Poll: Why do we always say that humans are so violent?
- Thread starter Rocking Thunder
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We're social animals more than we are violent ones, and the whole edifice of human civilisation is built on top of the fact that we _aren't_ senselessly killing one another - we cooperate and build things and work together. It's just that those social instincts of forming a group and working towards some shared interest allow us to justify doing terrible things to people not in that group if our interests conflict with theirs.
Aliens though, they'd be one hell of an "out" group. If we butted up against some other alien civilisation and we had technological superiority on our side I expect they'd be fucked over about as quickly as the indigenous people when colonists arrived in America/Australia/anywhere else you care to name.
The odds of technological parity are pretty damn low, so the other probable option for meeting aliens is that we make contact with a species more advanced than our own, and take the role of "the natives" in the scenario above. Unless the other species managed to get into space without developing from the same types of instincts as our own.
Further down the line, when we've had enough time to develop relations with our alien overlords/underlings, there might be a civil rights movement all over again, but I don't see contact with beings from another planet going all that much differently from contact with beings from another continent. Unless we learn the lessons of history or something, but that seems unlikely; we've never done that to much effect before.
Aliens though, they'd be one hell of an "out" group. If we butted up against some other alien civilisation and we had technological superiority on our side I expect they'd be fucked over about as quickly as the indigenous people when colonists arrived in America/Australia/anywhere else you care to name.
The odds of technological parity are pretty damn low, so the other probable option for meeting aliens is that we make contact with a species more advanced than our own, and take the role of "the natives" in the scenario above. Unless the other species managed to get into space without developing from the same types of instincts as our own.
Further down the line, when we've had enough time to develop relations with our alien overlords/underlings, there might be a civil rights movement all over again, but I don't see contact with beings from another planet going all that much differently from contact with beings from another continent. Unless we learn the lessons of history or something, but that seems unlikely; we've never done that to much effect before.
Well, that's kind of a meaningless statement. It's a bit like saying "humanity is hungry to the core" because humans tend to do a lot of eating. That doesn't mean every human is hungry all the time though, nor is every human violent. These things are just functions of humanity that have their time and place, like going to the toilet, having sex, and staring at flowers.DazBurger said:
Which qualities exactly? Under stanbd circumstances? Are they simply attacking something? Maybe they feel threatened. Are they toying with something dying? Alot of animals bleed out their prey, but it doesn't mean that theyattacked just to make it miserable.BonsaiK said:
Perhaps we perceive what the cats do are cruel when it's simply instaict in the cats mind, because don't forget, animals run off of instict. In order to derive pleasure from the pain of another, or to kill for pleasure, you cannot cruise-control your brain on instinct alone
Because our intelligence has been used to create such advanced weapons that we are frightengly good at killing stuff. I mean, back during the Cold War, a nuclear bomb dubbed "The Tsar Bomba" (the King Bomb) that was tested made an explosion so large that the shockwave went around the world (three times) and added a slight wobble to the planet's oribt. Add that to a natural instinct to use violence to get what we want (like most carnivorous and some herbivorous animals), and the idea that we'd be the Klingons in any Star Trek-esque fantay isn't that far fetched.
