[Orecle]

Originally Posted by David Cain

Humans are animals too. Evolution has geared us to survive at all costs even if that cost is quality of life. Reactive, overemotional qualities like paranoia, mistrust, and hate provide very strong incentives to keep all potential physical threats at bay.

Read your article and I like and respect your intent. How ever I have trouble with some of your assertions

How has evolution geared us to survive at all costs? How has paranoia, mistrust and hate been strong incentives?

How many civilisations would still be there if they had been a little more mistrustful and paranoid? American indians, many indeginious south American tribes, many African and Australian tribes, even many European tribes. The fact is, there is another emotion called greed. A man or a nation does not need to hate you to want to steal from you. You dont have to hate him or the nation to defend yourself and attack him in a way that makes him/nation think twice before robbing you again. many people have died or been stung (enron, anyone) from not being vigilant

Originally Posted by David Cain

Logically, a caveman who dominates others, hates anyone who might threaten him, and is not afraid to get violent would have been far more likely to become the alpha male, which would allow him to procreate much more frequently and pass his genes along.

It's unfortunate, but a gentle and trusting caveman would never have become dominant and would rarely get a chance to procreate.

You do not have to hate someone, who makes you feel threatened. There are tales of opposing generals having dinner before going to war. In fact most rivals actually have respect for one another and view their feuds as artistic competition, even wen lives are at stake

Originally Posted by David Cain

So guess who we're descended from?

This alpha/beta pattern is typical to all sorts of mammals. Humans are only now beginning to leave this model behind, but our bodies are still tuned for it.

See, hate has a use in the animal kingdom, but that does not mean that hate has ever been directly conducive to quality of life for human beings as in how enjoyable life is for us.

Where did you get the idea that animals hate? Violence is not always about hate. It could be control, survival, self defence or sport

Originally Posted by David Cain

Everything you're talking about (the events of the 20th century) is just a tiny percentage of the millions of years our bodies and emotions have been evolving. Civilization has changed the playing field completely for homo sapiens, but we're stuck with these animalistic traits that no longer serve us (reactivity, paranoia, hate, etc.) War is the ultimate manifestation of how ingrained these ancient behaviors are.

Where is your proof emotions have evolved? What were we missing before/ or wat do we feel now that our ancestors did not?

How has civilisation changed the playing field? This is the most confusing part.

How is reactivity, paranoia and hate animalistic?
Pls show one animal that clearly exhibits reactivity, paranoia and hate on a regular bases?

When animals attack each other, thay do it for food and physical defence of themselves and offspring, we humans do it for many more reasons than the 3 you suggest, so who is the animal of the 2

Originally Posted by David Cain

In other words, our bodies and minds still tell us we're in danger far more than we really are, because millions of years of evolutions have predisposed us towards being overprotective of ourselves and our egos.

I can agree with this, but I do not think it has anything to do with evolution. In every age, there always has been and there always will be dangers. There will be people who survive them and people who fall

Originally Posted by David Cain

It's the same reason we have a tendency to overeat. Because of technological advancement, food is not hard to find for those of us in developed countries, but our bodies are geared towards surviving feast or famine conditions. But eating too much is rarely helpful to us now, because we seldom experience the 'famine conditions' that overeating has always compensated for. We're out of balance, in other words.

Or people just like satiety, notice you dont get many people overeting veggies

Originally Posted by David Cain

Here's how: Preserving one's life is not the same as preserving one's quality of life. Biological evolution is guided solely by how good a creature is at reproducing and keeping its children alive. The genes we have are the genes of those individuals who mated the most. And dominance has always been the biggest determiner of that.

This is unfortunate, because society is still gripped by these impulses. That's why we have wars and violence. I think we are evolving past hate, but evolution is slow.

You seem to assume that all wars are started because of hate. Alot of wars were based on theft. I do not have to hate you to want to steal your watch, TV, laptop, your wife, husband, car, land, oil, gold, money. Violence is not solely caused by hate.

Originally Posted by David Cain

I explained all of this in the article I linked. If you do not agree, I would like to hear why you think humans have such a tendency towards hate and violence? Where did it come from? Nothing happens without a reason.

Pls feel free to shoot down anything you do not agree with. By the way, my claims are just my opinions

Human tendency towards violence.

You hear a term in personal development and that is 'Negative emotions'. So people are adviced to think postive and feel positive emotions and disgard negative emotions. I happen to see all emotions, as one of the, if not the most incredible tool a human can have, including hate.

I see emotions as an incredible gauge to how you are feeling, which in turn would help you decide a future course of action. Kind of like the same way the sensations of hot or cold on the skin can help you decide wat to experience next.


Emotions are messages

Wen I feel emotions, I take them as a message. So if i am doing an action and it makes me feel happy, I generally want more, and if I am doing an action that makes me sad, then I want to stop

Is this enough? NO

There are many individuals, who feel Haopy doing things that make others feel extremely sad.


ie there are individuals who feel (rightly or wrongly) that invading Irag is right, and they are happy about it, there are also people who are extremely sad about it.

when I feel an emotion, jealousy, envy, passion, excitement. To me they are all messages to take some form of action. depending on the message and my values i act accordingly
ie jealousy - Do i feel threatened, inadequate, paranoid, maybe I am justified. with all this info I now choose to do this.........

The emotion of hate, I see as a message of ultimate dislike. There is nothing in this world that comes to mind that I think enough about to make me feel this emotion. But if there was i would ask myself, why do i hate this? Is it a good reason? Is there anything I can do about it? then I would take action based on my value and my answers

You see not everybody does and can have the power to act on their hate. If a burglar attacked a love one, I do not have to hate him to smash him to a pulp

hate to me is a hardwired emotion like any other, there to send a message. I think what is more dangerous is to deny and repress feelings and pretend they dont exist, in the name of being positive. Like people who deny the emotion of jealousy and envy and then flip out in other ways.