~message to earthlings~

[Greta]

I'm dubious about early humans agreeing about the good life. I don't see so much agreement in other species' groups, but plenty of jockeying for position and dominance/submission rituals. Also, different tribal groups probably developed different moralities' based on the individual qualities of their leaders. Some may well have agreed on a morality that includes cannibalism, infanticide and other common behaviours of wild primates.

I agree with you on what you wrote.

My own nuclear family often practiced cannibalism. So I understand where you're coming from. (We always had turkey for Thanksgiving. And since I was the youngest and my Mom's favourite, I was always given the sphincter of the roasted chickens. The best part of the animal!! Mm-mm.)

I chose very carefully "the very first human family" in my example therefore, because they woulda been made of the waters of the same gene pool with very little deviation in values and systems.

Mum used to call the chicken's bum either the "pope's nose" or the "parson's nose". Also highly desired.

The first human family would have been a mutated genetic line we now call Australopithecus living within a larger tribe of common ancestors, presumed to be Ardipithecus ramidus.

The seeds of morality can been seen in other social species anyway. I'm not sure where it started, perhaps with mothers struggling to find a safe place to lay their eggs? The compulsion to care for one's young is odd when you think about it. Why should we? Why not eat them or leave them? Because any species* that eats or leaves their young is less likely to persist than a species that helps its young to survive to maturity.

Ironically, the amorality of natural selection has shaped morality. No doubt the situation in that sense will be similar for any advanced species. It clearly takes time for an evolving intelligent species to tame their residual fearful and savage instincts.


* aside from species that produce large litters or clutches of eggs.

[Dubious]

most of the humans who call Earth home
seem more alien than those unknown.

I don't get this. If someone is unknown -- unseen, unheard -- they don't seem like anything, since you can't see them. It is futile to compare anyone whose presence you can sense to anyone whose presence you can't, and are not aware of.

Humans often seem more alien to each other than to actual aliens they never met.
Sorry if the message wasn't simple enough.

[hajrafradi]

1. The compulsion to care for one's young is odd when you think about it. Why should we? Why not eat them or leave them? Because any species* that eats or leaves their young is less likely to persist than a species that helps its young to survive to maturity.

2. Ironically, the amorality of natural selection has shaped morality. No doubt the situation in that sense will be similar for any advanced species. It clearly takes time for an evolving intelligent species to tame their residual fearful and savage instincts.


* aside from species that produce large litters or clutches of eggs.

1. We care for our young because a gene was formed randomly that compelled the parent of few-litter issues to care for them, and it incidentally made the issue survive better. This increased chance for survival made more of the gene that compels this behaviour survive, and fewer of the issues that did not have the gene reproduce successfully.

Eventually the losers died out, because those species that have a few issues only, have a tremendous advantage for survival when they care for their vulnerable young.

2. The softening of the world has other reasons. (Again, my own theory follows.) In the middle ages horrible and inhumane torture and executions for the slightest of reasons were commonplace. Before that, in the ancient times, some human slaves were put into the functional modality of animals and machines. They were stripped of their humanity.

Then came the Industrial Revoution and the large scale agricultural meat production of female animals. (Chicken, cows.) Male animals don't taste good.

A lot of chicken and cow fertilizers ensued.

Industrial chemical byproducts created estrogen mimicking substances. Chicken fertilizer, and chicken lives, as well as cows', created a huge deposit of female hormones that diffused into the environment.

Females are less aggressive, more caring, less cruel than men. Historically speaking, and psychologically speaking. Of course there are exceptions, I don't deny that, but most women are peace-loving, conservatively investing, caring healers. Men are from Mars, women, from Venus.

So the world became effeminized due to the large amount of estrogen we absorb. Male crocodiles are losing their manlihood. Male fish spontaneously change into females. Amphibians are dying out.

And man... I mean, the human species... has become kinder. We have hospitals not only for the kings and princes. We don't allow slavery. We have social safety nets. Public executions and corporal punishment is banned. Rape and child abuse has been made illegal. Nobody gets their heads chopped off, or broken into the wheel, or closed into the Iron Maiden, or burnt alive at the stakes, or walled in while still alive, or get their bodies impaled lengthwise while still alive.

