Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet to Suit You => Omnivorous Raw Paleo Diet => Topic started by: goodsamaritan on March 16, 2015, 09:42:22 pm
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Derogatory article says the people were starving so they ate elephant meat, even raw.
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/03/in-mugabes-zimbabwe-people-eat-elephant-meat-even-raw/ (http://www.eutimes.net/2010/03/in-mugabes-zimbabwe-people-eat-elephant-meat-even-raw/)
What I observe is that these people see elephant meat as a delicacy, they eat it raw.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/03/12/article-1257292-08A987DD000005DC-604_634x444.jpg)
Anyone can report here what elephant meat tastes like?
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How and about what was the article derogatory? Besides President Mugabe's regime, that is.
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Enthusing about meat from seriously endangered wild animals is rather sick, imo. I admit it would not have been an issue if we had elephant herds the size they were 500 years ago and if only a very few humans ate them, but otherwise it is only sane to leave them well alone, for environmental reasons. Besides, we have already got evidence as to how the environment became devastated after early humans wiped out all the megafauna in the Late Palaeolithic era, so why increase the misery of it all? I strongly urge all RPDers to avoid ruining the environment by buying useless crap like raw coconut oil, raw palm oil etc., not just avoiding eating endangered species.
A far better, more practical, more ethical, and yet still rather exotic approach would be to allow cannibalism to return en-masse. This would save the environment and solve the world overpopulation problem at the same time, while allowing a previously forbidden meat to be eaten as a delicacy. I wonder, does it really taste like pork?(it is after all called "long pig", I believe).
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That website, and the people who visit and comment on this website are seriously messed-up in their mentals.*
"Katy Clevenger"** rightly highlighted the extremely racist statements the author of the article made, such as: “as some people already know, black people are far from being superior to anyone.” , or “blacks are usually lazy.”. And she got largely down-voted!
On the other hand, the other very ignorant people -to put it lightly- who made very ignorant and racist comment were praised!
GS, I really hope you just happen to stumble upon this website, and do not share the same views as this very sad bunch...
Tyler***, when you're starving, you don't give a flying f*ck about the state of endangerment of the food you eat. It's either him, or you. Plus the animal was already dead anyways...
Doesn't eating the flesh of the same specie turn people mad? I thought this was the cause for the mad cow disease?...
Correction:
*Ok, it looks like (as everywhere) their are some more enlightened minds among the rest of them.
**Oops, I think she might've been a member of the Tea-party saying "look, other people are racist-er than us!!". My bad on quoting her...
***...Or were you commenting on GS's ill-suited curiosity? In that case, sorry for the overly agressive response. Actually, sorry anyways... I can get quite emotional sometimes when confronted to what I might consider as disrespect, ignorance...
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Tyler, when you're starving, you don't give a flying f*ck about the state of endangerment of the food you eat. It's either him, or you. Plus the animal was already dead anyways...
Doesn't eating the flesh of the same specie turn people mad? I thought this was the cause for the mad cow disease?..
There was some claim that eating raw human brains caused the problem(re Kuru disease), so not eating the brains would be a solution. Besides, some of the population then developed prion-resistant proteins etc. so as to be immune to the Kuru disease, so natural selection would wipe out the issue, anyway. At any rate, cannibalism is indeed a solution to overpopulation and famine without any harm to the environment.
Starvation does not excuse killing a member of an endangered species.Human life is not sacred and loses its value proportionately as human populations steadily rise. But since the animal was dead(presumably from old age not human predation) it is not so much of an issue.
I do wonder about the dubious link made between European whites and black Zimbabweans. I mean, European whites have already wiped out vast numbers of animal species in their own countries so it is a bit hypocritical to claim that whites are on a higher moral ground, as regards environmentalism, compared to black Africans. At least the blacks have only started wiping out animal species in a big way in the last 65 years or so. Not that this delay was made out of any moral grounds, of course, but still......
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Starvation does not excuse killing a member of an endangered species.Human life is not sacred and loses its value proportionately as human populations steadily rise. But since the animal was dead(presumably from old age not human predation) it is not so much of an issue.
You remind me of the people on other websites who claim "overpopulation is getting bad. We should kill more people.". Well, lets start with you then!
(...You -> "the people", not you...Tyler...ok..)
Tyler, believe me, if you where high up in the polar circle (naked, as you like to be ;))* on the edge of dying from starvation, you wouldn't think twice before bitting into those polar bear's balls. Neither would I. Your mind wouldn't even consider the thought of"letting him live because he's endangered blablabla"... It just wouldn't.
note: I'm not saying human's life is more sacred than that of another being, but when it comes to surviving, you do what you have to do.
Incidentally, GS means well. Citing a controversial article helps generate online discussion which helps the forum.....
I only wish it were an intelligent controversial article.
*http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/humans-naturaloptimal-habitat/
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Survival does not allow the destruction of a nearly-wiped-out species. Full stop. Anyway, if we are talking about environmentalism, should we not be talking about the annihilation of peoples who are decidedly overproducing children, as opposed to those who are not? Whatever the case, if one species has way too many offspring, then it simply does not have the right to wipe out a member of a species which has been almost wiped out, and starvation is simply no excuse at all.
