What's the deal with humans and their obsession with continuing their survival as a species?
Whenever there is a movie/t.v. show in which some catastrophic event occurs and mankind is faced with extinction a couple things usually happen. First, they try to avoid the catastrophe. This I understand. If we have the ability to drill holes in asteroids or to the center of the earth and set off nukes, I'll fully support this idea. The thing I don't understand is when or if their plan fails, they will occasionally have this back up plan, in which 1,000 or so of the smartest doctors / scientists / politicians all go to the secret bunker underground so they can wait for the nuclear winter to end and begin rebuilding society. I mean, really?! If you spend thousands of years making a sand castle and it gets knocked over by a wave, do you stick your hands right back into the sand and start over? When does "ah.. screw it" come into the equation?
Another thing I don't understand is the movie Children of Men. The movie is about the earth in which babies are unable to survive, and the youngest person in the world is like 20, and mankind is obviously coming to an end. Everybody in the movie is terribly depressed. That's a pretty poor attitude in my opinion. I think it should be more like the last day of high school when everybody is like "well, it's been fun" instead of "When I'm dead there won't be other people that are still alive, oh no!" I guess the only thing worth living for is knowing that life goes on when you die? huh? Besides, is that really such a bad thing, considering how destructive human's have been on the planet?
More recently in the news is the story of a woman who gave birth to 8 babies when she already has 6 toddlers at home for a total of 14 kids. There has been outrage over stories that the woman was recently seen getting a manicure despite the fact that she uses food stamps / other government programs to feed her family. A lot of people seem to think you shouldn't have children if you can't afford to care for them. I tend to agree.
Which brings me to my final question..
I just saw this video on youtube
I think most of us here are aware of extreme poverty in other parts of the world, so that shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. But with all the news about Octo-Mom recently, I never thought about it this way. That's A LOT of hungry children. That's also A LOT of parents having children that they can't support in countries where they are less likely to receive assistance. The children are expected to care for their parents when they get older. In one hand we have a woman who receives hundreds of death threats every day because she uses food stamps to feed her children and in the other hand we're asking for $3 billion to feed hungry children, but do very little to ask why they are hungry or how to get them out of the cycle of poverty. Is that a double standard?
i don't understand why people in the shittiest of situations bring children into the world. so you can make another being suffer? and ending world hunger doesn't start with sending food to the hungry. if you feed them, they just reproduce into the same situation and you have to keep sending more food, which puts them in a vicious cycle. no, you need economic development and investment, and that's not gonna happen for... a long time.
i agree paper. it's pretty much a taboo topic though, but in my opinion population control should be discussed very heavily.
i guess a lot of religious people are against condoms/abortion and considering a huge percentage of the world is religious that doesn't help.
then like BJ said there are those cultures where children are expected to work right away and thus people have children to create their own little slaveforce.
and then there are just the selfish people who want to pass on their progeny or have a cute little kid despite not really thinking about the consequences.
edit: oh you edited more stuff in, i don't agree with the rest of what you said. yes adults are idiots and have kids when they shouldn't, but i don't think we should talk about the follies of providing aid to those children unless you have the balls to be the one that says no to some starving kid face to face...
"What's the deal with humans and their obsession with continuing their survival as a species?"
I know what you're saying, I've asked this question before and I've never got a good answer. Funnily enough, it's usually after watching a movie/show which deals with the subject.
It's not that I'm cynical of humanity. It's hard to describe but the way this notion is portrayed in films just comes off as odd/forced/k, not explaining it well...
Ok, yea, I do get this answer a lot:
On February 16 2009 16:44 BroOd wrote: It's our biological imperative. We're hard-wired to survive.
I understand it but meh... I don't know. Maybe I'll attempt to say something with more substance in the morning.
I find it interesting that you question why people care about "living on as a species" and why they care about continuing it after they die, but in the same OP you seem to care about saving starving children balancing out the human race's priorities, presumably so it will continue to survive.
What the hell are you confused about? You really can't extrapolate that our species has developed through evolution, which has hard wired us to survive above all else? You seriously think that it's a strange reaction for us to attempt to preserve humanity in the direst of situations?
