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[sophiaserpentia]

An "idle thought" inspired by the conversion on my recent entries about pleasure restriction.

Human civilization is only possible because we are predators.

Comments

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Explain please? Do you mean that in the beginning, we only made tools to hunt and process prey, and would not have done so if we were herbivores?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

No, it's more fundamental than that. Civilization is a sublimated form of predation. The mindset that caused us to create structured societies is descended from the mental acuity that allows us to divide the world into predators and prey. Civilization -- in a scarcity situation -- depends on exploitation and social stratification.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The question, as weishaupt pointed out, is whether we will be able to evolve beyond it. This goal comes hand-in-hand with the accomplishment of post-scarcity.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

A long time ago I studied paristology. The professor spoke of how almost all predatory organisms began as killers. Relatively swift killers. But then the organism was out of a host. Some of the offspring survived, but not many. Over time, predatory organisms developed into parasites which slowly drained life force from the host, but did not kill or harm so much that the organism could not survive. And over a lot more time, the most successful parasites evolved into saprophyes, which neiehter helped nor harmed the host organism. And some of thjese further evolved into symbiotes. In symbiosis, both organisms flourish because of the presence of the other. Some symbiotes have evolved to the point where two organisms become needed so that either can survive. Lichen is a good example of this.

Some scientists are now beginning to see that a human without any internal organisms could not survive. In Greg Bear's "Darwin's Children" he goes into this in detail.


Now, bacteria divide every 20 minutes. So evolution of species is rather swift. Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to evolve thru memes as well as genes, so even though our generation time is vastly longer than 20 minutes, we have the potential to evolve at a relatively rapid rate because of memetic changes on top of genetic changes.

Predation is one extreme of human interaction. However, it is (like various plagues) very inneficient when it comes to long term survival. It seems to me that those cultures which evolve into mutually beneficial behaviors have a much greater chancde of long-term prosperity, not just survival.