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Survival does not allow the destruction of a nearly-wiped-out species. Full stop. Whatever the case, if one species has way too many offspring, then it simply does not have the right to wipe out a member of a species which has been almost wiped out, and starvation is simply no excuse at all.
Says who? That's you socio-culturally biased point of view.
I spent six months in anthropology classes last year. The teacher talked about a case where researchers were trying to ban whale-hunting by Eskimos, because the whale population was dangerously decreasing. The Eskimos believed hunting whales would on the contrary make their number rise, as it would allegedly force them to reproduce more. So the researchers let them hunt this year. The year after, the whale population had surprisingly increased. Coincidence? Or did the Eskimo way really work? We'll never know...
This is only to illustrate the fact that humans only perceive a fragment of reality. The rest is shaped by external factors such as the culture you were raised in, your social environment, your beliefs...
So your statement might seem rational, logical to you: "It is wrong to kill an endangered specie; The plenty cannot prey on the scarce; One diamond is worth a million times more than a grain of sand". This might be your truth. But it might not be mine.
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Anyway, if we are talking about environmentalism, should we not be talking about the annihilation of peoples who are decidedly overproducing children, as opposed to those who are not?
Annihilate them? Why not educate them, ask them nicely? Raise them on fair terms so they can actually survive with only two kids? That's also an option, hypothetically speaking...
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A far better, more practical, more ethical, and yet still rather exotic approach would be to allow cannibalism to return en-masse.
But the humans should be grass fed in order to be edible — no, sorry: raw-paleo fed. LOL.
… should we not be talking about the annihilation of peoples who are decidedly overproducing children, as opposed to those who are not?
But the nuclear war you long for won’t selectively target the overproducing ones… what a shame! It’s a problem, isn’t it? >: ;D
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Says who? That's you socio-culturally biased point of view.
I spent six months in anthropology classes last year. The teacher talked about a case where researchers were trying to ban whale-hunting by Eskimos, because the whale population was dangerously decreasing. The Eskimos believed hunting whales would on the contrary make their number rise, as it would allegedly force them to reproduce more. So the researchers let them hunt this year. The year after, the whale population had surprisingly increased. Coincidence? Or did the Eskimo way really work? We'll never know...
This is only to illustrate the fact that humans only perceive a fragment of reality. The rest is shaped by external factors such as the culture you were raised in, your social environment, your beliefs...
So your statement might seem rational, logical to you: "It is wrong to kill an endangered specie; The plenty cannot prey on the scarce; One diamond is worth a million times more than a grain of sand". This might be your truth. But it might not be mine.
Not really. Take the example of elephants. They need to spend many years in order to get an elephant from being conceived to being old enough to mate and produce more elephants. The current mass slaughter of elephants cannot be easily replaced by elephants simply going in for more breeding like with the whales suggestion. Plus, while you may have no problem with most species being wiped out other than domesticated ones, I find a world like that deeply repugnant.
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Annihilate them? Why not educate them, ask them nicely? Raise them on fair terms so they can actually survive with only two kids? That's also an option, hypothetically speaking...
The only "nice" method that can encourage people to have fewer children is the education of women. However, the Islamist Fundamentalists are effectively blocking this potential move. Well, perhaps a nuclear war in the Middle-East may help things in this regard.
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But the humans should be grass fed in order to be edible — no, sorry: raw-paleo fed. LOL.
I am sure most non-RPD humans will not mind eating human flesh that has been raised on a diet of McDonald's , doner kebabs and the like.
But the nuclear war you long for won’t selectively target the overproducing ones… what a shame! It’s a problem, isn’t it? >: ;D
I reckon the effects will end up affecting the entire world, re nuclear winter effects etc.
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Not really.
Uhmmm yes really.
Objectively: Can you kill an elephant? Yes, give me a rifle and you'll be eating elephant meat in a minute.
Subjectively: Is it RIGHT or WRONG to kill an endangered specie such as the elephant? You might believe that IN NO CASE can you kill an elephant because "..." , I might believe that killing an elephant is legitimate in certain situations because "...", and other people might have no problem with it because "..."
See, it's all subjective, and largely influenced by your socio-cultural environment.
Did you know that some African tribal kings used to exchange gold, which they had plenty of, against simple pieces of glass with the colonials? How foolish of them, right? I mean, everybody knows gold is worth more than glass....
subjective or objective statement?
Take the example of elephants. They need to spend many years in order to get an elephant from being conceived to being old enough to mate and produce more elephants. The current mass slaughter of elephants cannot be easily replaced by elephants simply going in for more breeding like with the whales suggestion.
I didn't suggest anything with the whales, other than illustrating the fact that different people have their own altered perception of reality.
Plus, while you may have no problem with most species being wiped out other than domesticated ones, I find a world like that deeply repugnant.
Wow, I'm surprised how well you know me, Tyler. Can you read minds? I find your prejudice of people repugnant.
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I am sure most non-RPD humans will not mind eating human flesh that has been raised on a diet of McDonald's , doner kebabs and the like.
