Bonobos that write, start fires and play Pac-Man
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Tis so!
yes, you should take that seriously in so much as associated meaning in the common perception. Not hard at all It's a commonly held belief that men reason from logic and that women reason from emotion. I wouldn't say it constituted a theory though, just an assertion.
my point is that it's a commonly held belief, not a statement of fact. It's also a commonly held belief in some parts of the US that muslims are all bearded and 'niqab'ed plane hijacking and suicide bombing terrorists. That doesn't mean it's true
Btw, this is an interesting article
http//www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/society_culture/office_biology.htm
One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin
or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.- Franklin Thomas
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One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin
or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.- Franklin Thomas
bravo bravo bravo bravo
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huh?
I'm not sure why you're confused by what I'm saying. Bonobos have sex throughout the year.
Instead of fighting with each other, they diffuse tensions using sex.
Okay. I'm not saying they are wrong for doing what they do. I just wanted to point out it is interesting how they engage in sex year round.
Uncommonness isn't a good reason, I think you're passing a moral judgment.
I'm passing moral judgement? How so? Uncommon has nothing to do with morality here. It IS uncommon. I'm not talking about right or wrong.
Some lizards spray blood from their eyes as a defence mechanism, are you going to call them 'blood freaks?' It's unusual too.
Please, I'm not going to say this again, do NOT say I'm doing something that I'm not doing. I have NOT claimed what the Bonobos do with their sexual habits is bad. I did not say it was good. I pointed out it is what they DO unlike most creatures in the animal kingdom. That's not a moral judgement. It's a distinction that one can make with any creature from another. It is a fascinating practice. Do I hate it, abhor it, or love it? I have no moral judgement either way I just think it is intriguing that they do what they do.
Joe
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Peace Sarah,
I think I may see the cause of your hardline with me. I called them freaks. It was not meant as an offense or a put down of the animals. People can say, "S/he was a freak between the sheets", which is actually not negative comment. Great athletes are called freaks but it has no negative connotation. I'm sure this may continue to be a misunderstanding between you and I, but take me for my word, I did not mean they were bad for doing what they do, or wrong for doing what they do. I tried to be lighthearted with that comment when I made it, i.e. read it as "they are horny", not as, "they are freaks, hence they are bad or evil creatures or sexually immoral creatures".
Joe
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Instead of fighting with each other, they diffuse tensions using sex.
Okay. I'm not saying they are wrong for doing what they do. I just wanted to point out it is interesting how they engage in sex year round.
Promiscuity is a form of violence. Some animals wipe out their competitors with their claws, some do it with their genitals. You can't say one method is moral and one is immoral. You can't say the rabbit is moral and the fox immoral, nor vice versa.
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Peace Sarah,
I think I may see the cause of your hardline with me. I called them freaks. It was not meant as an offense or a put down of the animals. People can say, "S/he was a freak between the sheets", which is actually not negative comment. Great athletes are called freaks but it has no negative connotation. I'm sure this may continue to be a misunderstanding between you and I, but take me for my word, I did not mean they were bad for doing what they do, or wrong for doing what they do. I tried to be lighthearted with that comment when I made it, i.e. read it as "they are horny", not as, "they are freaks, hence they are bad or evil creatures or sexually immoral creatures".
Joe
oh, ok, sorry for the misuderstanding. It was because you called them freaks, but now I know what you meant.
Peace
Sarah -
Okay. I'm not saying they are wrong for doing what they do. I just wanted to point out it is interesting how they engage in sex year round.
Promiscuity is a form of violence. Some animals wipe out their competitors with their claws, some do it with their genitals.
???
how are they 'wiping out' their competitors? -
my point is that it's a commonly held belief, not a statement of fact. It's also a commonly held belief in some parts of the US that muslims are all bearded and 'niqab'ed plane hijacking and suicide bombing terrorists. That doesn't mean it's true
Btw, this is an interesting article
http//www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/society_culture/office_biology.htm
One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin
or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.- Franklin Thomas
Its not about what you consider a fact or not. Argument is based on accepted common perceptions. In the parts of the US you mentioned it would be logical to base an argument on the commonly held perceptions you mentioned assuming you shared these perceptions. You could not use the argument that because someone had a beard they most likely were not Islamic terrorists, with the asssumption that this would be accepted as you yourself ascribe to another perception that most Islamic terrorists don't have beards. This is irrespective of what the truth may be. Let us say that the truth is that most Islamic terrorists don't have beards and that the commonly held perception in those parts of the US is wrong. In order for you to use this fact, you would first have to argue for it and if you don't then you are guilty of the fallacy of appeal to authority. Cards must be declared in open and honest discussion. The bottom line is that you cannot make a direct arguement on this forum that someone is a man because they are not logical when the common perception is that this is a female trait not a male one and this is irrespective of the facts. Arguments must be based on some form of common perception whether or not they are correct.
