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Mankind is the only animal for which its own existence is a problem

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I didnt take ecology in school, but i have watched quite alot of documentaries on wild life. Also its pretty obvious that nature needs both predators and pray to maintain the balance.

What comes to predators and humans. Its true that we dont have any animals that hunt us, but there are other stuff.
First of all bacteria and viruses keep evolving as we try to find cures for them and i dont really see some major epidemies that would kill big part of the population as impossible, since we are kinda making the viruses and bacteria stronger by misusing antibiotics and what ever the virus medicines are called, making them immune to drugs.
Then there is the weakening of our genes which comes with us being now able to pass on malfunctioning genes, this rarerily happen with other animals(except with some diseases).
Also plenty of other stuff, like us recycling water that has estrogen from birth control pills, which raises the estrogen in males, making them to produce malcunctioning sperm, thus infertile(or lowering the chances of being able to make babies). Eating fatty and other foods that are unhealthy too much, which causes heart problems and obesiety(which makes those obese males and females less attractive to opposite sex, thus making it harder for them to reproduce). Computers create nerds that have harder time finding a partner and make babies and possibly die sooner due to health problems that come with lack of physical excercise. Etc etc, could go on all day.
But still human population keeps growing, at least for now, dunno if we manage to create more problems on reproducing in the future that would make the population go down before we destroy the whole place and the population goes down due to lack of food.

Yep, there are a few minor things, and we're much better at keeping the old/ill/weak alive, but marring a major plague, nothing is making any sort of real dent on the population. Even billions of starving people doesn't make a difference globally when people just have more children to make up for it.

It does depend on how you interpret the question. I see it as "a species' behaviours can cause net negative effects on other species" and humans are definitely not the only species to fall into that category.
 

INTP

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Yep, there are a few minor things, and we're much better at keeping the old/ill/weak alive, but marring a major plague, nothing is making any sort of real dent on the population. Even billions of starving people doesn't make a difference globally when people just have more children to make up for it.

It does depend on how you interpret the question. I see it as "a species' behaviours can cause net negative effects on other species" and humans are definitely not the only species to fall into that category.

Yep, but i think those small things add up and can cause potentially much damage.

For example infertility is growing really fast, for some reason i couldnt find much infro from google about this, but it has been discussed in media in finland some time ago quite alot. If you look at infertility rates in usa, its around 10%, which is quite alot. In india infertility has grown 50% in the past 20 years. In finland average sperm count with men born in the years 79-81 was 227 million and average sperm count with men born 87 was only 165 million. Similar stuff is happening all over the world, also rates in testicle cancer is growing. Now of you look 100 years to the future, it starts to look pretty grim.
Also it seems that women today arent putting making babies asap to so high priority as they used to and concentrating more on career.

But its impossible to say whether population starts to drop or not, but at least in finland it starts to look like its starting to go down.
 
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This is a result of the curse God put on earth. Before, we would freely eat in the garden of Eden, and everything would recycle itself without effort. After the rebellion of man the ground was cursed, so now we have to sweat and toil to bring food from it.


Reference (Genesis 3:17) -

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
 

xisnotx

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I've never been anything other than human (or have I?lol) so it's hard to say, but I think every species has a drive to maintain it's existence. To that end, I disagree...every species existence is a problem to that species.
 

INTP

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This is a result of the curse God put on earth. Before, we would freely eat in the garden of Eden, and everything would recycle itself without effort. After the rebellion of man the ground was cursed, so now we have to sweat and toil to bring food from it.


Reference (Genesis 3:17) -

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

So basically accordin to bible(or your interpration of it) men fucked up the world because of women?
 

Magic Poriferan

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I understand that there is some hypothesis that the Ordovician extinction event may have been caused by the effects that earth's life had on the oceans at the time, so maybe that would count. :shrug:

Yep, there are a few minor things, and we're much better at keeping the old/ill/weak alive, but marring a major plague, nothing is making any sort of real dent on the population. Even billions of starving people doesn't make a difference globally when people just have more children to make up for it.