I think most humans will simply mind eating human flesh, raw-paleo or not ???
...But they don't have to know >D Another patty, Frank?
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Yes, the theme of the film Soylent Green sounds like a great way to solve overpopulation.
It is difficult to argue with an obvious nihilist like yourself as nihilists are inevitably somewhat slippery types who change their own definitions constantly on a whim. Yes, there are a myriad individual "perceptions" and, no doubt, you are happy to accept even poachers' justifications for wiping out wildlife, but those are irrelevant as there is always a basic "Truth" which cannot be countered, at least not logically.
Take tigers, for example. I believe there are 5,000 tigers domesticated in the US, 3,200 in the wild, and (?) perhaps another 12,000 or so in the world's zoos or domesticated outside the US. OK, so that is 20,000 tigers approximately worldwide. Now, the current human population on Earth is c.7.3 billion. So that means that the value of a tiger's life is the same as the value of 365,000 human lives combined. Similiarly, the value of a human life is therefore the same as 0.00000273972 of a tiger's life. Therefore a human's life is worth squat these days and the value of wildlife is immeasurably greater, by comparison.
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I think most humans will simply mind eating human flesh, raw-paleo or not ???
If faced with starvation, humans all too happily go in for eating human flesh.
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It is difficult to argue with an obvious nihilist like yourself as nihilists are inevitably somewhat slippery types who change their own definitions constantly on a whim.
Which personal definition did I change? Please quote.
Yes, there are a myriad individual "perceptions" and, no doubt, you are happy to accept even poachers' justifications for wiping out wildlife
There again, reading my mind. I never said killing endangered wildlife was generally "ok". I never meant killing was justified for any other reason than pure survival. Stop twisting other people's statements.
but those are irrelevant as there is always a basic "Truth" which cannot be countered, at least not logically.
Take tigers, for example. I believe there are 5,000 tigers domesticated in the US, 3,200 in the wild, and (?) perhaps another 12,000 or so in the world's zoos or domesticated outside the US. OK, so that is 20,000 tigers approximately worldwide. Now, the current human population on Earth is c.7.3 billion. So that means that the value of a tiger's life is the same as the value of 365,000 human lives combined. Similiarly, the value of a human life is therefore the same as 0.00000273972 of a tiger's life. Therefore a human's life is worth squat these days and the value of wildlife is immeasurably greater, by comparison.
Let's reason the way you just did (and calling it "reasoning" is a great overstatement):
There are (the numbers are invented) 3,5 billion Asians in the world. Their are also 500 million Americans. So the life of an American citizen is worth that of 7 Asians?
There is 1 rich man. There are 100 poor people. Therefore the life of a poor man is worth 0,01 of a rich man's?...
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If faced with starvation, humans all too happily go in for eating human flesh.
Uhm that's irrelevant to the context of the -blatantly unrealistic- suggestion you proposed.
As I've understood over-population is the problem you're trying to find a solution to, not famine.
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There again, reading my mind. I never said killing endangered wildlife was generally "ok". I never meant killing was justified for any other reason than pure survival. Stop twisting other people's statements.
Killing for survival is still a meaningless option when humans vastly outnumber the relevant threatened species. Killing for the survival of a few irrelevant individuals who have no intrinsic value, is morally wrong.
Let's reason the way you just did (and calling it "reasoning" is a great overstatement):
There are (the numbers are invented) 3,5 billion Asians in the world. Their are also 500 million Americans. So the life of an American citizen is worth that of 7 Asians?
There is 1 rich man. There are 100 poor people. Therefore the life of a poor man is worth 0,01 of a rich man's?...
*gasp*. You have managed to accurately get the point. Yes, indeed, your above points are dead-on-target. Now you appear to understand the laws of scarcity.....
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Wow, we are definitely not on the same wavelength:
Which personal definition did I change? Please quote.
So you weren't able to find any? That's what I thought.
Killing for survival is still a meaningless option when humans vastly outnumber the relevant threatened species. Killing for the survival of a few irrelevant individuals who have no intrinsic value, is morally wrong.
You're still validating the fact that what may seem immoral to you, might not be to someone else, and vice versa. Do I really have to give additional examples?
Taking part in a purely subjective debate is absolutely useless, so I won't discuss this further.
*gasp*. You have managed to accurately get the point. Yes, indeed, your above points are dead-on-target. Now you appear to understand the laws of scarcity.....
Wait a minute, you don't actually believe that Bill Clinton's life is worth 7 times more than GoodSamaritan's?
Or that your life is worth a hundred times less than the life of that rich guy next door?
How the hell do you even interpret the value of this?
Anyways, the "point" that you made, again, was drawn out from a purely personal, subjective mind conception, that has absolutely no objective value. It's worth as much as the Islamists' belief that "women should not drive cars because they are weaker than men".
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Like I said before, you are a nihilist so that means you do not really have a valid viewpoint, just one that arbitrarily changes like shadows, depending on the individual in question.
There is an overall morality , an individual's perception thereof is irrelevant. In this case, the laws of scarcity mean that the few have more value per individual than the many.