I think Franklin Thomas's comment is more of a utopic wish than a prophecy rather like Martin Luther King's dream. Though there's little doubt that we are moving in the general direction of equality I don't see so many signs of past inequality being considered incredible. Is it incredible to think that Africans were catured like animals and shipped to market in America? Well perhaps to someone with a very limited perception of humanity but personally I find it more incredible that today people can be shipped around the world and held as sex slaves all across the modern West and that this trade is growing. That's an indication to me that it is the future that will offer the greater incredulities not the past.
I found the article you linked to high on assertions and low on science even though I may agree with some of the generalities and conclusions. I believe that any differences between the sexes is far less significant than the differences within the sexes and that the expansion of the overlap challenges the assertions made. Here is an article for you Is There Anything Good About Men?
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Is There Anything Good About Men?
That was a very interesting read. A perspective that I hadn't thought of before, I found myself tending to agree with the general one-on-one - larger social group aspect he brings forth, it explains in a sensible way certain patterns that are repetitive enough to warrant an explanation. -
Promiscuity is a form of violence. Some animals wipe out their competitors with their claws, some do it with their genitals.
???
how are they 'wiping out' their competitors?I think LH is confusing individuals with genes and is referring to the survival of the fittest or even the competition between species.
However I'm also interested to know how promiscuity is another kind of violence even taking an evolutionary stance. Is an oak tree being violent when it sheds 100,000s of acorns? I suppose one could say that this was an agressive strategy just as sending thousands of job applications, but violent?
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???
how are they 'wiping out' their competitors?I think LH is confusing individuals with genes and is referring to the survival of the fittest or even the competition between species.
However I'm also interested to know how promiscuity is another kind of violence even taking an evolutionary stance. Is an oak tree being violent when it sheds 100,000s of acorns? I suppose one could say that this was an agressive strategy just as sending thousands of job applications, but violent?
Passive aggressive maybe?
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I think LH is confusing individuals with genes and is referring to the survival of the fittest or even the competition between species.
However I'm also interested to know how promiscuity is another kind of violence even taking an evolutionary stance. Is an oak tree being violent when it sheds 100,000s of acorns? I suppose one could say that this was an agressive strategy just as sending thousands of job applications, but violent?
It's not like sending out job applications because the hiring of employees is a consensual process. However the spread of life across the planet is not in some way consensual, it is by force and determination.
Again, this is not to say it is wrong, it is right for the rabbit to breed, and right for the fox to catch and devour it, because this is how animals are meant to behave. But it is absurd to forget the complexity of the behaviour that makes human beings unique and describe animal behaviour as human when all you are seeing is that a lot of human behaviour is animal.
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It's not like sending out job applications because the hiring of employees is a consensual process. However the spread of life across the planet is not in some way consensual, it is by force and determination.
Again, this is not to say it is wrong, it is right for the rabbit to breed, and right for the fox to catch and devour it, because this is how animals are meant to behave. But it is absurd to forget the complexity of the behaviour that makes human beings unique and describe animal behaviour as human when all you are seeing is that a lot of human behaviour is animal.
Well that's a mute point, most men at least feel forced to get a job in order to uprighthold their lives just like life being forced to spread across the planet in order to cope with limited resources.
