculed for being idealist, religious and blind to human nature being essentially evil, greedy and self-serving.

I say humanity has only learned to crawl, if we pretend that the Earth has existed for only for one year, the history of human life on earth proportionally is a mere second. Its about evolving, I cannot believe everyone is fixed on history; history shows where we have gone wrong, not what our limits are, we need to challenge this culture of low expectations.

I think to call humans mere animals is ridiculous, we are further from chimps than chimps are from mice. The point about humans is that they are unique in having advanced conciousness and culture. Heritage from chimps? I'm not sure that is right, we evolved from somewhere but not necessarily from Apes - but that's not important, what is important is the ability of humans to transcend all of this by using their minds. Where people behave like animals its not good enough to suggest that "it wasn't my fault judge, its me genes playing up again".

That Arab saying, its a reflection of the loyalties society embedded them. In ex-communist Russia they still celebrate a man whom turned his own father to the party police for profiteering, the father was taken out and hanged and the son became a hero for recognising the supremacy of the party over the (bourgeois) family. Any bond can be broken through propaganda and I thought I was going to encounter some contributions from "out of the box" on this forum rather than a lot of admittedly eloquent and well-read postings telling me to "get real".

[grandbaby]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

You could try asking a chimp.

HA!

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

I know in my heart that to progress we have to have a positive view of humanity and its very difficult when it has become so in vogue to trash it due to its constant failures.

Indeed a positive attitude is a must; cynicism will literally get us nowhere. One of the difficulties I have yet to work out is the balance between an optimistic view and a realistic one. Many of our most intractable problems were caused by the idea (pervasive still) that humanity's potential is unlimited; that human progress is an inarguable good; that even as we have thought our way into a disaster situation, we can think our way out of it through ever more heroic feats of derring-do. One of the things bound to infuriate me is humanity's insistence that we have no animal nature; that we are enlightened and rational; and that we are inarguably superior to the dumb beasts (despite having made a trashcan of the Earth, spoiling it for both us and them). Because in order to truly progress, we must acknowledge our failures and our weaknesses, and not repeat the failures, and implement workarounds for the weaknesses. Otherwise we're doomed to step on the rake, whacking ourselves in the forehead, every time we try to walk into the garden. So it's a tough balancing act, hey?

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

I think to call humans mere animals is ridiculous, we are further from chimps than chimps are from mice.

Well, that's one view. We share 95% of our DNA with chimps, and only 60% of our DNA with mice.1 [see poorly googled footnotes below] Many of our behaviors can be traced to similar behaviors in other primates that have no cognates in other animals.2 My personal view is that our insistence upon setting ourselves above and apart from the rest of the natural world is the very root of all our troubles.

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

What is important is the ability of humans to transcend all of this by using their minds. Where people behave like animals its not good enough to suggest that "it wasn't my fault judge, its me genes playing up again".

Right again. We've gotta own up & take responsibility for our actions. And it won't take just minds to do it, neither - don't forget, what glories the mind envisions, the body still has to enact. But yeah, our heritage as animals - for better and worse - is no excuse for neglecting our "higher" selves: the terrible, thorny, horny dilemmas of applied ethics.

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

Any bond can be broken through propaganda

True; blood is only thicker than water because we're all brought up to believe it. That old Arab saying has a lot of layers and I'm not going to try to unpeel them all, but it's shed a lot of light for me in many situations - not as "what should be" but a reflection of what actually is.

Sorry if I came off as belittling your opinions, Bikelbees, I didn't mean to at all. It's all good fodder for discussion. Onward!

Footnotes
1. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n..._dnachimp.html
2. http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/primates.html
3.

And, apropos of nothing, here's a funny gif: http://img1.jurko.net/avatar_1218.gif

[Bikelbees]

There is a lot you say we agree on, and I do respect a lot of your posts Grandbaby - but there is a lot you haven't understood about my message: of course humanities problems are caused by its legacy, but instead of pressing on to better it, you choose to belittle humanity and make it subservient to anti-human agenda, this being probably rooted in eco-awareness propaganda. We must see potential as unlimited, if you are talking about resource management then solutions exist to all problems, but unless the political infrastructure is changed and innovation, risk taking, and consumption is radically encouraged, then we will drown in this shit.

