HUMANISM
The Holy Bible is true. Because it says it is true, right in there. True? But it was originally just a collection of stories from many different Jewish tribes, cobbled together later by those who were not eyewitnesses nor had any relationship to events within. Then it was voted on by Catholics who culled out the bits they didn’t care much for, translated, re-translated, updated, and modernized before becoming “Holy.” Religious fanatics know they can handle poisonous snakes without coming to harm because God told them so. So why do they die? The fact that someone says God said something means nothing. The evidence is in, and it’s not favorable.
My personal brand of humanism I’d describe thus; I believe every religion started out as a profound personal experience of awe which was copied imperfectly and over time ultimately taken to such extremes that the meaning of the original experience has not only been lost, but been turned on its head, such that it now performs the reverse of the original intention.
Why am I a humanist? Long story….
Let me tell you about the dancing pigeons: The Skinner box is a device that was first developed by B. F. Skinner in his work on operant conditioning. A subject was placed in the box, and the mechanism gave small amounts of food each time the subject performed a particular action, such as depressing a lever or pecking a disk. With the operant conditioning chamber attached to a recording device, Skinner was able to discover schedules of reinforcement. These patterns are the basis for organismic interactions with the environment and are explored extensively in Schedules of Reinforcement and elsewhere.
But wait, here’s where it got really, really interesting: Skinner's research discovered many fascinating examples of animal behavior. One of the most interesting was Skinner's work on superstition. Instead of giving a reward for a specific action and training a specific behavior, Skinner would take a hungry pigeon and place it in a box that would release a food pellet at random.
What happened was the pigeon would receive the food pellet while it happened to be performing some action, and rather than attributing the food pellet reward to randomness, it would assume that the appearance of the food pellet had something to do with its behavior. So it started doing whatever that action was, over and over again, and sure enough, it was eventually rewarded with a food pellet again. The pigeons developed all kinds of complex behavioral responses such as bowing, scraping, dancing, and neck turns. Since the pigeon is increasing the amount of time spent performing a particular action, it is also increasing the number of times it is "rewarded" for that action, even though the reward is random.
When I was 28 years old, I had a girlfriend who was 32. She had crow’s feet from the corners of her eyes right up into her hairline. I thought, “Oh my god, when I’m 32, I’m going to have that?” I was horrified. As it turned out, she was from California and had the habit in her youth of sunbathing. It was a hobby she practiced daily. This accounts for the skin damage. When I was a teenager, I found a great soap from China; sandalwood. I loved the smell, and I’ve used that soap ever since. Now, is it a fact that because I use sandalwood soap, I never got crow’s feet? No! There are too many factors. There’s the fact that my grandmother told me when I was a child, “Don’t squint, it’ll give you wrinkles.” I was probably only 10 years old at the time, but I remembered. I learned not to squint. So is it that why I still have no crow’s feet, at 61 years old?
I have a good friend whose maiden aunt told her that the reason her hair had never gone gray was because she took brewer’s yeast every day. Now the girlfriend does the same. But it turns out that when you gray, even whether you gray at all, is determined by genetics alone. No yeast of any kind can change it.
The fact that I use sandalwood soap and have no crow’s feet is not necessarily cause and effect. Both are true, but neither has anything to do with the other. Superstition and sympathetic magic doesn’t work. It may be that food comes when you hold your head a certain way, but it doesn’t mean that you have to hold your head just that way to make food come. Stop spending your life with your head bent that way! Instead, try to figure out how that feeding mechanism works, and learn to operate it for yourself.
In the Dark Ages, they knew that their crops needed water. If rain didn’t come in time, they started sprinkling the crops with blood. This did not, in any way, affect whether it would rain. Yet they believed it did, because if they kept on doing it faithfully, eventually rain would come. And if the field you’ve been watering with blood has a better yield than the others, it’s probably because it got a lot of extra vitamins out of that blood. And so did the flies who came, attracted by the smell. Sprinkling the crops with blood DID have an effect, just not the effect they attributed to it. We often think that people then were stupid. They weren’t. And the same psychology drives people today to see causation and patterns where none exist. They were only as stupid as we are.
There was a Pacific island where some planes landed during a world war, and the crews handed out free supplies. The islanders had never seen anything like these marvelous things; canned food (even the cans themselves!), exotic flavors, such amazing things. When the planes stopped coming, they cleared more runways, built plane-shaped objects out of sticks, prayed, worshipped, lit fires, and called upon the gods to come again. This strange occurrence in their lives had no natural explanation they could conceive of, and so it became their supernatural religion. They were correct to keep a runway clear, and even to light fires, but it didn’t cause anyone in a distant land to suddenly decide to send more supplies. They may have spent many years and a lot of resources trying to get the planes to come again – time and resources they could have used to their own advantage if they hadn’t been busy with these things. You’d think that after a while they’d give up, but they didn’t. It’s sad to think they spent so much effort in such a useless task, but even sadder to think they may judge and condemn each other for the failure.
I don’t know whether the Cargo Cult (as the islanders above are known) developed a priesthood, but most religions do so. Priests interpret the desires of supernatural being(s) and convey them to the populace, including how much of their wealth should be given to the priests themselves. The priests get a very good living out of this. Not only is their own occupational success guaranteed, but the careers of their children are also assured. They are not only wealthier, but considered much wiser and much holier than ordinary people. They have access to the best of everything, enjoy power and positions of importance all their lives, are respected, and have a guarantee their children for every future generation will have the same. Naturally, they will do anything – anything at all – to ensure that this remains the case. They’ll interpret things however needs be to ensure the continuation of their lucrative livelihood. They encourage people to pray (in other words, do nothing but wish very sincerely), to give tithes (percentages of their income), to make sacrifices (sometimes of their own children’s lives), and if the faithful postulant still doesn’t get what the priests have promised him, they declare that obviously the postulant’s faith was inadequate, or some kind of wealth was held back. Now, in addition to having given up his time, wealth, and maybe even his child, he is shamed and blamed for the failure. The priesthood is preserved, the fleecing continues. When a certain Nazarene came onto the scene in ancient Judea, why was he turned over to the courts and his execution requested? Surely a dirty, barefoot preacher who wasn’t even a member of the priesthood, wandering the countryside and performing little miracles was no threat, or not such a threat that he must die publically? But he WAS that threatening. He was telling people they didn’t need the priesthood; he was preaching an end to their way of life. It was the one thing no religion can tolerate.
The idea that I should take on “faith” such people’s opinion of my morals, my obligations to the universe, my outlook and the ultimate salvation of my eternal soul, I find laughable. I know right from wrong without any holy book (and we only know it’s holy due to its self-perpetuating sacredness). In fact it is provable to my satisfaction that every mammal on earth has a moral code, without benefit of any stone tablets.
By simple observation, one can see that the priesthood doesn’t practice the morals they drill into their postulants. Long-term observation will show them convicted of not only violating their own precepts, but fleecing their followers with a truly chilling greed. As tempting as it is to believe that someone with a terrible illness can be cured by the simple act of a priest laying a hand on them, or by strong enough belief, as magical and merciful and noble as it is, it’s simply not true.
