No. Quite real. That quotation from the Quran is real. How many of the folk so quick to pounce here there and everywhere have actually read the Quran?

Which nation sent troops to Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing?

I saw a Billy Graham episode on tv the other week that was a re-run from 1979. He was predicting the end of the world then. We all thought it was gonna end then. In the 60's I thought the world would end in the mid 70's. Here we are yrs later still carrying on.

well you had previously taken the stand that there is not a genetic predisposition to war but you have recently been bringing up examples that can be used to support that there is a genetic predisposition to war.

like the following


Emotion is a behavioral output.

Example:

Cognitive Module Attribute: Altruism limits or the Them or Us border.

Input data: That wonderful little you tube of Muslims carrying on at Buckingham Palace spewing on and on about making Britain a Muslim State with no tolerance for non muslims.

Data Processor, the cognitive mind of an Anglo-British Citizen: I am confronted with a group of humans that I perceive as threatening my traditions and values that want to disrupt and destroy my liberty.

Emotional Output: Fuck the bloody bastards they are vermin that need elimination.

Behavioral Output: Organization within the Anglo non muslim community and prepare for violence.

Reinforcement: Obviously there is no end to the back and forth here short of war and elimination of one or both of the parties involved.

Of course the dreamer says why isn't there a single altruistic umbrella that is inclusive? It seems like altruistic umbrellas are more like sand barricades that crumble and blow in the wind. The sand always accumulates the thickest around things like religions or economic institutions. These sand magnets have long fingers and can stretch into the most remote parts of the world and divide people of similar ethnic origin to perpetrate cruel acts of genocide on one another.

I know it is depressing. So many of you have said things here that agree with a genetic predisposition to war that it is getting more and more difficult to deny.

Not at all, H. It means the human brain is very adaptive and shapable. A term sometimes used for this is 'plasticity' or colloquially, "We are what we eat or who".

Feed them images of violence against those whom they identify with and they become violent. Feed them images of peaceful interaction with those whom they consider other and they become peaceful.

Where the water meets the shore, the water takes the shape of the shoreline but the moon stirs it ceaselessly. As a result, the shoreline is infinitely detailed and forever changing. The water remains the same.

Ceaseless motion, infinite variety, eternally one.

I blame everything on a monolith with dimentions in the ratio of 1 X 4 X 9.

I blame Gene Simmons and that terrible rock n' roll.

it is depressing...still, i know there are people who really hate war (right this minute as we speak) and want it to stop, really and truly.
also (at the risk of sounding corny), i appreciate your straight forwardness and honesty on this subject.

Probably, that would mean the part of us that can make a choice to be peaceful or violent is also in our DNA.



Denial does not negate any action taken.

I understand what you're saying about a dream like quality to some things that happen to us. I think that is something entirely different from what you are talking about here. And to be honest, I have not studied enough in the recent past to talk about that in a coherent fashion.

I'm not going to talk about whether it's good or bad to build a Mosque near where the twin towers stood. Who can say? Will it promote peace between feuding cultures?

I hesitate to say that all of any particular culture is good or bad. You'll find good people and bad people in every group you know about. To label a culture as heathen, I don't think so. Native American culture was labeled as heathen when settlers from Europe came the this continent. And that was a mistake.

People make up corporations, institutions and politics, so it all goes back to all of us. How can we determine what is our hardware (DNA)? If it's not DNA, then what is it? Is learned behavior part of DNA?

Well, I'm out of time for this for today. Hope this makes sense. Sorry if it doesn't.

There is a theory applied in economics and behavioral science called 'melioration theory' or 'hyperbolic discounting'. Without getting into details, essentially, if offered a small reward immediately versus a large reward later, pigeons and some humans choose the small reward immediately.

In humans, it can be shown that if a person is offered $50 when everyone else gets $50 versus a $100 dollars if everyone else gets $200, most but not all take the $50. Similar results can be shown for other primates, and once again, pigeons given suitable rewards. So:

1. Are these genetic behaviors? How many genes do primates have in common with pigeons?

2. Are these learned behaviors? Are some but not all humans smarter than pigeons?

3. Does it matter given some humans don't conform to the expected behaviors?

Contrary to what seems the case, awareness of greater good requires a certain insensitivity to stimuli. You may call that discipline or simply... practice. A bird in the hand is just a bird in the hand.

What would a marsupial do?

There are references in the Christian bible of human and animal sacrifices, condoned executions of believers of "foreign gods" and ordained rape, among other atrocities. Christians, for the most part, don't do that anymore unless they're really screwed up.

