The willingness to kill

Regenerative Culture Dangers & Risks
#15

The 'breeding of the fittest"? Richard–this game or whatever you describe deeply disturbs me. Eugenics creeps me out. >:(

Who says what makes one fittest? This represents the ultimate domination of cultural memes over actual living flesh–us.

Anybody seen the movie Gattaca? I love the sci fi that asks the juiciest (scariest)questions. The premise: in some future world the tyrannical powers have taken away our one of our most treasured gifts, in my view, “random” collaboration with the universe. Parents must plan out all children with the blessing of the DNA police.

The movie’s tagline: “There is no gene for the human spirit”. I think people would turn into flavorless hothouse tomatoes, idiotic yappy inbred fancy-pants twinkie-brain dogs with no wits. . . oh jeez, has it started already? :stuck_out_tongue:

On another note, the other day someone told me about a book, Survival of the Sickest. At first glance, it sounds goofy to me, but I don’t know much about that one yet, just throwing it out there. Anybody read it?

[sorry, tangent, please follow detour signs back to the meat of the thread]

#16

[looking]

Where? I don’t see anything ??? ::slight_smile: :stuck_out_tongue: ;D

#17

:’( I feel lost again. [j/k]

#18

[quote=“Richard, post:14, topic:554”]On the subject of survival of the fittest, a hypothetical:

If the human race decided that to alleviate the problem of overpopulation they would allow only 1 in so many [a hundred, a thousand] the ability to reproduce, how would you prefer that minority chosen?[/quote]

Dude, has the human race ever decided on one thing?

I think the big shot “Takers” and the real genocidal ones would have it (everybody able to agree on one thing) that way, but it hasn’t happened so far and it probably won’t anytime soon, no?

#19

Hypothetically. :o

#20

Yes. It perturbs me too. I enjoy perturbations.
I also tend to advocate the devil.

Who says what makes one fittest?

I mentioned nothing to do with innate potential - I honestly believe everyone has the capacity for their own highly individualized brand of strength and that it would seem loony and ludacris to offer any competitive comparison in regards to strength, saying one person is on a whole undeniably better than another.

however, we can see that some make good jet fighter pilots, some do not (and interestingly enough video game champions score higher than top gun aces on flight simulators), some have immensely agile creative thinking muscles, some win on jeopardy, some only have one X chromosone without an additonal X or Y, some can play that Simon game all day, some can solve a rubix cube in 30 seconds… we call some virtuosos and wunderkind and born leaders and others we don’t.

hopefully we treat them the same, not only based on what we can get from them.

I remember reading somewhere… Ishcon in fact… about a study which observed mothers who had anxiety issues during birth producing babies with gross abnormalities, gaps and warps, in the DNA strand… it seems plausible that the stress of civ could mar the integrity of the human blueprint. The presentor offered no proof when I pressed, so I wouldn’t place to much stock in the validity of said recounting.

To put it another way, if you had 1000 plants, and you could only reproduce a few, would you choose the ones with the thickest stems, the fattest buds, the most extensive root systems, the most vibrant flowers? Not to say they have some definiable and quanitifiable quality marking them as superior plants, just that they would seem the most logical choice. to me anyway.

Dude, has the human race ever decided on one thing?

Yeah. It is totally implausible. Although we might all nod in agreement that we should have taken some countermeasure if doomsday ever arrives, assuming we would have enough time for reflection.

#21

Yeah. “Lets make more!”

#22

I’ve come upon an expression: The one that survives a danger, survives, and the one that doesn’t survive that danger, dies. The one that survived that danger, won’t survive another danger, so will die when that comes. But another will survive this danger, that won’t survive another danger which another one will survive, on and on into eternity.

Another : The one that survives a danger, has not encountered a danger. So it doesn’t survive anything, it just lives its life.

What do you think?

#23

I’ve got a better Idea. Instead of trying to second guess mother nature on what defines “Fitness” or “an acceptable population”, why don’t we just let it all sort out? If it’s really neccessary to reduce the population, It’ll happen naturally, and those who survive to reproduce will be the fittest. We call this process “natural selection” and it is the exact opposite of Eugenics.