When you hear that a certain preacher or guru is doing something you can’t possibly approve of (like faking miracles, or using their position to obtain sexual favors, for example), you shouldn’t be surprised. This has been going on since the beginning of civilization, and it’s very likely to continue. Just let it continue without any backing from you.
Like our Christmas traditions, religious rituals originated in the dawn of time and have been usurped, manipulated, and warped out of all possibility of recognition today. The custom of having an “eternal flame” lit on a Christian altar at all times, for example, began on alters to Venus. Study your traditions before buying, please.
But just because I don’t believe in a god doesn’t mean nothing is sacred to me. In fact, the complete opposite is true; I believe everything is sacred, and every being is equally divine. I don’t mind bowing in respect to a Hindu avatar just as I don’t mind bowing to show respect to an ancient tree, or stopping to listen to the song of a waterfall or applaud a flight of playful birds. And I can’t fathom how it can be otherwise! If someone believes in a god, then don’t they believe that creature has made everything out of him- or her-self, that all things are the one thing, that everything must be made of this god? And if that were so, how can anything be profane? But enough about that, I’m not trying to start an argument! Please simply accept that my particular brand of humanism is a belief that I am the universe (= Aham Bramhasmi), the universe is me, and the divine fire of spirit is present in all things equally, even in the multitudinous and multifarious gods and goddesses of Hinduism. I’m perfectly happy to have a sacred Hindu ceremony. The vows I take will be sacred to me no matter what statue they’re done in front of.
WHAT THE HELL? * * * * * * * RATIONALITY VS SCIENCE &RELIGION * * * * * * * CAN ANY USEFUL SENSE BE FOUND, BETWEEN MEMES, BRAMES AND AN INFINITY OF DIMENSIONS AND UNIVERSES ON THE ONE SIDE AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION, SNAKE-HANDLERS AND MESSIAH-ON-A-POTATO-CHIP ON THE OTHER? A RATIONALIST'S POINT OF VIEW...
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
EXCUSE ME, I HAVE A QUESTION…..ARE YOU A BELIEVER?
If you believe in God as creator of the universe, tell me, did he not make all men? Did He not make Man in all colors, all genders? Are you saying He did it wrong?
If you believe in God as omnipresent, tell me, is He not present in all things? And that being so, is he not present in every Man? And when you treat a fellow human badly, how are you treating Him? And do you think He will not know of it? Further, if you believe He is eternal, do you think He will forget it?
If men in different parts of the world use a different word for love, a different word for charity, a different word for faith, why can’t you accept that they might have a different word for God? Is not the Eternal One the same, no matter what men call Him? And does it really make sense that He would speak in all of our history to only one man? And give that man no other evidence than his word?
If you believe in God as omnipotent, tell me, why would you think His existence is threatened by the inquiries of science? Is God not the source and foundation of all the laws of nature? If so, why should study of those alarm you? And does He not endow us with intelligence? How can it be a threat to Him to use it? Further, if all He wanted was fear and devotion, why didn’t He just make us sheep?
If you believe in God as creator of the universe, tell me, did he not make all men? Did He not make Man in all colors, all genders? Are you saying He did it wrong?
If you believe in God as omnipresent, tell me, is He not present in all things? And that being so, is he not present in every Man? And when you treat a fellow human badly, how are you treating Him? And do you think He will not know of it? Further, if you believe He is eternal, do you think He will forget it?
If men in different parts of the world use a different word for love, a different word for charity, a different word for faith, why can’t you accept that they might have a different word for God? Is not the Eternal One the same, no matter what men call Him? And does it really make sense that He would speak in all of our history to only one man? And give that man no other evidence than his word?
If you believe in God as omnipotent, tell me, why would you think His existence is threatened by the inquiries of science? Is God not the source and foundation of all the laws of nature? If so, why should study of those alarm you? And does He not endow us with intelligence? How can it be a threat to Him to use it? Further, if all He wanted was fear and devotion, why didn’t He just make us sheep?
MONSTERS
You want to know where monsters come from? You make them.
You make them out of lonely people you won’t speak to, out of homeless people you look away from, out of abused children and beggars and the ugly and the mentally ill. You make them out of those you shun, laugh at, point at, make fun of, spit on, call names, and beat up.
You turn lonely kids into deadly adults who have no idea how to have a “normal” emotion, who domineer and ultimately destroy both you and those you care about. You turn them into over-achievers who can never be satisfied because they can never forget the taunting and inadequacy they’ve suffered. You teach them to say absolutely anything to be accepted, then wonder why they cheat you.
You turn heroes into street people; soldiers, parents, grandparents - who do you think these homeless people are? They’re the ones you kicked out. They’re the ones you resent providing health coverage for, crappy shelter, food stamps. They’re the ones you can’t be bothered to help or even visit. Where do you think they’ll go? And who do you think they blame? You’re surprised they steal from you? Really?
You torture people with rumor and innuendo. The chubby girl who always eats alone, the family you cut off, the friends who weren’t any advantage to you. You brushed people off because they got a divorce or declared bankruptcy or got cancer. But when they commit suicide, trying to end the suffering and isolation, you condemn them for that, too.
You want to know where monsters come from? You are the monsters.
You want to know where monsters come from? You make them.
You make them out of lonely people you won’t speak to, out of homeless people you look away from, out of abused children and beggars and the ugly and the mentally ill. You make them out of those you shun, laugh at, point at, make fun of, spit on, call names, and beat up.
You turn lonely kids into deadly adults who have no idea how to have a “normal” emotion, who domineer and ultimately destroy both you and those you care about. You turn them into over-achievers who can never be satisfied because they can never forget the taunting and inadequacy they’ve suffered. You teach them to say absolutely anything to be accepted, then wonder why they cheat you.
You turn heroes into street people; soldiers, parents, grandparents - who do you think these homeless people are? They’re the ones you kicked out. They’re the ones you resent providing health coverage for, crappy shelter, food stamps. They’re the ones you can’t be bothered to help or even visit. Where do you think they’ll go? And who do you think they blame? You’re surprised they steal from you? Really?
You torture people with rumor and innuendo. The chubby girl who always eats alone, the family you cut off, the friends who weren’t any advantage to you. You brushed people off because they got a divorce or declared bankruptcy or got cancer. But when they commit suicide, trying to end the suffering and isolation, you condemn them for that, too.
You want to know where monsters come from? You are the monsters.
ATHEISTS UNITE
Christians are proving themselves to have lower morals, less education, more exposure to Fox News, and a startling number of guns. They believe that if they have enough faith they can safely handle poisonous snakes. Unfortunately, although this is untrue, it’s taking far too long to rid the world of Christians that way. Since they believe all sins are forgiven, they put themselves in dangerous, illicit situations, and while this results in humiliation and possible injury, far too few die of it. They repeatedly sell everything and sit on mountaintops waiting for the world to end. But again, waiting for them to die of exposure is taking too long. It seems like the only solution to these problems is to give them higher incomes, better educations, and profound lessons in both morality and empathy. Obviously, Fox News has to go. Keep quoting the parts of the Bible they ignore – in fact try to get them to read the damned thing, try to keep them in school, but how can you teach morals and empathy? They say they get these things from their god, but he must be very frugal in handing them out!
