Human Nature

LaughingMan · July 26, 2015, 3:35am

Thomas Hobbes was quite correct.

It’s too bad he had to water down his philosophy at the time to make it more paleable for a puritan Christian zealous majority out of fear of religious persecution because then he could of written truly even more about what he thought of human nature without restrictions during the 16th century.

He had to keep everything religiously PC during that period of time towing the party line.

LaughingMan · July 26, 2015, 3:43am

No, I don’t. Yes, I would include myself into that equation also.

From my point of view, it’s a savage animal species trying to extrapolate that it is somehow better than what it really is and because there is nobody else around to criticize it all levels of bullshit is articulated to paint a rose on itself when all there is weeds.

It’s like taking a plate of dog shit and then going to some sort of bullshit extrapolation as to why it is a five star meal.

GreatandWiseTrixie · July 27, 2015, 7:08am

Human nature is like a pack of carnivorous, cannibalistic sheep, lead by a bunch of sabertoothed, primate chimps.

Because the sheep is surrounded by other sheep, he views this as a “good” due to his excessive sheltering.

Lev_Muishkin · July 27, 2015, 10:24am

You can always change, and be nicer, but that is probably beyond you.

GreatandWiseTrixie · July 28, 2015, 3:15am

Says the guy who flames every post he sees.

Lev_Muishkin · July 28, 2015, 9:34am

Today I chose to be nice. Today you could chose to be more human, rather than a chippy little bitch harping on about ‘humans’ and pretending you are not one.

GreatandWiseTrixie · July 28, 2015, 7:41pm

I don’t eat meat. I don’t agree with most modern values. Why should I associate and place myself into the same category of a herd that doesnt share or care to understand my values? I especially can’t stand when a human get’s “chippy” when someone insults his precious species. Your species is a galactic punching bag, a receptical, a scapegoat, a “blame all”, always will be until they change their ways.

Arminius · July 12, 2016, 1:04am

Arminius:

HaHaHa:

I like how you illustrated the difference between culture and nature where I would like it if you explained this further. If you could I would like you to cite your references for my own study.

3 excerpts as examples:

Arminius:

When it comes to distinguish the nature of human beings from the nature of other living beings, then human nature is human culture/s. Although it is difficult to say whether there is one human culture or several human cultures, I would say, if I had to refer to merely one human culture, that a human being is a luxury being. In another thread I said:

The luxury is a very special phenomenon, especially for human beings. Human beings are luxury beings. They make their artificial island of luxury in the sea of nature. Evolution is not just about adaptation to nature, but also about distancing from nature, thus about the luxury islands.

Only human beings (thus no other living beings) are able to distance or disassociate themselves so much from nature. Humans live on islands of luxury. They have their human bubbles like hulls / shells, caves, huts / cottages, houses, beyond that: castles, churches / cathedrals, cities, city states, states, nations, empires, global empires … and so forth. Because they are much more spiritual / mental / intellectual than other creatures, they have not only a bodily but also a spiritual immune system. This spiritual immune system is the main cause of the enormous luxury and the characteristic feature of human culture/s. Because of the fact that there are many different spiritual immune systems of humans possible, one should rather speak about several human cultures and not about one human culture.

=>

Arminius:

Naturally humans beings are animal beings, but culturally human beings are not animal beings but human beings (just becaue of their culture). Of course, there are feedbacks between nature and culture, thus also between human nature and human culture. But if it comes to distinguish the nature of human beings from the nature of other living beings, then human nature is human culture/s. And one of the main features of human culture/s is luxury.

=>

Arminius:

We can say that an “authentic human life” means a “life according to the human’s nature”, whereas an “unauthentic life” means a “life according to the human’s culture/s”.
In other words: Humans need their culture/s to not live according to their nature and need their nature to not live according to their culture/s.
If humans are humans because of about 2% of their nature and because of about 98% of their culture/s (=>#), then they have merely a chance of about 2% to live authentically.

=>

HaHaHa:

It is clear to me the more I read that culture is indeed a simulated or matrix like existential interface separate from nature where most of humanity’s woes stem from it. It is possible that in more ancient societies culture was more symbiotic with nature thus being natural but the evolving of culture overtime enclosed has separated itself from nature or evolution entirely.

Culture is the successful or/and unsuccessful implementation of the trial to escape from nature.

HaHaHa:

Ultimately the future for me concerning our species will be disastrous or catastrophic from all of this.

My only hope is that this future calamity will leave human survivors if possible so that we learn from all of this through collective shared experience but even that might be a foregoing stretch.

Learning by experiencing a catastrophe is one of the most effective kinds of learning, because this means an effect where human nature and human culture are again very close to each other at this moment of experiencing a catastrophe.

Mictlantecuhtli · July 12, 2016, 3:07am

Homosapiens are animals just more delusional, inventive, and innovative kind of animal.

How human beings treat each other, other animals, and the natural environment only shows an inherent viciousness of human nature which of course Thomas Hobbes elaborated quite well. His solution or ideal containment of human nature not so much by comparison…

When I think of human nature I think of words like viciousness, savagery, inequality, hyper -competitive, selfishness, egotistical, malicious, duplicitous, hypocritical, vanity, narcissism, myopic, insatiable-desire, power-driven, dangerous, dominating, and arrogance. I do not sugar coat human nature as a bunch of naive idealists and simpletons make the habit of doing the world over.

Arminius · July 12, 2016, 4:53pm

I guess you know that Thomas Hobbes wrote his book “Leviathan or the Matter, Form and Authority of Government” (1651) because of the experiences with the terrible civil war in England.

