[mdlug] Darwinia game at Big Lots for $4

[Garry Stahl]

Joseph Vartanian wrote:
> True.  We often forget that we're part of this thing we call nature.
> I believe it's just us trying to distance ourselves from the animal
> kingdom, because it makes us feel special.  But why shouldn't we
> distance ourselves from them?  We're smarter than them.  We're the
> only living things on Earth that actually understand concepts like
> natural selection and extinction.  We have a much better
> understanding, than any other animal, of how our actions impact the
> world around us and ultimately ourselves.  This ability to understand
> things that other animals can't understand is the one and only unique
> ability that nature gave to us humans.  Humans think and animals act
> on impulse.  If we don't use this unique ability, and act only on pure
> impulse, then that makes us nothing but animals again.
>
> Now I have no idea why I just wrote all that.  I think it was just an impulse.
>   

Thinking ourselves apart from nature causes us to make serious errors. 
While we are to the point unique in our ability alter our circumstances
and environment, we are not "apart" from nature, and it helps to
remember that.  "Nature" affects us as much if not more than we affect
nature.

In many years for observing animals, the human variety included, I am
not so sure that abstract thought is the realm of humans alone. 
Likewise the supposedly human traits of kindness, love, and charity.  I
don't believe that sentients is a black and white issue. 

-- 
Garry  AKA  --Phoenix--  Rising above the Flames.

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
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