Which is a higher form of life?
- Thread starter fess
- Start date
Well the chimp lives in a jungle not being governed by the humans but living freely doing their chimp type things.
A human has certain rights no matter what condition they are in. A human must be helped if they can't help themselves if it is at all possible.
A human has certain rights no matter what condition they are in. A human must be helped if they can't help themselves if it is at all possible.
That's only if hard, rough men defend those "rights" from those who would take those "rights" away from them.
"Rights" come from the power of the gun.
Baron Max
Morals are not something that everyone agrees upon, so...?
I would vote for the chimp every time, without question or much thought.
Baron Max
A few hundred fairly weak women could easily overcome a burly, rough man. We are not living in the Dark Ages anymore - 'rights' link very closely to morality, which is decided by the consensus.
Why is there a choice?
Exactly! See? Might makes right, huh?
Do psychopaths, sociopaths, murderers, rapists, child molesters, and other such people get a vote, too? If not, then you can't call it a consensus, can you.
Baron Max
Why not? They only make up a tiny proportion of society.
what if they made up a majority though? then the government would grant you no rights to protection from rape and murder and once again you would find that the guys with the biggest, pointiest sticks would be the ones to determine your rights.
no-one has any rights beyond those that they are able to defend. you pay the cops and they grant you the rights that they are willing to defend, you keep a gun under your pillow and your rights become that much greater.
Is it really?
How many chimp colonies have devastated the huge areas of the Earth, making it almost uninhabitable?
How many chimp groups have attacked and murdered their own kind?
How many chimp groups have poisoned their own water supply?
How many chimp groups have poisoned their own air supply?
I coud go on, but I think you get the picture, right?
Baron Max
I'm pretty sure Chimps are capable of murdering their own kind although I'm sure how you expect us to put a number on how many times this has happened.
As a side note: I remember reading an article about Game Theory that suggested that a society/tribe/herd/whatever becomes unstable if the percentage of freeloaders or individuals that work against the group (e.g., murderers) is above a certain critical number, I vaguely remember it being about 10% but I can't recall exactly.
As a side note: I remember reading an article about Game Theory that suggested that a society/tribe/herd/whatever becomes unstable if the percentage of freeloaders or individuals that work against the group (e.g., murderers) is above a certain critical number, I vaguely remember it being about 10% but I can't recall exactly.
Capable, yes. Actually doing it is quite another story!
I read a similar article not long ago that suggested that human populations become unstable at approximately 50 individuals. It seems that that's the limit of people any individual can really know on a personal level. After that, people become conceptual, and mostly unknown, and mostly of little importance to the individual.
Baron Max
All of them with the exception of the bonobos.
This theory is referred to as the Monkeyshpere, the number for chimpanzees is ~50, whereas with homo sapiens it's closer to 150.
Also the population doesn't become unstable, but individuals within the group become increasingly unable to empathise with with each other the further outside their 'monkeysphere' the other person is.
For example, you are likely to be more distressed by the death of your best friend then a 5th cousin you've met twice.
If rapists made up the majority then we would live in a society with no emphasis on consent. The government cannot go against the majority in such a way and survive, so the law against rape would not exist. Morality is almost entirely decided by the masses, not by a few more powerful individuals. This is not so apparent in modern-day Britain or America as many people are apathetic and passive when it comes to politics (mainly because they have lost faith in their own power). However, in the last two/three-hundred years almost every major player in Europe has had a revolution - despite the fact the governments they overthrew had much pointier sticks than theirs.
Your second paragraph doesn't take into account the rights of disabled or comatose people who have no ability to defend themselves. The point is, most people in the West believe that these people should be looked after and treated fairly, so they are.