About that Monkeysphere thing... by Fremdfirma

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

About that Monkeysphere thing...

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Sunday, August 9, 2009 15:49
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Saturday, August 8, 2009 12:28 PM

One of my current ponderings lately, is certain scientists assertation that the average humans "monkeysphere" is so small because of the limitations and physical construction of a human brain, and I am starting to believe that's bullshit.

What's damn near the FIRST lesson we teach kids, but that they are a lesser being than adults, and by implanting that kinda division so freakin early, so deep in the developmental core of their psyche, other divisions naturally follow, many of them encouraged by our so-called society, and the public school system, which is in my eyes responsible for a LOT of human social maladjustment.

So you got the first division, being that kids are subhuman, and shortly following the usual second "girls are iccky" (sexism) and if the family hasn't gotten round to it yet, cultural and racial divisions as well, setting the stage for the all or nothing, us-n-them dynamic, and step by step crippling their human empathy till there's almost none left, which is why I accuse the public school system of deliberately fostering sociopathy, cause there can BE no other result from this social "education" no matter what the intent or lack thereof happens to be, and half the problem is that adults blind themselves to it cause the memories are too unpleasant to face, tell themselves polite little lies, and it goes on and on.

But those divisions and lack of empathy, that's a SOCIAL, not a physical cause, and I think the abysmally small "monkeysphere limit" is perhaps more heavily influenced by that than any other factor - I'd like to see some homeschooled kids or folks from more accepting cultures like Finland, cause I have noted that many Finlanders "monkeysphere" at it's limit covers prettymuch ALL OF FINLAND, although in less passionate degree as it spreads, and I think that has a LOT to do with Finland not having so much of the problems other countries do.

It's definately something worth putting thought into.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Saturday, August 8, 2009 5:14 PM

DREAMTROVE

Imho, the most destructive thing we teach kids is the concept of "Favorite Color"

This introduces the concept that the right way to view the world is that some of it is good, other bad, some natural things are preferable to others, and to segregate natural equals into arbitrary preference. It prepares us for not just racism, but a broader mental illness of skewed perspective that will later be exploited by pepsi vs. coke, mac vs. pc, republican vs. democrat...

Another note on monkeysphere. I've noticed that some people's 'circle of empathy' I've noticed is very small, others very large. To Bush, only 'Family' matters, to some people, mice are people too, and bugs.

If you were to start at humans, and move on, and decide that yes, some people are not the latest model of homosapien, if someone discovered an isolated hominid still extant, they would be treated as human by some, others would reject them, a debate would stir, then be silenced by racism, or fear of it. What if we take the species view, back to Lucy, who is a 23 chromosome bonobo essentially, then how do we justify the acceptance of a human 23c bonobo, which may still exist, and not the 24c bonobo. If we accept 24c bonobo, why not other apes, monkeys, who may be more intelligent or civilized than the most "primitive" creature who falls in as genetically "human"? Then, if monkeys, we accept prosimian, too? If not, then by what basis? If we accept prosimian, then what about the rest of the murine family. Are mice not people also?

I think we do our best to extend our understanding, mutual respect, eventually, without travelling to distant planets, we will find that already, we are not alone. Me, I'm never alone, My room is filled with critters. I got a squirrel, a couple mice and a bat. And these moths. Not brilliant these moths, but not without charm. A small cardinal family outside the window. I wish them well. It's a tough fight for those little guys to grow up so fast.

"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace" - Albert Schweitzer

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Saturday, August 8, 2009 6:10 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

This last post got me thinking about what I consider a 'person' to be. I was wondering if there were any 'people' in the world, that I recognized as such, who weren't human.

After giving it much thought, the best I could come up with was this: A person is someone I would not kill and eat.

Upon realizing that, in a pinch, I would kill and eat most any non-human, I have concluded that I only consider humans people.

On another tack,

Dreamtrove, do you think that people wouldn't have favorite colors if they were never asked to choose one when they were a child?

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Saturday, August 8, 2009 6:29 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:

Upon realizing that, in a pinch, I would kill and eat most any non-human, I have concluded that I only consider humans people.

