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Discuss us, the human race



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Original post

Posted by Lucas, 20.06.2006 - 14:39
First of all, welcome and thanks for your interest. Second, can this be moved to the 'Serious Discussions'?

So, let me explain the idea of this thread. You might have read some of my posts in the threads 'Over Population' & 'With or against cloning?'. If you did, you might have noticed me being real angry about our species.

My problem is, we are weak. We are stupid. Some might argue me saying that mankind has survived for the last few 1000 years, because we are so smart that we can solve our problems and think of solutions. I always think, what problem do we have actually solved, without creating 10 others?

We can cure many diseases. Yes, we can cure a few. But my question is, is that a good thing? Why are we running for death, whilst we have no idea (or at least can't agree) of what death actually is. I'm not saying we should all die at once, to find out, but I do think we should stop the fucking running. Why not accept our time of going, when it has come.

As said, in the 'Cloning' thread it was said that we are making progress. Sure we are. We have succesfully cloned a sheep, and in the near future we will probably be able to clone humans or grow bodyparts and we can use those to replace our own. I can't help to imagine us as Frankenstein's, with all different sorts off legs and stuff. Anyway, do you think this is good? My main arguement is that I believe we should follow the course of Nature, and therefore we should live as animals etc. So NO cloning for me. Yes, we will save lives with it, and call me heartless, but I still don't agree with it.

I think we are drifting further and further away from our course, the path we should take. If my world would become reality, we would all be placed back into prehistory and would just live and hunt. If my opinion, that is enough. All our machines that do the hard work for us, leaving us with more time for other things have made us decadent. We now need to philosophize about if there is a God, what road we should take and stuff like that. (Yes, I do see the irony)

So basically, do what the title says: Discuss us, the humanrace. I probably will meet some of you who disagree with me, but I'd be happy if we can discuss that. I'm always in for a good discussion.

PS: If anyone dares to say that we are discussion this through the internet, and thus through one of the main mistakes of mankind, wanting to be connected, I'm going to slap you.

I do see the irony in this, of course, and I know this may sound all a bit hypocritical because I am philosophizing too right now, but I've accepted that. I know that I cannot live up to my ideals, because they represent something I think we can never turn back too. But whatever, discuss!
29.08.2008 - 19:18
Aei Ontos
Account deleted
The world isn't going down just like that. It will take a while at least, but we will be dead already for a long time. It is good to be careful with the earth, as we will have children in the future and we must not want to fuck it for them. But for we will we make anything better if we start to panic? We must mind about what we do, but we must not start shaking and so because of the earth.
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30.08.2008 - 09:43
Hrothdane

There are plenty of reasons to hate humanity and plenty of reasons to love humanity. Whether or not I "should" hate humanity, I think its useless to do so.
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Despair is death, and I'm not interested in dying.

Member of the True Crusade against True Crusades
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30.08.2008 - 17:20
Aei Ontos
Account deleted
Written by Guest on 30.08.2008 at 11:11

It's a popular to say people should care about what happens in this world, but why? I don't see any logical reason why anyone should give a give a shit about anything. Of course people DO give a shit about things in this world and it's unavoidable that we care what happens to us. We're born curious and ignorant to the world and as we grow we form preferences based off past experience, so we can't help but want things to be a certain way. But what I'm talking about is people who say we "Should" care; like citing their preferences is the same as speaking undeniable truth.

I'll say it again, except in the form of a statement: There is no logical reason to care what happens to the human race or anything else in the world. We won't live to see it's end (which is inevitable as all things in existence are subject to change) therefore any guilt we might have for being lazy bastards won't matter when our identity passes. And even if you believe in an afterlife where you retain your identity (thus remembering your life on Earth and all your guilt) you still have no reason to care, because YOU'RE STILL ALIVE! If there's an afterlife then what the fuck does Earth matter?

There are more points to bring up in attempt to counter my self proclaimed infallibility, but I think the idea my identity surviving my body's death is ridiculous and based on nothing, so I'll leave those counter points open for somebody else to bring up. I promise I'll do my best to refute all your defensive arguments.

I understand your point. But it is the most cynical viewpoint that you can have. If you have ever seen a young child, it is very natural to wish nothing more than a good future for this child. This is not just an feeling, this is also rational. The child is one that we need to learn from. A child trusts it's parents. We, as grown up, do we need to misuse this trust and destroy what they will need to live?
You say that we don't need to mind about that what is after us. Try to defend it. Even evolutiontheory learns us that the living lifeforms have no other purpose than to reproduce. If we destroy the earth the only purpose that we are alive is gone.