Citing individuals by character was not what I meant. Obviously, if one were to specifically examine Bill Clinton's and GS's characters, one would have to conclude that Bill Clinton is so worthless that 1 Bill Clinton could not equal even one billionth of a GS.
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Like I said before, you are a nihilist so that means you do not really have a valid viewpoint, just one that arbitrarily changes like shadows, depending on the individual in question.
Is that what nihilist really mean? Wikipedia says: "Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived."
I'll tell you what is true, and what isn't:
-I don't change my point of view based on the person I'm speaking to. But you seem to believe I do, so please indicate at what point did it happen.
-I believe that moral values are not entirely abstractly made up, but derive from what I would describe as "natural truths/laws", or survival strategies.
I'll give you an example:
A cultural idea: having reproductive sex with your brother/sister/parents is WRONG.
The Natural truth: reproducing with a close family member goes against the survival logic of seeking diversified genes, and may produce a defective child.
One may hypothesize that the majority of cultural practices and moral values derive from "natural truths", but I can think of too many illogical, unhealthy acts that may deny this idea: such as genital mutilation, to take an extreme example.
But human brain and psychology being as complex as it is, one may actually find some explanation (not justification) to such acts, if one took the time to dig deeper.
There's a whole theory on this, regarding some human psychological issues, devious behaviors and diseases being linked to the clash between the conscious, abstract, fantasizing mind and the unconscious, objective, survival mind.
I've read that some people develop stomach cancer following a stressful situation (divorce, death of a family member) because they figuratively "could not gut" the thing that has happened to them. However, the unconscious mind, that controls almost every aspects of the body, can only view things objectively, and will literally take the message sent by the conscious mind "I can't gut this", and produce an otherwise beneficial stomach cancer* to help digest this abstract piece of "something that is hard to gut". The person can get rid of this truly unnecessary stomach cancer if he works either at properly mourning the situation, or bringing forth to the conscious mind the survival strategy at work.
This is -very- basically how one side of the theory goes. I don't know if it works, but their are a lot of positive accounts. It's called "décodage biologique" in French: Biological Decoding in English, I'm guessing.
Don't worry, the stuff gives me a headache too ;) But I still find it quite interesting, and at least some aspects of it makes sense to me.
*It has been observed that developing a stomach cancer actually helps foxes digest difficult pieces of meat, such as a bunnies' leg with its fur and claw eaten in a rush, that would otherwise obstruct the stomach. When the piece of food is properly digested or gotten rid of, the stomach cancer suddenly disappears.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=segrVSCYbhc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=segrVSCYbhc)
If I was starving I would eat the elephant
if there was no elephant, Id eat frogs,
if there was no frogs, Id eat crawl dads,
if there was no crawl dads Id eat sand.
Starvation and hunger is not a moral issue, all living animals will suck sustenance from neighboring organisms if given the chance, it natures way, there is no consideration of endangered or overpopulated in an organism that is truly starving. All life forms are endangered and no creature gets out of life alive.
As a sentient being capable of compassionate thought, Its a tragedy that intelligent animals such as elephants and whales have been hunted to extinction, and perhaps one can make a case that for the most part survival was not the primary motive, and that human beings have gone on a murderous rampage, killing off half of creation, and leaving huge portions of mother natures earthly body, baron and bleeding.... Yet nature abhors a vacuume and new forms will eventually evolve to take the place of the exterminated, and life will go on...perhaps after the human race devours all the worlds edible plants and animals, there will be a huge die off, and out of the Armageddon little critters will emerge from the wreckage to, inherit the wind, and carry forever onward in the struggle for survival.
This total extinction has happened early in earths history on the primordial level, when microbial overgrowths were responsible for terraforming this rock into the world that is inhabited by us. There may be nothing that we may be able to do to stop the human organisms from doing the same thing that our bacterial ancestors had done by overgrowing the biological medium and going out in an orgy of all devouring mass consumption.....it may be wise to not resist the inevitable transience of life and cling to the illusion that certain spices are more worthy of existence than others. Let us embrace the singularity by which the spirit of life transforms itself in order to persevere from epoch to epoch, no matter how many life forms are left by the wayside, the spirit of life itself will devour the remains of yesterdays giants and transform itself into new beings that rise like the phoenix and ascend into higher forms of existence.
There is no stopping the annihilation of life forms, the kind of policies to cull of the destructive tenancies of man will only aggravate the situation. What you resist persist.
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Is that what nihilist really mean? Wikipedia says: "Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived."
I'll tell you what is true, and what isn't:
-I don't change my point of view based on the person I'm speaking to. But you seem to believe I do, so please indicate at what point did it happen.
The point is that you believe that everybody's individual moral view is potentially valid, so that a particular subject can have a googleplex number of interpretations depending on which individual or culture you are talking about. This means you have a wholly arbitrary stance on matters, and this is rather nihilistic per se.