You cannot predict with certainty what the future will hold, and what traits will perform well in it. Traits which seem maladaptive to us can, under the right circumstances, be survival traits. Sicle cell anemia is the perfecct example of this. People with two copies of the gine have a horrible genetic desease, but people with one copy are resistant to malaria. In areas where malaria is an issue, It’s adaptive despite the desease because a few people with sickle cell is better than everone with malaria.

What other traits might we eliminate that prove to be adaptive? Almost any trait can be adaptive in the right situation, even things like mental retardation. The strongest population is one that carries within it the greatest diversity of traits. In our hypothetical situation, the best long term selection method would be complete randomness, with as large a sample set as possible.

Come on. We’re rewilders. When we choose which animals survive based on traits we desire we call it domestication. We’re against that. We place the greatest value on biodiversity, which includes diversity within a species. We shouldn’t even have to have this conversation.

#24

Total agreement with you, Andrew. Nature rules and humans are fools.

Victor, Life is what we see it or seeing spirits in everything or spirits that never die is a way of seeing life. This is not a reason for life but an expression of life itself. So if you believe in these things you still live the life for itself. So you could stay in the tribe! ;D

Wilderness lives, Civilization promises of a life valuable enough to worth living, a purpose for this miserable life it has made. That is what I meant.

#25

This “survival of the fittest” thing:

When we make it our priority to merely survive, we devalue our lives.

It’s similar to how I feel about conventional economics. The very definition is, “A system for distributing scarce resources among a population.” But when you take resources to be scarce, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That’s how I feel about “survival of the fittest.” It prophesies that life is just a constant quest for survival.

We get to choose what we believe; in other words, life is what you make of it.

#26

Ai read “Survival of the Sickest” and ai have to say it was pretty dam good! It explains what environmental factors selected for people with diabetes, sickle cell anemia and a few other horribel things like that. It talks about really cool stuff, like why diabetes helped europeans survive the freezing temperatures of the ice age (blood sugar decreaces the freezing point of blood, preserving limbs from frostbite, longer) and how other animals do similar things. Lots of great stuff about skin color and loads of small adaptations ai never knew humans had before. The book starts out talking about this blood condition that runs in the authors family and how he found out (cant remember the name, homeo- something or hoe-somthing). Turns out, the best treatment for it is blood-letting, so the author is now a regular blood donor!

#27

the whole word " survival " and its meaning, can only exist in the skewed world-image of the civilized me thinks.

#28

Tonight I was reading section62 of Schoepenhauer’s main work (One of the few books I didn’t burn) and came to this passage which relates to this topic perfectly:

“The concept of right as the negation of wrong [extending to affirm one’s will so far that it becomes the denial of another’s will] finds its principal application in those cases where an attempted wrong by violence is warded off…If an individual goes so far in the affirmation of his own will that he encroaches on the sphere of the will-affirmation essential to my person as such, and denies this, then my warding off of that encroachment is only the denial of that denial…consequently it is not wrong and is therefore right. This means then that I have a right to deny that other person’s denial with what force is necessary to suppress it; and it is easy to see that this may extend even to the killing of the other person whose encrochment as pressing external violence can be warded off with a counteraction somewhat stronger than this, without any wrong… Thus if the will of another denies my will, as this appears in my body and in the use of its powers for its preservation without denying anyone else’s will that observes a like limitation, then I can compel it without wrong to desist from this denial”.

By the light of this passage, I see a right for myself to kill a patrol or whatever that person may be, who wants to stop me in whatever way it may be, from living my way of life that practically doesn’t deny anyone else’s right to do so. What do you think?

#29

In case your wondering, the term ‘survivial of the fittest’ was coined by a drop kick from the eugenics movement, and actually has no scientific basis, and no real connection to evolutionary theory other than misappropriation and timing.

