I’m a bit late on this one October but I’d like to talk, see if I change my mind during writing this….
Either we are all here to support one another, and find our humanity in empathy and love, or else we are all alone, and the trick is to get over it and then sink or swim.
We can’t practically live alone, we’d die. So we need others to physically survive.
In our heads, we’re always alone (?as far as we can tell). Through language, limited though it is, we can exchange ideas and find people who share our ideas about life. Feeling part of a group can make us feel content and secure. A group also gives us possibilities for growth and achievement (‘progress’).
We’re animals. As much as we like to separate ourselves from ‘the animal kingdom’ etc, that’s just human narcissism: we think we’re above all the other animals (why?). The evidence is our superiority due to our opposable thumbs and big brains. That superiority is shown through our aggressive dominance (as it is with all animals?).
Life is competitive. Life is about survival of the dominant genes. Why do we have children? Not for altruistic reasons, or at least I haven’t heard an altruistic reason yet. I’m still open to changing that view though.
We are here to survive and pass on our genes and that’s it. And what’s right or wrong with that? It just is. That’s what animals do.
What is humanity? To me it’s being an animal that appears to have attributes that other animals don’t. I don’t know if consciousness is a useful attribute for survival. But I do think that because we do have big brains, that we can keep stretching them. We don’t have to accept our current thoughts; we can change our ways of thinking. For me one way of doing this is by talking about things which bore me silly, or which I disagree strongly with. I try and listen and understand what it is that other people find interesting. By doing that, trying to enter their worlds, I can maybe get a glimpse of why I think differently to them and vice-versa. But I don’t assume that anyone is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, I’m interested in ‘why’.
Delphine said:
And when I look at the world around me it is very difficult to see evidence that we were intentfully DESIGNED to function lovingly and cooperatively.
I think we were designed as all animals, to survive. What is the purpose of life? To continue to grow and adapt. If that growing and adapting means cooperating, we’ll do that (within our family/tribal/social/country groups). People don’t drive the wrong way down a highway, that’s cooperation. We don’t all murder our neighbours these days, in most countries (?not sure that’s a fact). I think we’re slightly better at living together than we used to be, so that’s improvement.
So human survival isn’t all that bad a concept! The more we realise we live on one world, the more we know about what happens on this planet, the more we live together cooperatively, the more chance we have of surviving as a species.
As soon as we’re born, we’re selfishly fighting for survival. We aren’t designed to give up our water and food to someone else, unless we have more than enough. Then we might share so that we’re not alone and we have another group member etc etc…
People in some parts of the world have far more than enough for survival today. People in other parts of the world are dying right now from lack of food, clean water etc. Obviously we are a competitive, survival-driven animal, because if we weren’t, the situation would be different.
I don’t find myself cooperating with many people around me (in the real world) because I don’t want what they want. It is difficult finding people who want to share, to enjoy and who are open to real conversation.
But why should life be easy? Why do we expect things to be good just because we live? Survival is about knowing what you want and fighting for it – and that includes fighting for cooperation and better understanding if that’s what you want.
Thanks October, that clarified some stuff for me. Hope it isn’t too off-the-wall for your thread, because it feels it to me (but then I’m often on my own and I’m used to it, what the heck) best, P