On that basis, I have concluded that I consider my dog a person. And she undoubtedly DOESN'T consider me one, because in a pinch she would kill and eat me. :)

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Saturday, August 8, 2009 6:41 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

LOL! Well, it could be that she just doesn't mind eating people. ;-)

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Saturday, August 8, 2009 6:52 PM

KWICKO

Well, in her defense, she vastly prefers eating turkey or chicken, enough so that she HAS stolen it off my plate. In fact, she cost me my Thanksgiving leftovers last year because I turned my back and left a platter of turkey on the table. I turned around, and she was paws on the table, woofing down the last piece of turkey! And I was already dreaming about the awesome turkey sandwiches I was going to have the next day...

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Saturday, August 8, 2009 9:05 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
After giving it much thought, the best I could come up with was this: A person is someone I would not kill and eat.

Interesting, by that standard there's not a lot of humans who make the cut for me, but there's plenty of non-humans who do.

Interesting.

-F

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Sunday, August 9, 2009 1:34 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Speaking of hunger, I got something of a snicker out of this, in a dark humor kind of way.

Hunger hits Detroit's middle class
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/06/news/economy/detroit_food/?postversion
=2009080712
On a side street in an old industrial neighborhood, a delivery man stacks a dolly of goods outside a store. Ten feet away stands another man clad in military fatigues, combat boots and what appears to be a flak jacket. He looks straight out of Baghdad. But this isn't Iraq. It's southeast Detroit, and he's there to guard the groceries.

"No pictures, put the camera down," he yells. My companion and I, on a tour of how people in this city are using urban farms to grow their own food, speed off.

Raymonds goons are so pathetic, buncha miltary wannabes who don't have the testicular fortitude to actually put themselves at risk, but do so love to dress the part and push people around - if someone REALLY wanted to jack the groceries, they'd never see it coming (their situational awareness is abysmal and their procedural discipline non-existent) and if someone DID try it, they'd piss themselves cowering in fear the moment they came up against anything more significant than a pocketknife.

Hell, I wouldn't even let em bounce for a bar, cause their damn egos cause them to escalate shit that shoulda never gotten past verbal confrontation, into potential lawsuits and legal liability - sure, they LOOK intimidating, but you get what you pay for, honestly.

Mosta my goons look like they belong behind a keyboard or a college desk, we're talkin revenge of the nerds here, people...
But they WILL spot you on approach, call it in immediately, and the instant you start your "interview" they'll call in the heavy thunder on the spot.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/interview.htm

And should you be fool enough to actually engage one of those college lookin weenies, you better make real damn sure the one swing they're legally obligated to let you take counts - elsewise you're going home on a stretcher, if not in a bag.

Someone made that mistake last night/this morning, and I'm faxing off the paperwork about it right about now - you see... that little unpretentious lookin "nerd" ?

He knows Akido, HE didn't hurt you, you hurt YOURSELF trying to injure him, and ain't that just too damn bad - especially if you got *active warrants* out on you, mister perpetrator, so maybe calling the cops on the big bad scary 110lb security guy wasn't so hot of an idea.

Kids in for a bonus, too, but I have GOT to have a little talk about the way he writes up reports... "he tried to hit me, and I wouldn't let him" is perhaps a little LESS descriptive of what happened than it oughta be ?
At least I can read *his* handwriting, tho I have little enough room to talk on that one.

Anyhows, if someone really wanted those groceries, Raymonds big scary looking beefcakes wouldn't be much of a deterrent, even IF they showed up on time, and sober.

Again, you get what you pay for - and the worse things get, the more "value" our services have, if only that were not a bittersweet comfort, eh ?

-Frem

PS. My personal beliefs/morals have absolutely zero injuctions against cannibalism, and that's one of the few tenets I don't MIND other folk knowing, for reasons all too obvious.

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Sunday, August 9, 2009 11:51 AM

DREAMTROVE

Then to a dog, dogs are people, unless it truly is a dog eat dog world.

I guess to a vegetarian by that rule everyone is a person.

A personal snark to alfalfa sprout eaters: Baby killers!

More seriously, most humans would not consider killing or eating a dog, and do relate to them as "people" so I guess there's a space between "people" and "human" since a dog is not human. We do not pretend that a dog is human, we do not set the same rules for a dog, we would not think that it was uncharacteristic or insane to spend all day playing with an animal corpse, but were a human child to do the same, we would be amiss in not trying to at least investigate the matter further immediately.