Mictlantecuhtli · July 14, 2016, 9:11am

That would be his ideal containment of human nature I was referencing in which I disagree with.

Arminius · July 27, 2016, 11:09pm

Yes, I know. But …:

Is he or not - in your opinion?

Arminius · July 27, 2016, 11:11pm

Arminius:

The first moral is a means of surviving: one’s surviving depends on the group’s surviving. Leaving the group can lead to a new group and new morals, of course, but that does not change the meaning of the first moral law: means of surviving.

By the way: The main problem that modern humans have with morality has not to do with this first moral law or other laws of the primitive morality. It has to do with the fact that modern humans are not capable of acting and reacting according to the consequences of the facts that humans created by inventing things, especially technological things. In other words: Humans have got a problem with living on the same level that they have reached technologically - the human nature is always far behind the human spirit (including moral), because the human brain is made for surving, at least primarily. The first moral law has to do with surviving. But the modern humans have created moral systems that have not much or even nothing to with surving.

Homo sapiens is a species that has reached a stage of development of a huge difference between nature and culture.

=>

Artimas · July 28, 2016, 12:42am

It’s just nature in general.

Arminius · July 28, 2016, 11:30am

Arminius:

When it comes to distinguish the nature of human beings from the nature of other living beings, then human nature is human culture/s. Although it is difficult to say whether there is one human culture or several human cultures, I would say, if I had to refer to merely one human culture, that a human being is a luxury being. In another thread I said:

The luxury is a very special phenomenon, especially for human beings. Human beings are luxury beings. They make their artificial island of luxury in the sea of nature. Evolution is not just about adaptation to nature, but also about distancing from nature, thus about the luxury islands.

Only human beings (thus no other living beings) are able to distance or disassociate themselves so much from nature. Humans live on islands of luxury. They have their human bubbles like hulls / shells, caves, huts / cottages, houses, beyond that: castles, churches / cathedrals, cities, city states, states, nations, empires, global empires … and so forth. Because they are much more spiritual / mental / intellectual than other creatures, they have not only a bodily but also a spiritual immune system. This spiritual immune system is the main cause of the enormous luxury and the characteristic feature of human culture/s. Because of the fact that there are many different spiritual immune systems of humans possible, one should rather speak of several human cultures and not of one human culture.

=>

Arminius · July 28, 2016, 11:41am

Arminius:

Arminius:

The first moral is a means of surviving: one’s surviving depends on the group’s surviving. Leaving the group can lead to a new group and new morals, of course, but that does not change the meaning of the first moral law: means of surviving.

By the way: The main problem that modern humans have with morality has not to do with this first moral law or other laws of the primitive morality. It has to do with the fact that modern humans are not capable of acting and reacting according to the consequences of the facts that humans created by inventing things, especially technological things. In other words: Humans have got a problem with living on the same level that they have reached technologically - the human nature is always far behind the human spirit (including moral), because the human brain is made for surving, at least primarily. The first moral law has to do with surviving. But the modern humans have created moral systems that have not much or even nothing to with surving.

Homo sapiens is a species that has reached a stage of development of a huge difference between nature and culture.

=>

What I meant is that in an early human group an “I” could not behave individually in a modern sense, thus like a modern “I”, because every “I” had to be like the “we”, every son had to be like his father and former ancestors, every daughter had to be like her mother and former ancestors. If someone tried to not follow this main rule of that early human culture, then this one would be killed. Someone who broke this rule was punished to death. There was no way out of the group.

Arminius · July 28, 2016, 12:27pm

Do you know, for example, the rules of modern “gangs”? What do this “modern” gangs do when it comes to breaking their rules (this rules are like “laws” for them)? They punish their members to death, if they trie to break their rules. So they are referring to one of the first human rules. Why are they doing that? They are doing that, because they do not want any member of the gang to leave the gang. They are going back to early times of the humans. Development is more cyclical or spiral than just linear (“progressive”).

Meno2 · July 29, 2016, 4:36am

Are they going back to early times of humans, like in pre historical kinship? Or, are the regressing to less autonomous, more amalgamated , less symbolic , less individually cultural and social being, like in a childish early developmental regression?

And if so, do these two types, cultural and psychological link? Are very young children and
ungrounded juveniles have similar traits as early homosapians as regards human development?

Arminius · August 1, 2016, 11:34pm

You may call it “regression”, but what I mean is more the cyclic or spiral aspect of any development, thus also any cultural development (evolution, history). So any development means much of analogical repetition, retry, iterance. So this behavior is not pathological but normal in the sense of the respective cultural development. If there had been “modern gangs” during the 18th century in the Occidental culture, then their members would have been punished to death before joining, so they would have had no chance at all. But the same thing at the same place but at a different time (for example the current time or the time of the late antique Imperium Romanum) is possible. Societies must be decadent enough to have such “modern gangs”. this “modern gangs” or other examples show very clearly that the development is backward (“regressive”), although it is forward (“progressive”).

Okay, some people may say that decadent cultures (humans) are just pathogical cultures (humans), but that it is not true, because they are just old. Being old is (still!) not pathological.

Lev_Muishkin · August 9, 2016, 9:40am

Why - because you are a child of the Universe?
Why- because you are morally superior?
Why - because yer loverly.
Why - because pretty angels dance on your cheeks and night and sprinkle their tears on your eyes to wake you up
Why - because you are rainbows and buttercups.