The systems that are ‘behind the curtain’ are also a result of nature, not just human nature, but all natural tendencies of life on Earth to compete for survival and procreation. That said, we are evolving and can accelerate this evolution if we become more self aware of our oneness as organisms (not just as humans) and our ability to thrive without a fight to the death but rather collaboration and nurturing of others. It can be done but it is difficult to overcome natural tendencies. You see it in families and communities every day. We compete in sports that give us that natural bump we crave, but in the end we can find it in ourselves to love and nurture our competition after the big game is done. We can evolve.
I don’t have a cult. My opinions are from my own observations. Living organisms compete to survive but also collaborate, both unwittingly and purposefully. Look around yourself
Your observations are conditioned by 3000 years of Greek culture by way of Christianity and empire. These animals have no more sense of contest than any herd in an abattoir. David Graeber from his creative refusal paper:
>However this may be, the heroic complex, if one might call it that, had an enduring impact. The city-states and empires of the classical Mediterranean, to take one vivid example, could well be seen as a kind of fusion of heroic principles into a standard of urban life drawn from the far older civilizations to its East – hardly surprising, perhaps, in a place where all literary education began with Homer. The most obvious aspect is the religious emphasis on sacrifice. On a deeper level, we find what Alvin Gouldner (1965: 45–55) called ‘the Greek contest system’, the tendency to turn absolutely everything, from art to politics to athletic achievement to tragic drama, into a game where there must be winners and losers. The same spirit appears in a different way in the ‘games’ and spirit of aristocratic competition in Rome. In fact, I would hazard to suggest that our own political culture, with its politicians and elections, traces back to heroic sensibilities. We tend to forget that for most of European history, election was considered the aristocratic mode of selecting officials, not the democratic one (the democratic mode was sortation: see Manin 1997, Dowlen 2009).
That Greek contest system? That's you right now, projecting drama onto life.
I see this natural tendencies argument as just patriarchal nonsense and hope we can get to the love and nurture before tearing each other apart. But it takes what it takes. That natural bump is just an adrenaline rush that we crave because we have left our souls so far behind in our drug fueled quest for more and better. How about less and good?
The systems that are ‘behind the curtain’ are also a result of nature, not just human nature, but all natural tendencies of life on Earth to compete for survival and procreation. That said, we are evolving and can accelerate this evolution if we become more self aware of our oneness as organisms (not just as humans) and our ability to thrive without a fight to the death but rather collaboration and nurturing of others. It can be done but it is difficult to overcome natural tendencies. You see it in families and communities every day. We compete in sports that give us that natural bump we crave, but in the end we can find it in ourselves to love and nurture our competition after the big game is done. We can evolve.
No, that competitive reproduction drama is nothing more than the metanarrative of your particular fertility cult.
I don’t have a cult. My opinions are from my own observations. Living organisms compete to survive but also collaborate, both unwittingly and purposefully. Look around yourself
Your observations are conditioned by 3000 years of Greek culture by way of Christianity and empire. These animals have no more sense of contest than any herd in an abattoir. David Graeber from his creative refusal paper:
>However this may be, the heroic complex, if one might call it that, had an enduring impact. The city-states and empires of the classical Mediterranean, to take one vivid example, could well be seen as a kind of fusion of heroic principles into a standard of urban life drawn from the far older civilizations to its East – hardly surprising, perhaps, in a place where all literary education began with Homer. The most obvious aspect is the religious emphasis on sacrifice. On a deeper level, we find what Alvin Gouldner (1965: 45–55) called ‘the Greek contest system’, the tendency to turn absolutely everything, from art to politics to athletic achievement to tragic drama, into a game where there must be winners and losers. The same spirit appears in a different way in the ‘games’ and spirit of aristocratic competition in Rome. In fact, I would hazard to suggest that our own political culture, with its politicians and elections, traces back to heroic sensibilities. We tend to forget that for most of European history, election was considered the aristocratic mode of selecting officials, not the democratic one (the democratic mode was sortation: see Manin 1997, Dowlen 2009).
That Greek contest system? That's you right now, projecting drama onto life.
I see this natural tendencies argument as just patriarchal nonsense and hope we can get to the love and nurture before tearing each other apart. But it takes what it takes. That natural bump is just an adrenaline rush that we crave because we have left our souls so far behind in our drug fueled quest for more and better. How about less and good?
Well put.