No offense, but no, we're not peaceful, intelligent and selfless. We are peaceful and selfless if it suits us. We are only loyal to anything as long as we don't get a better offer. As for intelligence, that can be discussed. It's not enough to be able to invent and create stuff. Intelligence is also whatwe do about it. We are destroying the planet day by day, and we use our intelligence to create bigger bombs. So much for smartness.
And yet we work to improve ourselves and our situation. Learning from our mistakes. That is intelligence, despite what you might think. The point of my post is we are contradictory animals, and yet, as Cog said, we have the potential to be so much more. And no need for the phrase 'No offense' I'm not easily offended.
So viruses just evolve and adapt to different situations by sheer impulse? It always seemed to me like they just had a very functional one. As for the ants, that's a pretty good explanation. It seems they have a more functional capacity for their intelligence- they only use what they need to when they need it. In a way, I wonder if this is not the same for all things with a brain, but it just happens to be physically evident in the ant because of the growing and shrinking- which sounds freakin funny because they grow and shrink with regards to sex- a very human thing in my opinion, just the opposite
I'd have to say actions would weigh more in the decision than potential would. You can always claim to have the potential to do better, but a history of misconduct or damning behavior will definitely fall against you.
Viruses are just strings of DNA or RNA in a protein coat (or in a lipid envelope). They have no intelligence structure at all. They're not even really "alive" in the sense that you normally think of things being alive. They inject their DNA or RNA into a host cell and the host transcribes it and creates new viruses.
While this is true, it's also missing the point that humans haven't been around long. Life on earth is 3 billion years old, and we are not even maybe 1 million years old. Intelligence is young, and still adapting to reason. What humanity needs to do is stop saying shit like 'We should know better' because we shouldn't. We are still evolving, and we are still poorly evolved.
Opinion is divided. But yeah. Not very long at all. Some think so many hundreds of thousands of years, some think a little more or a little less. I'm no expert anyway, most of my knowledge on evolution comes from reading. Mostly Richard Dawkins, who I really respect as a biologist.
Yeah right, lol. That argument only holds if we were like in a child phase and didn't know any better. We KNOW what we are doing, we KNOW it's wrong, and we KNOW the consequences. That definitely makes us responsible for them. I'm more for conscious change than eradication, though. I just don't see either happening.
Sounds like a troublesome four year old doesn't it. Knowing something is naughty but doing it anyway. We are responsible for our own actions, yes, and I'm hopeful we can evolve past our primitive origins, but it's got a long time coming at this rate. But there are signs we are working toward something better, slowly. I'm not a cynic - I love this planet, and everything on it - I'm hopeful.
We're not children and we do know better on the whole, but we still can't escape our biological nature. We are still ruled to varying degrees by biological imperatives that evolved in our ancestors and were crucial to their survival. In a more civilized world, many of those aspects of human nature lead to ills, but we're not far enough removed from them to be free of those things our ancestors needed. As the human race continues to evolve, I believe those traits will become minimized as they are no longer essential to survival of the species (and may run counter to it in many instances). But that is a long, slow process.
This is my philosophy. The earth, this small world, is our home. Instead of hating and fighting we should band together and try to help and understand each other. Our differences make us interesting and bring us together, but our differences are also one of the biggest obstacles we as a species face. Our similarities, though, are undeniable. We are all brothers and sisters, alone, together.
I, for one, do not. I hate mosquito's, I definitely do not like some people, and nature deep in the woods in the summer can be irritating to infuriating. I like a lot of it also, and that's what it's about, I guess. Dealing with what you don't like or can't change, and enjoying what you do. But if I could offer one thing that would help create a better world, it would be to rid us of the need for excess. Somewhere along the line, people have lost the concept of doing something because you really like doing it to doing something for personal gain. It seems people are now convinced that if there is no personal gain to be had from working towards a goal, there's no point and all progress comes screeching to a halt. I think if people like to do something, they will do it regardless and there doesn't need to be a profit motive. The need to get more money, more power, more, more, more in excess of yourself is the main problem today and yesterday. The need to profit makes people more willing to step over and stab one another. Even brothers. Family.
