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What does the Cheetah and the human have in common?

Quickie from Wiki: “The cheetah is a vulnerable species. Out of all the big cats, it is the least able to adapt to new environments. It has always proved difficult to breed in captivity, although recently a few zoos have managed to succeed at this. Once widely hunted for its fur, the cheetah now suffers more from the loss of both habitat and prey.”

The cheetah has adapted to its environment by making itself faster and faster. Unfortunately these adaptations have placed it in jeopardy of extinction because in the process of becoming faster it has lost its ability to protect its kill from other animals. The cheetah has become too specialized and thus faces extinction.

I would say that we humans have a similar problem. We have developed specialization to the extent that we place all of our focus upon technology with little knowledge or appreciation of the human sciences that will make it possible for us to manage this high tech world that we have created.

Both the cheetah and the human species face the same paradox. They both have so finely tuned their adaption to the world that their specialization will mean their extinction.

I suspect that within the next 200 years we humans will most likely bring an end to our species and possibly the end to all life on this planet.

I think that the only way to prevent this is for our species to become much more intellectually sophisticated than it is now; I see little evidence that this will occur. The problems we face today are enormous and while we have the brain power to prevent this we may well not have the necessary character traits to do so. I suspect our species is a dead end species.

Do you think that the human species might extinguish it self within a few centuries?

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No, if LHC will be started.

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The cheetah's extinction will be hastened by the fact that they are all genetically identical I believe.

What's LHC?

The human race will survive, even though it may not want to.

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Large Hadron Collider


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I'm not sure how specialized humans are. Many of us are incapable of living outside of a technological society. But there are people scattered throughout the planet who live well with primitive technology. Tragically, those people have been and continue to be pushed to the limits of extinction.

The brains we evolved allow us to adapt to our environment. Even if civilization collapsed, humans would likely survive.
This is not to say that we will survive. If evolution teaches us anything it's that there's no guarrantee of survival for any species.

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coberst: "...while we have the brain power to prevent this we may well not have the necessary character traits to do so."

Supposing that's true - and I think it is - is there a pragmatic approach to dealing with the problem? You suggest:

coberst: "the only way to prevent this is for our species to become much more intellectually sophisticated than it is now"

Are you suggesting that better education would change the character traits inherent in our species?

I think it is these very character traits - which encompass instinctive behaviour - that answer your ultimate question:

coberst: "Do you think that the human species might extinguish itself within a few centuries?"

I think that (a) as TFF says above, our species would survive self-inflicted injury, though in what condition is another question (b) civilisation will be very seriously damaged unless population is controlled (c) adequate population control can only be achieved by coercive measures.

Most current threats to the survival of civilisation, short of a catastrophe like cometary impact, would seem to be either caused by overpopulation or intensified/exacerbated by it. Overpopulation is a common characteristic of underdeveloped regions, and it could be argued that accelerating the development of those regions would solve the problem. I think the critical limit will be reached long before such a plan could be effective.


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redewenur

What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.” “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.” “Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.” “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”

Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”

If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior. If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.

When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified. We can modify intuition only through habit directed by our will.

“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts. Character is the interpenetrating of habits. If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist. That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations. But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”

I would like to recommend the thoughts of John Dewey to all those who are disheartened by the direction of education, politics and the general drift of our society wherein citizens have allowed themselves to become propagandized into recognizing production and consumption as its most important values.

My understanding of character and the quotations concerning the nature of character are taken from Habits and Will by John Dewey

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Originally Posted By: redewenur
coberst: "...while we have the brain power to prevent this we may well not have the necessary character traits to do so."

Supposing that's true - and I think it is - is there a pragmatic approach to dealing with the problem? You suggest:

coberst: "the only way to prevent this is for our species to become much more intellectually sophisticated than it is now"

Are you suggesting that better education would change the character traits inherent in our species?

?

The human animal, being a species of mammal in many respects similar to other mammals, behaves, by and large, according to its inherited nature. I would define character as the inherent complex of attributes that determines moral and ethical actions and reactions. But however you choose to define 'character', 'behaviour' is the bottom line in the chain of cause and effect. Human behaviour is not governed entirely by rational thought. Were it to become possible for us (the human race) to learn ethical behaviour and rational thought on a grand scale, then the current threats to civilisation would dissolve before our eyes. Alas, I see no cause for optimism.