Republicans are statistically-shown to have lower income, minimal education, lower moral standards, and again, a maximum number of guns. Republicans believe that white people are superior based on a complete lack of evidence, empathy or morals. They need better income, better education, but again, how to teach them empathy and morals?
Christians are proving themselves to have lower morals, less education, more exposure to Fox News, and a startling number of guns. They believe that if they have enough faith they can safely handle poisonous snakes. Unfortunately, although this is untrue, it’s taking far too long to rid the world of Christians that way. Since they believe all sins are forgiven, they put themselves in dangerous, illicit situations, and while this results in humiliation and possible injury, far too few die of it. They repeatedly sell everything and sit on mountaintops waiting for the world to end. But again, waiting for them to die of exposure is taking too long. It seems like the only solution to these problems is to give them higher incomes, better educations, and profound lessons in both morality and empathy. Obviously, Fox News has to go. Keep quoting the parts of the Bible they ignore – in fact try to get them to read the damned thing, try to keep them in school, but how can you teach morals and empathy? They say they get these things from their god, but he must be very frugal in handing them out!
Republicans are statistically-shown to have lower income, minimal education, lower moral standards, and again, a maximum number of guns. Republicans believe that white people are superior based on a complete lack of evidence, empathy or morals. They need better income, better education, but again, how to teach them empathy and morals?
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
A FRIEND IN NEED – A GREAT LIFE HACK
What can you do if a friend needs you, but you’re stuck far away? Someone needs comfort, reassurance, cheering up, a hug – and you’re not there! Here’s what to do:
Send them photos of happy things. If they need to cheer up, send them photos of people and animals smiling. If they need a hug, send them photos of hugs. If they need comfort or reassurance, send them photos of things peacefully sleeping. If they’re depressed, send beautiful nature photos. Just looking at a long series of photos like these not only changes their thoughts, it actually changes the brain chemistry for the better! I like to put a series of 10 or more photos in an email so they can be viewed as a “slide show.” All my unhappy friend has to do is click on “Slide Show” and it’s a done deal.
Because the human mind automatically empathizes with images, it’s impossible to look at so many happy, pleasant things and NOT be influenced. Try it on yourself; it really works. In fact, if you’re feeling bad because you can’t be there, you’ll find that as you collect these photos/cartoons/whatever of happier things, you also cheer up. It’s magic!
I shamelessly steal photos from all over the web. My defense of these thefts is a question; “To what better use could they ever be put?”
What can you do if a friend needs you, but you’re stuck far away? Someone needs comfort, reassurance, cheering up, a hug – and you’re not there! Here’s what to do:
Send them photos of happy things. If they need to cheer up, send them photos of people and animals smiling. If they need a hug, send them photos of hugs. If they need comfort or reassurance, send them photos of things peacefully sleeping. If they’re depressed, send beautiful nature photos. Just looking at a long series of photos like these not only changes their thoughts, it actually changes the brain chemistry for the better! I like to put a series of 10 or more photos in an email so they can be viewed as a “slide show.” All my unhappy friend has to do is click on “Slide Show” and it’s a done deal.
Because the human mind automatically empathizes with images, it’s impossible to look at so many happy, pleasant things and NOT be influenced. Try it on yourself; it really works. In fact, if you’re feeling bad because you can’t be there, you’ll find that as you collect these photos/cartoons/whatever of happier things, you also cheer up. It’s magic!
I shamelessly steal photos from all over the web. My defense of these thefts is a question; “To what better use could they ever be put?”
THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND DEATH
I don’t believe in ghosts, and I don’t believe in Life after Life. If it happens, I’m open to it, but I’m not living my life in expectation of or preparation for that. Whether there’s life later or not has no effect on this life, this world. We will die, only that is certain. In the end, someone will have to go through all the material possessions we’ve accumulated, and decide which ones are trash, which ones are worth selling, and which ones should be given to charity. Yeah, those were good shoes, but now that they have the imprint of our feet, no one will want them. By the time this sorter reaches the end of your junk, they’ll just start throwing everything away. THAT’S life. Don’t spend all your time accumulating junk for someone to go through. But it’s no use spending all your time doing things for people, either. They’re vicious sons of bitches, and no matter how much you give they’ll turn around and bite you HARD. No, the only person who’ll ever appreciate your gentleness and generosity is your own self. If you adopt an animal, they’ll at least be loyal, and many of us settle for that, albeit somewhat different, love. Intelligence isn’t good for much; if you’re smart, you realize all of this, realize the hopelessness of trying to figure things out or trying to do good in this life, try to help people but with the knowledge that they won’t appreciate it, and that’s not a good thing to know. If you want to do something nice for someone, do it! But don’t expect anyone to appreciate – or reward – your sacrifice. Ask any parent who’s lovingly surrounded a child with nurture and care and every material comfort only to have them spew such bitterness and hatred back that they wish they’d never even been born, much less had children. No one is ever going to thank you one-hundredth part of what you deserve, so if you do good, do it for its own sake, then walk away and never, ever look back.
I don’t accumulate much in the way of material possessions, but I often pity the person or program who’s one day going to have to go through all the bits of crap I’ve collected online and delete it all. Even worse is the thought that it won’t get deleted, but float around out there for eternity, without the context (which is me) attached! Aren’t we, in this sense, already immortal? The things I’ve collected, information, hacks, photos, things which make me FEEL, things I've written, photos I've taken, aren’t they some part of my mind? And won’t they exist out there in the electronic dimension pretty much forever? I can’t figure out whether that’s comforting or frightening! If you come upon a meaningful post which seems very timely and relevant to your own life, and it turns out it was posted by someone who’s dead now, aren’t you hearing their ghost? Discuss.
I don’t believe in ghosts, and I don’t believe in Life after Life. If it happens, I’m open to it, but I’m not living my life in expectation of or preparation for that. Whether there’s life later or not has no effect on this life, this world. We will die, only that is certain. In the end, someone will have to go through all the material possessions we’ve accumulated, and decide which ones are trash, which ones are worth selling, and which ones should be given to charity. Yeah, those were good shoes, but now that they have the imprint of our feet, no one will want them. By the time this sorter reaches the end of your junk, they’ll just start throwing everything away. THAT’S life. Don’t spend all your time accumulating junk for someone to go through. But it’s no use spending all your time doing things for people, either. They’re vicious sons of bitches, and no matter how much you give they’ll turn around and bite you HARD. No, the only person who’ll ever appreciate your gentleness and generosity is your own self. If you adopt an animal, they’ll at least be loyal, and many of us settle for that, albeit somewhat different, love. Intelligence isn’t good for much; if you’re smart, you realize all of this, realize the hopelessness of trying to figure things out or trying to do good in this life, try to help people but with the knowledge that they won’t appreciate it, and that’s not a good thing to know. If you want to do something nice for someone, do it! But don’t expect anyone to appreciate – or reward – your sacrifice. Ask any parent who’s lovingly surrounded a child with nurture and care and every material comfort only to have them spew such bitterness and hatred back that they wish they’d never even been born, much less had children. No one is ever going to thank you one-hundredth part of what you deserve, so if you do good, do it for its own sake, then walk away and never, ever look back.