Your rejection of a human-centric view of the world cuts the mustard in many spiritual and green circles, but its the last thing welcome politically IMO. Humans are totally better than animals or plants and if we couldn't use animals or plants for our own ends then they would have no importance whatsoever unless they were part of a wider significant food chain.

You missed it entirely with the DNA stats; it doesn't matter that you quoted the similarity of humans with chimps and mice, as opposed to my comment on us being further from chimps than chimps are from mice - I'm saying genes count for nothing in that sense, if a non-human animal shares most of its genes with us, it still just isn't anything like a human really. You can but human genes into a pig and so-what, it means nothing. I guess there will be a time (I hope) when technology could create something like a human by genetic engineering, but right now, regular humans is the best there is, so celebrate that.

I find it possible to discount similarities in appearance, physiology, anatomy and behaviour - like they have been saying, its the differences that count and its not racist or speceisist to diss a chimp.

If its not clear to you, no other living thing has a significant level of self-awareness to progress in any way. Humans do, its just that they have fucked up a lot because they lost their way.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

This discussion then kicked off about human nature and I'm finding it challenging - I know in my heart that to progress we have to have a positive view of humanity and its very difficult when it has become so in vogue to trash it due to its constant failures.

Well it's the same for free will - in all fairness, looking at the evidence that we have about the universe it is wholly unlikley that it exists; yet a belief in it is absolutley neccesary. However simply because it is useful to beleive in a concept in no way demonstrates it's truth. What you are now arguing is what William James would have called 'pragmatism' - that truth is predicated by the usefullness of the belief.

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

Any bond can be broken through propaganda and I thought I was going to encounter some contributions from "out of the box" on this forum rather than a lot of admittedly eloquent and well-read postings telling me to "get real".

I tend to find that by far and away the largest number of people beleive there is something inherently special about humanity. It's what gives us the right to rub shampoo in the eyes of dogs and inject monkeys with bleach as they do in animal testing facilities. If the majority didn't beleive in thier superiority this sort of thing wouldn't happen. It takes someone to think carefully and logicaly about the world to come to the sort of conclusions that I have tried to convey. Cynicism isn't 'in the box', cynicism doesn't even acknowledge that there is a box. Even if these ideas were held by 90% of the human race then that wouldn't mean they were any the less true. Originality isn't the hallmark of fact. It's often the reverse.

It is necessary that a significant percentage of humanity persist with these whimsical and baseless notions that you have outlined, because if they didn't there would probably be a much higher incidence of depression, amongst other things. However there will always remain those who know the opposite, no matter how much they are trashed as cynics or how old the ideas get, because they arrived at them by independant reasoning; they applied themselves to searching through our philosophical concepts until they could create something that painted a picture of the world as it is, with all our fuzzy emotions removed, and left us with the cold hard reality. And then, because it wasn't a pretty picture that they painted, they have been sidelined in every popular public political and philosophical debate.

[El Calico Loco]

Originally Posted by grandbaby

But what I wanna know is: do drugs and crime go hand in hand?

I think this conversation proves that drugs and thought crime go hand-in-hand.

Bikelbees:

I sympathize. I too like to think that human nature is improving as we learn and grow. I think it has to improve further if we're to survive as a race and migrate out into the Kingdom of Heaven in cool spaceships.

I just get cynical about our chances sometimes. I wonder whether the future will look like Men Like Gods or Idiocracy...


ECL

[Bikelbees]

Yeah, lets hear it for the doom-mongers. I firmly believe in animal testing and those activists who attack scientists - even I wouldn't defend them

[Felonious Skunk]

I think the ultimate challenge for humans is finding a way to distribute equally 100% of the wealth among 100% of the population.

