|
|||||||
| Coffee Lounge Talk amongst other community members. |
 |
|
|
LinkBack | Topic Tools | Rate Topic |
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
So i've been thinking...
and with added stimulation and insight from Vancouver author Douglas Coupland and Anti-communist phenomenon Ayne Rande have a couple questions that've been on my mind.
Ravers being ravers i don't really expect that much response to this sort of stuff, but i'd still like to hear your insight on the matter: #1-Where does the beginning of being a species start and individuality end? ex: We look at a flock of birds, all wich are white. We see one species of all the same bird but no discernable features telling one from another. Do birds fly over a soccer game or group of people and see a species but not the indivual? #2- Why is it that humans are the only species that expects tomorrow, speaking in days, weeks, years, decades, generations, being a completely new day different from the last? ex: A lion lives in Africa. It eats, shits, sleeps, breeds, and all that other routine lion stuff a lion does. It doesn't expect( operative word) its offspring to begin eating plants, stop eating zebra, or start watching Oprah. So what makes humans expect tomorrow otherwise? food for thought. discuss. 
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
a species starts when they successfully breed with a compatible mate, and ends with extinction!
i think most birds distinguish us as just humans...but give them a reason to number you out as an individual, and i'm sure they can! here is a story OK... once upon a time some guy, a HERO killed this crows baby...from that point on, whenever this guy was around that area, the crow parents attacked him! doot doot dooooooo! crows are scary dirty flyers! at the birdy place i used to work at, some of our resident birds responded to only certain people! because they luvered them <3 i think other animals expect for tomorrow, and i think you're underminding them, asshole! if birdies did not expect for tomorrow, they would not rebuild em nests for another season! if bear and squirrel like creatures did not expect to hibernate over the winter, they would not forage all fall too fatty mc fatten themselves up! if fishies did not expect for tomorrow, they would not migrate up the coast into warmer weathers! get it? animals expect for tomorrow!
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
some cool questions:
i think instead of asking if a flock of birds looks down on us, we should as ourselves this: if aliens came from another world, would they look at us as one species or see a bunch of individuals. i think there is a large difference between the birds and us (just going on appearance, not intellect). birds of the same species mostly look the same, whereas humans like to differ themsleves from other members of their species by dying their hair a different colour, wearing different clothes, piercings, etc... so i think that if aliens were looking down on us, they would be able to classify us as one species since we all have the same basic layout, but they would obviously be able to point out the individual differences in each person. both your questions really have to do with the difference between humans and animals, mainly being that we have a far greater intellectual power over them (or so it looks to us). why do humans expect tommorow? think about it, if no one expected tommorow then what would it matter what we did today? humans are probably the only animal on this planet to come up with something called 'the long term goal'. right from birth we are told about this crazy term and start planning things for far far away in the future. but in terms of our life on this planet, i don't think that humans are that different from animals, and it's funny you brought this up because i was doing some thinking on the skytrain the other day about all of this. all this stuff that humans do during their lifetime: school, work, buying things, inventing, discovering...all that stuff seems to be just a way of filling up time until we die. we've just been given a smarter brain, so we can fill up time a little more thoroughly and with more diversity, then let's say, a lion or a bird, who basically do the same thing every day. it's sad when you think about it, but most people don't leave a mark on this planet at all, and if they do it dies out within a couple generations of their birth. bullshit? maybe, but those are just my thoughts.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
we don't really expect ourselves to go through every day doing the same thing, like a bird or a lion does because it is genetically programmed into it. sure, humans have routines (like work and school) that we fall into, but we would get extremely bored if everything was the same all the time. i think that's what the question was addressing.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
They migrate to mate and survive the winter. Something they've been doing for thousands of years. We used to do that too. Not anymore. I didn't say animals don't expect tomorrow. They don't expect tomorrow as a completely new day that will be completely like the last. like expecting to evolve, start playing soccer etc.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
i wouldn't be going to school or work if i didn't have too, but we're forced into it cause society is a downer like that. i'm sure there's many humans who'd love to just eat, shit, sleep, and fuck all day and everyday if they could. we should enforce some sorta society on birds where they'd have to earn their right with some sorta certificate to peck at grass for wormies.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
because humans have a higher intellect than birds and such, we have to find new ways of keeping ourselves entertained. like i said before in my other post, work and school and all this stuff is just the human species way of filling up time until we die. none of it really matters in the long run. but i don't think it's fair to blame to just use that big scary word and blame "SOCIETY!" with the whole work and school thing. i mean, we make up society, so we're part of that system too. i think that the creation of things like school and work and traffic laws were all inevitable. because humans like to live in such large groups of their own species, we had to come up with some system of keeping it all running smoothly.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
PS.
if people just ate, and slept and fucked all day every day, i'm very sure that it would get boring for them. that's one thing about humans, they need change and variety in their lives to keep things interesting for them. that's why we have movies, and theatre and books and all those other things that birds don't have...or more importantly don't NEED in their lives for them to be interested all the time.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
i don't think school and work is a means for us to fill up our day.