I don’t accumulate much in the way of material possessions, but I often pity the person or program who’s one day going to have to go through all the bits of crap I’ve collected online and delete it all. Even worse is the thought that it won’t get deleted, but float around out there for eternity, without the context (which is me) attached! Aren’t we, in this sense, already immortal? The things I’ve collected, information, hacks, photos, things which make me FEEL, things I've written, photos I've taken, aren’t they some part of my mind? And won’t they exist out there in the electronic dimension pretty much forever? I can’t figure out whether that’s comforting or frightening! If you come upon a meaningful post which seems very timely and relevant to your own life, and it turns out it was posted by someone who’s dead now, aren’t you hearing their ghost? Discuss.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
THOUGHTS ON GOD
So you have this idea about a Great Being. You can’t prove it, you can only show that a lot of people agree with you. On this basis, you’re willing to murder people for disagreeing. Not just murdering, but torturing innocents such as children and even pets! Because of something you can’t prove, and they have the gall to disagree with you? Really? And you call that moral?
And if they disagree with your views on anything else, the same curse applies – they should be killed. If they think marriage is different than you say, or slavery, or sex, or they disagree about which foods are “proper” (though none of them is poison), or any damned thing at all, they should be killed. If their skin is a different color, if they speak a different language, DEATH. And you think you are more moral?
You build mega-churches, pull in mega-crowds, and collect mega-bucks on this basis, all tax-free. You spend this money on alcohol, drugs, sex and prostitution, and you call that moral superiority. When a monkey cheats on its spouse, it hides that fact from its spouse and from the whole community, just as you do. You aren’t even morally superior to a MONKEY.
You do not have the right to any of these behaviors. You should not be exempt from taxes just because you’re exempt from obeying the moral law. 84% of prisoners in the U.S. are religious – only 3% are atheists. Even if such statistics are way off – the difference is astronomical. Tell me now, who hold the moral superiority card?
Why is it that when faced with a terminal illness, Christians are generally filled with dread (though they believe they’re going to ‘join with’ their magical deity), and atheists are filled with peace? Why have atheists never started a war, nor started pulling down the monuments of your religion? Only other religions do that!
There’s an old saying, “I swear there ain’t no heaven, but I pray there ain’t no hell.” Yet, when they come to peace with the fact that neither of these exist, the atheist’s morality does not change. The Christian, full of devotion and prayer, hides his amorality unless he can get the group to agree with his immoral acts, then celebrates them as if they were holy. They will rob, murder, and con their way through this world without the tiniest regret. They believe in a Satan; is that why they BECOME him? Their “moral” behavior is not only evil and insidious, but omni-present, omni-powerful, and self-congratulatory.
Never ask why I despise religion; I’m likely to answer you.
If there were a magical, all-powerful being who was the source of love and morality, he would have destroyed the religious centuries ago. Imagine if all the damage done in the name of religion were suddenly reversed; THAT would be paradise! An increase in your “faith” brings the opposite. Having faith only proves that you’re willing to suspend your disbelief infinitely; Jimmy Jones’ followers gave up everything they had and moved to South America to live in his “utopia” and ultimately took their own lives, still apparently believing that only he spoke the Truth. Congratulations! You’re one of those guys!
So you have this idea about a Great Being. You can’t prove it, you can only show that a lot of people agree with you. On this basis, you’re willing to murder people for disagreeing. Not just murdering, but torturing innocents such as children and even pets! Because of something you can’t prove, and they have the gall to disagree with you? Really? And you call that moral?
And if they disagree with your views on anything else, the same curse applies – they should be killed. If they think marriage is different than you say, or slavery, or sex, or they disagree about which foods are “proper” (though none of them is poison), or any damned thing at all, they should be killed. If their skin is a different color, if they speak a different language, DEATH. And you think you are more moral?
You build mega-churches, pull in mega-crowds, and collect mega-bucks on this basis, all tax-free. You spend this money on alcohol, drugs, sex and prostitution, and you call that moral superiority. When a monkey cheats on its spouse, it hides that fact from its spouse and from the whole community, just as you do. You aren’t even morally superior to a MONKEY.
You do not have the right to any of these behaviors. You should not be exempt from taxes just because you’re exempt from obeying the moral law. 84% of prisoners in the U.S. are religious – only 3% are atheists. Even if such statistics are way off – the difference is astronomical. Tell me now, who hold the moral superiority card?
Why is it that when faced with a terminal illness, Christians are generally filled with dread (though they believe they’re going to ‘join with’ their magical deity), and atheists are filled with peace? Why have atheists never started a war, nor started pulling down the monuments of your religion? Only other religions do that!
There’s an old saying, “I swear there ain’t no heaven, but I pray there ain’t no hell.” Yet, when they come to peace with the fact that neither of these exist, the atheist’s morality does not change. The Christian, full of devotion and prayer, hides his amorality unless he can get the group to agree with his immoral acts, then celebrates them as if they were holy. They will rob, murder, and con their way through this world without the tiniest regret. They believe in a Satan; is that why they BECOME him? Their “moral” behavior is not only evil and insidious, but omni-present, omni-powerful, and self-congratulatory.
Never ask why I despise religion; I’m likely to answer you.
If there were a magical, all-powerful being who was the source of love and morality, he would have destroyed the religious centuries ago. Imagine if all the damage done in the name of religion were suddenly reversed; THAT would be paradise! An increase in your “faith” brings the opposite. Having faith only proves that you’re willing to suspend your disbelief infinitely; Jimmy Jones’ followers gave up everything they had and moved to South America to live in his “utopia” and ultimately took their own lives, still apparently believing that only he spoke the Truth. Congratulations! You’re one of those guys!
Saturday, July 5, 2014
- - - - SIN - - - -
All sin and all crime in all places, in all times, are just one thing; betrayal. No rules to learn or lists to memorize. Just this. If you hope to be a good person, if you think of yourself as loving and pure, you just have to ask yourself; who trusted me, and I stabbed them? A good man feels bad when he does something wrong. A great man fixes it.
