Originally posted by Raithere
Animal packs to more than simply steal resources from one another and murder or warfare is the exception rather than the rule. There is a constant interaction between tribes; they combine during migration, members (typically young males) spilt off from one tribe to join or form another, competition between alpha males is typically non-fatal in contest for breeding prerogatives.
Any familial tribe that was as combative and xenophobic as some are asserting here would quickly fall to a decreasing cycle of inbreeding and would die out
You are correct to call me out but only because I was over simplifying, you are wrong when you say our cousins and niche sharers aren't combative as a rule.
Chimpanzees flat out WILL kill any male chimpanzee in their territory that they are not familiar with. Any clan of chimpanzees will be made up of males who are blood relatives, and assorted females that this group of brothers managed to pick up along the way, the rest will be made up of offspring. They are not, however, willing to accept any other adult males into this group and when adult males are found they are brutally murdered, its hard to watch.
Its alot more intricate than that but I'm not going to write a book about it here. Basically every social animal has an extremely complex political structure evolved to be ideal for the survival of the most competent clans. We would have had one also, thats the only reasonable assumption to be made. And before we had the means to farm we couldn't have supported an overly large amount of individuals, the only practical political structure for us to naturally evolve would have involved the urge to compete with other clans of humans.
We all know humans need to compete with other humans anyway, we can still see it today, we know we have violent tendencies toward eachother, imagine if there was no law or police some of you aren't realising what this means historically or something I don't know.
I think the reason we feel we are so flexible is because right now we are lost. We aren't living in the political structure made for our species, I think if all order to society and civilisation was lost, if there was no law or police or technology or civilisation at all we would quickly go back to our original political structure whether we wanted to or not. We would have to, probably to a more violently cutthroat degree than ever before because there are so many people and so few resources.
We are still animals, and we can never take that away, we are still completely controlled by our instincts IMO(and the opinion of all good neuroscientists and sociobiologists).
More people than I thought appear to have taken the "free will" phrase coined by the bible seriously.
That free will you sense is instincts, I'd bet most animals would feel like they are making decisions, thats just how instincts function.
To get an organism to follow its instincts the thought has to prepare and create itself, this action is the organism is "deciding what to do".
What I'm getting at is that although human intelligence is probably the greatest of all animals, the altering of behaviour is an unrelated issue. It truely is insane to think our intelligence alone could make us greatly alter the political structure our species functions on. It could better it, as in a clan with an extra intelligent member could be extra skilled at being a clan, but deciding to change completely in the way you propose humans did is beyond the mental capability of any animal that could possibly evolve anywhere ever. Its not a brain action, brains don't do that. The main thing the brain obeys is instinct, are you "smart" enough to suddenly not be interested in sex at all?
I'm just gonna come out and say it, I suspect human progression was interfered with by an alien species that operates off an altruistic caste like system, or is a superorganism like an ant colony. Here me out(even if only for entertainment purposes
)
If you look at religion from a certain perspective, you can see how it looks like a tool for changing a species from one thing into another by playing on that species traits and subtely expanding on them.
Love for example. Humans feel this trait strongly for clan survival purposes. Many religions build on this, they tell us to love everybody, we have evolved to think love is great so the we are open to that suggestion, it was clearly the most efficient way to start the human species acting like a super-organism.
Traditionally super-organisms are comprised of naturally altruistic members that only care for the well being of the superorganism because they basically are that super-organism.
Humans are still mammals so they care for themselves very much, it wasn't so long ago they were all alone out in the big bad world, the social life is still very new and mammals first and foremost care for themselves. The social life's only real purpose for them is to protect themselves.
This is vastly different from the colony life, Due to the fact that colonies evolve as opposed to individuals the individuals do not care for their own lives at all, they are over 90 million years removed from solitary life so they've lost the grudge. All they care about is the colony.
Which would be the ideal for a civilised species.
But humans had the potential to live a form of civilised life anyway, all be it messy and rough around the edges, all that was needed was an altering of our views to make us cooperate like a colony. They built on the trait we have closest to altruism, love, making us love eachother(or making us feel like we have to) thus making us protect eachother like a giant colony.
Our mammal traits make it a strange and glitch ridden colony but it gets by anyway, producing technology and the like.
Jesus could have been injected by them to reinforce the love when it was getting a bit sloppy. And now they can let us go because after seeing what we can accomplish we sort of almost do want to act to benefit the colony. Just to see where it goes, also after a history of people becoming famous for bettering the colony our mammal selfishness is starting to aid the cause.
Bah, I wish I could explain this better. Even if it is an enormous coincidence it is quite strange how many indications point to this possibility. There is the fact the human species has the effect that an introduced species would on the environment. Name one other animal that acts like an introduced species in its own environment? Our behaviour has been altered and earth is rejecting it.
Also, I urge someone to read the bible while entertaining this possibility, you'll be surprised. Doesn't the bible or any religious litterature seem like a whole lot of work for people to just make up for no reason? If it were just attempts to explain I wouldn't be suspicious but it also gives orders and tells people how to act, thats just wierd, why would people make something like that up?
I'll come back to this thread everytime I see an indication, there is way more backing for my stance than this I just can't think right now.