Thank goodness for chicken and cows. I think the global warming due to cow-production of methane is a tremendously fair and advantageous trade-off for having a kinder, gentler world.

It is not evolution that made man or humankind more moral. It is the chicken pooh and the cow pies that ought to get the credit for it.

[hajrafradi]

Humans often seem more alien to each other than to actual aliens they never met.
Sorry if the message wasn't simple enough.

Thanks for the explanation. I guess I was having a dumb moment. Sorry. Or worse, for me, and I wasn't.

Anyway, it makes sense now to me. Thanks.

[henry quirk]

"it is illegal to shoot an alien with a suckling baby"

When them sons of bitches stop laying eggs in human chests, I'll put away me shotgun...I wasn't meant to be an incubator and I'll be damned if I'm gonna start now...nope, no fleshy tubes down my throat, no leathery egg in my chest...old gypsy crone told me I'd bite it by way of cancer or an eighteen-wheeler...didn't say nuthin' about no glowy finger ET making babies in me.

[mtmynd1]

We're not long down from the trees. Does this mean that intelligent species that start the process towards building civilisations are supposed to immediately and uniformly know what they are doing, with an immediate developed morality?

Those aliens are tough judges, and probably being sanctimonious and hypocritical jerks. In that case we probably dodged a bullet by not being contacted by them.

Re:

who will defend your path
in further destroying the life
that sustains your madness.

you alone have labeled yourself
as homo sapiens... thinking man
but what has this brought your kind?

your memory has now faded
from the time that you were
part of the cosmic community

[Greta]

1. The compulsion to care for one's young is odd when you think about it. Why should we? Why not eat them or leave them? Because any species* that eats or leaves their young is less likely to persist than a species that helps its young to survive to maturity.

1. We care for our young because a gene was formed randomly that compelled the parent of few-litter issues to care for them, and it incidentally made the issue survive better. This increased chance for survival made more of the gene that compels this behaviour survive, and fewer of the issues that did not have the gene reproduce successfully.

Eventually the losers died out, because those species that have a few issues only, have a tremendous advantage for survival when they care for their vulnerable young.

Yes, but the step before the first efforts to protect the young was far earlier, and even more mechanistic than a compelling random gene. The first form of parental protection is believed by some to be toxic egg coverings. No compulsion there, just something exuded and it may well have protected the offspring from the parents as well as scavengers. Otherwise no argument. It's natural selection.

2. Ironically, the amorality of natural selection has shaped morality. No doubt the situation in that sense will be similar for any advanced species. It clearly takes time for an evolving intelligent species to tame their residual fearful and savage instincts.

2. The softening of the world has other reasons. (Again, my own theory follows.) In the middle ages horrible and inhumane torture and executions for the slightest of reasons were commonplace. Before that, in the ancient times, some human slaves were put into the functional modality of animals and machines. They were stripped of their humanity.

Then came the Industrial Revoution and the large scale agricultural meat production of female animals. (Chicken, cows.) Male animals don't taste good.

A lot of chicken and cow fertilizers ensued.

Industrial chemical byproducts created estrogen mimicking substances. Chicken fertilizer, and chicken lives, as well as cows', created a huge deposit of female hormones that diffused into the environment.

Females are less aggressive, more caring, less cruel than men. Historically speaking, and psychologically speaking. Of course there are exceptions, I don't deny that, but most women are peace-loving, conservatively investing, caring healers. Men are from Mars, women, from Venus.

So the world became effeminized due to the large amount of estrogen we absorb. Male crocodiles are losing their manlihood. Male fish spontaneously change into females. Amphibians are dying out.

And man... I mean, the human species... has become kinder. We have hospitals not only for the kings and princes. We don't allow slavery. We have social safety nets. Public executions and corporal punishment is banned. Rape and child abuse has been made illegal. Nobody gets their heads chopped off, or broken into the wheel, or closed into the Iron Maiden, or burnt alive at the stakes, or walled in while still alive, or get their bodies impaled lengthwise while still alive.