Take male circumcision/male genital mutilation for example. Even without access to science, one can conclude that there must be a reason for the foreskin to exist otherwise Nature would not have enabled male children to be born with them in the first place, so that removing the foreskin is most definitely unnatural. With scientific knowledge that the foreskin contains many nerve receptors which enable sexual gratification to more easily occur, male genital mutilation can only be reasonably viewed as being unethical and unnatural. Any other stance is not logical.
Take the original example:- the fact that these Africans(Zimbabweans?) were starving is not the fault of the elephant, but the fault of the Africans. There is a saying:- "every country has the government it deserves". In other words, if they wanted to improve their situation, they would overthrow Mugabe at any cost, allow the white farmers to return and restore a democratic government, or they could have far fewer children so as to simply cope better with famine etc. Since they do not choose to do so, they are at fault by implication. Wiping out elephants is not a permanent solution to their problems.I know, I know, the elephant was technically already dead so the Africans had every right to eat it, I am just arguing on a philosophical point.
SB is a true nihilist in every way. The message is just wipe out all species other than what are directly useful to Mankind, that it does not matter and that Nature will fill the vacuum. First of all, there is no guarantee whatsoever that humankind will ever reach the Technological Singularity, maybe sentient AIs might, but not us humans. What I fear is that what will eventually happen is that we humans reach a point where technological and scientific progress stops, with us being unable to reach other habitable planets or make our own Solar System's planets habitable. By that stage we will have wiped out all wildlife other than microbes and domesticated animals(if that, our descendants may even replace domesticated animals with artificial meat raised in hydroponic farms by that stage). Let us suppose, that Mother Earth is fortunate and so along comes a series of asteroid strikes in the next 100 million years or so and wipes out all Mankind, allowing life to proliferate. Well, according to current scientific thought, we currently only have c.300 million years to go before it becomes too hot for life on Earth to exist(maybe 1 billion years if the greenhouse effect does not happen) - since it took several billions of years for very complex life like the dinosaurs to appear on Earth, 1 billion years(or maybe much less) is nowhere near enough for complex lifeforms to appear again via evolution.
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The point is that you believe that everybody's individual moral view is potentially valid, so that a particular subject can have a googleplex number of interpretations depending on which individual or culture you are talking about. This means you have a wholly arbitrary stance on matters, and this is rather nihilistic per se.
Well, as I said, I believe in natural logics and laws, which socio-cultural morals and customs derive from at various degrees. So my stance on such matter isn't totally arbitrary, even though I understand that their is an explanation to every custom and belief.
eg: I personally find covering up the body -when weather is clement- to be wrong, as humans would otherwise benefit from exposing their whole body to the sun (for vit. D and other things).
Take male circumcision/male genital mutilation for example. Even without access to science, one can conclude that there must be a reason for the foreskin to exist otherwise Nature would not have enabled male children to be born with them in the first place, so that removing the foreskin is most definitely unnatural. With scientific knowledge that the foreskin contains many nerve receptors which enable sexual gratification to more easily occur, male genital mutilation can only be reasonably viewed as being unethical and unnatural. Any other stance is not logical.
I too believe that male or female genital mutilation is unhealthy, thus somewhat unnatural. But their is an explanation for such practice, that originates from subjective interpretation of what is moral or immoral, right or wrong, and perpetuation of such belief. And since it's impossible to define what is unnatural, as everything is inherently natural, their might be an objective logic to such act, which derives as I said from the clash of the abstract mind's altered reality and the response of the objective unconscious mind.
Its like the example on BDSM :
"The brain, especially human's, has the tendency to memorize and create new survival strategies by association (sorry, it's really hard for me to explain it clearly) drawn from past experiences.
In the case of masochist, one could reason that these individuals where beaten up by their parents during childhood, and so their brain could've possibly made the association "being physically punished/ hit by a loved one (parent)= being loved/cared for= good".
And so, these people will later want to recreate, reenact this feeling of love and caring by demanding to be hit by a partner."
Take the original example:- the fact that these Africans(Zimbabweans?) were starving is not the fault of the elephant, but the fault of the Africans. There is a saying:- "every country has the government it deserves". In other words, if they wanted to improve their situation, they would overthrow Mugabe at any cost, allow the white farmers to return and restore a democratic government, or they could have far fewer children so as to simply cope better with famine etc. Since they do not choose to do so, they are at fault by implication. Wiping out elephants is not a permanent solution to their problems.I know, I know, the elephant was technically already dead so the Africans had every right to eat it, I am just arguing on a philosophical point.
"every country has the government it deserves" I don't agree with this saying. A lot of times, especially in old colonial and/or developing countries, the new government is put in place by the old colonial forces, or other powerful groups.
Also the people sometimes don't have the necessary insight and knowledge to cope with the socio-political changes, or new gained freedom, you cannot expect from them to produce a fully functioning government right away. If they're not taught how by other successful nations, they'll just have to go through the old trial-and-error, and so they'll make mistakes.
I don't think these people are entirely at fault here.
I think you're making a mistake of judgment on Saber's stance, again, but he'll probably tell you himself.
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Tyler, you might want to split this topic and name it how you see it. Seems the elephant meat discussion was only in the first few replies.
