Ancient man’s group dynamics were much more different than that of present state society and therefore is not the same.
(Primitive man ( Prestate society) versus modern existance which is state society.)
I would argue that most of man’s metaphysical ideals are not into harmony with nature at all.
I would argue that as civilization has went forward in history nature anymore is playing a lesser role in the affairs of man which includes natural selection and that our dependency of nature is being far more overshadowed by our destruction of it.
Joker, I am not arguing that modern civilization in its current incarnation is wholly natural. But, civilization, is a natural extension of man. In fact I agree with your previous post to a point. Man’s metaphysical constructs are, in a purely secular sense, derived from nature. Primitive man began the concept of metaphysics by observing the natural world. Therefore, metaphysics is as natural as man in his most primitve form. It only does not seem so due to thousands of years of development.
And so what is unatural about that for man? A badger digs its den in the ground, a bird constructs its nest in a tree. Which one is natural? They both use objects to line their home. Is that natural? Of course. Man has a more complicated environment and it has more objects but, it is natural for man… Wether we delude ourselves or face facts it does not really detract that both are natural things for us. A badger couldn’t live in a sparrows nest., It would be unnatural for the badger.
Could a tribesman from deep in the Amazon survive Newyork, without getting killed or arrested?, No. Could a New yorker survive the tribe deep in the Amazon? No. Both humans are in unnatural environments.
You can’t put all of us in the same environment that would be unnatural.
Man and his environments are natural for man. It would make us all comfortable if man all lived with our notion of natural environment though.
Ain’t gonna happen. We spread out too fast and lost all ability to be the same. In some ways we have multiple breeds of humans if you look at it with an objective clinical eye.
How is civilization a extension of man? For thousands of years prior to civilization man was like any other animal living amongst the natural landscape.
There was indeed a cause that caused a transition but the arguement here is whether if it had merit or if it was baseless.
( I choose the former.)
How? I can prove many metaphysical assumptions as being baseless.
That may be true but what they didn’t know that we now know today is that human beings are finite and therefore any observation will always be incomplete unto being flawed.
Because man is supplanting a predetermined existence saying that his ideals are concrete when infact most of his ideals are nonexistant everywhere beyond him.
It unnatural to say that cosmos conforms and supports ideals when it clearly doesn’t.
Animals don’t have simulations, symbolic signifiers, ideals of how life should be and many other scenarios that man stands alone with.
I would argue that the tribesman wouldn’t survive because he wasn’t knowledgable about any artificial enviroment like that of a modern city and that the modern civilian wouldn’t survive because he never acquired natural survival skills beyond his artificial upbringing.
You are trying to put the badger in the sparrow’s nest.
What is natural for one, is not natural for another. Stop comparing humans to other species and claiming we are not natural. Instead observe that humans are being humans and badgers are being badgers and a sparrow is being a sparrow. You can’t put a badger in a sparrow nest and say it is natural. You can’t put a human in the ocean to live beside dolphins. We are mentally complicated hominids. Nothing to our knowledge has ever existed like us before, close to it, but not quite… So, How can you even begin to think we are not natural. We are just a wee bit freaky but, freaky is still natural.
The jungle or the desert is prejudiced against man in some sense. They’re certainly not pleasing so the senses. Whether it’s socially constructed moral prejudice against a group of outcasts, or prejudice by everyone against everyone in a state of chaos, you’re still gonna be stuck with that problem of having to strive to survive. At least the socially constructed systems are predictable and provide at the very least an inspiring illusion of upward mobility.
Here’s the problem with using english words in a logical construct. You say “Is or isn’t?” and then you use a word that’s susbstantially relative. Is snow white? Are cars fast? Do airplanes fly? Are humans natural? None of them have conclusive results because they don’t have a definition of pure precision.
However, it can be fairly stated that human beings are the focal point between paradigms. The most striking change of habitat behaviour on earth since the development of life is through no other species but humans. We have done away with the concept of meshing with primitive habitat and exploited the advantages of defying it. We didn’t rise above any statistical factors however. Events were somewhat probable, given that nature had high chances of evolving apes, and their behaviours had high chances of evolving further. I do wonder- any animal could have easily beaten us to it if homo sapien had somehow dwindled by a sudden predator. Give a few million years. Maybe whales were next in line. Or maybe felines. The same sort of revolution probably would have occured, and very much the same technology would have existed right down to a familiar piece of hardware at your local store. The only difference is that it might not be measured in centimetres and inches, and not the same brand names on the package.
Still some astronomers feel that humanity evolved right when the skies were their most observable, which makes us almost too strange for coincidence. Either way, the primitivist agenda makes me think of an adult that doesn’t know his own strength, smashes something, then wants to be young again and dismantle the responsabilities thrust on him.
What you are denying is the natural teleology of creation which influences functions, goals, organizations and qualititative intentions amongst all species. This same principle is a deep part of all evolution biologically.
It seems that what you are saying is that man’s constructed civilization is his defiance against natural habitual forms of living and it is also a defiance against the cold universe that is amoral or uncaring of human events. Such a conjecture only proves that man’s natural abilities is escaping him with there instead being a artifice to replace them.
Joker,
Your assertion that man is not natural is based on your experiences; out of which you have constructed a model of reality which you make use of to get by the day. In this model man stands as an anomaly because he is in a class of his own; because from experience you cannot relate him to any other animal. He has the power for conceptual thought and forethought - which is essentially a model of the future based on past experiences - i.e. he sees the sun rise a million times, he assumes it will happen again tomorrow and lives his life based on these assumptions. They may be correct most of the time but by they are by no means absolutely correct. The sun could not rise up tomorrow. That would obviously be an anomaly in our collective model, but it by no means means it’s an anomaly in the thing our system represents. What I say I means is that our model was wrong and must now evolve to incorporate the anomaly as a working part of the model.
