Humans are not superior

Hi guys,

It's official, the concept of superiority is simply based on opinion. E.g. all the silly reasons people give for why humans are so much different and special to all other life forms is based on their own bias. I found the full documentary on a free documentary site - here is the direct YouTube link if you want to see it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqT82oGeax0

If we just dropped our ego down to a normal level, rather than a god-like one, I bet we would refrain from so much pollution and other damage. Life is interconnected. If we ruin Earth, we ruin our home.

 

I also recommend "The Secret Life of Plants" to those who haven't seen it!

 

"The Earth doesn't belong to us, we belong to the Earth" Chief Seattle

 

claiming any species to be superior is a fallacy, they all just have traits which allow them to best survive in their environments, ours is intelligence.

 

The mind is a powerful tool, but if abused, this can be a result

 

Well the idea of superiority is irrellivent to objective reality, but we live in a subjective reality.

I get it, you have such a low, humble horse, that it's a high horse.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, you're annoying, stfu.

 

So, by knowing that human superiority over all other life is untrue and subjective, I'm on a high horse? I suppose civil rights activists were on high horses. After all, they should have known that the idea of a superior race was subjective and just put up with the burden of being discriminated.

Firstly, believing something degrading to current human status is one of the last beliefs that could be used to bolster ego.
Secondly, most people I have met think that their reality is objective and I would like people to know that it is not true, and that the current subjective thinking of many is damaging our Earth which we depend on.

 

The only thing that separates us from animals is language.

 

And how do you suggest we do that?

 

You didn't watch the part about prairie dogs? We are slowly decoding animal languages. They just don't speak human language.

also:
http://io9.com/5919973/plants-communicate-with-each-other-by-using-clicking-sounds

 

Promote hipforums, study Descartes and his effect on modern society, study physics, study philosophy, study non-Abrahamic religions.

I think a lot of the mess is from what Descartes did to academia, which was promoted by the Catholic church. His thinking made us very man VS world. Also that humans are the only ones with souls and our bodies and nature are just basically temporary decoration. Who is going to respect the Earth if they think that way?

Australian aborigines viewed the land as more sacred than individual life, because one life is only a loss of one generation, but the land will support every future generation. So, if you destroy your habitat, you are harming your future generations.

 

I don't think any study is going to drop the ego. All you're really doing is adding more knowledge to what you've already got so you might reach the point where you tell yourself you should drop your ego because of what you've learnt, but it's still going to be part of your biological structure no matter how much you struggle or don't struggle. Probably all thinkers have reached this point and gone no further.

 

I think it's an assumption to say that human supremacy is ingrained in my biological structure. Anthropocentrism is ingrained due to the natural genocentrism of species, but I think human supremacy is a different topic. Example: I will save the life of a human over that of a mouse due to evolved empathy for humans, but I will not naturally produce a Cartesian ideological construct that tells me that mice cannot think, feel and are fundamentally different from humans on a very deep level so it doesn't matter if they die. Proof: I never have.

Indigenous societies around the world respected nature as a source of life. Kids often dream of being animals. The gods of many old religions are animals. I think it's a great assumption assuming certain modern religious views are what every human thinks by default and that it takes thinking and learning to rid them. To the contrary, we are not born with Cartesian ideological constructs that we have to unlearn, we are born without them and have to learn them.

Perhaps it is ingrained in the biology of the people who enjoy the belief system and their offspring may come to similar Cartesian conclusions without the help of hearing about them first. That, I can believe.

 

i dont care if i bring this off topic because all the important points have been made. but this reminds me of when i went camping and we fed a young groundhog. well after a half hour of feeding this groundhog the mother saw what was happening and proceeded to punish the baby groundhog for what was obviously getting to close to humans.(she was biting the baby's head...hard enough that it hurt the baby but not anywhere near causing serious damage to it) so in conclusion animals even have parental discipline.

if not for intelligence and adaptation i believe humans would be extinct long ago. much like the neandrathals who didnt adapt. (dont believe the hype that we evolved from them...or at the very least question that fact since there is no proof)

 

Fast adaption is one of our major skills. That's for sure. I think it's right on topic to point out that verbal language isn't the only important thing. Regardless of other species having verbal language, it's not the standard to judge everything else by.

The neanderthal genome is found at an average of 5% in all populations outside of Africa. The study is a couple years old. I suppose the smart ones bred with humans to ensure their offspring's survival.

 

I'm not saying animals don't have have language ~ of course they do.

 

I think you blame Descartes too easily. It's all connected. Early naturalistic polytheism is usually just the earliest stage of religion, no different in source from modern religious thinking. And I see Descartes metaphysics as simply a more refined version of Plato's. Maybe it's these systems which ingrained themselves into our culture and language over thousands of years and there is no way to unlearn them again once that culture is ingrained into us. Devolution just doesn't seem possible even with critiques and strong polemics against these systems, which is why I say it's biological in source. If we can smash them it would take hundreds of years and eliminating all metaphysical language from education and even then, I don't know what would be left. Metaphysical ideas seemed to peak at the end of the 19th century followed by a swift decline and yet we're still as barbaric as ever.

Saving a mouse is an incredibly egoistic act. Much more than, say, stepping on a snake that has just bitten you by instant reflex.

 

If you understand that we're just animals, you should understand why we dominate and proliferate and all that good stuff.

 

I think there are unknown facts and truths about both sides of this argument. We don't know what goes on in the mind of animals but at the same time we tend to sometimes downplay the complexity of the human mind. All is not what it seems.

 

We do not dominate. That is a self-centered illusion

http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/07/michael_pollan/
and/or watch "The Superior Human", "The Secret Life of Plants"

That's one of the very problems. Many modern people think we dominate the Earth. When asked why, they say intelligence, adaptivity, etc. etc. In the end, those are all very subjective human values. I really recommend the TED talk at least.