All sin and all crime in all places, in all times, are just one thing; betrayal. No rules to learn or lists to memorize. Just this. If you hope to be a good person, if you think of yourself as loving and pure, you just have to ask yourself; who trusted me, and I stabbed them? A good man feels bad when he does something wrong. A great man fixes it.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
PROOF OF LOVE
When someone you love is hurting, be alert! Now is your chance! You don't need to buy flowers or take them to dinner and a movie - just hold them and show them how much you care how they feel. And it costs you nothing. More than any fancy outing or expensive gift, more than a grand romantic gesture, THIS is proof of love! Don't miss the opportunity, it may not come again; if you fail in this because you don't have time or it's embarrassing, why would they come to you next time? Prove your love before you lose the chance.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
HELLO AGAIN, WORLD!
I don’t know if anyone will be interested in reading this, but it’s welling up in me like the words to a poem, demanding to be spoken. Most of my references are from Wikipedia for ease in both research and for easiest reading. So here they are for what they’re worth, my thoughts on….
BEING HUMAN
The only way I can think to begin is to reference some experiments that shaped my thinking. The first regards the domestication of the silver fox. Here’s a Wiki excerpt:
There are many records of domesticated red foxes and others, but rarely of sustained domestication. A recent and notable case is the Russian silver fox, a domesticated silver fox by the Siberian Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk,[18] since it resulted in visible and behavioral changes, and is a case study of an animal population modeling according to human domestication needs. The current group of domesticated silver foxes are the result of nearly fifty years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia to domesticate the silver morph of the red fox. Notably, the new foxes became more tame, allowing themselves to be petted, whimpering to get attention and sniffing and licking their caretakers.[19] They also became more dog-like as well: they lost their distinctive musky "fox smell", became more friendly with humans, put their ears down (like dogs), wagged their tails when happy and began to vocalize and bark like domesticated dogs. They also began to exhibit other traits seen in some dog breeds, such as color pattern, curled tails, floppy ears, and shorter legs and tails. They are also more likely to have piebald coats, and will almost always have a white spot on the chest or face. The breeding project was set up by the Soviet scientist Dmitri K. Belyaev.
The purpose of the experiment was to see if wild dogs became domesticated ones through selective breeding by humans. Here’s what happened:
Belyaev believed that the key factor selected for in the domestication of dogs was not size or reproduction, but behavior; specifically, tameability. Since behavior is rooted in biology, selecting for tameness and against aggression, means selecting for physiological changes in the systems that govern the body's hormones and neurochemicals. Belyaev decided to test his theory by domesticating foxes; in particular, the silver fox, a dark color form of the red fox. He placed a population of them under strong selection pressure for inherent tameness.
As Lyudmilla Trut says in her 1999 American Scientist article, The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the "domesticated elite," are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.
What this outcome showed was that through selective breeding over a mere 50 years or ten generations, the traits selected for changed the breed. Not only personalities changed, but also coloring, demeanor, and communication styles. It’s unlikely that these changes can be reversed.
Just file that.
The second experiment worth noting involves some dancing pigeons.
The Skinner box is a device that was first developed by B. F. Skinner in his work on operant conditioning. A subject was placed in the box, and the mechanism gave small amounts of food each time the subject performed a particular action, such as depressing a lever or pecking a disk. With the operant conditioning chamber attached to a recording device, Skinner was able to discover schedules of reinforcement. These patterns are the basis for organismic interactions with the environment and are explored extensively in Schedules of Reinforcement and elsewhere.
But here’s where it got really, really interesting:
Skinner's research discovered many fascinating examples of animal behavior. One of the most interesting, perhaps, was Skinner's work on superstition. Instead of giving a reward for a specific action and training a specific behavior, Skinner would take a hungry pigeon and place it in a box that would release a food pellet at random. The pigeons developed all kinds of complex behavioral responses such as bowing, scraping, dancing, and neck turns.
What happened was the pigeon would receive the food pellet while it happened to be performing some action, and rather than attributing the food pellet reward to randomness, it would assume that the appearance of the food pellet had something to do with its behavior. So it started doing whatever that action was, over and over again, and sure enough, it was eventually rewarded with a food pellet again. Since the pigeon is increasing the amount of time spent performing a particular action, it is also increasing the number of times it is "rewarded" for that action, even though the reward is random.
One can’t help but wonder how pigeons have so quidkly – within one lifetime - invented a religion of dance. I don’t mean to invalidate actual religious/spiritual experiences. I think it occasionally happens that a particular person has a great insight of spiritual significance and becomes enlightened. But if this moment of clarity occurred while that person was on a hilltop, everyone rushes to the hilltop hoping for the same insight, and often claim that they get it. And it may be true that they gain some insight. However, repeating the behavior does not guaranty the same result; the two are unrelated. Build a giant church on the hilltop and shame those who don’t believe in the hilltop and you have just unintentionally invented an organized religion. Anyone who disagrees that the hilltop confers enlightenment is ostracized from the community and denigrated with such phrases as “lack of faith” or “blindness to the truth.” But the truth actually has no part in their religion, and faith gains nothing but a good feeling of community, acceptance and agreement.
Our minds are hard-wired to see patterns. They are hard-wired to see things in terms of cause and effect even when the outcome is completely unrelated to previous actions. Since one can’t predict randomness, and there’s nothing about it that’s understandable, we learn to dance like pigeons in a random reward-trial. The good news is that what seems random is actually the outcome, not of what dance we were doing at the time, but of causes we can’t readily see or understand. Humans survive by solving problems, and that’s an excellent strategy. Right up until there’s a flood (for example) and we lose loved ones and/or our possessions. Then it seems to our problem-solving minds that there must be a way to prevent such things, but there isn’t. So we move on to thinking that we must have done something wrong, When no physical mistake is found, we reach further afield and light on the idea that we have thought or believed or behaved wrongly. Organized religion bolsters this view by the expedient logic of telling us that if we had faith we could do anything, and if we can’t fix this it’s because our faith is lacking. So the problem-solving, outcome-oriented human mind, while it is not happy, is satisfied that the solution has been found.
Third, an experiment unofficially called “Monkey Money.” There isn’t a good Wiki reference for this experiment, so allow me to summarize. If you’re interested in the details, see the “References” section below.
Cognitive psychologist Laurie Santos taught a group of primates to use money for food. Exchange rates were established, and then some pretty sophisticated scenarios were set up where the primates were allowed – even encouraged – to take financial risks in the hope of financial gain. The amazing outcome was that the primates very quickly displayed exactly the same attitudes and actions that humans demonstrate in our own financial decision-making. No significant difference.
So while this is not absolute proof, the implication is clear; humans are not that special. Other animals, which we consider lower life forms, share our innate traits. What that says about being human is that our “programming” (our ideas and even our ideals) are neither entirely unique nor entirely random, nor based solely on our experiences. WE ARE JUST ONE OF THE ANIMALS ON THIS PLANET. Does that mean you are not special? Not at all! Just that some of the unique bundle which makes up “you” is hard-wired. Of course you still determine your own path, your own choices, your own value. What it DOES mean is that if we are going to claim we are intelligent, we must accept the evidence that much of our thinking began as evolutionary advantages shared by other earth-beings, and that some of that thinking needs to be changed. We need to recognize what paradigms are no longer valid.
