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I do not talk about political separations and abnormities like apartheid, but about cultutral, ethical and language differences.
I treasure those as a source of inspiration and enlargment of my horizon.
bernhard
 
not at all, why should I ?
while being German I am experiencing the US-culture on this board, and believe me, it is different, epsicially when you look at the pride and nationalism displayed by the American people (no negative meanings here). would be very boring if I'd meet only other Germans here, don't you think?
of course a "universal tongue" would alway be required to be able to communicate, which happens to be English here. But this does not touch the heart of my arguments here, it is just a matter of pragmatism and convenience.
bernhard
 
ah ... so you do not like the cockroach-picture. I apologize if I hurt your feelings PhotonBoy, I could have used another image.
and ... I am not a darwinist either. as a doctor I value life and peace. BUT I am a realist, and I can interpret what I can see. and the big picture is not people helping people but people trying to outsmart and dominate each other.
back on topic:
- I think the most powerful motor of progress is fear and competition, I do not like this, but it seems so true
- IMHO our goal should not be a uniform mass of humans, but a community formed of communities with all their differences respecting each other and accepting those differences; a multiverse is much more enlightening than a universe
- the "critical mass" concept as a threshhold for human development (technical aspect here) is a very intelligent concept, I agree with it.
bernhard
 
Ah yes, survival of the fittest. They who have the sharpest elbows win.... Well that's true, but in the process, they help others. Best example: Bill Gates.

Do others benefit from Bill Gates? Certainly, including his enemies.

From 200,000 miles away, I agree, we're not much different than cockroaches. I'm not offended. The universe is a *really* big place.
 
[ QUOTE ]
kiessling said:
...I think the most powerful motor of progress is fear and competition, I do not like this, but it seems so true

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One might add the desire to make something better or the need to fulfill a wish or desire. Inexplicable genius almost always bursts its bounds and catalyses new philosophies, religions,industries, solutions.


[ QUOTE ]
- IMHO our goal should not be a uniform mass of humans, but a community formed of communities with all their differences respecting each other and accepting those differences; a multiverse is much more enlightening than a universe

[/ QUOTE ]
That might eventually work because it acknowledges our territorial and tribal nature, rather than fighting it with Utopian Disney-dreams.

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- [ QUOTE ]
the "critical mass" concept as a threshhold for human development (technical aspect here) is a very intelligent concept, I agree with it.
bernhard

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Absolutely. Cross pollination can't exist without pollinators; the more the better.

Brightnorm
 
Empath,

you wrote; " what is the objective of the human race?" But it's a loaded question, /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif . Maybe that's the problem, that there is no objective, and we insist that there be one..
We're here.
Harmonizing with the planet while we're at it might be nice.
Controlling our numbers might be nice.
If we use the earth as living tissue analogy, we certainly don't want to be the cancer cells of this earth, with the objective of ceaselessly increasing in number..
Though sometimes this does seem to be our apparent objective..
 
[ QUOTE ]
kiessling said:
- IMHO our goal should not be a uniform mass of humans, but a community formed of communities with all their differences respecting each other and accepting those differences; a multiverse is much more enlightening than a universe
bernhard

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Yes, I think I like your version better. The world working as one but still retaining our own unique identities. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

The idea of having to sacrifice native languages and cultures in order to work as one quite frankly gives me the creeps.
 
I find it really odd that people seem to believe that something has changed about human nature. I believe that technology has changed, communication has changed, popular culture has changed, but human nature has remained static, in my eyes, for the entirety of recorded history. History is chock full of the same repeated cycles of human behavior, there are surges and ebbs and varying circumstance but still I find it fairly consistent. I also believe that you cannot subvert human nature, in general, not by intellectualism or enlightenment or religion or education or even by imposing rule and punishment. We are animals who exhibit natural traits and behaviors regardless of environment, regardless of education I see them everyday and they are as unalterable as the rotation of the planet we live upon. I think maybe arrogance is a partial culprit in the blindness that man has for his own place in the universe, an unwillingness to see oneself as a base animal, to constantly assert a superiority over other humans and animals and to prove this superiority through postulation. I try not to deny a certain amount of indulgence of natural behavior and response to stimuli and find I am much happier for it.

TSG /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
The Buddha said it another way, DrAgOn. He said "life is suffering". It's generally considered a basic truth. However recognition of it is mundane, and secular knowledge at most. But acceptance of it, at least on a higher level than purely intellectually, is seen as spiritual and esoteric.

Uhhhh..... I just thought I'd let you suffer through those words. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif
 
"...what triggered such a difference to initiate such a rapid growth of technology?..."

Things are changing fast and humans generally seem to cope, even anticipate it. (My cell phone needs a better camera, dammit!)

The planet, however, may not be able to cope with the changes. Even if 20% of China's 1.2 billion people were to own and drive a car, the resulting air pollution might push us into the next ice age or drown us in melted ice from the north and south poles. I hope people can put the brakes on before this happens.
 
In addition to technology, language itself, which is the main tool for communication, has developed pretty late in the timeline of man's existence. I feel that this was a major contributing factor towards the latency of technology's evolution. For without it, what would have taken millennia to achieve, would have taken eons. From a pure technological standpoint, just think. We use technology to further technology's advance. Human cells have been around since the emergence of man. Then along came lenses, microscopes (technological achievements), which led to the discovery of them. Then as technology marched on, electronics, electron microscopes, vapor phase chromatography, NMR, and then we were able to further peer into the "mystery" on the molecular level. So to me, it is all like a stack of falling dominoes. It takes time, time to propagate from one technology to the next in order to advance our knowledge and create even more "newfangled" technology. Technology spawns technology and as such, this spawning process has an associated propagation delay. That's why I can cast reasonable assurance that this is just a natural progression of events. It just seems to be logarithmic rather than linear in its unfolding, thus the lop-sided timeline. This then evokes the question: What happens when we run out of dominoes?


Ed.
 
Homo Sapies may have been around in its current 'form' for some 1 to 1.5 million years, but that is a structural arguement--which is because all we have to work with are bones. There are non-structural things about us which I believe have changed and evolved. On average, I think we are smarter, at least.

Most of the progress that you ask about are cultural in nature. To develop a culture, one needs to communicate with others. So, the implementation of culture depends on how well one can communicate with others. The more and better the communication, the more the chance for developments of culture and civilization.

The advancement of our people is like a tapestry. With more members, there are more threads to work with. With more communication, the threads are more tightly interwoven. Each new row building on the patterns of the previous.

On somewhat related note, the book "Darwin's Radio" is a good read and deals with some similar ideas in a fictional setting. I think there's even a sequel to it our or coming out.
 
I wonder if we would ever have to colonize other planets and develop new cultures.... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif
 
I disagree that we're more intelligent Willmore, more learned, probably. Modern society functions in a "specialized" capacity where arts and sciences and even education are broken into groups and sub-groups and technology gives us an edge in the dissemination of information which in my mind may make us "book smart" and probably speeds it's own succession but I find in practice humans possess less common sense and "native" or "generalized" intelligence. If you were to apply modern technology to the minds prevalent to say the period of "The Enlightenment" I'll bet the products of intelligent thought and process would have been even more utterly amazing in their scope as well as depth and speed of development. Don't get me wrong here, there are brilliant minds around I just believe they are fewer and farther between. I think alot of people have a hard time just negotiating a crowded city sidewalk or making the mental connection between a piece of garbage in their hand and a trash can that's four feet away, nevermind quantum physics. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

TSG /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
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DrAg0n said:
Life sucks.

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..not all of it..just the mammals.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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