In other words, making the concepts of "wealth" and "poverty" obsolete. This is the starting point, the springboard from which mankind could begin to correct the other flaws.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

Yeah, lets hear it for the doom-mongers. I firmly believe in animal testing and those activists who attack scientists - even I wouldn't defend them

I have no problem with animal testing - I just don't think about it with that hot rushing emotion that people tend to get when cute and cuddly animals are involved. I was demonstrating an instance in which humans morally assume thier superiority. I do beleive we should be able to exploit animals but for no other reason more selfless than I would rather them than me. If you look at the moral and philosophical arguments against animal testing, animal testing becomes very hard to defend. I won't go into it now but the conclusion I have come to is that animal testing can only be defended if you would be just as willing to test on a brain dead human, or those parts of human species that don't fit into Fox's definition of what constitutes humanity. That is something I would also agree with - excepting those humans with a chance of recovery from thier condition, such as the very young or the temporarily demented. No one will ever try to defend the idiotic behavoir of those activists that burn down labs and exhume dead bodies - if they do, they are as idiotic. Defending those actions is harder than defending the actions of Al Quadea IMHO.

[Bikelbees]

Originally Posted by FuBai

I have no problem with animal testing - I just don't think about it with that hot rushing emotion that people tend to get when cute and cuddly animals are involved. I was demonstrating an instance in which humans morally assume thier superiority. I do beleive we should be able to exploit animals but for no other reason more selfless than I would rather them than me. If you look at the moral and philosophical arguments against animal testing, animal testing becomes very hard to defend. I won't go into it now but the conclusion I have come to is that animal testing can only be defended if you would be just as willing to test on a brain dead human, or those parts of human species that don't fit into Fox's definition of what constitutes humanity. That is something I would also agree with - excepting those humans with a chance of recovery from thier condition, such as the very young or the temporarily demented. No one will ever try to defend the idiotic behavoir of those activists that burn down labs and exhume dead bodies - if they do, they are as idiotic. Defending those actions is harder than defending the actions of Al Quadea IMHO.

Well its the superiority that justifies it (the testing), I think its a specialist subject, but most scientists recognise its purpose, and the bottom line has to be that although it would be crass to inflict pain entirely unecessarily on any animal, really anthropomorphism and sentimentality towards animals is pointless.

I see your point about brain-dead humans, but the reason why there is a distinction between using the profoundly mentally disabled for testing is unashamedly sentimental - humans associate other humans, even if they are brain-dead as at least symbolically special, and of course they have relatives, and there is the slippery slope argument as well - best stick with animals to do research for necessary human activity.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

I see your point about brain-dead humans, but the reason why there is a distinction between using the profoundly mentally disabled for testing is unashamedly sentimental - humans associate other humans, even if they are brain-dead as at least symbolically special, and of course they have relatives, and there is the slippery slope argument as well - best stick with animals to do research for necessary human activity.

Peter Singer would claim that that sentimentality is an example of specisism. He argues that if we are to permit animals to be tested on and not brain dead humans etc then we are being speciesist. In the words of Jermey Bentham "If it feels pleasure of pain it has moral worth." Sometimes I think he's a bit beside the point and I would rather strip brain dead bodies of their organs for living people than necessarily screw all the organs up by testing on them.

[Bikelbees]

I'm not sure what the "pleasure of pain" has to do with morals, most of those S&M clubs look pretty immoral places to me.

Specisism, is that like racism only NOT? Of course thats exactly what I am condoning - not to be specisist is madness - it would mean putting the lives of animals on an equal footing with man, inconceivable and bonkers.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

I'm not sure what the "pleasure of pain" has to do with morals, most of those S&M clubs look pretty immoral places to me.

Specisism, is that like racism only NOT? Of course thats exactly what I am condoning - not to be specisist is madness - it would mean putting the lives of animals on an equal footing with man, inconceivable and bonkers.

I meant to say "pleasure OR pain". Anti-specisict philosophy acknowledges there is a difference and man an animal are not equal, but it also says that does not mean animals are without value and that our value is defined not by being members of a biological species but by the attributes we display such as self-value and worth, consciousness etc. So those without a sense of self and consciousness etc should not be held to be of higher worth than animals (unless they have the potential to re/gain it)

[Bikelbees]

Originally Posted by FuBai

I meant to say "pleasure OR pain".

Whatever rocks your boat


Of course animals have value; to quote Keith Floyd (on lobsters), if God had not wanted you to be eaten he wouldn't of made you so bloomin tasty.

[English_T]

Keith Floyd is a f'ing star! I love his stuff! He has aged a hell of a lot recently, though - My younger brother lives near him and drinks with him occasionally. He's a very friendly guy and will have a drink with anyone as long as they aren't dicks. He loves his pubs and can be found in his local most days.