h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This post is also on MySpace ... I think I'll keep it there as a reminder ... anyway :

Here is a news clip from yesterday from the local news paper ... at this point I'm rather numb... irony ... in another post here (which I posted yesterday) I was saying how I take very little seriously and that things ... good or bad will happen ... well bad things DO happen ... the woman mentioned in the clip was a freind ... the store she owned was one Richmonds best ... anyway, here is the news clip:

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A well-known Richmond couple and their two young daughters were found bound with their throats cut yesterday afternoon in the basement of their South Richmond home.

Richmond firefighters made the discovery about 1:45 p.m. after responding to a 911 call reporting a fire at the home of Bryan and Kathryn Harvey at 812 W. 31st St. in the Woodland Heights neighborhood.

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I know this is a very open ended question, but WHAT IS WRONG WITH US??????

Of all the species on this planet, we seem to be the only ones who KILL each other for reasons far from self preservation (self preservation I understand is inherent in all living things ...) ...

As I write this, I find that I'm backspacing and redoing words and may be on the verge of rambling, so I think I'll stop now ...

Wow ... what is wrong with us? Where and or when did we take the wrong road? Why do good people die in numbers, and the wicked just go on ...Life (our chance to make sense of it all)The Universe (all we see and dont see ... our canvas to reality) Everything (what I think we're missing)

I think I'll be sad for quite a while..

Back up the trees if you ask me.

capitalism

The advancement in technology and living in the 21st century.
In previous times,i believe ppl were more spiritual and also had a belief in god.
Now take away them beliefs,ppl become helpless and alone.So they take what they can while their alive.
Then again theres always been evil folk in the world.

All of you have very good points (the trees are my first choice, although I think we should have stayed in the ocean)

Its very true that the more complex a society the more problems its citizens create ... I find it very interesting that in "primitive" cultures you see very little, if any problems with mental illness and random violence. It makes sense to me ... this world has alot in it that drive you crazy if you let it.

I think to some degree that the world has always been this violent. The reason it seems so out of control is that we have "real time" access to whats happening all over the globe. News that took weeks to reach a neighboring regieon is now seconds away. Capitalism? Just take a look at things in the good ol USSA here ... I look at my own countryfolk at times in sheer disbelief ... we complain that prices are soooo high and yet we MUST own the biggest SUV that travels close to the speed of light even though we cant drive them more than 70MPH ... now thats plain nuts....if anyone needs to slow down a bit, it us...

So things still dont make any sense, which in some way makes alot of sense. We have a great deal of "collective figuring out" to do.

Violence has always been there. In the wild or in primitive times, natural selection wouldn't have been kind to humans suffering from either mental or physical disabilities, hence the inconspicuousness. It wasn't that long ago since the time when if you were born with a birthmark you would have been cosidered the spawn of satan. The biggest problem is population versus land/resources/food(oil). At the moment, it looks like there isn't enough future to go round everyone.

I think we need to put things in some context. The vast majority of people who pass us by any day are just normal people with the same concerns as most of us. What we see reported on the news are the extremes - people with extreme problems, in extreme situations or with a biological makeup that makes them commit extreme acts. When we are living in a world of 6.5 billion people (to put that in context: It would take you 5,000 *years* to give each one of them a quick hand-shake) such situations and such people are bound to exist.

So the poser as to why the good people die in numbers while the bad people seem to live on can be answered by statistics: there are a *lot* more good people than "bad" people, so inevitably a lot more of the former will die than the latter. It doesn't mean that "bad" people are spared in any way. Bad people can, of course, live long and happy lives (by their standards), but they don't get any longevity or happiness points simply because they are "bad" as such. The laws of nature are the exact same for them as they are for anyone, good, bad or indifferent.

Here's a poser for you - in the days of primitive hunter gatherer societies, the population of people did not increase appreciably at all. This is because people died and were sometimes killed with great frequency, on a rate that would traumatise most people living today. To reach the age of 30 in those societies was quite an achievement.

Also this issue of capitalism being the root of all evil is bunk. I don't remember Mao or Stalin being avowed capitalists, and yet they deliberately massacred millions of their own countrymen.

I also think that humans have one great advantage that other animals do not. We can exercise compassion on a world-wide scale, and we can, and do put in place initiatives to preserve life. This would not happen in the wild: Predatory animals can only survive on the deaths of their prey. Never will they say, hey, we are killing too many of our prey animals, let's hold back. Neither would they be in any way concerned with the deaths of fellow animals that they have never met after a tsunami or an earthquake in Pakistan or a famine in Ethiopia.

I don't think religious belief has been such the boon we think it has been, because there has always been the questions of "whose God?" and "which particular belief?", which, repeatedly over the centuries has driven otherwise good people to commit acts of mass murder and oppression. In any case, an overwhelming majority people on the planet still believe in some sort of god, and I am not aware of any reports that suggest that people with no religious belief are more liable to be selfish or to commit criminal acts. Indeed I would be surprised if this was the case.

I certainly don't think that we have all the world's problems licked, but as a race of creatures we are tough, remarkable, compassionate, co-operative and able to make the best of a bad situation.

Around the sun in an orbit

I could argue against Mao and Stalin being true communists but power hungry men who exploited communism to obtain and hang on to power but that's a whole other issue.

Hunter-gather societies tend to be small and any anti-social act threatens the survival of the group so transgressers will be indentified and deal with quickly using by execution. If you are living on the edge you don't tend to ask questions if someone is mentally ill, evil or just plain selfish - they threat the group and so they have to go - end of debate. I think the problem may well be urbanisation and mobility - although cities are great in that you can be who you want to be without worrying that the people in your village might think you're a bit strange and giving you grief as a result (it is why I am very much an urban animal) it does mean that you can't rely on nasty people not getting to you and also that increased mental health problems probably happy through stress and the lack of emotional support. It can be possible to utterly lonely and disconnected in today's world in a way which perhaps in an earlier time when everyone where you lived near knew you it wasn't and I think that to lead to mental problems and emphathy failures resulting people just lashing out at other people.

By the way the interesting thing about human beings is that we are capable of being both better and worse than animals - we are half gods and half devils so to speak.

'Ere,
What about that bloke who's just been sent to chokey for raping a 12 WEEK old baby?
Now THAT is f***ed up!

>>>"I could argue against Mao and Stalin being true communists but power hungry men who exploited communism to obtain and hang on to power"

Agreed, but it did not make them, by default, capitalists. Far from it.