Would there be a afterlife (which I believe) than this present live would be to decide the next life. A selfish attitude wouldn't really help. I haven't even brought up those who worship the earth as mother earth. So, it isn't anything more than logical to be a bit careful to this earth. But, we don't need to panic or so.
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02.09.2008 - 16:58
Valentin B
Iconoclast
Written by Guest on 02.09.2008 at 11:21

Written by Guest on 02.09.2008 at 11:16

Written by Guest on 30.08.2008 at 11:11

It's a popular to say people should care about what happens in this world, but why? I don't see any logical reason why anyone should give a give a shit about anything.


That is without a doubt one of the dumbest things I have ever read popular my ass, grow up dude. You don't see any logical reason to care, well that just shows how blinded you are to reality.


See? Look where caring gets you. Now you're all offended.

what you're talking about is NOT logic, it's cynicism, and you are wrong to consider things only from the "what we do to the earth" view-point. logic means not simply being cynical, like doing whatever you can in your life just because you won't see the end etc.

what would be logical for the human race to do would be trying to live in harmony with everyone, so that we ALL have a better life, not just somebody nuking the whole world just because, well, you don't live forever... is that logical to you?
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02.09.2008 - 17:59
Aei Ontos
Account deleted
Written by Guest on 30.08.2008 at 18:28

You call me cynical like it's a bad thing, hahah.

Just so we're clear, I'm not arguing that humans don't care about anything or that we shouldn't care, I'm just saying that if we were logical beings we wouldn't care. We for sure have built in affinity for morals; I won't try to refute that. I know I care. If I didn't I wouldn't even bother getting out of bed to share my views on this website. I'd just sleep to death.

As for the afterlife....well, I feel stupid even having brought it up since the idea holds no water in my mind; but I did bring it up, so I'll discuss it despite its irrelevance to me (btw, my disbelief in an afterlife is my reason for stating there's no reason to care what happens to rest of the human race; to my understanding the only reason we are here is because everything has an opposite and existence is the opposition to non-existence. I see no other point to life).

So suspending my disbelief, lets say we all live for an eternity of infinite stages (life on Earth being one of them) and we retain our unique identies throughout all of this. Ok I have a question. What about amnesia? People DO forget things. So why care about the future if you can't even remember the past?

If you have forgotten the past and you have no future to look towards, there is no use for live. If there is only a future to look towards, than life isn't nice, but at least there is something to look towards. But amnesia is not very nice.
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02.09.2008 - 19:35
Valentin B
Iconoclast
Written by Guest on 02.09.2008 at 19:03

That really depends on what goal you're talking about, hahah. If your goal is to make Earth the healthiest, most rockin' planet ever (not that people would ever stop complaining) then there WOULD be a logical way to go about it (and no, blowing up the Earth would not be conducive to that goal. When did I say anything about self destruction???). But I was never talking about "what to do with Earth". I was talking about contentment (something EVERYONE can enjoy). If people stopped caring, realizing that there's really nothing special about the human race or anything it perceives (as we all inevitably die, including Earth), then Earth and humanity's health wouldn't even be an issue. We'd be able to live out our lives in peace, not fighting over what to do with the future.

But people aren't like that. Nobody is so completely logical in their journey for satisfaction, which is why people spend their lives getting offended by things strangers say in international forums.

i was not offended by your post, i know it's pretty damn hard to change an opinion over something someone else posted on the web.

that thing about self destruction, well, someone who doesn't care for the world doesn't care if a nuke is dropped, right?

and if we were completely logical beings(which is, after all, pure fantasy), i believe that we wouldn't have emotion(which is irational), thus no contentment, no happiness, no reason to live.
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03.09.2008 - 06:23
PsychoNerd

well i think that all we want to do is surviver adapt and explore, we all want to know what is over that hill to whats in the sky, we want to live life to its fullest and see everything, and we want to change our place, if we don't like owr place we will move away, it might not be fully on the topic but its a philosphy.
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The computer Nerd
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13.10.2008 - 00:44
Toast
Account deleted
^ Yup we're a pretty curious species. It's one of our greatest and worst qualities haha.