Man is unnatural only if you limit the scope of naturality to a narrow static model of nature. The anomaly is in your representation of the world and not the world itself, and you’d be hard pressed to show how it’s an anomaly of the represented. If we were to consider all that does not fit into our collective model of nature unnatural, then the list of things unnatural would undoubtedly be longer and continue to get longer than of things natural.
For example, I have made that screen door argument time and time again, but you have avoided it every time I brought it up. Hence from my experience I have constructed a natural world order of things in which you continually ignore or misinterpret my point. If, for instance, you respond to my post and in it acknowled what my argument means to yours, then that will be unnatural to me based on what I know natural to be. I would say:
“Nature did not cause Joker to reply to me the way he did. Joker’s reply was unnatural!”
A lot can be unnatural if you limit naturality to what your experiences have been in your short life-span. Instead of saying of the thing that doesn’t fit into your representation of the world as not belonging to the world itself, you should instead accept that your representation is incomplete, and always will be by the way, and that you must change to accommodate anomalies, instead of doing the religious thing and saying the anomalies do not belong in, or are not of, the world itself - hence your model remaining correct throughout your intellectual maturation all the while a progressively large list of shit getting added to the unnatural section.
It goes much deeper than that Erlir as my expiriences are a symptom or reaction of a engulfing spectrum of humanity’s insanity that surrounds me.
No. Man is an anomaly because instead of relating to all of creation by living or expiriencing it through his instinctual senses he instead tries to make a ideal out of all the cosmos trying to conform all reality to his metaphysical wants and desires but the anomaly lies in that the cosmos will never submit to the whims of men.
Our whole system is based on a unsubstantiated metaphysical idealism.
It is an anomaly and there is no way in repairing a metaphysical anomaly by constructing or heaping more metaphysical propositions upon it.
Our system will only be fixed when man meets his end in global catastrophe or in the event of infinite regression.
Our system of being won’t evolve if we insist on being contrary to our very individual nature down to the very enviromental symbiosis that substains us.
You think that man’s existance will one day be fixed by adding on new metaphysical criteria for mankind’s future but I shall say it won’t since your so called solution will only bring more self destruction amongst man with the mendacious lie of the " ideal".
By calling everything beyond the measure of man static is a baseless moral judgement.
Tell me Erlir, what is static?
I can only wish that everything I have discovered was of my own making but my expiriences have lead me to think otherwise.
If my book should ever become published perhaps then I shall prove somthing to the world through my own eyes.
For once I can agree with you but unlike yourself I am unafraid to travel the crevices where other men don’t like to stray and I am willing to go far beyond in dismantingly man’s insanity so that for a second of my life before death I can breathe relief for once amongst so much insanity.
Use it again in this thread. I challenge and call you out.
If you would atleast listen to me Erlir without prejudice you would find that in my philosophy and form of thinking I rarely ever talk about myself.
My whole philosophy is not about myself but rather it is my expression of showing mankind being insanely contrary in all ways to the rest of existence.
Only things which are green are natural.
Therefore all things not green are unnatural.
This is elementary stuff so the answer should come easy. It is also the form of your argument. Think about it…weigh the options…is man really unnatural - meaning not having been created by, nor belonging, nature- or is your first premise about what is natural - arrived at anecdotally - too narrow?
That’s a problem. Before someone can start talking intelligently about others, they must first know, or at least study, themselves.
You have yet to prove that all things green and organic are not natural therefore you can’t go analyzing the next step without reaching a conclusion of that subject first.
( I also notice that you managed to not describe your view of things being static. Why is that? )
I know myself quite well but I feel it is detrimental in explaining my thoughts by putting myself as the main focus of all attention.
Joker,
Correct. That is what’s wrong with the argument I presented. The first premise is not axiomatic and it is too narrow.
Neither have you shown why metaphysical idealism, or whatever you wish to call a function of our big brains, is unnatural. It is certainly unique to life on this planet, but uniqueness is by no means an anomaly, because after all, all animals, and things, posses something that defines them as that thing instead of as another.
Your argument about man being unnatural because of his higher thought capacity can be made about any other animal and their defining qualities. Because you equate uniqueness with unnaturality and by virtue of the Identity of Indiscernibles everything could be said to be unnatural. Man can be thought of as unnatural because he’s got a bigger brain and makes use of it more than any other animal; bats can be unnatural because they’re the only mammal that flies, etc.
There are some things that should go without saying. One of those is that reality is seen only as a representation and never directly. Another thing that should go without saying in regards to this model is that when the model encounters something that does not fit or is inconsistent with it, the model should then remodel, instead of itself not changing and declaring the anomaly unnatural. That’s what a static model is. One that does not change despite of it’s inconsistencies or anomalies with the world it’s supposed to represent; one that declares anomalies or things inconsistent with it as sins, unholy, or in your case unnatural.
Face it dude. You do not stand outside existence and can therefore never know what stands outside it (i.e. know what is unnatural, unnatural = outside nature). Besides, there is a clear fallacy in stating something that exists does not belong to existence. Given this, we must always go from the assumption that all that exists belongs to existence, and if something is incompatible with a model or representation of reality, then the fault most likely rests with the representation than with the represented.
Don’t get me started on Hegelian dialectics.