About the assumptions we make in #DeepTime.
It is a mistake to think of #nature as warm and cuddly. Many, perhaps most, #violent encounters between #humans and #wildlife are the result of the former treating the latter as #Disney characters.
One reason "#birds are #dinosaurs" made immediate sense to me was a vivid childhood memory: when I was about ten, I thought some #goslings were cute and wanted to pet them. #Mother #Goose had other ideas. Yeah, don't do that.
It is *equally* a mistake to assume nature is All #Killing, All The Time. Fighting takes a lot of energy, and wild animals—including our own distant ancestors—are in constant peril of #starvation. Even a minor #injury can lead to #infection and #death.
Violence is a tool of survival, to be sure, whether in #predation, self-defense, or squabbles over #territory and #mating. Unnecessary violence is a quick road to #extinction. Most animals would rather do something else, when they can.
So before you fall back on "red in tooth and claw" as a default, look for other explanations. They're usually more interesting anyway.
nature and violence = natural?
@medigoth DeepTime was tagged in this post - do you mean this as word "DeepTime"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time ?
I like the writing regardless.
And also wonder why you wrote it?
Seems around the concept of accepting nature and violence perhaps... or something for humans to learn from... Can you expand on question in last paragraph?
nature and violence = natural?
@medigoth "But people are idiots..." (one might say) but what I mean more specifically is that to a certain this works or it can work more often to catch up with the lag of learning (each generation falling back more or catching up 'a bit better)... so I personally can appreciate the writing and intention but consider others way off! Obviously I can't see the worlds reaction but have some measurement as a kind-of many "FreeSchools" in myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=freeschool&ns0=1 ... but yes nevertheless well said and well my glass in the air for trying! 🥛 🍹
Summary and moving forward:
▲1▲ The whole 'catching up' is a long-term thing, can be short-term in understanding...
but then also what to do / how to convert is probably long-term too, and people die before doing / living something better...
▲2▲ People don't want the truth often I've found as it's too real or they don't want to know (it's a burden, it has more expectation to act and therefore kill yourself almost in the trying- e.g. banks etc cheating people - they don't want to reject it as that would almost reject the platforms of 'life' itself as the new deigns would have it... etc - just too real at the end!)
▲3▲ I guess a lot of this will cross into other things so don't want to distract but that's the whole point and design exactly to mix and make frustrating to get anything other that 'Walt Disney" type stuff... A quick look at you online I see lots of different stuff so would be good if you counter what I've said with something more precise if you're going for anything like education or growing more decent people ! (anything like that or even helping me define what we need / how)... so far making friends and accepting online pseudonyms & anonymity seems the way to get best we can from each other / hit mutual things / become united (dare I say as the last thing)...
▲ Finally - weakest point is keeping something going between 2 people (I'm can play the role of assistant and director/ both.... but people need to believe in themselves and others first before anything [ LOL + some irony there ]
▲ Alone nothing much, Together everything is possible...?
nature and violence = natural?
@freeschool right, I was talking about the concept of deep time, as described in the Wiki article. The reason for running them together as one word is simply that there's no way to tag phrases as far as I know.
The origin of the post was a conversation I was having elsenet about why modern #humans show evidence of #maternal #inheritance from #Neanderthals via #mitochondrial #DNA, but no evidence of #paternal inheritance via the Y #chromosome.
Their explanation was basically "our ancestors killed all the men and took all the women." Which is possible, of course: there are certainly plenty of examples of that in recorded human #history. But I have hard time believing it's the *only* thing that happened between two species (or subspecies: the line is fuzzy) that interacted with each over over tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
Another and IMO more likely explanation is that #hybrid #fertility is sex-linked. e.g. the rare #fertile #mules are always female. If the same applied in this case, that would explain why the #Neanderthal Y chromosome disappeared in mixed #human populations.
There are definitely applications to modern behavior. 🙂 But really, I'd mainly just like people to get away from always assuming the bloodiest possible explanation for observed #biological phenomena, whether in humans or any other animal.