NNSD, I didn't know that was you. Small world. My first job was as a weenie rentacop for a pathetic organization. All they really wanted us to do was rat.

You should cross off cannibalism, it's a bigger threat by far than inbreeding. It's like sharing needles: A great way to spread disease. Our whole meat industry uses cannibalistic feed, which is the source of diseases like BSE.

In general I would, by choice, not eat meat, but for those who care, the food value hierarchy is milk>eggs>fish>chicken>anything else. No meats contain any unique nutrients we can digest. Curiously, many land animal meats contain unique nutrients that we actually *need* for survival, but they pass through our system undigested. The only would-be unique animal product that you can take in is fish oil, but that is made somewhat moot when you realize that it is not a meat product: The fish took it in wholesale from the seaweed that synthesized it, and didn't metabolize it at all. I guess all of this is overwhelming evidence that our ancestors were not predators by nature.

People often are attracted to the idea that they were on the grounds that this would be cool, because it's violent and stuff, it just doesn't happen to be true. Tiny technical point. The fact is we can eat meat and get some food value out of it, but only the same proteins found in other foods. But a cow can eat meat, and does so daily, cows eat cows, that's why there's mad cow disease. Oh, and you're feeding your cat "cat." That's what the cat food component labelled as "Ash" is. It's cat. Cat's put to sleep are then fed to cat food companies and returned to you as cat food.

This is a society run by morons, of morons and for morons, and will perish forthwith.

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Sunday, August 9, 2009 3:49 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Erm, actually we're not affiliated with Animal, to be honest I don't even know him save in passing and I doubt he'd even remember me.

It's just that unlike most, he actually has some clue of WTF he happens to be talking about, in comparison to folk who seem to think the proper approach to *every* situation is "GET ON THE GROUND, NOW MOTHERFUCKER! *Zzzappp*" or various forms of "escalate a non-situation into a legal liability crisis", by actually using the feelgood yell-scream-intimidate 'training' that Marc occasionally refers to, quite accurately, as "bullshido" - and I call needless, career ending, get-you-fucking-blackballed provocation.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/get_attacked.htm

The rather painful irony here is that while much of Marcs work is intended for use by police against gangbangers, once you have a full understanding of this whole defensive concept and remove the blinders of perceived legitimacy, you begin to realize that cop behavior and gangbanger behavior are identical - not just similar, but exactly identical right down to the same challenges and threat displays - and therefore a great deal of this, shadowdancing, de-escalation and control presence, can get you out of trouble with a cop who's itching for an excuse to hurt someone, often without him QUITE realizing how you managed it.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/deescalation.htm

While conversely a lot of actual police training in fact CAUSES incidents, rather than suppressing one.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/contol_vs_command.htm

And of course while on-duty I am quite professional and reasonable...

That said, I wasn't always on the side of the angels and I know this playbook intimately well from BOTH ends, there's a slight but appreciable difference between your actions telling a perp scoping the "interview" that you are aware of his presence and acting to counter it - and that the goldfish he's chasin is a friggin pirahna as YOU turn and start your own "interview" of HIM as a potential victim, and do a better job of it.

And if I *do* want to provoke someone into attacking, bet your sweet bippy I've set em up, shadowdanced em into a box, and am doing so quite, quite deliberately as the bad habit of a misspent youth, heh.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/shadow_dancing.htm

This is in fact handy in a personal capacity when you need to somehow cadge a reason to engage someone who *IS* in fact dangerous (stalker, malicious ex, etc) that you have no effective legal recourse against cause they've done nothing *overt* (yet), and waiting for them to do so is needlessly risking someone elses neck - when angry ex packing heat is standing out in the front yard twitching with intent, insisting he just wants his Led Zeppelin tapes back, and the cops blow you off cause you have no PROOF he's waiting for you to open that door for a clear shot, sometimes you need a little greymarket edge of your own, you see ?

Anyhows, while I have no official affiliation with Animal, he carries my highest seal of approval when it comes to knowledge and professionalism on this subject.

-Frem

PS. I consider humans toxic junk food and wouldn't bother, but nothing says I gotta TELL them that.

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