Don't sweat possums. They are too lazy to do much than scratch or bite. Raccoons are a whole other beasite. They organize, pillage, and hate cats. En masse, they are a dangerous animal wherever there is a closed garbage can.

So perhaps how we organize feedback determines behavior. Here is something to think about if you have the time and patience:

http://fora.tv/2010/07/27/Jesse_Schell_Visions_of_the_Gamepocalypse#fullprogram

The troubling thought is this feels like change but is it? In game and information theory is the concept of selectors, or simply, hierarchies of choice. You make choices but who provides the choices from which you select and who and how are those choices selected and provided. The terminology is first, second, third order systems, as in hierarchies of choice and choosers.

In effect, all you are seeing is a new elite of money and technology emerging to choose choices for you to choose from. The word for that is 'power'.

Caveat emptor.

i know about possums and raccoons...

actually, i have a picture i took of my dad rough housing (the raccoon played rough but he could manage him) with one BEAR of a raccoon who a friend of his raised in a tractor trailer because he would have tore up everything else until he outgrew even that (near the time of the picture) and was free to go!



that sounds like a good thing.


"us" and "thems" are all a bunch of individuals. conflicts can sometimes spring from ignorance? arrogance?


i take that to mean that there is hope! (in terms of humans in general i mean)

len, i will have to check out the stuff in your second post up there later.

Maybe. The point being that there are references to "death to non-believers" and condoning other nasty behavior in assorted religions' "holy" books. If Islam is going to get slammed for what's in theirs then, likewise, other belief systems are not without their content of the same.

i understand that too, i was thinking about it earlier.

So, does that make religion the dangerous animal? Opossums have fifty very sharp teeth.

First, note that many of those references are from the Old Testament which strictly speaking, is a superset of the Hebrew Bible. One may note that in the regions of the world where some conflicts are the most insensible, the old Hebrew texts are the dominant texts. Note that these are very old texts which are not even original to the Jewish tribes. They have roots in Sumeria. Then there is the Quran claimed to be the 'divine and directly transmitted word of God to the Prophet" yet linguists can see plainly how much of it is adopted from other stories in the region at the time. Then when you look at the Christian texts, look at the work done at the Council Of Nicaea to eliminate texts that did not fit into the power model of the elite of the time particularly to rid it of so-called Gnostic texts.

Why would one give words such power over people? Why would you become so frightened of the N word, a word derived from a word which simply means 'black' or 'oscuro'?

You have to be taught to do that. Society has to make it a rule and by such rules, you are ruled, your minds are closed to alternatives, you accept what would otherwise be unacceptable.

When the movie, "Agora" comes out on DVD in October, get a copy and watch. It, not Inception, is the real tale of our time. And it is unlikely to come to a theatre near you if you are in the US because the distributors are afraid of showing it in a country so loaded with superstition instead of faith just as ABC was terrified of showing Bewitched in the South because it was about a witch. Yet Bewitched is much beloved in the South because it was about an impossible love, a beautiful woman, and a man befuddled by his in-laws. It is universal. It is human.

But the Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans are not everywhere violent. We all raise children, try to provide for families, enjoy sports, music, we all know songs of peace. Why then are we so easily led to war? I don't think it is genetic. I think it is cultural and a result of how we use symbols that we feedback to organize resources. I think individuals and groups who enjoy great power and status use these symbols and being animals highly susceptible to symbolic processing, we are easily led.

People are too easily distracted by the container and forget the content. Awareness requires a certain insensitivity to stimuli. Otherwise we are a fish school swimming in perfect synchronicity until a shiny object drops into our midst. Cue Klaatu and Gort in the silver saucer.

So do we go to the Guthrie Center and sing with Arlo so we can go back out and hate the Muslims, criticize the Jews, despise the Christians, fear all other than what is like us? If we are genetically disposed to war, why do we sing My Peace?

Kallisti.

The us vs them cognitive mode. it is one of the mechanisms that Dr Smith identifies as an evolved predisposition to war mechanism. One of many. The one that separates us into

Socs and Greasers (Oklahoma Reference there)
commies and capitalists
christians and jews
jews and muslims
muslims and hindus
etc and etc

This thread has a new theme it seems

God's Folly

No. The incomplete and unpracticed awareness of individuals of what their head is in.

If you aren't powerful enough to put away your fear, if you are too lazy to find food and rely on the worm on the hook, don't blame God or your genes.

Dangerous animals are also known to close threads on these forums when they reach 15 pages. It's a housekeeping thing. Feel free to continue with a new thread.