You may not be saying it is wrong but violence has a negative connotation. determination on the other hand has a positive connotation. However you still don't explain where the violence is in promiscuity. Are promiscuous women also expressing a kind of violence? How do you know how animals were supposed to behave? Animals change behaviour and evolve according to evolutionary pressures of their environment so their behaviour is merely a product of this and is transient in evolutionary terms. A fox may stop eating rabbits and start scavaging in dustbins if the environment changes. Were they then meant to behave in this way too? Seems strange when they had to wait millions of years for dustbins to come along and they probably won't be around for that long anyway. It isn't a question of forgetting but of characterising, making the right connections and through them reaching a better understanding. The measure of our understanding is our ability to predict.and exploit our environment. Making assumptions about what was meant to be has done nothing but hinder a greater understanding. It was once assumed that blacks were meant to behave as slaves. We cannot and shouldn't escape from the fact that we are basically animals and that we have much in common. Our behaviour has only comparatively recently become so very different from that of other animals. Complexity can grow out of simplicity as my avator demonstrates. It is no basis for assuming some essential uniqueness. No, the behaviour you are referring to is far from animal behaviour as has been pointed out.
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Promiscuity is violence because it is using your partner as a means to an end rather than an end in him/herself. It's objectification. The way this relates to evolution it that the promiscuous creature is spreading its seed in a manner intended to deprive its fellow creatures of their own opportunities to mate. i.e. through objectifying its partners it is castrating its adversaries.
This is an inherent characteristic of animals which sexually reproduce promiscuously.
On the matter of every creature having its own nature, this is a characteristic of the experience of living. We all have patterns of thought adapted to the kind of task we attempt to do. You can say we have some thought patterns in common with animals, I would agree. But we also have thought patterns different from animals. There are patterns of thought unique to human beings. I see this as self-evident. If you disagree, so be it.
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Promiscuity is violence because it is using your partner as a means to an end rather than an end in him/herself. It's objectification. The way this relates to evolution it that the promiscuous creature is spreading its seed in a manner intended to deprive its fellow creatures of their own opportunities to mate. i.e. through objectifying its partners it is castrating its adversaries.
This is an inherent characteristic of animals which sexually reproduce promiscuously.
On the matter of every creature having its own nature, this is a characteristic of the experience of living. We all have patterns of thought adapted to the kind of task we attempt to do. You can say we have some thought patterns in common with animals, I would agree. But we also have thought patterns different from animals. There are patterns of thought unique to human beings. I see this as self-evident. If you disagree, so be it.
Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be saying that promiscuity is a kind of violence in that it is bringing an unjust force to bear against your peers. This suggests to me that you have some preconceptions about promiscuity based on men and sex. I have friends who live in so called open partnerships, meaning that they are free to be promiscuous while remaining in an exclusive relationship. They are not really any different from any other couples in other ways and it makes no sense to suggest they are using their each other or that they are objectifying others any more or less than anyone else. In different culturers at different times sex has been practiced very differently. On tropical Pacific Islands sex was practiced rather like with the bonobos and in the other climatic extreme of Arctic Inuit (Eskimo) culture a man would offer a visitor to sleep with his wife out of hospitality. In these cases it is likely that increasing the gene pool was behind these cultural norms.
In the contemporary world mankind has progressed to the stage where sex can be had without concern for the consequences of procreation. We have the ability to fully control our fertility. These days then people, like my friends, can choose to keep sex out of the equation. Doing so does not deprive others of mating any more than had they not chosen to, assuming that by mating you mean procreation. If you mean mating as in sex then it obiously has the direct opposite effect. In any case I cannot see how it ever deprives as you state unless you mean opportunities to mate with virgins perhaps.
When did the thought processes you consider unique to humans first evolve, along with homo sapiens or in comparatively recent, historical times? If along with homo sapiens, where is the evidence? If recently then that would show they are not inherent but cultural.
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It is unnatural because human beings have evolved to fall in love. We fall in love so we can raise children as pairs. This is the only way to solve the cooperation problem.
Human beings evolved to fall in love - and thus to live monogamously - probably a million years ago, though we can't tell as we observe the way fossils used to behave. That doesn't mean we don't still have left over promiscious instincts, of course we still have them, just as we still have violent instincts. I think the two are linked in our brains.
People who sleep around as a couple are using their minds to override their feelings as well as their morality. Promiscuous people often get help from alcohol, cannabis and amphetamines. They're knocking out their consciences and their higher feelings so that only their animalistic parts still function, i.e. the drive to bang against strangers.