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I too believe that male or female genital mutilation is unhealthy, thus somewhat unnatural. But their is an explanation for such practice, that originates from subjective interpretation of what is moral or immoral, right or wrong, and perpetuation of such belief. And since it's impossible to define what is unnatural, as everything is inherently natural, their might be an objective logic to such act, which derives as I said from the clash of the abstract mind's altered reality and the response of the objective unconscious mind.
Its like the example on BDSM :
"The brain, especially human's, has the tendency to memorize and create new survival strategies by association (sorry, it's really hard for me to explain it clearly) drawn from past experiences.
In the case of masochist, one could reason that these individuals where beaten up by their parents during childhood, and so their brain could've possibly made the association "being physically punished/ hit by a loved one (parent)= being loved/cared for= good".
And so, these people will later want to recreate, reenact this feeling of love and caring by demanding to be hit by a partner."
You are basically stating that everyone has an inner truth that they follow which is valid for themselves. You are quite wrong in claiming that it is impossible to define what is natural. I just did, by pointing out that baby boys are all born with a foreskin so that a foreskin must therefore have a useful, NATURAL purpose so that its removal is unnatural.
The masochist example is a bit of an own goal, to put it mildly. You are stating that being hurt is fine for the relevant person because past physical abuse on that person, as a child, moulded his personality so that he/she now finds pain pleasurable. I, and many others, would heavily disagree with this moral relativism.
Using a similiar sort of example, by your reasoning, a person who murders prostitutes for kicks because he was sexually abused as a child, is only doing what is natural, according to him. This reminds me of a fictional serial killer in an SF story I recently read:- the court asks him, after his murders of several little girls, as to whether he knows the difference between right and wrong. He duly answers that he is aware and understands that others view his past actions as being wrong but that he did not personally feel this to be the case from his POV.
"every country has the government it deserves" I don't agree with this saying. A lot of times, especially in old colonial and/or developing countries, the new government is put in place by the old colonial forces, or other powerful groups.
Also the people sometimes don't have the necessary insight and knowledge to cope with the socio-political changes, or new gained freedom, you cannot expect from them to produce a fully functioning government right away. If they're not taught how by other successful nations, they'll just have to go through the old trial-and-error, and so they'll make mistakes.
I don't think these people are entirely at fault here.
My half-brother made this sort of argument once. The idea was that because the old colonial powers had redrawn the borders artificially across natural tribal boundaries, many tribes found themselves duly split in two or three parts by various borders, thus increasing the possibility of tribal conflict. While one can make excuses for newly-freed peoples to foul things up and make mistakes in the first few decades, if they keep on making endless mistakes after c.20+ years or more(ie 1 generation+), then one cannot blame the old colonial powers any more. Ultimately, corrupt governments such as those in Russia, the UK, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Venezuela, the US etc. etc.could not be sustained unless their people were willing to accept the limitations and restrictions that their governments force upon them. If they did not like it, they should have gotten rid of their governments and put in something better. Otherwise these populations are complicit and therefore part of the problem.
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You are basically stating that everyone has an inner truth that they follow which is valid for themselves. You are quite wrong in claiming that it is impossible to define what is natural. I just did, by pointing out that baby boys are all born with a foreskin so that a foreskin must therefore have a useful, NATURAL purpose so that its removal is unnatural.
The masochist example is a bit of an own goal, to put it mildly. You are stating that being hurt is fine for the relevant person because past physical abuse on that person, as a child, molded his personality so that he/she now finds pain pleasurable. I, and many others, would heavily disagree with this moral relativism.
Using a similar sort of example, by your reasoning, a person who murders prostitutes for kicks because he was sexually abused as a child, is only doing what is natural, according to him. This reminds me of a fictional serial killer in an SF story I recently read:- the court asks him, after his murders of several little girls, as to whether he knows the difference between right and wrong. He duly answers that he is aware and understands that others view his past actions as being wrong but that he did not personally feel this to be the case from his POV.
Hey, I only said it could be explained this way, not that it was justified. A psychological work that would bring these unconscious mechanism to the conscious mind of the person might help him/her deal with it and abandon these practice. Such psychological treatment takes time, and there seems to be much more immediate and efficient ways to bring those negative behavior to consciousness and disintegrate them. Stanislav Gorf's Holotropic Breathwork seems to be one of them. It consists basically of making the patient hyperventilate, which will after a time bring the person into a "self-exploration" altered state of mind, and bring out un-restored past trauma.
http://holotropicbreathworkla.com/how-to-do-holotropic-breathwork (http://holotropicbreathworkla.com/how-to-do-holotropic-breathwork)
Their are many definition to the word "natural". You are right in stating that male circumscription is unnatural, in the sense that it is a man-made, man-thought practice. Or that it derives from culture as opposed to nature.
But if man is in essence a natural being, isn't everything that he thinks or does natural too? Depends on what definition you give to the word "natural". But for the sake of understanding lets define natural as something that is not something human created, thought, conceptualized.
Or as wikipedia puts it: "Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena."