BETTER THAN HUMAN
I always find it a bit annoying when humans are surprised by the love, loyalty, and compassion displayed by animals. I’ve had at least one cat almost continually for the last fifty years. When still a child, I realized they are capable of love, loyalty, and every kind of good behavior including compassion. That’s not to say that animals aren’t dangerous; they very much are! But they are just as capable of caring, making sacrifices, and loving even across species barriers as humans are. Eventually I believe humans will be able to accept this, and as a result, treat animals at least as well as we treat each other. However, this will no doubt take some time, as social adjustments seem to take many generations to “take.”
This can easily be seen in the social issues we still – despite our claim to be rational – are struggling to deal with. Racism, for example, is a natural enough attitude when the threat of strangers invading one’s territory and gene pool is acute and threatens our genetic success. But we are far beyond the point where the success of our species depends on this. Racial purity is actually the opposite of success, since diversity provides a much greater chance of survival.
Homosexuality, for another example, is not unique to humans. Even the most cursory study of animal mating habits shows that it is ubiquitous in nature. Homosexuality and/or gender ambiguity is a fact of life among all animals, and there’s no reason humans should be immune, or why it should be considered “unnatural.” When breeding populations were dismayingly small, this might have seemed threatening. But once again, this is no longer a threat to the survival of the human species. In a genetic bottleneck – which humans have faced more than once – it was an issue. For us? No.
Using our much-vaunted intelligence, it is time to rethink many attitudes and behaviors which originally had an evolutionary advantage, but NO LONGER DO.
GOOD GUYS / BAD GUYS
Opponents of selective breeding seem to forget that humans have been selectively breeding themselves since before we became homo sapiens sapiens. We breed ourselves selectively by choosing the most attractive (that is to say, usually the fittest) mates we can find. This has been going on for far more than ten generations. Like the silver foxes above, our behavior and appearance have been shaped by this – surely – completely “natural” selection process.
My point is that if we are taller, more consistently bipedal, stronger and smarter or more beautiful, it isn’t because we were just uniquely made that way, but because over thousands of generations we chose to become that way. In the silver fox experiment one should note that this selective breeding only succeeded in its goal about eighty percent of the time. Knowing this to be the case, perhaps we should evince slightly less surprise when a certain percentage of our population doesn’t exhibit the desired traits or behaviors. Altruism doesn’t necessarily breed true.
People will tell you that community-beneficial traits like altruism and other good behaviors have evolved to support our species rather than the individual. There are all sorts of explanations for why families or herds protect one another, for instance, sometimes at the cost of their own evolutionary success. The same strategy can be observed in pack animals like prairie dogs and wolves. It’s not my intention to argue causes, but rather to simply note that group-benefitting behaviors exist, that this is a fact of nature just as much as economic systems, superstition and selective breeding are. Homophobia and racism are perfectly natural outcomes of our evolution.
So who are the “good guys”? The good guys are the ones who observe the facts, evaluate their applicability to circumstances and aim for better action and better understanding. They are the ones who consider our problems, rethink their position, and modify their thinking to embrace the facts – the reality.
ADOLESCENTS
It’s well known that the most dangerous place to be when it comes to bears is between a mother and her cubs. At any perceived threat to her offspring the mother bear will attack and kill without hesitation. And yet when her cubs reach adolescence, the same protective mother bear drives her cubs up a tree and forces them to stay there. When she’s sure they won’t try to come down, she leaves what has been her territory, leaving it to the cubs and leaving them on their own. When they finally grow tired and/or hungry enough to come down, their mother is gone forever and their adulthood has begun.
When male lions (similarly to wolves and other pack animals) reach adolescence they are driven out of the pride and wander alone until they find another pride and are either stronger or more desperate than the alpha lion in that group and attempt to take the alpha lion’s place. If they’re successful, they have a new home and family. If not, they continue to wander on until they eventually succeed or die.
Even among domesticated cats where pride- or pack-based behavior doesn’t apply, once her kittens are weaned the mother drives them out of her territory. Should they return, she will attack them exactly as she would any invading stranger.
This same type of scenario plays out across all species and has always done so. It’s a successful survival strategy. Yet every single generation of humans without fail has the same reaction to the adolescence of the following generation; they wonder where they have gone wrong or been bad parents. They wonder what is wrong with their teenagers. The teens just want to get out from under their parents’ control, and by the time they leave home the parents are glad to see the back of them. But – there’s actually nothing puzzling in either case. Whether you are the parent or the adolescent, the bonds of childhood have to be broken, new territories staked out, mating strategies tested, battles for dominance fought, and ultimately, the separation will occur. It shouldn’t be surprising that it’s a painful process. So why do we fight the process, blame ourselves and our children, and suffer so much drama as a result of a perfectly natural process?
Of course it’s necessary for every young adult to challenge the very things parents have tried to procure for them (financial security, education, marriage). They are simply establishing themselves beyond the security blanket. The drive is as predictable as it is unavoidable. There’s no need for alarm on either side; just take the long view; eventually these new strategies being tested will either succeed or fail. Either way, the most important factor in our success is that we support one another through the process, share compassionately, and come out the other side with a sense that whatever happens we will not abandon one another. A child will perfectly naturally question everything they’ve been taught. It doesn’t mean the adults in their lives have done anything wrong, nor, in the end, will children on this migration ultimately think the older generation are idiots; they will come to respect them given time and experience. In the long run, it is not the End Of The World.
CONCLUSION
The point of bringing up the subject of adolescence is this; there is very little difference between humans and animals. The sooner one becomes at peace with that, with our natures – with nature itself, the sooner we can go about the business of evolving our culture and working with nature instead of fighting it. Since you can’t change nature there is no sense in that. Give even a little thought to the issue of problem teenagers and guilt-ridden adults and you’ll see that we’ve been handling the breaking of our childhood pair-bonds in the worst possible way.
Again, we must, if we insist on claiming we are intelligent, look at the facts. It makes no sense to blame anyone (even yourself) for things which have always happened. If we are so smart, why are we failing to learn from the facts, even when they are endlessly repeated right in front of us? People from different places or with different skin color or with gender-related differences, members of other generations or even members of different species are exactly the same as we are on the most basic level. Look at the evidence for yourself.
In summary, I urge humans to think, to consider some uncomfortable truths, to draw new conclusions and shift perspectives accordingly. Like all earth animals, we have evolved selectively, and certain traits are now inherent in our makeup. But that doesn’t make them permanent. The drive to reproduce was a brilliant survival strategy, but it no longer serves us best. Having a multitude of children may make one feel genetically secure, but it is no longer necessary or even desirable for survival. The same applies to racism, homophobia, religion. The need for economic and community/spiritual security, for good mating rights, for genetic immortality, are universal desires. Just recognize the systems, acknowledge their value, and consider what we can realistically do within them. These are my aims, this is my truth. Thank you for reading this, because just hearing some new ideas is good for your thinking and for humanity; change comes slowly, but inexorably. It allows our future evolution to be wiser. Namaste.