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Human beings haven't evolved to fal in love or to do anything else, they have evolved in the way they have because certain characteristics have offered a better chance of survival than others. Monogamy is far from the rule in the broad spectrum of human societies and there is no real evidence that this is the only way to cooperate in raising children, far from it. The nuclear family is a modern concept. Evolution hasn't reached some supposed end gaol but continues unabated neither is there such a thing as a left over instinct. Each time our ancestors evolved a novel characteristic you could have made the same argument , that this was unnatural as they hadn't evolved that way previously. Have we evolved to walk upright? In some ways we have while in other ways we haven't. Walking upright causes a lot of problems for our backbone which in your terms didn't evolve to be used in a vertical position. The same can be said about a myriad of other "modern" characteristics of our species. Lots of other animals make close bonds as in falling in love, in order to cooperate with nurturing young however there is condition that this is exclusive. Neither is it a condition that social and sexual monogamy go together. Birds are usually form mongamous pairs socially but rarely sexually. Monogamy Is an Oddity.
My point is not to advocate open marriages or anything else, but to point out that humans are capable of a wide variety of behaviour and that the notion of judging by what is natural is bogus. The real measure is how behaviour makes for success. The modern Western societies I mentioned previously where there is a wide range of acceptable behaviour, including open marriages are extremely successful, in fact they are the dynamos of progress at the cutting edge. You still haven't made the connection between violence, instinctive or otherwise and promiscuity. If there is the primordal connection you are trying to claim then we should expect to see it in other animals, we don't.
Powerful minds Is a human characteristic, one which you normally are very keen on. I don't see where morals come into this. In a particular African tribe it is customary to knock out the front teeth and seen as a sign of beauty. Isn't this our minds overriding our feelings? Is this immoral? Is it immoral to have our ears punctured to wear earrings? Lots of different societies have lots of different accepted behaviour, does that mean that they are almost all immoral except one kind? Isn't this cultural supremacy? As I stated the people I know who choose to live in open marriages are no different from others in other aspects including alcohol consumption etc. The irony is that many of these hippy types I think you have in mind say exactly the same about religious people. That is that they have help from religious dogma which knocks out their consciences and makes them unable to live out their full potential as humans. -
Falling in love ABSOLUTELY is evolved. It is hard wired with the chemical receptors in our brain.
http//nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2004/3/monogamy.cfm
Why has so much scientific study been devoted to monogamy in voles? Because it's possible that what goes on in their genes, brains, and nests resembles what goes on in the genes, brains, and bedrooms of human beings. "Mammalian species share many similarities in terms of their physiology, anatomy, and behavior," says Zuoxin Wang, who studies the changes that mating brings about in the vole nervous system. "Particularly if you look at dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin?it has been demonstrated that they play an important role in human society; for instance, in love, social attachment, and reward. So there are great similarities ."
I'm aware the the pro-promiscuity ideologues claim monogamous love is a social construct of religion. But they're self-evidently wrong, as study of other monogamous mammals show.
If you want to go into depth about how an advanced society can get around the cooperation problem without monogamy, go ahead and detail it. Remember that it is much more difficult for a man or woman to participate in the raising of his children if he has them in more than one household, and both men and women are selfish in their desire to increase the material wellbeing of their own children. Not knowing their own children gives men an incentive to contribute the minimum to raising children and maximise their predatory behaviour towards impregnating more women.
Obviously, some social customs are moral, some are immoral. Puncturing earlobes isn't harmful, so it is morally neutral. Puncturing other parts of the body can be more harmful, but usually is still safe if done by a doctor. However, knocking out your children's front teeth is harmful because it'll make it harder for them to eat, so yes I think that cultural tradition is immoral. This is the same with the pre-modern Chinese practice of binding feet, that most certainly is immoral. So is the Ancient Roman, Arab and Japanese practice of prostitutes murdering their unwanted children.
Maybe your free-sex friends don't take much alcohol/drugs, but the fact is that in society as a whole sleeping around is very closely linked to the use of alcohol and other drugs. This absolutely is about knocking out the person's natural instincts of love and monogamous attachment.
I consider that a form of self harm. I consider adultery an act of violence and psychological abuse towards the cuckolded spouse. I think our culture that encourages sexual 'conquest' as a form of capitalist/materialist acquisition to be immensely violent and hateful towards the human psyche. I think the way that many pro-promiscuity atheists like Dawkins hate religion is an animalistic fear of the knowledge that human behaviour has evolved beyond them.