Tree-hugging destroying the environment

POSTED BY: Hardware
UPDATED: Sunday, June 26, 2011 13:18
VIEWED: 4151
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RIONAEIRE

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 6:07 AM

I agree with Byte that acceptance for humans could be seen as part of survival since we are a social creature.
Niki, I think that survival in this Maslow context is concerning one's individual survival and not survival as a species. For most people survival does depend on acceptance into a group, one's family to start with and then one's tribe/community. Sure some people decide to live in a isolated fashion and are quite content doing so, but they still had to be part of something at some point.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 9:16 AM

What a day to have this conversation, oh irony of ironies.
Let's just say that Puella Magi Madoka Magica addresses this issue, the idea of desire to be accepted and self sacrifice, and in a way that about floored me.

-Frem

Select to view spoiler:

Kyubey, you just got *bitched*!

ALL HAIL MADOKA !!

NIKI2

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 4:40 PM

Mike: Got it.

Riona, thanx. As I said, the model is too small for me to make out, so I misunderstood somewhat. Nonetheless, doesn’t throwing oneself on a grenade represent short-term decision making?

(Magons: Thanx, but it asks me if I want to "run or save" when I click on the URL, and my computer is fresh back from the doc's; I'm a bit paranoid about doing either. I think I understand what they're talking about better now, tho'.)

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

SIGNYM

Saturday, June 25, 2011 9:07 PM

Quote:
Are you sure it trumps desire for SURVIVAL?

Yes, it does. Look at the people of Japan, living in radioactively contaminated areas. What keeps them there?

Quote:
But what if that person CHOOSES, not necessarily acceptance, but actively and purposely CHOOSES to work towards the benefit of their fellow humans, *WITHOUT* that emotional drive ?

A triumph of will.

BYTEMITE

Saturday, June 25, 2011 9:53 PM

I think that the grenade example is more altruism than it is about acceptance, group survival as opposed to individual survival. Acceptance doesn't matter if you're dead.

BYTEMITE

Saturday, June 25, 2011 9:57 PM

Quote:
Yes, it does. Look at the people of Japan, living in radioactively contaminated areas. What keeps them there?

The really radioactive areas have supposedly been evacuated. Some of the evacuees may still be in radioactive areas because the Japanese government has been reluctant to be honest about just how widespread the problem is, but that's less about acceptance, and more about not having anywhere else to go. Those that still have homes can't sell and move away, who would buy?

But if you don't mean evacuees, but you mean the workers putting their lives in danger because their company made them lose face and honour, then you have a point.

On the other hand, it's a different culture, and so the hierarchy of needs might be expected to work somewhat different.

SIGNYM

Saturday, June 25, 2011 11:44 PM

No, I mean the people living in areas that the government has TOLD them are safe, but private citizens with their Geiger-counter/ dosimeters showing are NOT.

And what do these citizens earn for their diligence and concern? The enmity of their fellow-citizens, who treat them as pariahs. Because anyone in Japan who might be contaminated is now treated like a modern-day leper.

BYTEMITE

Sunday, June 26, 2011 2:12 AM

I had not heard of this.

SIGNYM

Sunday, June 26, 2011 3:54 AM

Sad but true. Once the Nippon-Sekai server becomes re-available I'll post a link to their video. (I hope it's still there and not scrubbed.)

HKCAVALIER

Sunday, June 26, 2011 1:18 PM

It may be that this whole acceptance trumps individual survival thing is new to the human tool bag. I'm becoming more and more convinced that terrible unforeseen things have been going on in the human psyche since we truly became a post-tribal species and began living in societies of many millions of people--less like our primate forbears and more like termites in a termite mound.

Not only are we living in these bizarrely huge mega-colonies but we also experience mass-death on a wholly unprecedented scale. We kill off in wars today the equivalent of what was the total human population of the Earth for millennia! Every time we see a million people die in a war or from cancer or in car wrecks we've destroyed a group of people equivalent to our total pre-agrarian human species.

As late as the last century even getting shot at close range was an iffy proposition. Run like hell was still a powerful survival tool. Individual survival was simply more within the individual's reach. But with bombs and automatic weaponry, the individual knows now from repeated ill use that individual survival exists at the whim of state power. I think that's where the effed up insanity we see like Japanese citizens playing it cool in the face of nuclear atrocity comes from. It ain't our human nature. It's the nature of the state and how that li'l institution warps our human natures.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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