I agree with you there's more to it than simply food and shelter.
I can't really decide if the "spiritual" nature is a plus or minus, since most genocide is done with either religious, national, racial or ethnic parameters. To deny ones ability to become an animal is to open the door to be used by this trait. Humans are predators, pure and simple. Most of us also have the ability in non stressful environments to not let this predatory behavior dictate our lives. One could argue that to breed this trait out of our species would be self destructive, a trait that will not lead to success as a species and as a result we would make ourselves extinct. On the other hand, being too successful as an intelligent predator species could also lead to our extinction.
Alas, life is not simple... but simply a challenge. Just think what it would be like to occupy second place in the predatory chain... Something we build into many movies for shock value but rarely take seriously. Tomorrow we could become the lesser predator to a new species either imported, or created... We've been an electronic beacon since Marconi sent his first radio messages, who knows whats headed our way? We're playing with bio-engineering... where will it lead?
Hell, we might need bio-engineered humans to fend off the new top species!!! We have a place and a purpose as a species, I just quite can't figure out what it is supposed to be. My intelligence points toward the skies, that our purpose is to take "life" as we know it out beyond the bounds of mother earth and fertilize new star systems.
To exactly what end that would serve I know not... I think that our species would survive an all out nuclear event, but only as a very small percentage of its present size, and the other species present on this planet would be greatly effected. (hows that for a digression?)
What you miss with the statement that we can feed the masses with our current resources is that it will only cause the population of humans to grow until we cannot. It is a simple fact of nature, repeated often. Natures system is simple, survival of the fittest and there is an inherrent balance that keeps no single species on top for very long. If we want to stay on top then we will have to do a better job than nature does... so far I don't see us succeeding.
(Sorry for all of this philosophy on the Asia Forum, but I can't stop myself... <VBG>)
Chuck |