From an evolutionary point of view, as I understand it, ‘fitness’ (or natural selection) is post hoc. Its not something designed. It is quite simply that if the organism lived long enough to shag and make babies, said trait of organism is also transmitted. However, organism without said trait did not shag and left no babies. Therefore, said trait is naturally selected, and implies it was a better alternative to achieve survivial of said organism.

Nothing deliberate about it. It’s random mostly, and reactionary at most… and could be anything from being blind to having 2000 eyes.

In other words, in one situation the killing would be a more effective survival strategy than others. However, the act of killing does not always imply a comparitively greater propensity to kill, perhaps just a greater reaction to stimuli that suggest the neccesisty to kill. And that ‘reaction’ could mean (and usually does) the abdanonment of reason for passion, or what we usually call ‘the heat of the moment’.

By the way, this a biological reality for all humans…so there’s no high horse to jump on…

Which, in a nutshell, makes this conversation completely redundant, because we don’t know what we’d really do unless we’ve been there and done that.

I hope I never have to find out.

#30

There are ways. Training in situations where you can’t just putting yourself through simulations of the experience. Mentally, you can prepare yourself for a situations just by imagining them. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it’s worlds ahead of nothing. At the very least, you will react faster because a lot of your processing will have been done before the event. And in many cases this role playing is all we can do to prepare.

#31

Rewilders!
It is years I haven’t seen someone who wants to only listen to my Ideas. I don’t want to feel the same feeling in this forum. Don’t let me feel mad. Tell me what you think about my crazy ideas. And here, willingness to kill, I don’t give a damn to the survival of the fittest, but I do care about killing and being killed. I like it.

#32

I was curious what it is you like about killing and being killed? We all have natural survival instincts of fight, flight or freeze, flight is usually the first to come up under a threat. If an animal can’t run away from the threat, then fight comes up (road rage, anyone???). I was in a group of people talking about whether we could kill anybody, and there were only two of us who unhesitatingly said “yes, absolutely” … we were both mothers, and we both knew that if anything threatened our children we would do whatever we needed to to protect them. You know how those mother bears are always the most dangerous :wink: When neither flight nor fight is possible (almost all situations in civilization) then we get stuck in a “freeze” response, and so we walk around like zombies. Perhaps you are struggling with some freeze or frozen fight charge in your nervous system? I think it was Tom Brown Jr. who said a warrior is the last to pick up the lance, violence as a last resort for protection of the tribe. I always consider any kind of coercion - including violence - a failure … sometimes necessary but always a failure that the underlying threats and conflicts couldn’t be worked out. But that doesn’t mean that the “fight” - or rage and anger of being hemmed in and violated isn’t real and doesn’t need an outlet.

#33

Welcome back Mountain Refugee! Long time no see/read/hear!

#34

Thanx willem, I see you carefully monitor the tribe!

Well, to be honest Im curious too! Total agreement with your analysis. Healthy creatures do choose flight if possible and, in the case of a reasoning animal, if appropriate. But this doesnt mean that when the time arrives to kill that healthy animal shouldn’t like to fight, which means to kill or to be killed. Wounding or paralyzing generally wont do in a wild situation, at least in case of men. Revenge is the cause. So I agree that being a warrior or a layman, we better choose flight if possible, and we all do that, then I add that nevertheless fight has its own place, and I seriously like it and its consequences.
Lets put it this way. In the wild, conflict is a daily reality and in a good percentage of them fight is inescapable. So a savage wakes up in the morning and reminds himself that today a conflict may come up. He does this because he doesnt want to be suprised. And he knows that he may not be able to escape, so he must be ready for a fight, for death. If he doesn’t like it then he would have a great contradiction all day “in his mind” even if a conflict doesnt happen. So he will eventually set his mind to await the fight. to long for it. to like it. The validity of this view is proved by observing the remaining wild and semi-wild tribes round the world, and I was fortunate enough to have access to some of them, Kurds and Turkmens of Iran. I strongly resist calling this behavior violence, which is entirely irrelevant.

As a civilized person(atleast historically) I share this trait with all my fellow civilians! But this doesn’t affect the preceding the least. I think so.
Well its time to go back to my mountain refuge! Ill be back to hear what you all think.
MR