Hi PESKY BOY...

I'm sorry I've not seen you on OLO or the Forum before ? Therefore please accept my welcome.

You state inter alia, that humans are not special ? Why is that, when human beings are the highest 'life form' is my understanding ? There's no other living species superior to humans to my knowledge at least. And we're by far, inherently the most dangerous of all the living species too, I would've thought ? Or am I right off the mark ?

Hi o sung, my point is not that our species is not special to us, it's that our species is not special to "the point of it all". In other words, "the point of it all" would still exist even if our species didn't exist. So, this means homo sapiens is not special, meaning we are not at the centre of existence as believed by primarily the religions and to a lesser extent by the spiritualists. We are a mere part of existence, just like everything else in existence is a mere part of existence be it big, little, significant, insignificant, necessary or unnecessary etc.

o sung wu,

Not a serve, but treating you as an equal, and I am concerned when that melancholy creeps up to trip you and maybe cause you to wonder about your own assessments.

I am sure you could direct us all if you chose.

Pesky, I was being a bit cheeky because I did actually know what you meant however your comment says "most of 'us' here in this discussion appear to think... ". Using the word 'us' generally means you are including yourself. Sorry to wind you up.

We don't look back on Neanderthals or other early humanoids with horror and pity and I doubt a more advanced civilization of the future will look at us that way. 20,000 years from now they may not even be interested in our actions, say from the years 1500 to 2500. Why should they be, everything will have progressed well beyond the point of worrying about 2014. An interested handful of historians will be able to see the mistakes we made or science we totally missed but they will also recognise everything we do now is a step in the process of them being where they are in the future.

OSW>>Which brings me back to my initial question. What is the point of being born, when we all must ultimately die ?<

OSW, most of the paradigms have been covered....so I poise the questions, why the senseless short life span in our DNA and why do we have our unique consciousness.

Consider the 70 odd years we live for.
Most of our mistakes come before maturity.....many of them effects us for all the following years. Then we move into young adulthood, still vibrant assertive personalities and still making mistakes of judgement because of the lack of experience due to age.

As we reach mid life we consider matters with the wealth of experience of “cause and effect”, we have seen “why” something happens and we have seen the outcome....., our values have changed and our actions may be the total opposite of our youthful judgements. We understand life differently, but our DNA does not allow the best attributes of humanity to come to fruition......DNA can have us living for a thousand years, but it doesn’t. Why give us this unique consciousness and then end our existence before we can exploit it?

Our unique consciousness, serves no purpose under evolution......the knowledge that we have a use by date does us no favours. Other creatures who share the majority of our DNA are not self aware. When a lion eats a Wildebeest, the other Wildebeest do not stand around and think “that could be me tomorrow.”

OSW, if we lived longer the history books would have fewer of the inhumane acts of man because of the shift in values that longevity brings. Evolution and DNA gave us everything, but did it give us our unique consciousness.....if so,is that the reason for our existence and procreation just the conduit.

For those that believe humans have too high opinion of themselves. Tell this to the to climate change scientists. No other species is being blamed for such an imprint on the planet. Humans do have a higher intelligence, a higher responsibility and a higher purpose.