Relevant points Ecclesiastes failed to address:
Needless violence, unhealthy violence is what I speak against.
If a family gets the flu, is it healthy for the father to kill his children, his wife then himself?
Ought he rationally do it?
I’d say, likely not. It is an unhealthy application of violence. Violence has it’s place, but it isn’t the solution to all dilemma.
War and conflict have prolonged our existence, but they are not the only components that have led us to where we are, and I do not consider them the most fundamental aspect of our existence.
One must first exist, before one can engage in war or conflict. Therefore, an environment that enables one’s existence, is more fundamental than the ability of an already living being to maintain that existence via war / conflict.
Without human intervention, anyone with severe forms of cancer would die.
Based on your argument, they should. Leave them to their own devices and deny them access to the hospital.
The strong shouldn’t compensate for their weakness. Why should they spend their time healing the afflicted?
Your argument should logically be, if their own body can’t defeat cancer, then they ought be weeded out.
I don’t advocate living in harmony with cancer, and I also disagree that that cancer and ‘bad genes’ ought have the same solution.
Killing isn’t the only solution.
Is your only qualifier to good genes that which enables survival? (This is all death and failure to reproduce establishes)
If so, then you ought have no problem with anything that survives, because it has passed the test, and established that what it does, works.
You’re saying Science degrades our intelligence? Philosophy? Knowledge? Language? Renewable energy?
Books, video, audio recordings, art - degrade our intelligence?
Glasses, hearing aides, artificial limbs?
Telescopes, microscopes, satellites?
Planes, trains, automobiles?
Lights, x-rays, microwaves, fire - degrade out intelligence?
Ovens, plumbing, refrigeration?
Telecommunications?
These are things we have created or harnessed artificially.
The internet that you’re using, the computer you’re using, the power it runs out, the language you’re using, the residence you’re inhabiting, the clothes you’re wearing.
All artificial.
Your claim is, all devolution?
It all degrades our intelligence?
Complete bullshit.
These are products of our intelligence. They strengthen us. They’re all tools that can be used to our benefit. They are solutions to adversity we were once confronted by.
Unless of course, the strong pull them back into line and teach them the error of their ways, allowing them to be productive in a way that benefits the will of the strong.
The strong don’t need to obliterate anything that is different. They can guide to their own interest, if they so choose.
Also, you’re still making the assumption that genetics is to sole determiner of one’s potential. This is false. Again, genetics contributes to a result, but does not single handedly determine it. The external environment plays what I believe to be a more powerful role. We are a species that reacts to and was shaped by our external environment. The internal environment has generally just been a catch up game, trying to meet the demands of what the external environment dishes out to us. If we couldn’t meet those demands, the external environment would kill us.
Yes.
But if he hadn’t stood on their shoulders, where would he be?
To bring together the power of minds, is more effective, than leaving them in isolation.
It is wise to cooperate, even if one could survive in isolation. It is not weak to seek to cooperate, it is the best means of progress.
If one wills progress, one ought will cooperation with all that can aide that pursuit.
You argue that anyone who seeks to cooperate, is doing it out of genetic inferiority. This is wrong.
There is always a way to harness the power of others towards one’s own end. To isolate oneself from that potential, will slow down the rate of one’s progress, unless one is incapable of harnessing the power of others. In which case, that is as much a flaw in one, than the other.
It is one’s ignorance, that disables the capacity to harness the power of the other.
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Stuart
You’re still ignorant of the reason I call your statement arrogant.
You started your statement with the words ‘Others realize’. This says these others are the only ones to comprehend the existence of the possibility, and also that this possibility is a fact beyond doubt, and that if one doesn’t subscribe to the realization’s implications, then it’s only because one is ignorant of the possibility, not because one has just cause to disagree with the implications and evidence to the contrary of the implications.
Arrogance. In a nutshell.
You’re going to say statistically that it’s been certain races that have produced superior technology, then say it must be their superior genetics that enabled them to produce such technology.
I deny that genetics was the sole cause of their capacity. If one doesn’t have a supportive environment that nurtures their potential, they wont be able produce at the same standard than one of similar genetics, but of greater external environment (meaning capacity to nuture and harness one’s potential).
If one man is forced to fight daily to attain their basic needs of survival, and another man is handed their needs on a silver platter, who has more resources to further intellectual pursuits?
Clearly the latter, because their environment enabled it.
They are sent to quality schools, given the knowledge of great men before them, given positive reinforcement in regards to their potential.
How does a man of equal genetics, but living in the dirt, ostracized by society at large, left to fend for himself, produce at the standard that the man with good fortune produces?
With great difficulty.
All you’ve said following this point is founded on the initial premise which I disagree with.
Therefore, I’d only be repeating myself.
You’re getting ahead of yourself, another sign of your arrogance.