Yuyutsu, and Poirot,

Nature of Humanity?: Excuse my resorting to objective analysis of the nature of "man", and the nature of nature itself, for guidance.

Yuyutsu's proposition is that man's genetic makeup must, in concordance with the rest of nature, predispose man to be competitive, hence aggressive, as a matter of survival.

However, not all in nature is overtly competitive, some are more cooperative than man, and most rarely, if ever, kill their own kind. Killing, other than by man, is almost exclusively for food, leadership or mating rights. Man's behaviour tends to take "survival" to extremes.

Hence, by observation, man is more aggressive towards his own kind than any other life-form.

Is man genetically "engineered" to kill his own kind? As man's killing of his own kind in the modern era is almost always associated with some "ideal", I would hold this as proof of a "learned" disposition, rather than an inherent disposition.

Hence, an inherent "capability" is acted upon when "learned" motivations override "learned" principles. Killing for no reason? Defects can occur in all species.

Poirot poses: "Don't you think there's a significant paradox in the nature of the "extraordinary free-thinking intelligent life-form" .. in his equally extraordinary capacity for slaughtering his own kind."

And: "As intelligent and " aware" that man is, methinks there's something wrong with his wiring - might also account for his insistence on the existence of "God"."

To the first point: Yes, absolutely extraordinary, and indicative of an ego which knows no bounds. Is this genetic? Is it paradoxical? My guess is that exceptional potential predisposes to exceptional behaviour.

God? Wiring? Again, with exceptional potential, ingenuity and imagination, all exceptional expression has to be possible, including "dreams", "nightmares", visions, miracles, healing hands, enormous hatred and gigantic compassion.

Do other creatures suffer neurological disorders? Probably rarely. Hence, man's cerebral capacity is at once a blessing and a curse. (As going on OLO tends to confirm.)

Dear Saltpetre,

I suggest that the reason that man kills so many of his own species, relative to most other species, is that as the balance in nature was lost, there aren't any longer so many of the other species around for man to compete with, so man is left to compete with his own kind.

The reason man kills others remains as always that ancient competition over resources ("food, leadership or mating rights"), but because man has an ego, which doesn't like to suffer from cognitive dissonance, one justification or another is engineered to satisfy that ego that one is still on moral high-ground despite taking another's life.

Saltpetre and Yuyutsu,

Most of man's inhumanity to man is in response to his self-transcending nature as opposed to his ego-driven self-assertive nature. However, his ability to identify with group-think means he integrates within the egotism of that group.

Arthur Koestler wrote on the polarity in man, between the self-transcending and the self-assertive tendencies:

" Under normal circumstances the two tendencies are in dynamic equilibrium. Under conditions of stress the self-assertive tendency may get out of control and manifest itself in aggressive behaviour. However, on the historical scale, the damages wrought by individual violence for selfish motives are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively shared belief systems. It is derived from primitive identification instead of mature social integration; it entails the partial surrender of personal responsibility and produces the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group-psychology. The egotism of the social holon feeds on the altruism of its members...."

Dear Poirot,

Grouping/Socialization is a mammal phenomena, not just a human phenomena. Mammals come together to better compete for resources as a group than alone. Man forms somewhat bigger groups, but that's a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one - it's driven by the same genes.

Mammals of course are not the only "social" creatures, ants and bees do it too, but they are completely unconscious about it, whereas we can be conscious.

As the ego requires an excuse for violence, it often finds handy and picks the group and its ideas as a readily-available one.

When I earlier mentioned transcendence, it had nothing to do with the group thing. Not only you are not a human - you are not a mammal either (nor an ant): leave these behind, leave the genes to their folly and madness, you have nothing truly to do with all this!

Yuyutsu,

When I speak of transcendence, I'm referring to the psychological act of transcending the physicality of our material state - our earthbound reality as a human animal. This is achieved through art and religion, but also through the identification we find in integration within group structures.

We are social creatures like other mammals, yet for us it is not only physical security we seek, but also intellectual succor from shared beliefs and ideals.

The feeling of sharing beliefs and destiny takes us beyond our lone feeling of human frailty - we lose ourselves amidst a greater purpose. We break the bonds of purely physical reality by psychologically transcending our own meager physical interests to enjoin in "spiritual" or "ideological" oneness with others.

I think that your careful selection of a single definition for the word "faith" has backfired a little on you Trav.

When using Wikipedia, which is so frequently updated by people with differing views and priorities, it is important to check the references they use. Otherwise you might get egg on your face.

>>Faith is hope and belief in the goodness or trustworthiness, of a person, concept or entity.[1][2]<<

That little superscript leads to the supporting evidence. For example, the [1] leads to this:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith

And here you will find that you have selected the one definition that suits your purpose. Which is of course perfectly valid. Except that you present it as if it is the incontrovertible truth.

>>Clearly, the mere fact that you have a worldview (as everyone does, whether they admit it or not) shows that you have faith.<<

Nope. Sorry, but that is just one very stretched interpretation of the word "faith". I hold a worldview, I don't "have faith" in it. In support of which, I can promise you that my worldview has changed a number of times over the years. Has your "faith" in your religion changed too?

You play a similar trick with the word "stories".

>>If stories couldn’t be evidence then the discipline of history would be in ruins, because there are many historical figures who are examined day in, day out in universities across the world, and a large body of evidence used to learn about them is....you guessed it, stories.<<

I was using it in the sense of "a fiction". Legend, if you like, as in "the story of Robin Hood", or "the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table".

Both based upon historical characters. But "stories" nonetheless.