Good News: And No Religion, Too
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Lizzie45 Of course nobody can explain what awe is or what it feels like to experience it anymore than one can explain what it feels like to be in love which presumably you haven’t experienced either. How sad.
Wez But that’s all artists, poets and romantic novelists attempt to do ad nauseam. Perhaps you should pick up a book occasionally Lizzie.
I not only pick up plenty of books, Andrew, I read them too, both in ‘Austro-Bavarian’ and English. But as a scientist (with a specific interest in Astrophysics) I tend to steer clear of fictitious prose.
ALB, or Wez?
ALB – It’s why of course we are confident that “human nature” doesn’t make socialism impossible, as the genetic determinists claim.
I think it is important that we challenge the genetic determinists with their own argument. Our genetics determine that the first thing we experience (as do all mammals to some extent) is the experience of cooperative care giving. The mammalian solution to the survival conundrum is to care for and nurture our offspring. The most notable feature of our genetic inheritance and human existence is mass cooperation, it is so common that we often don’t even see it.
As to instinct, our first and overwhelming instinct is to cooperate and to be nurtured, the initial 3 years of our existence is based on the interdependency of others and learning to be part of a social grouping, our second instinct is to be inquisitive and to learn. Instinct and learning are intertwined part of human development. The “human nature” argument, is one we should use, it is capitalism which is contrary to human nature to cooperate and nurture, not socialism.
‘I not only pick up plenty of books, Andrew, I read them too, both in ‘Austro-Bavarian’ and English. But as a scientist (with a specific interest in Astrophysics) I tend to steer clear of fictitious prose.’
Blimey, ‘Austro-Bavarian’ eh, no wonder you can’t articulate what love is. How sad.
TM – But as life and the consciousness it can enable seems to be so rare we are damned ‘significant’.
Blimey, ‘Austro-Bavarian’ eh, no wonder you can’t articulate what love is. How sad.
I jest. Austro-Bavarian, being one of several German dialects, is spoken rather than written. As far as love is concerned, suffice to say that to experience it is more than sufficient. Like ‘awe’ it can’t be satisfactorily articulated.
You do know that the phrase God Blind Me is the etymological root of Blimey. How quaint.
And yet, Wez, we will cease to be humans in less than a split-second of cosmic time, and the species will have ceased to be, forever.
Significant and insignificant are but our terms.
That would be awful. And would apply to your animal friends as well. They would be annihilated too and, presumably, as just as insignificant as well. And which is the only species that could at least try to avert such a catastrophe (and in fact is already looking into how might it be able to do so) and save them?
Significant and insignificant are but our terms, as I said.
Supreme arrogance is a quality of the human species alone, as far as we know.
And I wasn’t talking about sudden annihilation, but normal extinction. I doubt humans will be here anywhere near as long as other species have*, although humans are likely to annihilate more species before we disappear – species whose longevity as life forms dwarf ours.
*For the reason Gould gave, mentioned earlier: the apes (us) are ripe for extinction. (Which can still mean a few million years, which we won’t have at all unless we get rid of capitalism, as I’m sure you’ll agree).
To say that “supreme arrogance is a characteristic of the human species alone” is a silly statement since only humans are capable of expressing any degree of arrogance. In any event, arrogance can only be an attitude of individuals not of a species.
It is true that the leading thinkers and traditions used to teach that humans were the most important life-form, that the Earth had been created for them and was the centre of the Universe, etc, etc but that is no longer the dominant view (even if religion still preaches it).
I would think that today the dominant view amongst thinkers other than obscurantists priests is the view expressed by Sagan in that clip that we are life-forms living on a planet on the outskirts of one of many galaxies where particular circumstances happened to permit us to come into being.
And it is only in the formal sense that humans are destroying the planet and extinguishing other species in that this is the result of actions by humans. But, as you know, what humans can do is constrained, even dictated, by the capitalist economic system they live under.
Of course, if you wanted to, you could argue that humans are at fault for not having established a world of common ownership and democratic control as they could have done for some 150 years. But what’s the point of being a self-loathing human?
“In any event, arrogance can only be an attitude of individuals not of a species.”
Agreed.
“It is true that the leading thinkers and traditions used to teach that humans were the most important life-form, that the Earth had been created for them and was the centre of the Universe, etc, etc but that is no longer the dominant view (even if religion still preaches it).”
Long after a belief has been overthrown, its influence remains. Most who accept evolution think it is a progressive thing, with humans the “result” of a mounting towards complexity and superiority.
“… as they could have done for some 150 years.”
Obviously they couldn’t, because they didn’t. “Could have” is like “if”. “I could have bought some paracetamols in the shop.” No you couldn’t, because you didn’t.
We may bring about socialism, or we may not. But whatever we do or not do, we will do what we do, and “could have” will likewise be meaningless.
Obviously they couldn’t, because they didn’t. “Could have” is like “if”. “I could have bought some paracetamols in the shop.” No you couldn’t, because you didn’t.
I think this is one for Wez and dialectics. Does “could” imply “did” and “is” imply “ought”? Or is the real rational or the rational real?
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