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Ultimately, corrupt governments such as those in Russia, the UK, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Venezuela, the US etc. etc.could not be sustained unless their people were willing to accept the limitations and restrictions that their governments force upon them. If they did not like it, they should have gotten rid of their governments and put in something better. Otherwise these populations are complicit and therefore part of the problem.
I think self-preservation somehow inhibits people from putting their lives at risk in trying to overthrow a government. They'd rather be restricted than die, which is only logical.
Do you know why concentration camp prisoners, who vastly outnumbered the nazi guards, never attempted to unite and rebel against them?
Their is this biological phenomenon called "PAT hormonal" in French (strangely, I couldn't find the English translation), which describe a state in which an individual's hormonal levels are all lowered, especially testosterone, so as to make him a lot less prone to fighting, more obedient and passive, thus avoiding being killed in a fight with a stronger opponent.
Wolf pack function this way, meaning that every male, except the alpha, enter a "PAT hormonal" which inhibits constant fighting with one another, thus protecting the livability of the pack. Once the Alpha is dead, another wolf (the Beta) exits its PAT hormonal to replace him.
Prisoners in concentration camp where naturally under the influence of a PAT hormonal that kept them obedient, and prevented them from putting their life in danger by rebelling against the guards.
You can't blame people for something they have no control on.
However realizing this might've permitted them from exiting this hormonal state. We'll never know.
While one can make excuses for newly-freed peoples to foul things up and make mistakes in the first few decades, if they keep on making endless mistakes after c.20+ years or more(ie 1 generation+), then one cannot blame the old colonial powers any more.
Well quite frankly you're in no place to judge how much time it should take for a population to adapt to a new political and life environment. Maybe it takes a century, maybe there are other factors that you haven't taken into account that can momentarily stop or slow down the process...
Or maybe you're right, they're just dumb and they deserve to be severely oppressed by their government.
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Regarding elephant meat, it looks absolutely delicious, and 100% paleo
In response to, TD.... although I admit from time to time I have nihilistic sentimentalities, I prefer to think of myself as a born again radical humanist. Valuing humanity, and the human potential, over all other creation, I have no issue with human beings doing whatever it takes to survive, so long as you stay away from me and mine. "If you want to make an omelet you must be willing to break a few eggs" The devouring of the yolks and the vital essence of other spices will not be in vain so long as it fuels the growing and evolving minds of my fellow humans. This is a value judgment based on subjective human experience . I personally have cut the throats and drank the blood of dozens of animals, and have four children who are also eating machines..... so who am I to say that hungry people in far away lands should be free to breed and eat as they chose. That being said I will agree that there are responsible ways of managing earth by teaching the poor how to live off the land and eat plants and animals which are available, its just that I am not going to be personally bothered if a particular type of animal goes extinct.( besides sheep, which I am really fond of). But if all the sheep were killed off, I would begin to look for the next best thing to prey on.
If there are no elephants, let them eat wilder beast, if there are no beast let them eat bugs, if there are no bugs let them eat each other. As horrid as it sounds, it is the reality of life on earth.
The singularity I speak of is much different than the trans humanist fantasy being projected in science fiction, where humans are artificially engineered, it much more pantheistic, I envision a more organically arising situation in which the masses of humanity will reach a point where after devouring the earths resources they will become absolute desperate, in which the conditions may arise that will move the spirit of life to reawaking the instinctive drive to survive, in a being who has developed the power of focused consciousness to transform the biological self at will, sparking the next quantum leap in biological evolution, which is the evolution of higher consciousness and extra sensory awareness focused and intune with the genetic will to surthrive. It was only after lifetimes of harsh living on the brink of annihilation that our ancestors were forced to develop the last great leap of quantum evolution in which our brain sizes doubled in 2 million years, during this time higher consciousness arose and the mind developed the abilities to shape and alter reality with thought. This process of the conscious evolution has become latent due to the lack of necessity in modern life, but if the conditions where to arise when the survival of billions of now informational interconnected human beings was truly threatened, it could very well reactivate on a global scale. This is the singularity of a neo humanity of which I speak, where the world of human thought ,unites under the necessity of mutual survival, and the will to survive drives a collective humanity to transcend all earthly limitations and eventually toward the stars and into the great beyond.
What form this new world of humanity will exactly take, is up for speculation and will depend greatly upon the immeasurable conditions leading up to the singularity, but I hold on to an underlying faith that life will find its way, if we would just let it be. I insist this view is not nihilistic!.... it is the modern day equivalent of the Tao, it is an acceptance of reality as it is and of humanity for what it is and what it is capable of becoming, it is the understanding of the wayseers who in the midst of a dying world stand upright and proclaim " the beginning is near"
If the Malthusian Hollow Men are successful in convincing human kind to prematurely cull their own numbers, in order to save the earth( or some other lofty ideal) then our collective soul will be gelded, our power will be diminished and the point of crises that would place humanity on the brink of annihilation, which has always been the catalyst for evolutionary leaps forward will never arise and the point of singularity will not be attained. In such a world the human flame will slowly die out and the world will end not in a bang, but with a whimper.