i'd get bored if my days only consisted of eating, sleeping, shiting and fucking but i can think of many other things i'd rather be doing other then school and work! sometimes i wish our ancestors kept things simpler. i think i'd have been happier living a life on a farm, hunting and fishing for my meat out in the middle of nowhere rather then going to school, getting a job, paying taxes, and driving my insured car to the grocery store to buy my hormone and chemical filled chickens to feed my bratty little shit kids running round in their teeny weeny air force ones while in the midst of getting my second divorce! bleh human evolution is inevitable i'm not arguing that where we are now was voluntary, but i'd have been happier a couple hundred decades back.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Just a quick point to your second question, you ask why humans are the only creatures that see life in a linear form.
You may look at the history of humanity, go back as far as Egyptian or Mayan tribes and find that they too had a calendar system which was not an identical 365 days, but did follow a seasonal shift where days became nights, nights became weeks, and weeks became years. Then if all major cultures in human history exhibit some form of "time" comprehension, it would lead me to believe that conscious beings, have a neccesity to regulate or monitor their own existence.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
I don't know if I'll make sense, I'm very tired...
#1- Given the perspective from which the birds are viewing "us", (ie: from the sky) there may be less of a chance that they see us as individuals, than if they were viewing us from a couple feet away. For example, when you're taking off on an airplane, you look down below at specks of what seem to be cars on a highway. Even if you can't identify the individual qualities of each car, you can still identify the species of the object (in this case, car). However, I don't think that this is exclusive to birds. If we stood infront of a crowd of HUMAN BEINGS, similar to us in species but each member separate as individuals.. we would most likely perceive the crowd as a "species" rather than individuals. (ie=crowd of human, as opposed to each individual person which constitutes the crowd) #2- We may not be the only species that expects "tomorrow" but the language we've developed is unique to us. As humans we have developed a complex form of communication. We often reify abstract concepts such as "time" for the purpose of convenience:we have found it somehow useful in our daily lives to do so. Other species may not see the usefulness in thinking of time in this way, or even the purpose of thinking of time. Concepts such as "time" are a human construction, and it makes little sense to wonder whether/why not other species who functions in life in different ways, and have never acquired our human language... has adopted such concepts.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
birds are great! such simpletons and i envy it! if i could wake up every morning singing out loud, rolling out of the nest to feast on my lawn it'd be swell! not too mention spending all day chasing my friends around, or playing a game of 'shit on the stupid humans below'.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
i'm not really a hundred percent sure i get what your point is Lance, but i think it's that: if humans (who are conscious beings) moniter their existance then why shouldn't we believe that all conscious beings moniter their existance.
if that was your point: all i have to really say to this is that humans are at a different level of consciousness than i think most of the animals and creatures living on this planet, so it's not really fair to compare our intellect to theirs. that sounds so high and mighty of me, but humans do operate on a different level of consciousness than other animals i think.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
humans don't really need to think about 'survival' much anymore.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Animals are creatures of habit, they are obsessed with it. Even the slightest change in climate, hours of light in a date, avaliability of food and/or shelter can severely fuck an animal up.
People thrive on change. Tomorrow is an opportunity to take advantage of things, to change the way things are if we don't like them. Like Jake said, an animal just wants to survive day to day using the same, basic routine that they know.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
Myra I just roffled so hard...ya right we thrive on change you and me are the same that way it's routine or death!
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
I'm comfortable with routine, but I'm constantly craving change. But then I'm afraid of change. But I'm weird. :p
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
there's the pros and cons to everything, but i think i'd been happier if life were simpler like that of an animal. instead of watching movies, listening to music or shopping for new shoes i'd be hunting for this months meat, harvesting my garden or making new shoes outta deer hide. i dislike all this election, taxes, war, gas prices, mortgages and education business that evolution has been imposed on us. i'd rather just live to survive. or maybe my family has a lil more evolving to do :( Last edited by Kelster; Jun 15, 04 at 04:46 AM.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
go look at pictures on walls in caves. Quote:
dogs are conscious. they have limited intelligence. how many dogs do you know who have forsight or hindsight, being able to think over its actions and decide whether or not its human friend is gonna be chocked if it shits or pisses on the rug? ya, dogs can be trained. but only through repetative negative/positive association. as much as it learns, it doesn't. Quote:
i agree wtih you on #2 though. Quote:
rethink that. Kelser & Jake - we're on two way different wave lengths. thanks for coming out though :P <3
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
^even though a lot of his writing is based on comedy and satire and stuff, i don't think that's a fair reason to say that he's not meant to be taken so seriously.
his writing presents a lot of interesting ideas that should be thought about.
|
|
Jun 15, 04
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
whole bunch of thinking was goin on the other day and one thing led to another, etc etc. Coupland is a great author though. Every book it's as if it's not just the story developing but the whole layout as well, the whole tone of the book. i don't think that made sense.
|