Thank goodness for chicken and cows. I think the global warming due to cow-production of methane is a tremendously fair and advantageous trade-off for having a kinder, gentler world.

It is not evolution that made man or humankind more moral. It is the chicken pooh and the cow pies that ought to get the credit for it.

Entertaining idea :) Who knows to what extent it's a factor? Hormones could have had an effect, but there is a surprisingly high percentage of the internet devoted to porn, and it's increasing. It would seem the effect is not so strong, at least globally, perhaps more likely concentrated in certain areas.

The softening process would seem to have started long before humans. The brutality of simpler, more ancient life is far beyond that of evolved forms, again, due to natural selection. Today's evolved forms are most gentle by comparison, if still brutal. What creature lasts longer? The animal that fights every potential competitor or threat that crosses its path? Or the animal that forms bonds and cooperates with its peers, retreats from battles that seem too intimidating, and uses display behaviour to diffuse conflict situations?

The latter is what humans have excelled in - resolving tensions with display behaviours rather than violence.

[hajrafradi]

...old gypsy crone told me I'd bite it by way of cancer or an eighteen-wheeler...

The doctor is "IN".

Stay away from biting crabs and biting eighteen-wheelers, and you're set for life.

The doctor is "OUT".

[henry quirk]

Who woulda thunk it? Eternal life by just avoidin' crabs and big-ass trucks!

Thanks, Doctor!

[SpheresOfBalance]

~message to earthlings~

hello planet earthlings -
you are not alone
but simply avoided.

you've been imprisoned
by your inabilities to
socialize amongst others.

that's why you've been
isolated by us through
thousands of light years

without any possibility
of ever re-establishing
communications again.

you were given one planet
in hopes you’d regain the
one truth over many denials

but you have continued
the path of avarice in
hopes of a larger ego.

you are unable to be free
without suspicion of losing
the false belief in this ego

which is your primary problem
bringing you wars and death
of your own inner workings.

this in turn has caused you
great remorse and guilt
which is of your own doings.

look at your planet...
you are terrorizing Nature
stripping it of the capability

to allow you your very life -
poisoning the waters and air
that you rely upon to survive.

you use the terror of possibility
to assuage yourselves into beliefs
that mind has sovereignty over life.

you don’t recognize your own faults
passing these things upon circumstances
that do not fit within your sensibilities.

although your common sense is askew
you insist upon having things your way
viewing yourself as beings of wisdom

cast in the image of a god you worship
without having any idea of what god is
but religiously follow the dreams of such

who will defend your path
in further destroying the life
that sustains your madness.

you alone have labeled yourself
as homo sapiens... thinking man
but what has this brought your kind?

your memory has now faded
from the time that you were
part of the cosmic community

a time when it could be said
that all lived as one without
the fallacies you now embrace.

but it was you who rebelled
and fought against this oneness
that links all life together

with or without your reasoning
which cannot conclusively
agree upon any one thing

except arming and defending
yourself against intruders
of your own limited mind.

yes, you are now established
forever alone on the fringes
of our universal existence

and so you shall remain
killing and destroying
not only yourself

but the very world that
you’ve been given -
a test to grow beyond

that very mind inhibiting
your full potential to
become the fullness

of life’s given promise:
a life unified with all
that ever was and will be,

conceived of or imagined.
beyond the smallness of the
lives that you insist upon.

as you say, good luck!
your limited future may
very well require this luck.

______________________

mtmynd1

Of course the core of this message, we have in common. A religion I might be capable of buying into, has yet to be written. Of course it would be centered upon the universe.

But thanks, it's always good to see another that doesn't fear speaking the truth, as it certainly appears.

Peace my friend!

[mtmynd1]

it's always good to see another that doesn't fear speaking the truth, as it certainly appears.

Peace my friend!

Thank you, amigo... again, I do appreciate your refreshing words.