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coberst-Education and development may change people's perception of what is important and change behaviour to achieve that perceived goal. And of course, I really believe in the value of education. to literacy level at least, for everyone who has the ability to achieve it. Whether this is 'better' and an desired outcome 'for the greater good of society' is, I suggest, very much a moot point. As is the allocating of blame to the 'heaving masses' somewhere other than where you and I are fortunate to have made our home, and proposing to fix them up in some way.

The future of the planet is one where we are indeed all in it together, and the behaviour of those masses, as they emulate our standards is not hard to understand. What is hard though, and they may reasonably reject, is that they are expected to limit their aspirations so that we may continue in our wasteful habits. Maybe it is we who need the education and a change of character.

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We all need to become self-actualizing self-learners.

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Coberst wrote:
"We all need to become self-actualizing self-learners."

So we would if we could but some of us can't and the techniques developed by Skinner have great relevance to learners who do not respond to the more usual ways of learning new information. Without doubt true self-actualising learning requires high-level cognitive skills and a great deal of self-motivation, and can lead to creative and innovative results. However most of as need that carrot on a stick dangled in front of us at some time!

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...not to mention that "self" is cited by some as the major impediment to species survival. Psychological arguments extrapolated to group behaviour is simplistic anthropomorphism.

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Originally Posted By: Ellis
Coberst wrote:
"We all need to become self-actualizing self-learners."

So we would if we could but some of us can't and the techniques developed by Skinner have great relevance to learners who do not respond to the more usual ways of learning new information. Without doubt true self-actualising learning requires high-level cognitive skills and a great deal of self-motivation, and can lead to creative and innovative results. However most of as need that carrot on a stick dangled in front of us at some time!


Yes, high level motivation is required, motivation is created by the will and the will can lead to curiosity and self-discipline, which, in turn, leads to character development. It is our lack of character, not our lack of intelligence that stalls our progress. Intelligence is a gift of birth and character must be created.

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coberst,

Are you speaking of "will" in terms of Nietzsche's "will to power" ? What you appear to mean by "character development" is "having power over one's destiny". Your prescriptive usage of "must" and "need" also suggests nuances of your "will to power" over others, which is an important Nietzschean sub-category.

If you have not already done so, I would suggest you have a look at Nietzsche, bearing in mind his adoption by the Nazi "character development" advocates.



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I have not studied N. I have tried to read him directly but have given up. Can you suggest a good second source for his theories?

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Try

The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche , ed. by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Marie Higgins.

The "Cambridge Companion" series groups several secondary sources in one volume. They vary in "readability".

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coberst wrote:
"It is our lack of character, not our lack of intelligence that stalls our progress."

Would that it were so, but unfortunately lack of intelligence will spoil the prospect of success more quickly than anything else. Good teaching can help, but it is useless if the learner is unable to learn what is being taught. Learning is a two-way street, a fact that can sometimes be forgotten.

I think a lot depends on the definition of "progress". Sometimes it can mean the ability to learn to lift a cup to the mouth.

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In this case I would say progress is the ability to create a self sustaining world. Human consciousness has allowed us to go beyond nature. Nature has constructed a self sustaining system. Humans have displayed no ability to do likewise.

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Originally Posted By: coberst
In this case I would say progress is the ability to create a self sustaining world.

But then the definition of progress is limited to a human definition that recognizes itself as being less than natures ability to be self sustaining.
Originally Posted By: coberst
Human consciousness has allowed us to go beyond nature.

Never. Human consciousness is part and parcel to nature, it's only the ego that creates a system of measure that limits humanity and limits nature.
Originally Posted By: coberst
Nature has constructed a self sustaining system. Humans have displayed no ability to do likewise.
Humans are a part of nature and they demonstrate the reflection of a self sustaining process of cause and effect.


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Yeah i think well do it through our archaic view of 'progress'


Nuclear power is the pragmatic energy choice.

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Tutor

We humans are meaning creating creatures. We have competed with nature from the moment that we found our ego. Our competition has been with the outer world of nature and with the inner world that nature has given us.

We humans have created a technology removed from nature and one that I suspect will soon destroy our self and perhaps much of natural life on this planet.

I am convinced that if we do not quickly become sophisticated enough to recognize our problem we and perhaps all of life on this planet will become toast.

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Originally Posted By: coberst
Tutor

We humans are meaning creating creatures. We have competed with nature from the moment that we found our ego.