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If they accept their fate, they have only themselves to blame. Their hormonal state is irrelevant, as, through sheer will, they could have risen against their oppressors. I suppose it is all about how people value self-preservation compared to other factors. Some will go berserk if even tiny freedoms of theirs are revoked, others will take it up the arse and allow torture and every other monstrosity just in order to be allowed to stay alive.
There is a wonderful quote by Oswald Spengler who talks about this sort of thing:-
"We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.”
? Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life"
For example, I quite honestly despise and loathe the Arabs(a bunch of worthless desert bandits throughout history) who wiped out the Byzantines in the Near East and destroyed the Sassanid Persians, as those 2 latter empires were far superior culturally and scientifically etc., to the Arabs. On the other hand, the Arabs had no fear of death and were willing to fight until the end to support their beliefs(which were odious,but that is by the by), and that is something to admire, just like ISIS nowadays(and I hate Isis otherwise).
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SB, you are completely missing the points I made. For example, most scientists do not even remotely believe there is a chance for humans to attain a singularity where they eventually reach the stars. You see, for one thing, even if (libertarian) eugenics and genetic engineering were practised en-masse on current human populations, according to theory, only c.10% more could be achieved in our human potential. There are all sorts of restrictions:- for example, an adult brain bigger than 3,500 cc is impossible, requiring a vastly bigger female birth-canal etc. There are a few crackpots like Kurzweil who believe in mind-uploading, in order to get around this obvious limitation, but this is highly unlikely as how can one transfer consciousness(ie the soul) to mere electronics? To do that, one would have to know how to manipulate souls etc.
I doubt we would ever end up in a stage where we have to go into survival mode after having wiped out all other unnecessary species. More than likely, we will end up with a sanitised, near-desolate world where the only lifeforms are humans and microbes with everything else being just grown in hydroponic farms for human consumption, with humans being unable to travel to other star systems or ascend to higher states. Hopefully, by then we will have attained immortality which will inevitably lead to far lower birth-rates and perhaps therefore the possibility of other lifeforms appearing(not that that matters, of course, since we have less than a billion years before all life on earth is wiped out by Mother Nature).
All we can hope for is to create AIs which then can go interstellar. AIso those AIs, unlike humans, do not have to worry about having the right gravity, air-pressure, oxygen, lack of cosmic radiation etc. when getting into space. Even now, many scientists are screaming bloody murder because so much money is wasted on human spaceflight when much smaller amounts are needed to get robot spacecraft started.
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I have to say, you paint a very bleak picture of the future.... especially for someone who accuses others of being nihilistic. Although I will not disagree that failure to reach higher states of evolved humanity may indeed be our fate, I must insist that to reach for the stars is not entirely an exercise in futility. Even if there is only the slightest chance that we could be the one species that ultimately succeeds in the game of survival and outlive our mother planet to eventually spawn our human DNA throughout the cosmos...... there is still a chance.
Let us not be satisfied vicariously living through the accomplishments of soulless AI's in our cocoons of technology. Technical advances have made us decoupled from the natural world, and eternally entombing our minds into some AI matrix and sending out probes into interstellar space with cargos of digitized human souls, is nothing I wish to be a part of.
Never say never, and anything is possible. The present reality of the human condition is proof of this. The future is unwritten and life will flex and bend depending upon what the present situation requires. If our artificially created environmental conditioning creates a world where survival depends upon the submitting of human individuality to a hive mind, so that we become soulless drones and workers enslaved to a autocratic technocracy, then that may be our fate. But viewing the individual as an imagine cell in the great caterpillar, we can see that there are many groups of Cells in the body of humanity comprised of individual human minds, that are capable preparing for a different kind of metamorphosis. When the conditions arise survival may depend upon our ability to imagine our way through whatever limitations we have been conditioned to once believe where absolute.
This wait and let the spontaneity of mother nature work itself out, while we use our collective minds to guide our way, while we ride the wave of the present into the future, approach... is not what the technocratic futurist are offering us as a viable solution, but for me it seems like letting go of attachment to out come and learning to tune in with the present reality is the most sane and natural approach to take as we begin to chart a course into the unmapped future. Let us not waste our lives subservient to the mechanical imp Gods and their false promises of digital immortality in some cyber heaven.
Let us take time to breath the beautified air and reconnect with what is left of the natural world, only if we are in love with life to the point where it is so precious that we are willing to do anything to preserve it, will we have the motivation to take the next great leap forward. Great transformation wont happen over night, it took the birds millions of years to develop the ability of free flight, and the ego of man being only a temporal manifestation, is often paralyzed by the fear that all is for not if it cant be accomplished in a single lifetime.... this great mad dash to cram eons of progress into shorter and shorter time spans will no longer allow nature to take its course and find its balance as it has done in the past. This can be disturbing to anyone as we watch the species of our world be consumed to extinction one by one, in order to feed this breakneck race of human kind and its collective need to engineer reality to fit the egos every whim. Regardless of what course it takes, its going to be a wild ride, and if the human race is going to survive the next stage long enough to reap the whirlwind of manna which is the spirit of life, then we must hold on for dear life and use ever gram of will, strength and wisdom in our being to prepare us mind, body, and spirit for whatever will be.