It does depend on how you interpret the question. I see it as "a species' behaviours can cause net negative effects on other species" and humans are definitely not the only species to fall into that category.

In the longer term, run away environmental change does pose a significant threat to our population. Also, being that our population's size is highly dependent on a technology that is highly dependent on fossil fuels, if we really dropped the ball on energy reform, that too would seriously drop our population and possibly prevent if from ever recovering (though it certainly couldn't drive us extinct). Then of course there's a giant nuclear arsenal that can destroy the surface of the earth multiple times over. So I think we definitely do pose a threat to our own existence.
 
G

Ginkgo

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This is a result of the curse God put on earth. Before, we would freely eat in the garden of Eden, and everything would recycle itself without effort. After the rebellion of man the ground was cursed, so now we have to sweat and toil to bring food from it.


Reference (Genesis 3:17) -

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

Dude it looks like an angel is performing a c section in your avatar.
 
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So basically accordin to bible(or your interpration of it) men fucked up the world because of women?

No, man and woman both had a fair curse to bear for disobedience. Woman accepted the [false] notion of god-like power from the serpent. She saw it as innocent enough, but God sees that it was rebellion and therefore dealt an equal curse upon the woman: she would suffer from an emotional and physical desire for a husband and for a family. I say suffer because where there once was total emotional and physical freedom, now would be a longing that would make her life difficult as she would then be reliant on the husband to provide something. In other words, all those woman on the TV show "The Bachelor"? They are all examples of how woman suffers from the curse. Woman would have a desire to have a husband and a family, her husband would rule over her and she would resent that because of the sin nature that still exists (a false notion that she should be God and would put herself above her husband), and these emotions she would have to struggle and fight against, because she rebelled from being entirely ruled by the spirit of God.

Because Adam accepted the apple, he had spurned God's generosity with the rest of the garden. Because he choose this way, he would have to bear his own fruit, meaning he would have to labour every time he wanted to produce something--it would no longer produce itself like God's generosity had originally granted. Once Adam had everything he wanted, now there was bitter toil and a sense of meaninglessness, a sense of emptiness because he would work and then he would die and become the same ground he worked so hard to produce something from. It seems pointless! And yet to take care of a family he would have to do it.

Personally, being a man, I see this curse exist in my own life as I fight between a desire to go my own way and to have a family, because family comes with a greater toil that is hard to justify when life feels ultimately pointless. So then lets say I go the family route, I fight a feeling of blame to my wife because it would appear that she is the source of my difficulties between myself and God's providence. Now let me be clear this is not the case whatsoever, I am merely pointing out how believing the lie becomes an emotional struggle against darkness.

A clear example of this nature can be seen here:

(2 Samuel 12) 7 Then Nathan said to David, "..." "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own."

In the same way Adam despised God's command not to eat of the tree, David despised God by ignoring everything God had already given him and rebelliously took what he should not have taken, just like Adam.
 

INTP

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No, man and woman both had a fair curse to bear for disobedience. Because woman accepted the [false] notion of power from the serpent, she would suffer from a desire for her husband and a family, and it would be a source of emotional and physical suffering where she had not had before. This is fair because she introduced sin into the household that was her and Adam. In other words, all those woman on the TV show "The Bachelor"? They are all examples of how woman suffers from the curse. Woman now would be ruled by her desire to have a husband and a family.

Because Adam accepted the apple, he had spurned God's generosity with the rest of the garden. Because he choose this way, he would have to bear his own fruit, meaning he would have to labour every time he wanted to produce something--it would no longer produce itself like God's generosity had originally granted. A clear example of this nature can be seen here:

(2 Samuel 12) 7 Then Nathan said to David, "..." "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own."

In the same way Adam despised God's command not to eat of the tree, David despised God by ignoring everything God had already given him and rebelliously took what he should not have taken, just like Adam.

Okay. So all this happened about 5000 years ago or?
 

Salomé

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1. No
2. It means whoever penned it has a shocking disregard for elegant sentence construction.
 
