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PeonForHer -> RE: Male Superiority? (9/11/2013 7:32:59 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JeffBC
If an asteroid hits the earth it wins. It has more power. There is no debate. there is no nothing.
If a lion and an elephant get into it, the elephant wins... period.
Jeff . . . this is getting weird now.
What does the asteroid win - a gold cup? A big certificate to show its mum? What does the Earth lose? What does either care? What kind of 'power' are you talking about? There's not only debate, there's a ton of it. As for the lion and the elephant getting into it . . . what does that really mean and what's it supposed to imply? Lions can and do kill and eat baby elephants while running rings around their parents. They don't get into pitched one-to-one battles with elephants, nor elephants with lions, because that would make no sense in their world. Neither has any status to uphold. Both just want to eat something without being harmed. It would be a patent anthropomorphism to assume that either thinks of the other in terms of 'superior' and/or 'inferior'. They both want to survive - and that's just about it.
When you watch a pack of lions pursuing a herd of wildebeest on a nature doc, do you think in terms of 'superior' and 'inferior'? I did, once. I assumed the lion was 'above', somehow, in some overall 'natural hierarchy'. But then I realised that this was bollocks. The number of wildebeest far exceeds the number of lions, for a start. Secondly, the wildebeest only needs to bend its neck to eat grass. The lions have to stalk, run and frequently risk their lives in order even to get a snack. We routinely call the lion the 'king of the jungle' - it could just as easily be called the beggar.
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""Power" is not some made up human construct. Nor is it some sort of BDSM theory. It's a fact of life and it matters. In the end, when we got done with all the pious hand-wringing it may be all that matters.
Firstly, yes it is indeed a human construct. Unless . . . can you cite me a source written by some other creature on the 'nature of power'? Now, to move past that obvious point: the idea of 'power' is a human construct that has enduring value because it appears to fit the world around us. Therein lies its seductive appeal, though: it gets muddy and awkward when its application is taken out of physics and used in the context of, say, politics; but it gets seriously misapplied, and frequently, in the context of non-human animals.
As for that 'pious hand-wringing' comment - nup . . . I'm still at a loss as to how anything I've said is about 'piety' or the lack thereof. Likewise Phydeaux's 'political correctness'. I'm baffled at how either of these things crept in for you and him.
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As I said above, I see that statement as nothing other than narcissistic swill.... "Oh, humans are the center of the universe" type stuff. No, we're not all that different from animals in an awful lot of ways and I choose Occam's razor rather than making up elaborate theories to explain away the obvious.
Scientist gives food to one chimp but not the other and the one given food refuses to eat it along with various expressions of aggravation. Looks pretty simple to me.
Scientist gives food to one chimp but not the other and the one given food refuses to eat it along with various expressions of aggravation. Looks pretty simple to me.
Re the chimp: it could be about some sense of 'fairness' - or it could be that the chimp offered food just doesn't want to get beaten up by the unfed chimp. Or it could be that the chimp assumes the food is tainted in some way else all the chimps would be offered it. Who knows a chimp's reasoning?
I agree, of course, that we're not separated from non-human nature - that's the most obvious kind of arrogance. Another arrogance, though perhaps a less obvious one, is that though we are part of nature, we still do have a host of characteristics that aren't shared by even our closest relatives. Just because we now accept that we're part of the animal kingdom rather than apart from it, that doesn't wipe away the problem of anthropomorphism - of our seeing what we want to see in other species, not seeing what we don't want to see.
This all reminds me of the (true case) of the woman who visited the ape house in the zoo in order to 'bond' with the silverback gorilla. She would sit looking fondly into its eyes, seeing its own warm facial expressions as it gazed back at her. Occam's razor: fondness, expressed by eye-to-eye connection. Obvious. Until said silverback suddenly went apoplectic with fury one day, broke out of the pen and beat her up.
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