Nobody likes war. That is one of the arguments for all of the mechanisms of denial and dehumanization. It even happens in wars against war, I have been known to label people I didn't know personally as P..I..G PIG. The argument is we have evolved psychologically to cope with war. We have evolved to accept war as the solution to threats to our survival. The evolutionary solutions have evolved reinforcing structures because them or us is ubiquitous. I am willing to bet there is not a human on the planet without multiple them or us complexes. They range from neighborhood and office and community complexes all the way to racial and religious complexes. We all got them.

We are all walking contradictions.



If I said heathen it was to illustrate how quickly and easily people can label. It is part of that dehumanization thing. I agree with you that cultural differences are many and varied. As a species, we are also quite varied genetically. I mean, only insect species, microorganisms and a few other mammals that have co-evolved with us equal us in coverage of the planet. As far as our minds our concerned, I agree with you. We are all heathens. We are all aristocrats. We are all Okies and hillbillies. We all live in Beverley Hills and on Park Avenue. Like I said above, we are all walking contradictions but we do define our own niche in humanity and defend it like the dickens.

Is learned behavior part of DNA? There is the rub. There is little known about how the mind is structured or how the DNA acts as a blueprint in that process. There is tons of speculation. The pigeon scenario brings into question the methods of the evolutionary psychologists. Like I said earlier the methods are debatable and a lot of that debate comes from the dependence on genetic disorders as a "window into the structure / function of the mind".

The argument of Dr. Smith in his book on the most dangerous animal is that these cognitive modules that allow us to cope with and accept war are cross cultural and ubiquitous.

If you polled America, very few will say they want war or like war but polls back in the spring of 2003 had 60 to 70% of Americans favoring war.

I was watching a movie from 1941 last night about a hunter who penetrated the security of Berchtesgarden and had Hitler in his sight just before WWII began. As he lay there with Hitler in his sight, all the stuff in this thread was going on in his head (little videos of some of nazisms finest moments playing across the screen). Before he could squeeze the trigger he got busted. In thee interrogation that followed he referred to man as "the most dangerous animal".

I always wonder if Bob Dylan lifted the line "The Times they are a Changing" from that movie McLintock?

Goofus wrote:

"What would a marsupial do?"


I never heard tell of any "O'possum wars".......but I understand that they often "play dead".......


heraclitis wrote:

"I always wonder if Bob Dylan lifted the line "The Times they are a Changing" from that movie McLintock?"


One could amass quite a collection of songs and movies and that relate to war......."Master's of War"...."The Art of War"....."And it's 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin' for?"......"Alice's Restaurant Massacree".....Is that one about war or about garbage? Doesn't matter, they are the same........

I looked it up..it seems to be one of those amazing twists of fate

Dylan first began singing the song around Sept or October of 1963.

McLintock was released in Nov 1963.

It always strikes me when I hear Stefanie Powers say to John Wayne
"the Times They Are A Changin Daddy".

(I know it is not that novel a saying but it was the timing that got me)

It wouldn't surprise me. Songwriters refolk works all the time.

But it makes a point worth thinking about: The times, or zeitgeist.

1. Brain scan tomography has revealed areas of the brain associated with classes of stimuli. We know quite a bit more about brain structures and how inputs are processed, outputs organized, etc.

2. The problem is it isn't a simple to say a gene is associated with war. War is a culturally organized behavior. That's why I can say individuals don't go to war. They are organized into it.

3. Genes don't account for styles of painting or singing, etc, or many other expressions for which there are clear historical lineage. Sustained behaviors as such have as much to do with cultural memory and cultural organization as brain structures. Brains enable us to do both but it isn't as simple as saying we are doomed to keep going to war.

We do have plenty of archaeological evidence to show that in low density populations, humans tend toward flat power structures and that as density increases with correlated increases in interdependent functions and specialization (from being a person who can do many things to ones who can do very complex things but only a few), elites emerge to control the resource allocations shared by necessity to enable specialization. Regardless of how elites are empowered, over time they become inherited. Even with some new members at the edges, overall they tend to concentrate in a few families, a few universities, a few networks. It is conjectured that the worst cases of war arise as a result of this concentration of power with the ability to select who receives the resources and who can allocate the surplus resources.

In other words, war is societal and the conditions that lead to it have as much to do with the way we organize our environment as our inherited genetic capacities.

A saying that went round summarized it: Awareness - Know what is in your head and know what your head is in.