Your prediction on the future of the human race

[Azdgari]

Kudos, Tora, the first thing I thought of when I read Woeler's post was the people (three or four I think) who took bullets and died saving the lives of their girlfriends.

I wonder how differently we would perceive things if the news wasn't unbelievably negativity-centric.

[Woeler]

[quote="Tora"][quote="WildSimba"]There are always going to be people who are willing to not just think for themselves[/quote]
This is what I have been trying to say. That not all of man is greedy and full of selfishness. I am not trying to put a theory down. Woeler sorry for outright calling you blind, but you present yourself as though you refuse to accept anything to the contrary to your so called facts *cough* opinions *cough*

Perhaps you don't want to accept that people out there are capable of caring for others to the point of placing their loved one's lives in front of their own.[/quote]

No they are not opinions. You refuse to accept that it is common sense to survive and not die. There are of course excpetions, but exceptions are everywhere. There might be a >0.01% that would, like in the stories, die for someone else. That does by far not prove that the other 99.99+% must be like that too. The FACT is that humans are designed to survive, and if that will cost the lives of others, so be it.

There are many examples of hard-wired human instincts that help keep us alive. Perhaps the most obvious case is the fight-or-flight response, coined by Harvard University physiologist Walter Cannon in 1915. When humans are faced with danger or stress, a biological trigger helps us decide whether to stay and fight or get the heck out of there ''flight''.

When we're stressed or staring danger in the face, the brain's hypothalamus is activated. It initiates a series of chemical releases and nerve cell responses that gets us ready for the impending scenario. Adrenaline is released into the blood stream, our heart rate increases, blood is pumped more quickly into our muscles and limbs. Our awareness, sight and impulses all intensify and quicken. You can thank our caveman ancestors for this one. Early man faced a lot of dangers, and the fight-or-flight response evolved to help them evade or battle those dangers in order to survive. Today, it's what allows an ordinary Joe to rush out of burning building, a phenomenon known as hysterical strength. It also helps us out in non-life threatening situations like a boss screaming in your face or possibly fleeing or getting involved in a barroom brawl.

What is so hard about accepting that in the end, when it comes to life and death, we are selfish and greedy creatures with a strong will to survive? It's all there, in your genes, in my genes. When my house is on fire and chances are big I'm going to die my brain will not tell me ''get everyone else out of there'', no my brain would tell me ''get the hell out of there'' and so would yours.

[Tora]

[quote="Azdgari"]Kudos, Tora, the first thing I thought of when I read Woeler's post was the people (three or four I think) who took bullets and died saving the lives of their girlfriends.

I wonder how differently we would perceive things if the news wasn't unbelievably negativity-centric.[/quote]
Yep the news is horribly one sided. It is always negative, with the occasional slip of a positive story.

@Woeler You have your view point from years of research, and I still see the perception that change is coming. You see your theory and I see my hypothesis and until I am proven wrong that change is coming than you can bet I'll argue til the end of the earth.

[Woeler]

[quote="Tora"][quote="Azdgari"]Kudos, Tora, the first thing I thought of when I read Woeler's post was the people (three or four I think) who took bullets and died saving the lives of their girlfriends.

I wonder how differently we would perceive things if the news wasn't unbelievably negativity-centric.[/quote]
Yep the news is horribly one sided. It is always negative, with the occasional slip of a positive story.

@Woeler You have your view point from years of research, and I still see the perception that change is coming. You see your theory and I see my hypothesis and until I am proven wrong that change is coming than you can bet I'll argue til the end of the earth. [/quote]

You are supporting a hypotheses that hasn't been proven right nor wrong. I just stick with the facts we have at this moments in time. If your hypothesis becomes fact, I will accept it, if not, I just cant.

People don't change. We are what we are, and there is no solid evidence on what we will become. there are steady predictions though, but they aren't that bright. We are not living in a fairy tale. life is not unicorns and rainbows.

you can argue to the death. still won't provide you with solid evidence. We won't just drop our instincts (which is impossible) because they are cruel. In fact, it will never happen. our most basic instinct is to survive, it is the whole principle of evolution, and we, animals, are bound to that.

[Miharuka]

Hmm..
I am not sure about someone taking a bullet for a person they love.
They won't do it only for the the person they care about, but also for theirself in a way. They can't imagine a life without that person, of course. But what if that person thinks the same thing? And needs a life without the person they loved the most as well. Whenever the person can be happy with taking your life for that person or not, is pretty much unknown in the end. But at any rate, whenever it's good or not, I think risking a life for another person is a very brave thing to do and most people won't do such a thing. ^^

And yeah, we humans pretty much usually try to just safe our own lifes. For most it's the first thing you can think about. That's just how pretty much everyone of us works. So I gotta agree with Woeler in this.

[Azdgari]

The way people act in everyday life = 99.9999% of the time

The way people act in life/death scenario = 0.0001% of the time

Why are we only arguing about life and death?

[wolfishgirl]

Woeler when u say that people cant change i have go arugue
people do change and ghey change all the time. But most of
those changes r small and happen over a vast amount of
time.

[Woeler]

[quote="Azdgari"]The way people act in everyday life = 99.9999% of the time

The way people act in life/death scenario = 0.0001% of the time

Why are we only arguing about life and death?[/quote]

all i am saying is that in the end we are still animals. This wasnt even on topic. we got carried away. We are not all loving creatures and we will never be. This world will never become an utopia, because we are human. it is as simple as that. people should not bother wasting their time on a utopian world and denying what we are. we are what we are, not what some wish we were.

@wolfsgirl. no they don't. People do something stupid, you forgive them and they will do it again.

[Azdgari]

Do you believe that progress is pointless? Your logic seems to be "why try to improve the world, it's impossible." If it's 'impossible' to improve humanity, why don't we just revert back to the dark ages when we brutally killed each other whenever we liked, denouncing culture and science? Isn't that where your logic leads, that we're no better now than we were then and that we never will be? If not, then stop saying that it's futile to try to improve humanity.

Obviously we're going to try to be utopian: does a musician say "i want to be a minor star" or a baseball player say "i want to be a minor leaguer when i grow up." Obviously we should aspire to the best. Utopianism may be impossible, but "Shoot for the moon. even if you miss, you're pretty damn up there." As long as we continue to improve ourselves, there's hope for humanity. The only way there isn't hope is if we forsake ourselves and declare progress impossible.

[wolfishgirl]

I say go back to the dark ages so that we get rid of technology.