Poll: Does a Planet have a Soul?

[Angryman101]

snip

I know many have responded to you, but I just wanted to mention a few things:

History tends to ignore the mundane and replace it with romantic idealism. You seem to be suffering from that quite a bit. Hunter/Gathering tribes were by no means peaceful. I don't know how you've conjured up such an obvious illusion, but there it is.

Though modern existence has proven to be stressful to the typical blue and white collared individuals who seek to make a living for themselves and provide for their families it is not the full picture.

I will begin with your argument with technology and it's apparent lead to human stagnation. Sure, you could say that there is a analog disconnect when dealing with the newfound digital age. People seem more entranced with their IPhones and Nintendo DS's then with analog conversation. However, the information passed from human to human has never been as overwhelming as it has today.

Let me take a step back for a second. Information without education and/or context is useless. But, our evolution from hunter/ gatherer societies to what we have today has only served to better our understanding through higher education, increased worldwide literacy rates and longer life expectancy (for amassing knowledge).

There is always a downside. The capacity for war and incurred damaged has also never been greater. This is something for which every human must be mindful. Lest we forget.

With that said, I believe that the pros do outweigh the cons by a large margin.

Now to actually address the stagnation argument, might I submit that this is only true if humans have stopped evolving, which we clearly have not. New ideas, information and technologies continue to be the driving force in our evolution as a species. Are we perfect? Of course not. But regression is not the way forward, as we were not perfect in the past either.

Finally, might I point out the most glaringly obvious paradox in your statements? Aside from using technology to post your thoughts used to eschew technology (that would be too easy); in a hunter/ gatherer society, you would neither have the education, nor the time to weigh in on this matter. Besides, providing for your family by relying on hunting is both dangerous and stressful at the same time. Do you honestly think that prey just leaped onto your spear? Do you not think that sometimes families starved because of lack of a food supply? Of course they did!

Now it might be time to shed that romantic idealism and see the world for what it truly was, is and will become. Welcome to the 21st Century.\

OP: The world might have a soul, I do not know. But I should think that if the world does, then so is does internet. The countless (sometimes mindless) thoughts of several billion humans who plug data into it on a daily basis serves as catalyst. But frankly, I couldn't say either way.

You caught me! I'm posting on an internet gaming forum using a high-end computer about how much I hate technology!
And you should also get your facts straight, hunter-gatherer societies were peaceful. The societies that were more aggressive were the tribes that stuck to one spot and had something to protect, like a bay filled with shellfish and large amounts of sea resources. Regular hunter-gatherer societies were peaceful and in fact congregated often in order to hunt together and have genetic diversity by selecting mates in different tribes. They were hunters, but they rarely purposefully went after one another.

 

[Angryman101]

And you should also get your facts straight, hunter-gatherer societies were peaceful. The societies that were more aggressive were the tribes that stuck to one spot and had something to protect, like a bay filled with shellfish and large amounts of sea resources. Regular hunter-gatherer societies were peaceful and in fact congregated often in order to hunt together and have genetic diversity by selecting mates in different tribes. They were hunters, but they rarely purposefully went after one another.

Hm, Still clinging to romantic idealism I see. Honestly, do you truly believe they were peaceful!? You're only giving half of the story again.

Yes, some tribes may have co-existed peacefully with each other, politics being what they are, that is human nature. But it is also human nature not to. For every friendly tribe, there was always a tribe that made war. This applies to nomads as well as sedentary tribes.

Naivety in this matter won't win an argument and human nature is what it is.

Your theory needs human nature to be basically savage to work, which it isn't. Evidence shows that nomadic tribes did NOT engage in hostilities because if there weren't enough resources for more than one group of people, they just moved on, because it's common fucking sense to do so. People don't just blindly kill each other, if that were true then the species would have wiped itself out. Now, once you get into the coastal populations which were sedentary, THEN you got some hostility because they had larger populations that were dependent on the area they were in for the resources they needed, and could not just pack up and move.
Romanticism has nothing to do with it, I just study the biological, cultural, and psychological past of humanity and just so happen to know a little bit more about it than you. So, please take your insulting holier-than-thou cynicism and kindly fuck off.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

this was the most random topic i've made and yet the one with more views... LoL

 

[Angryman101]

Your theory needs human nature to be basically savage to work, which it isn't. Evidence shows that nomadic tribes did NOT engage in hostilities because if there weren't enough resources for more than one group of people, they just moved on, because it's common fucking sense to do so. People don't just blindly kill each other, if that were true then the species would have wiped itself out. Now, once you get into the coastal populations which were sedentary, THEN you got some hostility because they had larger populations that were dependent on the area they were in for the resources they needed, and could not just pack up and move.
Romanticism has nothing to do with it, I just study the biological, cultural, and psychological past of humanity and just so happen to know a little bit more about it than you. So, please take your insulting holier-than-thou cynicism and kindly fuck off.

Quote:
"It was frequently necessary for nomadic tribes to engage in internecine wars which were usually not unprovoked. The strongest chief got the best grazing lands, and it was often necessary to obtain and keep them by force. Following tribal customs more often than not resulted in conflict with another tribe." [Catriona Macpherson]

http://whitebard.tripod.com/nomads.htm

EDIT: Besides, you suppose that all wars are grounded in resources. WWII would like to have a word with you.

"Grazing Land"=form of agriculture. That's a proto-civilization, which is characterized by single matriarchal/patriarchal leaderships and a growing interest in goods such as precious metals, livestock, women, and other materials, and therefore the example is not a true hunter-gatherer group. Hunter-gatherer groups were characterized by leadership determined by customs and elders, no animal herding or domestication (besides dogs), and therefore a lack of need for any lengthy stay in one area.