The nature of humanity is that it reflects the nature of reality. It cannot compete since it is part of reality. It can only reflect nature.
Originally Posted By: coberst
Our competition has been with the outer world of nature and with the inner world that nature has given us.

The outer is a reflection of the inner. We seem to compete only when we believe the outer is separate from the inner but that is the illusion of the ego.
Originally Posted By: coberst

We humans have created a technology removed from nature and one that I suspect will soon destroy our self and perhaps much of natural life on this planet.

You seem to isolate nature to the surface appearances of this planet rather than the mechanics of the universe. If we destroy this planet humanity will continue somewhere else. That is the nature of the universe and the reflection of consciousness in human form.
Originally Posted By: coberst

I am convinced that if we do not quickly become sophisticated enough to recognize our problem we and perhaps all of life on this planet will become toast.
It wouldn't be the first time human evolution included self destruction, or the destruction of an entire planet.


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coberst-- Could you please define what you mean by the term 'nature'?

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Humans are the first creatures evolving from nature that has the ability to act beyond the boundries of instinctive emotions. Humans are the first creatures with the power to ac freely of natures hard wired directives. Humans have created meaning wrapped in symbols and it is this world of artifically created symbolism that operates beyond the complete control of nature.

The virtual world, the world of symbolic meaning, the world of non deterministic reality, is the world beyond the natural world. Ego is what has made such a world possible.

Ego says, HOLD IT, TIME OUT, while I examine the situation to determine if I want to change the siuation.

The ego is our command center; it is the “internal gyroscope” and creator of time for the human. It controls the individual; especially it controls individual’s response to the external environment. It keeps the individual independent from the environment by giving the individual time to think before acting. It is the device that other animal do not have and thus they instinctively respond immediately to the world.

The id is our animal self. It is the human without the ego control center. The id is reactive life and the ego changes that reactive life into delayed thoughtful life. The ego is also the timer that provides us with a sense of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. By doing so it makes us into philosophical beings conscious of our self as being separate from the ‘other’ and placed in a river of time with a terminal point—death. This time creation allows us to become creatures responding to symbolic reality that we alone create.

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Coberst,

Those views are clearly anthropocentric,which your "embodiment" argument seeks to avoid. Since the latter is reductionist, you have the philosophical problem of explaining how a reductionist "mind" can transcend its own "natural limits".

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Originally Posted By: coberst
Humans are the first creatures evolving from nature that has the ability to act beyond the boundries of instinctive emotions.
This idea implies there is something greater than the ego and that the ego can be subservient rather than the master of cognitive ability. It also implies that humans are a part of nature since they can evolve, rather than separate from it. It also contains the often ignored reality that nature includes Self awareness and that it (nature) is in itself self aware, which also leads to the possibility to cognize that nature is in itself a reflection of itself in all areas of cognitive function and its possible levels of experience.
Evolution then, contained to Darwinian theory would limit nature to a process of materialism rather than the reality that materialism is perceived at the level of the ego based on whether the ego is the master or the servant.
Originally Posted By: coberst
Humans are the first creatures with the power to act freely of natures hard wired directives.
Nature has no directives. It has what are called natural laws or laws that support certain types and levels of experience of itself.
In other words if you have only one finger the ability of the hand is limited, but if the hand has five fingers its potential is increased. Self awareness is limited when it cuts off 4 of its fingers to insist that reality is derived and manipulated and comprehended by a hand with one finger. Free will allows one to pick a room with all the components in it that will either limit or enhance the senses, to either isolate ones self from nature or realize nature as the self. It allows one to believe they are a product of happenstance and subject to the circumstances that are of fortune or fate, or to take command and make of themselves and the world what they will.
Originally Posted By: coberst
Humans have created meaning wrapped in symbols and it is this world of artifically created symbolism that operates beyond the complete control of nature.

