various off-topics re: Perfect Scale

[Kraig Grady, TD 176.22]
>[me, monz]
>> many of the tendencies we have that most of us wish would
>> go away arise from our most primitive instincts,
>[Kraig]
> How do we know it is primitive. Maybe war and aggression is
> a more resent trait of civilization!

OK, I'll play devil's advocate and go along with that possiblity;
it's a good point. Our written historical records only go
back about 5000 years, and that's not very long considering
the whole span of our history. So what we have is only
reconstructed and really unprovable hypotheses for what happened
among people socially during the vast span of time prior to that.

But Dante's point was still also a good one.

>[me, monz]
>> and are
>> situated in what brain-theorists call the 'reptilian brain',
>> which is our brain stem and evolutionarily the oldest part
>> of our nervous system.
>[Kraig]
> I don't think I ever ran across this one. The lizards in my
> yard are awful peaceful while the gangs at the bottom of my
> driveway are not!

Well, I never said humans were known for *using* the most
typically human parts!

Scientists have studied the different parts of the brain
that are electrically active during various types of behavior
and response, and have found the general outlines I've described.

I'm sorry I don't have the reference right now, but there's
an excellent book about this by a scientist (I think it's called
'The Brain' - it accompanied a PBS series), and it's referenced
in Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_, which is where I first read about it.

I bet if you sat for a *really* long time and watched those
lizards in your yard, they wouldn't turn out to be quite as
peaceful as they seem at first. Reptiles tend to be (usually)
sluggish creatures, except when they're feeding. And they
don't look too peaceful then...

>[me, monz]
>> These tendencies are basically concerned
>> with territoriality, aggression, and sex.
>[Kraig]
> the first two are qualities of civilization and grow
> proportionally with it.

Sorry to disagree here, Kraig, but no they are *not* exclusively
qualities of civilization, altho they do seem to characterize it.

Aggression and territoriality are basic survival instincts of
virtually every living thing, including some plants. But they're
manifest more in reptiles, birds, and land mammals than anywhere
else among earthly life-forms.

(I've just realized, if indeed I'm correct, that these
characteristics are notably absent among mammals living in
the sea, such as whales, dolphins, and seals.)

> Maybe we need to "devolve" to plants where there is not the
> survival of the fittest but that which maximizes their
> interrelationship with the environment prospers!

Well, as I alluded above, plants are not entirely free of these
basic evolutionary principles either. But I strongly agree
with your point.

We *definitely* need to behave this way if we are going to
survive as a species on this absurdly overpopulated planet.
'Survival of the fittest' is a concept that should have
disappeared among humans by about 5 billion people ago!
(at the latest, because that's not that long ago - maybe
only 100 years).

-monz

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
--------------------------------------------------

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]