REFERENCES:
Domestication of the silver fox; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_K._Belyaev
Dancing Pigeons; http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Skinner_box
Monkey Money; http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos and http://www.marketplace.org/topics/your-money/monkeys-love-discounts-too
I don’t know if anyone will be interested in reading this, but it’s welling up in me like the words to a poem, demanding to be spoken. Most of my references are from Wikipedia for ease in both research and for easiest reading. So here they are for what they’re worth, my thoughts on….
BEING HUMAN
The only way I can think to begin is to reference some experiments that shaped my thinking. The first regards the domestication of the silver fox. Here’s a Wiki excerpt:
There are many records of domesticated red foxes and others, but rarely of sustained domestication. A recent and notable case is the Russian silver fox, a domesticated silver fox by the Siberian Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk,[18] since it resulted in visible and behavioral changes, and is a case study of an animal population modeling according to human domestication needs. The current group of domesticated silver foxes are the result of nearly fifty years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia to domesticate the silver morph of the red fox. Notably, the new foxes became more tame, allowing themselves to be petted, whimpering to get attention and sniffing and licking their caretakers.[19] They also became more dog-like as well: they lost their distinctive musky "fox smell", became more friendly with humans, put their ears down (like dogs), wagged their tails when happy and began to vocalize and bark like domesticated dogs. They also began to exhibit other traits seen in some dog breeds, such as color pattern, curled tails, floppy ears, and shorter legs and tails. They are also more likely to have piebald coats, and will almost always have a white spot on the chest or face. The breeding project was set up by the Soviet scientist Dmitri K. Belyaev.
The purpose of the experiment was to see if wild dogs became domesticated ones through selective breeding by humans. Here’s what happened:
Belyaev believed that the key factor selected for in the domestication of dogs was not size or reproduction, but behavior; specifically, tameability. Since behavior is rooted in biology, selecting for tameness and against aggression, means selecting for physiological changes in the systems that govern the body's hormones and neurochemicals. Belyaev decided to test his theory by domesticating foxes; in particular, the silver fox, a dark color form of the red fox. He placed a population of them under strong selection pressure for inherent tameness.
As Lyudmilla Trut says in her 1999 American Scientist article, The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the "domesticated elite," are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.
What this outcome showed was that through selective breeding over a mere 50 years or ten generations, the traits selected for changed the breed. Not only personalities changed, but also coloring, demeanor, and communication styles. It’s unlikely that these changes can be reversed.
Just file that.
The second experiment worth noting involves some dancing pigeons.
The Skinner box is a device that was first developed by B. F. Skinner in his work on operant conditioning. A subject was placed in the box, and the mechanism gave small amounts of food each time the subject performed a particular action, such as depressing a lever or pecking a disk. With the operant conditioning chamber attached to a recording device, Skinner was able to discover schedules of reinforcement. These patterns are the basis for organismic interactions with the environment and are explored extensively in Schedules of Reinforcement and elsewhere.
But here’s where it got really, really interesting:
Skinner's research discovered many fascinating examples of animal behavior. One of the most interesting, perhaps, was Skinner's work on superstition. Instead of giving a reward for a specific action and training a specific behavior, Skinner would take a hungry pigeon and place it in a box that would release a food pellet at random. The pigeons developed all kinds of complex behavioral responses such as bowing, scraping, dancing, and neck turns.
What happened was the pigeon would receive the food pellet while it happened to be performing some action, and rather than attributing the food pellet reward to randomness, it would assume that the appearance of the food pellet had something to do with its behavior. So it started doing whatever that action was, over and over again, and sure enough, it was eventually rewarded with a food pellet again. Since the pigeon is increasing the amount of time spent performing a particular action, it is also increasing the number of times it is "rewarded" for that action, even though the reward is random.
One can’t help but wonder how pigeons have so quidkly – within one lifetime - invented a religion of dance. I don’t mean to invalidate actual religious/spiritual experiences. I think it occasionally happens that a particular person has a great insight of spiritual significance and becomes enlightened. But if this moment of clarity occurred while that person was on a hilltop, everyone rushes to the hilltop hoping for the same insight, and often claim that they get it. And it may be true that they gain some insight. However, repeating the behavior does not guaranty the same result; the two are unrelated. Build a giant church on the hilltop and shame those who don’t believe in the hilltop and you have just unintentionally invented an organized religion. Anyone who disagrees that the hilltop confers enlightenment is ostracized from the community and denigrated with such phrases as “lack of faith” or “blindness to the truth.” But the truth actually has no part in their religion, and faith gains nothing but a good feeling of community, acceptance and agreement.
Our minds are hard-wired to see patterns. They are hard-wired to see things in terms of cause and effect even when the outcome is completely unrelated to previous actions. Since one can’t predict randomness, and there’s nothing about it that’s understandable, we learn to dance like pigeons in a random reward-trial. The good news is that what seems random is actually the outcome, not of what dance we were doing at the time, but of causes we can’t readily see or understand. Humans survive by solving problems, and that’s an excellent strategy. Right up until there’s a flood (for example) and we lose loved ones and/or our possessions. Then it seems to our problem-solving minds that there must be a way to prevent such things, but there isn’t. So we move on to thinking that we must have done something wrong, When no physical mistake is found, we reach further afield and light on the idea that we have thought or believed or behaved wrongly. Organized religion bolsters this view by the expedient logic of telling us that if we had faith we could do anything, and if we can’t fix this it’s because our faith is lacking. So the problem-solving, outcome-oriented human mind, while it is not happy, is satisfied that the solution has been found.
Third, an experiment unofficially called “Monkey Money.” There isn’t a good Wiki reference for this experiment, so allow me to summarize. If you’re interested in the details, see the “References” section below.
Cognitive psychologist Laurie Santos taught a group of primates to use money for food. Exchange rates were established, and then some pretty sophisticated scenarios were set up where the primates were allowed – even encouraged – to take financial risks in the hope of financial gain. The amazing outcome was that the primates very quickly displayed exactly the same attitudes and actions that humans demonstrate in our own financial decision-making. No significant difference.
So while this is not absolute proof, the implication is clear; humans are not that special. Other animals, which we consider lower life forms, share our innate traits. What that says about being human is that our “programming” (our ideas and even our ideals) are neither entirely unique nor entirely random, nor based solely on our experiences. WE ARE JUST ONE OF THE ANIMALS ON THIS PLANET. Does that mean you are not special? Not at all! Just that some of the unique bundle which makes up “you” is hard-wired. Of course you still determine your own path, your own choices, your own value. What it DOES mean is that if we are going to claim we are intelligent, we must accept the evidence that much of our thinking began as evolutionary advantages shared by other earth-beings, and that some of that thinking needs to be changed. We need to recognize what paradigms are no longer valid.