On February 16 2009 16:43 a-game wrote: edit: oh you edited more stuff in, i don't agree with the rest of what you said. yes adults are idiots and have kids when they shouldn't, but i don't think we should talk about the follies of providing aid to those children unless you have the balls to be the one that says no to some starving kid face to face...
you can't keep people from dying in third-world countries. people will die despite your best efforts, so you have to look past it and concentrate on securing food for them in the future through investment and technological advancement.
''Don't feed a hungry man a fish, teach him to fish blah blah blah''
or if you're into BW: ''don't watch battles that you already know the outcome for, go back to your base and start macroing blah blah blah''
Everything that you questioned in your op is something that I take pride in.
I think it is awesome that our species could possibly use technology to possibly sustain human existance indefinately ...
I mean we are that fucking unique. I thought this post would be a little more like "I don't understand why humans seem to care so much about surivial yet spend 90% of the history of the world spilling each others blood"
I think all of the things we do inspite of our instinct to surive are what make us shitty.
Ps Defilers> Humans I could live for days in a cloud of darkswarm tripping off plague ^^
On February 16 2009 16:50 fight_or_flight wrote: I find it interesting that you question why people care about "living on as a species" and why they care about continuing it after they die, but in the same OP you seem to care about saving starving children balancing out the human race's priorities, presumably so it will continue to survive.
I don't see how one has to do with the other. Trying to end suffering in one generation shouldn't be an invitation to bring the next generation into the world in the same horrible circumstances. I specifically brought up the film Children of Men because in that movie unlike any other, mankind is faced with extinction in a very peaceful manner. People aren't going to die, they just aren't going to be born. I don't say feed the poor so mankind will continue to survive. I say feed the poor because it's the humane thing to do.
I guess the underlying question I was getting at, that I didn't want to write in the OP so people wouldn't think I was trolling is this: Isn't not having children that you can't afford to feed the most effective way of ending world hunger? The consequences of course are societies / cultures being completely extinct. What's the greater tragedy?
Well I'll ask you this. Is it right for others to decide whether someone else's life is worth their suffering? From your point of view perhaps a life in a poor nation is not worth living, but obviously those people keep preserving.
edit: btw, I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. but we should definitely be careful whenever we try to decide what is best for someone else.
On February 16 2009 17:27 fight_or_flight wrote: Well I'll ask you this. Is it right for others to decide whether someone else's life is worth their suffering? From your point of view perhaps a life in a poor nation is not worth living, but obviously those people keep preserving.
edit: btw, I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. but we should definitely be careful whenever we try to decide what is best for someone else.
I think life is always worth living, I'm strictly talking about offspring. I think I do have a right to judge if I'm partially footing that bill. Look at octo-mom. Do you think she should be allowed to have as many babies as she wants while the taxpayers are the ones paying to raise them? I think octomom loses her right to say 'its my decision, im a mother and I choose to have this many kids' when she's not the one paying to raise them.
Besides, is that really such a bad thing, considering how destructive human's have been on the planet?
You think harm to ecosystems outweighs the value of human life!?
Well individual human lives rely on the longevity of humanity as a species, which itself is incumbent on the livability of the planet. Regardless of whether human action has actually degraded Earth's livability, imperiling one's species is at least as unforgivable as imperiling a member of one's species.
On February 16 2009 17:27 fight_or_flight wrote: Well I'll ask you this. Is it right for others to decide whether someone else's life is worth their suffering? From your point of view perhaps a life in a poor nation is not worth living, but obviously those people keep preserving.
edit: btw, I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. but we should definitely be careful whenever we try to decide what is best for someone else.
I think life is always worth living, I'm strictly talking about offspring. I think I do have a right to judge if I'm partially footing that bill. Look at octo-mom. Do you think she should be allowed to have as many babies as she wants while the taxpayers are the ones paying to raise them? I think octomom loses her right to say 'its my decision, im a mother and I choose to have this many kids' when she's not the one paying to raise them.
EPT