Humans create all types of meanings and ideas regarding nature and its limits or of its separation from humanity. It is nature that supports these illusions.And it is Nature that Humans are that have control over Nature. There are no limits to the human condition that are not self imposed.
Originally Posted By: coberst

The virtual world, the world of symbolic meaning, the world of non deterministic reality, is the world beyond the natural world. Ego is what has made such a world possible.
And nature supports both experiences in reality, the one of the virtual and the one of the un-manifest or world of possibility, or awareness of awareness above and beyond the limits and boundaries of the virtual world that is subjective in the isolation of identification with materialism that is the ego deluded one finger on the hand world.
Originally Posted By: coberst

Ego says, HOLD IT, TIME OUT, while I examine the situation to determine if I want to change the siuation.
Actually ego sometimes in its belief in evolution identifies the flow of free will as personal, and limits all possibility to the finite realm of personal perceptions based on the personal identity of I am the sum of my experiences and humanity is the sum of democratic idealism based on such and such an authority. There is the impulse of free will that allows the ego to translate the nature of reality into the confines of the personal domain separating nature from ones self but that is just an idea.
Originally Posted By: coberst

The ego is our command center; it is the “internal gyroscope” and creator of time for the human.
It appears that way when one has absorbed such beliefs in the psyche as they are defined by Freud.
Originally Posted By: coberst
It controls the individual; especially it controls individual’s response to the external environment. It keeps the individual independent from the environment by giving the individual time to think before acting. It is the device that other animal do not have and thus they instinctively respond immediately to the world.
All animals have an ego. The human ego is just tied to a more evolved mechanism of comprehension or awareness of self. The ego in itself is a construct of the imagination and it really has no control that is not given to it by the Greater Self or universal mind. It is just a simple move in the awareness to circumvent the stress related subconscious programs that give the ego the illusion of so much power over free will.
Originally Posted By: coberst

The id is our animal self. It is the human without the ego control center. The id is reactive life and the ego changes that reactive life into delayed thoughtful life.
This is the twist Freud made regarding the nature of humanity which is really the spirit or first cause. By eliminating anything that is not physical he reduces the essence of humanity to its animalistic beginnings as determined by the idea of the Darwinian type of evolution where one believes humanity has no source other than the primordial ooze, and the universe is the result of random ocurrences that just happen to come into an operative condition of order.
Originally Posted By: coberst
The ego is also the timer that provides us with a sense of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. By doing so it makes us into philosophical beings conscious of our self as being separate from the ‘other’ and placed in a river of time with a terminal point—death. This time creation allows us to become creatures responding to symbolic reality that we alone create.
It also allows us to be self/Self reflective and aware of the greater Self above and beyond the materialistic reality of animal evolved into biped with a notion. It allows one to recognize order within the universe and to also recognize that it is connected in more ways than that are defined as material to the universe, not only as a participant but as a creator. It is the mechanism that brings universal mind or the uncreated unmanifest impulse of possibility that is order, which also creates and facilitates experience, or the understanding of cause and effect of the knower, the known and the process of knowing.


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coberst- I asked for a definition of 'nature' and got a dissertation that reads like Psychology 101.

eccles sums it up beautifully.. and you have, in fact, reduced the question I asked to the specificity of your own id. Quite a feat!

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Rank’s will psychology throws meaningful light on psychological foundation of epistemology and ethics—leading to a philosophy of the psychic—the creation of individuality in “rebirth experience” as being the actual creative act—in this act the psychic ego is born out of the biological corporal ego thus moving from creature to creator—i.e. creator of his own personality.

There is movement from competition with nature to artistic creation of reality which we call civilization—his competition becomes with himself—the inner world becomes an independent power which seeks to alter the external world to more correspond to the inner—this is more creation than adaptation and can be comprehended as will phenomena.

“In this sense civilized man, even if he fights the outside world, is no longer opposed to a natural enemy but at bottom to himself, to his own creation, as he finds himself mirrored, particularly in manners and customs, morality and conventions, social and cultural institutions.” 211

This idea is based upon the assumption that our inner world in our creation of it slowly becomes a power independent of the outer world, which we constantly try to modify to suit our inner reality. This is not adaption but is creation, which can be called ‘will phenomena’.

This is movement from Freudian id which is subject to natural laws under guise of “repetition compulsion” while personality “consists of identifications which form the basis of the parental super-ego”—to move beyond the super-ego morality to an ideal formation to a personality that guides—he evolves the ego ideal from self-chosen factors consciously strived for.212

Quickie from Wiki: “Repetition compulsion is psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations that have a high probability of the event occurring again. This "re-living" can also take the form of dreams, repeating the story of what happened, and even hallucination.

This concept was noted formally by Sigmund Freud in his 1920 essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” in which he observed a child throw his favorite toy from his crib, become upset at the loss, then reel the toy back, only to repeat this action again.”

Quotes from Will Therapy and Truth and Reality by Otto Rank

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