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Maybe if we had evolved to be more like iguanas we wouldn't even have society at all. We would just sit on rocks, seeking to stay warm, never striving for more
by jostmey 6y ago
Maybe if we had evolved to be more like iguanas we wouldn't even have society at all. We would just sit on rocks, seeking to stay warm, never striving for more
- curation 6y agoSince Global West "more" has delivered destruction of the biosphere, I'll also long for contemplative humanity not colonial.
- sushshshsh 6y agoI think I also prefer the docile society of technological backwardness, sitting on rocks in the warm equatorial sun and eating algae, none the wiser to the possibilities sitting around me involving smelting and electricity :) But the comment above us is probably right, it would seem that the iguanas have been "doing nothing" for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Meanwhile humans have "accomplished a lot" in the past 10,000 years lets say, at the expense of many many many other things.
- cal5k 6y agoAh yes, the idea of the noble savage. Back when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, in addition to fighting the Mugabe-lead rebels the Rhodesian military had to routinely step in to stop rival tribes from slaughtering each other. The default state of humanity is tribal warfare, not some beautiful Eden-esque utopia. "Colonialism" wasn't the cause, this is just humanity. I don't know why people are so keen to deny this. Nature is brutal and yet still beautiful, and I don't see why humanity should consider itself to be special in that regard.
- WD-42 6y agoSorry, you can’t compare warring factions in an already war torn and exploited country to the normal behavior of humanity.
- gearhart 6y agoTalking about the normal behaviour of humanity is like talking about the normal outcome of addition. It depends entirely on the inputs.
- luckylion 6y agoWho taught the first human tribe engaging in warfare the idea? Who taught chimps? Who taught all the other species that fight over resources?
- Turing_Machine 6y agoCan you give us an example of a country that wasn't war torn and exploited at some point in its history?
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoIf you go back far enough, you get this: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/new-study-of-prehistoric-skeletons-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/new-study-o...
- throw51319 6y agoYup, a huge fallacy used to push an agenda of "how it really was!" Yes - the world was peaceful until the big bad West came into play. Very bad people! Lol. The reality is as you lay above. Constantly clashes for resources and land, just as the lives of wild animals are in the present. Even just watching the birds eating from a limitless supply of seeds this morning, they were fighting and establishing an order.
- danans 6y ago> The default state of humanity is tribal warfare, not some beautiful Eden-esque utopia. "Colonialism" wasn't the cause, this is just humanity. Colonialism isn't the cause, but colonialism, powered by weapons and transportation technology and the concept of manifest destiny, massively increased the scope and scale of human exploitation of other humans.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- secondcoming 6y agoThis is an animated map of who owned what parts of Europe over the past 1000 years. Do you consider 'colonialism' to be different to any other form of human expansion done since time began? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI
- danans 6y ago> This is an animated map of who owned what parts of Europe over the past 1000 years. Who said colonialism didn't happen in Europe? Scotland and Ireland were arguably where the English prototyped their methods of subjugating countries. > Do you consider 'colonialism' to be different to any other form of human expansion done since time began? Yes. Colonialism as a systematic state supported effort to subjugate other nations and overtake their resources is very different than migration, for example.
- Turing_Machine 6y agoNote that pretty much all of the North American megafauna were wiped out within a few thousand years of the arrival of the proto-Native Americans. The only exceptions were species that were total badasses (bears, pumas), extremely prolific (deer), or a combination of badass and prolific (wolves, bison). Also note that the pre-Contact Aztecs weren't exactly nice people. I believe it was Neal Stephenson who observed that one measure of how much the Aztecs sucked was that when the Spanish Inquisition took over, things actually became more humane.
- sfink 6y agoYou may be right, but s/prolific/tasty/ mostly works as well. Species can survive humans if (1) the humans can't wipe them out (badass, prolific) or (2) humans don't want to wipe them out (tasty/useful, invisible, cute).