While we are a great race of people I wonder about us sometimes. We're depleting non-renewable resources faster then we can say "crap we used up all our oil!", while it is not 100% certain there is a good chance we're causing global warming, we cut down our forests (usually with the clear cutting method), we're driving other species to extinction, we throw our wastes into the oceans + pits in the ground...Pretty bad track record, and I cooked up that list in 5 seconds lol we obviously do a lot more negative things.

The saddest part is that we as a race could easily change most/all of those things. What happens is sometimes change is not benefitial to the elites who run our world so they leave things the way they are; a good example would be the energy crisis. It's true what they say "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Yet another fantastic quality of us humans .
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05.05.2009 - 10:52
Ph0eNiX
Fire from Above
Our problem mainly is falling to our desires & the problemhereis also that we are unable to see a "higher good" because we're ben on seeing proven in material reality. We don't move forward by giving in to our personal wants.

We're weak because most people do think strength is in finance and physical power. We haven't seen what both of those things (Together and respectively) have done to destroy who we are as beings. We blow eachother up for $ and for a show of dominance. After two major world wars and still more wars we still haven't learned that the ends don't justify the means. Instead of throwing money into joint efforts to cure sicknesses and possibly create vaccines we throw money into building bigger and more destructive weapons. We can explore things like the ocean & the solar system but instead we find ways to cater to people looking to cater to corperations. Instead of trying to find some way to send a real message there's commercials.

We don't move ahead because the cultiral norms in many places are unrealistic, limiting on an individual & amediately call for judgement if somone deviates. It doesn't really add up too well. People aren't able to get a true thought out sense of right and wrong, but get an integrated/handed down sense of one. Culture basically has a problem with creating "This is wrong"/"They are evil" without really stating a "why it's wrong" with a great many things.

Religion generally does what culture does with the problem of creating a fear of the soul not moving to the next level if the relligion's rules aren't followed. Not so much teachings told of or how "God"/"Goddess"/"PAntheonic Structures" are at all at work. It doesn't work or provide anything realistic to the follower other than subserviance, fear or guilt. Mostly it's there for no other reason other than to propogate the religion. Dogma creates wars, keeps people from being together and prevents unity. I don't recall jesus saying anywhere in the bible,"YO, straight up, we gotta go *explative* those mother*plural expative* up before they kill me". A religion would. Jesus never said "Hey, the other Jews are wrong so we should raise up an army to conquer them and show them the true God." Religion would.

If humanity is weak the problem is that what' we're built up to now (perception, values, organizations, institutions) are in serious need of an overhaul.

I don't know if the answer really is to throw away technology to live in the woods but I know we depend on technology too much. I know we don't care enough about the "right" things but I don't think the entirety of it all is to just not care. We just need an overhaul. Truly we need an overhaul. Life that we live as beings on a global scale has become twisted up. It's become something that is more about losing the self to a classification/status level of some kind. All of that revolves around appearances more than anything else.
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09.03.2016 - 21:39
Enteroctopus

Humanity is a superorganism, which is to say we are greater than the sum of our parts. 500 people acting as a group can accomplish things magnitudes more complex, rich and meaningful than 500 separate people can produce in isolation. You might get some decent poetry, a pretty good solo black metal project here and there, but no Algebra.

But for every Algebra there is a Racism, and for every Democracy there is a sex slave industry. We have some revolutionary ideas that have truly advanced our species forward in immeasurable ways, and we have chronically bad shit we keep doing not because individual people are bad, but because the human superorganism has some pathological ideas which propagate again and again and seem to re-emerge even when we think we have a handle on them.

Slavery is bad. Why is there slavery? What can we do about it? Do we form some world government and hold everyone under absolute dictatorship - the Philosopher King idea, I guess? There are obvious problems with that scenario. It's not so easy to watch everyone 24/7 and how corrupt would the leaders of that dictatorship become?

As easy as it is to point out the chronic problems afflicting the human superorganism it is much like chronic disease in the human body. Heart failure - what do you do about it?

You keep the patient alive (kind of) for as long as possible knowing eventually they are going to die.

You can't write up a column in the New York Times explaining to everyone that Trump is an asshole and expect everyone, overnight, to say, "YOU'RE RIGHT!" You simply can't change people's beliefs. They have to die or have some major life event happen or they will just keep on believing whatever they believe. That's the problem, and it's a fucker to solve.
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27.08.2016 - 20:14
3rdWorld
China was a neat
Except that I've solved it years back. Join the VHEM.
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