It seems that the natural tendency in the face of such appalling, senseless carnage is to assign responsibility to the people and political viewpoints one doesn’t like, and then to project one’s own attitudes onto them, all before the first bit of evidence comes in.We’re pattern-seeking animals, Marko. There’s no evolutionary advantage to assuming that Ook and Eek disappeared from the troop because Random Incomprehensible S#!t. When there aren't any patterns to find, we'll make 'em up.
This is one of those weeks when I spend a great deal of time wondering how our species has ever made it down from the trees and off the African savanna.
Also, we didn't make it off the savanna in spite of our propensity for killing, we made it off the savanna because of our propensity for killing. In order to properly control something, one first must not deny that it exists.
People get mauled by chimps when they forget that the cute, birthday-hat wearing Bonzo in front of them is a fanged killer who has no qualms about using violence to get what it wants. It's easy to let all the sonnets and science, art and architecture lull you into forgetting that you're locked in the biggest monkey cage of all with a few billion critters who make Bonzo look like a tame kitten.
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“Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.” ― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
That's what I like so much about you, Tam - that warm and fuzzy feeling you radiate and share with those around you. ;)
Just curious, do you think it was the Democrats that forbid the upper branches that brought the early apes out of the trees ("Pay no attention to the carnivores, we are saving you from falling from the trees! Vote for me!"), or was it another agenda that took the game of dare ("Gack! Mom! Eek threw my fruit to the ground again!") to greater heights? Vistas? Horizons?
Sooooo...herds of peaceful grazing hominids, co-op in peace and prosperity, with never a thought of competition..HEY YOU!!! Getaway!!!I sniffed her first.
OK, so they replicate by long division, too.
In fact, in the course of normal working life, one will meet folks whose gene pool apparently stopped at the foot of the tree. Mostly, they are not folks which one would wish to know better. Occasionally a PPO and and CCW are the appropriate response to their existence.
Have we physically changed from living in the tree? Mostly, but the brains of some and some part of the brains of all still guide our existence.
Oh well, so what? Like anything will ever change, much.
Thank you, Tam. I was getting mighty sick of the "ZOMG TEA PARTY!!!!111" "NO ZOMG OWS!!!!111"
He. Is. A. Freakin'. Nutjob.
Period. Full stop. He's not funded by the BATFEIEIO. He's not part of the NWO. There was no one-armed man.
NUT. JOB.
We came down from trees and moved across that lovely lion-filled savannah rather rapidly into caves. After the cave bears were evicted by force, of course.
Which safe harbor, the woody one with a penthouse view but lots of rain, or the one with scary flickering shadows on the back wall from the fire up front, is more important to our current mental mechanisms?
Maybe we're chromonsonally deficient. The wandering stupendous badass bipeds were chased off the savannah by leopards or eaten, while those that wandered badass into a cave became bear-food - until at about 73,000 (±4,000 yrs.) when their luck nearly ran-out when they wandered badass into the Toba Event - when perhaps as few or as many as 10,000 breeding pairs survived, which is possible evidence why we have 46 rather than the normative 48 of our closest primate semi-siblings - and which is also maybe what made Denisova and Neander such badass cuties as late as they did...
That I am alive now is due to my being descended from apes who pushed the OTHER apes out of the trees and hooted as the lions ate them. I embrace my inner monkey.
I teach my medic students that:
Like sharks, tigers, and killer whales, humans are apex predators. Humans ruthlessly kill everything that they need to in order to survive.
Humans are the most dangerous animal on the planet. Get them sick, injured, or intoxicated, and like any other animal that is filled with adrenaline, they WILL kill you.
Never forget that.
As I keep telling people, why, yes, we _are_ the most dangerous monkeys on the planet. Only a human will kill you for, say, playing yer Goddamned rock'n roll "music" too loudly, or being a loathesome criminal thuggish un-musical degenerate saxophonist.
Up to now, I have been able to restrain my violent music-critic impulses. Besides, who would want to bite the face off of a saxophonist? They probably taste really bad.
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