cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
But is it wrong? You pejorate it but bring no actual argument. Thank you for playingYou keep spouting this faux scientific concept that people are "apex predators" and predatory nature of human kind.
No. Not Kzin[ti]. They have a pure carnivore ethos. We monkeyboys are so much more morally ... versatile.Yet this is not the distinguishing characteristic of humanity. From your false premise, you go on and on about how weapons "make us civilized" and survival of the fittest as if life in the US is some sort of urban jungle where to live until the next day is a victory over evil doers and other humans who want to take your life.
While it's a fun fantasy to imagine us as some form of Kzin
Fuck social anthropology right in the ... Kzin.you completely miss what science and physical and social anthropology
No. It is based on all of human history. We are pack hunters and that has marked our history from Willendorf to present day. I sense you are made unhappy by that, but again ... where am I wrong? Specifics and not general principles if you want to advance the argument.actually tell us about ourselves. The most successful species on this planet have one thing in common, a social gene for cooperation and the willingness to sacrifice for the group. This genetic predisposition for cooperation has been studied extensively in honey bees but is also present the most successful animals on the planet, ants. Mathematical models for behavior have shown quite clearly that animals who live cooperatively in communities that will rally to defend the community at the cost of individual lives are much more successful than analogous animals with the same abilities but do not cooperate. What other successful animals have this gene? Quite a few, but one of them are human.
I'm not going to argue your philosophy, which is based on some lone wolf model of behavior because it is based upon a false premise.
Agreed. But individuals may pursue a different calculus. At that point you have the unpleasant option of requiring cooperation. "And that is when the fight started."The reality is that people do best when they cooperate with each other while having the freedom to act independently.
The threat is specific to people who would want me or someone harm. I consider that sort of threat an essential ingredient in an ordered society consisting of individuals always seeling advantage.And, actually, wolves don't survive well outside of a pack. When we cannot trust our neighbor, whether it be due to a form of threat or simply because they don't live by the same social mores as others, our ability to perform the two contradictory functions of cooperation and independence breaks down.
And so, your argument about guns as a civilizing force is ridiculous. Threatening people
A true foundation but not the only one. A similar argument can be mounted for religion as the cornerstone of civilization.or performing acts that cause fear only drive people into tighter knit and smaller groups. These groups may act against others out of fear, whether imagined or real. Civilized societies that successfully operate on large scales have well understood rules of behavior where people know what to expect from each other in specific situations. They also don't kill each other out of fear. People cooperate to produce more than they can by themselves. Cooperative behavior is fundamental to pre-industrial agriculture, which is the true foundation of civilization, not the gun.
Now we get to the meat of it. I disagree at all levels. As long as we are not a Utopia of individuals willingly building a better society (my principal beef with Rob Roy and others who invoke a deus ex machina to make us suddenly want to play team) I disagree. The gun, or any level-One weapon, in the hands of the individual remains the Gold Standard of personal freedom and comparative safety.Whether we own guns or not, therefore is not relevant to civilization.
I imagine you would have advised me to buy securities in '90 as well. That is a massive fail of "trend line" extrapolation. It's the breaks in the trends that tend to fascinate students of history.[/quote]Removing guns in a fragmented and fraught social situation won't make us more civilized, nor will seeding society with enough firepower to slaughter all members many times over. Removing fear and it's causes are the answers. Such as eliminate food and shelter insecurity. Remove barriers to social mobility -- let those with the most ability rise up and provide those with less ability a safety net where their dignity and security are maintained.
The reality is that, as outlined in the link belo, the US and the people of world on the whole are living in some of the safest and most peaceful times in history. It feels otherwise but that's just fake fear. So again, your perceived need to arm yourself in preparation for battle with other apex predators -- this testosterone driven rhetoric is too funny to me -- is due to cowardice and fearfulness.
"forsooth" LOL, who uses that word in everyday conversation? How funny
The World Is Not Falling Apart
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html
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