Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Rats killing when too many, people too???
Have the mankind reached the critical mass??
Well, this is a good question, posted in Virginia Tech, Behavioural Sinks, The Killings . The question and comparison with rats is really extremely good. But the author of the post has forgotten that there is another developmental stream in human society that differs from rats and other animals. If you are hungry you go to the nearest shop and you get what you need. Rats and animals cannot do that. So we are taught by our own development that it is not necessary to kill when there are too many other humans around. This signal is not threat any more.
For rats it is a threat. If there are too many of them the amount of food per rat capita gets too small and they “know” they might die or end up with no offsprings. Therefore they fight for food.
In human society we can observe many different types of organizing patterns. In so called developed societies and in cities people usually do not have to fear any kind of famine. In some regions of Africa this does not function, here people have many problems how to stay alive, a bit similar like the rats in the quoted post.
SO if we want to think of humans as further evolutionary development of rats, this of course fits, but not absolutistic; we must see other influences humans must react accordingly, and one of them is huge amounts of easily accessible food in developed countries.
Therefore the question if mankind has reached the critical mass - like in rats that kill there fellows in order to maintain their own lives - cannot be exactly applied to mankind. Only some parts of human society lives in similar conditions as rats. In such societies, of course, we can observe similar behavioral patterns as those of rats. Ii is necessary to view certain factor linked with their contexts.
It seems to me that stress is the point. If some organism is put under stress it is signal to the organism to take some action. In this light stress might be viewed as pain of fear, these two are also signals of body saying there is something wrong going on and some action is required.
Well, this is a good question, posted in Virginia Tech, Behavioural Sinks, The Killings . The question and comparison with rats is really extremely good. But the author of the post has forgotten that there is another developmental stream in human society that differs from rats and other animals. If you are hungry you go to the nearest shop and you get what you need. Rats and animals cannot do that. So we are taught by our own development that it is not necessary to kill when there are too many other humans around. This signal is not threat any more.
For rats it is a threat. If there are too many of them the amount of food per rat capita gets too small and they “know” they might die or end up with no offsprings. Therefore they fight for food.
In human society we can observe many different types of organizing patterns. In so called developed societies and in cities people usually do not have to fear any kind of famine. In some regions of Africa this does not function, here people have many problems how to stay alive, a bit similar like the rats in the quoted post.
SO if we want to think of humans as further evolutionary development of rats, this of course fits, but not absolutistic; we must see other influences humans must react accordingly, and one of them is huge amounts of easily accessible food in developed countries.
Therefore the question if mankind has reached the critical mass - like in rats that kill there fellows in order to maintain their own lives - cannot be exactly applied to mankind. Only some parts of human society lives in similar conditions as rats. In such societies, of course, we can observe similar behavioral patterns as those of rats. Ii is necessary to view certain factor linked with their contexts.
It seems to me that stress is the point. If some organism is put under stress it is signal to the organism to take some action. In this light stress might be viewed as pain of fear, these two are also signals of body saying there is something wrong going on and some action is required.
# posted by Dalibor @ 3:04 AM 