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Roughly so, I'd estimate a little over 6,000 years, with the exception of the passage about king David which was 35 of 77 generations between Adam and Jesus, placing that passage at, guessing, 2000 b.c.? Which doesn't account for the change in generation length due to shorter lifespans I know but it's a guess.

Either way, the patterns observed are still readily observable today, even though the times have changed. Idolatry is about the same as it was, it seems, the only thing that has changed is the growth of the Atheist delusion.
 

INTP

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Roughly so, I'd estimate a little over 6,000 years, with the exception of the passage about king David which was 35 of 77 generations between Adam and Jesus, placing that passage at, guessing, 2000 b.c.? Which doesn't account for the change in generation length due to shorter lifespans I know but it's a guess.

Either way, the patterns observed are still readily observable today, even though the times have changed. Idolatry is about the same as it was, it seems, the only thing that has changed is the growth of the Atheist delusion.

So dinosaur bones and early humans(like neanderthals) are just created to test our faith in god?
 

Lark

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Agreed.

OP, I interpreted your post as more metaphysical than naturalistic. So in that vein I'd agree with [MENTION=10315]Aquarelle[/MENTION].

You're on the right track, existentialist rather than metaphysical I would have said though.

Is suicide known to exist in the animal kingdom besides humans?

The naturalistic turn is interesting though, the needs of animals are easily sated, therefore never threaten them with total resource extinction, human needs just develop, change and escalate.
 

Lark

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I interpreted the statement to mean that mankind has an awareness of their own existence and thus can question the point of their existence and can experience existential anxiety (why do I exist? Does my existence really matter in the whole scheme of things?). Tied into this, I think is being aware of your own mortality and thus the termination of your existence.

Exactly.

This is what I believe the genesis tale is really about and IS a metaphor for.

The true wisdom has been missed by people debating the facts of the matter.
 

INTP

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Roughly so, I'd estimate a little over 6,000 years, with the exception of the passage about king David which was 35 of 77 generations between Adam and Jesus, placing that passage at, guessing, 2000 b.c.? Which doesn't account for the change in generation length due to shorter lifespans I know but it's a guess.

Either way, the patterns observed are still readily observable today, even though the times have changed. Idolatry is about the same as it was, it seems, the only thing that has changed is the growth of the Atheist delusion.

So dinosaur bones and early humans(like neanderthals) are just created to test our faith in god?
 

LucidLegend1984

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Would not wanted offspring up until the day you die be considered evolutionary suicide? I've always wondered that.

I literally have no desire whatsoever to have children. The main reason human’s question their existence is because the rules of competition have changed in that Darwin’s Fittest and Strongest theory goes out the window. It's no long smartest, strongest, and fittest. My theory is the ones that can survive are the ones who can attract the most. The more "influence" you have over others the more likely you are to survive and survive comfortably, only problem with this scenario is one cannot live in excess without taking comfort from others.

When an animal takes away another animal’s food or shelter away a fight is inevitable. When a human takes another human's food and/or shelter a physical fight depends on the situation.

Bottom line everytime people say human's are animals its partially true. When push comes to shove people are animals, when in peace were as human as we all can be.
 

Beargryllz

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Do you agree with this statement? What do you think it means?

I disagree completely

EVERY species population is threatened by the components of that population

Every fucking dog is a direct competitor to every other fucking dog

Every single seagull is preying on the resources that another seagull might need
 

FunnyDigestion

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^ That's basically how I see it. Humans have the ability to express lamentation, but that doesn't mean the other animals are feeling great about life. I want to meet whoever the first dog was to write a "Take This Job & Shove It" song.
 

Lark

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I disagree completely

EVERY species population is threatened by the components of that population

Every fucking dog is a direct competitor to every other fucking dog

Every single seagull is preying on the resources that another seagull might need

You didnt understand the point posed in the OP.

Are dogs conscious or merely instinctive? Transcending instinct and thinking instead has provided unique benefits but it has caused existential angst, dogs dont question the meaning of it all.
 
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