- vagrantJin 6y agoHahaha. Who stepped in to do what? I don't think you've thought this answer through mate. Anothet time mate.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how wrong another comment is or you feel it is. If you know more than another commenter, that's great, but in that case share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. Responding to bad information with good information improves this place; just putting others down makes it worse. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=know%20more%20share%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- praptak 6y agoI don't see how this is bad. If I could rewire my reward center to keep me happy with not striving for more, I'd do that.
- sushshshsh 6y agoTotally agree with this. The iguanas have evolved to be able to totally subsist with what is in front of them and not strive for more. Their Maslow checklist is 100% complete :)
- me_me_me 6y agoYeah, but Iguanas don't post on HN.
- drewbug 6y agoRecreational drugs are widely available
- praptak 6y agoThey do not work that way.
- shard 6y agoDepends on the drug, and the interpretation of "not striving for more": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotivational_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotivational_syndrome
- wasdfff 6y agoBuddhism does, however.
- mamon 6y agoBuddhism as a religion is basically anti-life. Wanting something, having goals and pursuing them - that's what every living creature does. Except for Buddhist, who often deliberately choose death as their way out of their miserable lives, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu Buddhism is a religion of losers trying to convince themselves that being a loser is OK.
- kubanczyk 6y agoIguanas are at the mercy of evolution. We aren't. Evolution is cruel beyond our comprehension and so it does not have mercy. Today they sit in the sun, their grandchildren can be cannibals eating each other. We have a say, for now.
- hirundo 6y ago> Iguanas are at the mercy of evolution. We aren't. Not being at the mercy of evolution is an illusion caused by being at the mercy of both genetic and memetic evolution. If we do things that are at odds with either our biological and social adaptation, we tend to not replicate as much as otherwise. For instance we can chose not to eat or have sex, but that just edits our patterns out of the population as it always has. We can change society such that acts that were adaptive are now maladaptive, but that just changes evolutionary pressures rather than eliminating them. Even as we master evolution it still masters us. It's like the illusion in orbit that you have escaped gravity, but you're just falling continuously.
- kubanczyk 6y agoI do care whether I'm subjected to cultural pressures or to genetic pressures and I would rather not muddle my worldview by conflating them to a single category. Calling them collectively "evolution" is not a subtle mistake to make. In fact placing together memetics and genetics in a single sentence doesn't even compile for me. It's like stamp-collecting and murder. Yes, my whole point is that we are operating on memetic engine and it works wonders. I'll point out one thing "that just edits our patterns out of the population as it always has", just like not eating or not having sex: being infected by tuberculosis bacteria. By your reasoning developing a vaccine is just silly. Do we even want to rescue any Chopins or Orwells or Kafkas. Vaccine (which is effectively a meme) "just changes evolutionary pressures rather than eliminating them". If it happens, good, if it doesn't happen, no worries? That's the message? Iguanas surely don't give a fuck about their Chopins.
- Volundr 6y ago> I do care whether I'm subjected to cultural pressures or to genetic pressures and I would rather not muddle my worldview by conflating them to a single category. Calling them collectively "evolution" is not a subtle mistake to make. But they absolutely are the same category. 100%, and always have been. Just look at how mating preference has affected many species, ex: the peacock. "Cultural" pressure preferred men with a colorful booty, and over time genetics conformed. The same is true if the "culture" prefers people who are soft spoken, adversarial, drawn to the color green, or have a funny left ear. If the culture means that people with a certain trait are more successful and thus more likely to reproduce over a sufficient period of time genetics will trend towards producing more individuals like that. As for the rest of your comment, I keep reading it over and over and I can't figure out what your getting at. Developing a vaccine means more people in my group are likely to survive to reproduce, thus (given sufficient time) evolution will favor those species that can produce vaccines (or not be vulnerable to the disease in the first place).
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoMaybe on an evolutionary meta-level striving for more is the equivalent of sitting on rocks and trying to stay warm - and we're stuck in this hyperactive local minimum one step from collective suicide because we're not smart enough to work that out.