Animal torture increasingly popular.
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That is lovely, and we therefore agree. So you know that every animal, including us, does what s/he does. Imposing rank is a human fallacy which originates from human class society. It should have no place when discussing the natural world.
I will always challenge speciesist language as reinforcing prejudices which need to be overthrown. Saying “inferior” is misleading as well as unnecessary, when “from other animals” suits the purpose. Furthermore “other animals” saves the energy of having to add another explanation.
Marx and Engels were Victorians and used Victorian progressivist terminology, including describing pre-capitalist, pre-colonial societies as “barbarous.” That doesn’t mean we should do the same. Their writings are not “holy scriptures” and we are not learn-by-rote followers.
“Some animals can survive without their mother, and human beings need their mother for several years; some animals know how to feed themselves, and we depend on our parents for several years”
I don’t think being able to survive without their mothers is necessarily a strength.
Attachment Theory has its basis in the concept that the more cerebrally complex the creature is, the more likely it is that the animal will spend longer periods being dependent upon their mother or mother replacement.
Generally, mammals have more complex brains that most other animals, and generally mammals with larger brains have longer periods of dependency on their mother/parents. This is because animals which have bigger brains need to get through the birth canal at an earlier stage of development, therefore they will spend longer periods between birth and maturity.
If you consider for instance sheep. A lamb can walk within minutes of being born, it takes a human baby about a year after birth to reach that level of physical and cerebral development.
Although the apologists for capitalism argue that competition and and aggression are the main springs of human nature, the reality is the opposite, competition and aggression are the exceptions not the rule. Nurture, compassion, cooperation, etc. are built into mammalian instinct and behaviour. We are all a product of on going nurture and cooperation. We have all survived due to long term cooperation and nurture. If we had not received the benefit of at least minimal nurture, care and cooperation, none of us would have survived infancy.
Humans (in a similar way to other types of mammal behaviour) have evolved to instinctively respond to certain infant behaviours such as babies crying, infants making eye contact, proximity seeking behaviour, etc. I would argue that the traditional Socialist response to the “Human Nature” argument, i.e that humans are capable of a wide range of responses as result of various learning experiences (a kind of Skinnerian approach) is actually too weak.
The reality is that, yes we learn from experiences as we grown, but the bedrock of our behaviours are from our inbuilt instinct to be cooperative, to nurture, to care. We also learn from our early years experiences to maximise the available care and support and also to care of and support others. Even despite the depredations of capitalism about 60-65% of children and adults demonstrate secure attachments and behaviours, whilst those who have insecure attachments often show high levels of preferences to cooperation, nurture and care.
I would argue that rather than the traditional neutral stance on Human Nature, that we are able to learn to be socialists, I would argue that all of the evidence is that practically all human beings are actually a kind of naturally occuring proto socialist.
I would argue that rather than the traditional neutral stance on Human Nature, that we can learn to be socialists, I would argue that all of the evidence is that practically all human beings are actually a kind of naturally occuring proto socialist.
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You are using the concept of human beings, and that term is not scientifically correct; we are living entities, we are placental mammals, or living beings; human life is a religious concept. That has been one of the contradictions within the so-called pro-life movement, which thinks that an embryo or a fetus is a human being, and they confuse cellular impulses with heartbeats.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc0MtTvLJfc&t=525s. This video has subtitles in English. This biologist explains the difference between human life and life; he explains that we are placental mammals. Some doctors in that room did not know the difference
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