BETTER THAN HUMAN
I always find it a bit annoying when humans are surprised by the love, loyalty, and compassion displayed by animals. I’ve had at least one cat almost continually for the last fifty years. When still a child, I realized they are capable of love, loyalty, and every kind of good behavior including compassion. That’s not to say that animals aren’t dangerous; they very much are! But they are just as capable of caring, making sacrifices, and loving even across species barriers as humans are. Eventually I believe humans will be able to accept this, and as a result, treat animals at least as well as we treat each other. However, this will no doubt take some time, as social adjustments seem to take many generations to “take.”
This can easily be seen in the social issues we still – despite our claim to be rational – are struggling to deal with. Racism, for example, is a natural enough attitude when the threat of strangers invading one’s territory and gene pool is acute and threatens our genetic success. But we are far beyond the point where the success of our species depends on this. Racial purity is actually the opposite of success, since diversity provides a much greater chance of survival.
Homosexuality, for another example, is not unique to humans. Even the most cursory study of animal mating habits shows that it is ubiquitous in nature. Homosexuality and/or gender ambiguity is a fact of life among all animals, and there’s no reason humans should be immune, or why it should be considered “unnatural.” When breeding populations were dismayingly small, this might have seemed threatening. But once again, this is no longer a threat to the survival of the human species. In a genetic bottleneck – which humans have faced more than once – it was an issue. For us? No.
Using our much-vaunted intelligence, it is time to rethink many attitudes and behaviors which originally had an evolutionary advantage, but NO LONGER DO.
GOOD GUYS / BAD GUYS
Opponents of selective breeding seem to forget that humans have been selectively breeding themselves since before we became homo sapiens sapiens. We breed ourselves selectively by choosing the most attractive (that is to say, usually the fittest) mates we can find. This has been going on for far more than ten generations. Like the silver foxes above, our behavior and appearance have been shaped by this – surely – completely “natural” selection process.
My point is that if we are taller, more consistently bipedal, stronger and smarter or more beautiful, it isn’t because we were just uniquely made that way, but because over thousands of generations we chose to become that way. In the silver fox experiment one should note that this selective breeding only succeeded in its goal about eighty percent of the time. Knowing this to be the case, perhaps we should evince slightly less surprise when a certain percentage of our population doesn’t exhibit the desired traits or behaviors. Altruism doesn’t necessarily breed true.
People will tell you that community-beneficial traits like altruism and other good behaviors have evolved to support our species rather than the individual. There are all sorts of explanations for why families or herds protect one another, for instance, sometimes at the cost of their own evolutionary success. The same strategy can be observed in pack animals like prairie dogs and wolves. It’s not my intention to argue causes, but rather to simply note that group-benefitting behaviors exist, that this is a fact of nature just as much as economic systems, superstition and selective breeding are. Homophobia and racism are perfectly natural outcomes of our evolution.
So who are the “good guys”? The good guys are the ones who observe the facts, evaluate their applicability to circumstances and aim for better action and better understanding. They are the ones who consider our problems, rethink their position, and modify their thinking to embrace the facts – the reality.
ADOLESCENTS
It’s well known that the most dangerous place to be when it comes to bears is between a mother and her cubs. At any perceived threat to her offspring the mother bear will attack and kill without hesitation. And yet when her cubs reach adolescence, the same protective mother bear drives her cubs up a tree and forces them to stay there. When she’s sure they won’t try to come down, she leaves what has been her territory, leaving it to the cubs and leaving them on their own. When they finally grow tired and/or hungry enough to come down, their mother is gone forever and their adulthood has begun.
When male lions (similarly to wolves and other pack animals) reach adolescence they are driven out of the pride and wander alone until they find another pride and are either stronger or more desperate than the alpha lion in that group and attempt to take the alpha lion’s place. If they’re successful, they have a new home and family. If not, they continue to wander on until they eventually succeed or die.
Even among domesticated cats where pride- or pack-based behavior doesn’t apply, once her kittens are weaned the mother drives them out of her territory. Should they return, she will attack them exactly as she would any invading stranger.
This same type of scenario plays out across all species and has always done so. It’s a successful survival strategy. Yet every single generation of humans without fail has the same reaction to the adolescence of the following generation; they wonder where they have gone wrong or been bad parents. They wonder what is wrong with their teenagers. The teens just want to get out from under their parents’ control, and by the time they leave home the parents are glad to see the back of them. But – there’s actually nothing puzzling in either case. Whether you are the parent or the adolescent, the bonds of childhood have to be broken, new territories staked out, mating strategies tested, battles for dominance fought, and ultimately, the separation will occur. It shouldn’t be surprising that it’s a painful process. So why do we fight the process, blame ourselves and our children, and suffer so much drama as a result of a perfectly natural process?
Of course it’s necessary for every young adult to challenge the very things parents have tried to procure for them (financial security, education, marriage). They are simply establishing themselves beyond the security blanket. The drive is as predictable as it is unavoidable. There’s no need for alarm on either side; just take the long view; eventually these new strategies being tested will either succeed or fail. Either way, the most important factor in our success is that we support one another through the process, share compassionately, and come out the other side with a sense that whatever happens we will not abandon one another. A child will perfectly naturally question everything they’ve been taught. It doesn’t mean the adults in their lives have done anything wrong, nor, in the end, will children on this migration ultimately think the older generation are idiots; they will come to respect them given time and experience. In the long run, it is not the End Of The World.
CONCLUSION
The point of bringing up the subject of adolescence is this; there is very little difference between humans and animals. The sooner one becomes at peace with that, with our natures – with nature itself, the sooner we can go about the business of evolving our culture and working with nature instead of fighting it. Since you can’t change nature there is no sense in that. Give even a little thought to the issue of problem teenagers and guilt-ridden adults and you’ll see that we’ve been handling the breaking of our childhood pair-bonds in the worst possible way.
Again, we must, if we insist on claiming we are intelligent, look at the facts. It makes no sense to blame anyone (even yourself) for things which have always happened. If we are so smart, why are we failing to learn from the facts, even when they are endlessly repeated right in front of us? People from different places or with different skin color or with gender-related differences, members of other generations or even members of different species are exactly the same as we are on the most basic level. Look at the evidence for yourself.
In summary, I urge humans to think, to consider some uncomfortable truths, to draw new conclusions and shift perspectives accordingly. Like all earth animals, we have evolved selectively, and certain traits are now inherent in our makeup. But that doesn’t make them permanent. The drive to reproduce was a brilliant survival strategy, but it no longer serves us best. Having a multitude of children may make one feel genetically secure, but it is no longer necessary or even desirable for survival. The same applies to racism, homophobia, religion. The need for economic and community/spiritual security, for good mating rights, for genetic immortality, are universal desires. Just recognize the systems, acknowledge their value, and consider what we can realistically do within them. These are my aims, this is my truth. Thank you for reading this, because just hearing some new ideas is good for your thinking and for humanity; change comes slowly, but inexorably. It allows our future evolution to be wiser. Namaste.
REFERENCES:
Domestication of the silver fox; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_K._Belyaev
Dancing Pigeons; http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Skinner_box
Monkey Money; http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos and http://www.marketplace.org/topics/your-money/monkeys-love-discounts-too
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