ZN and JT, very thought provoking posts, thank you!
WW
Where do you think evil (or bad behavior) comes from?
by wordlywife 39 Replies latest jw friends
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SixofNine
Louis Leakey sent me to Gombe with the hope that a better understanding of chimpanzee behavior might provide us with a window on our past. Farsighted genius that he was, he told me he thought my work would take at least ten years to complete, and this at a time when studies of just one year were almost unheard of. Of course, when I set out I had no plan to remain at Gombe for ten years. It seemed a whole lifetime when I was twenty-six years old. Yet had I stopped after only ten years, I should have continued to believe that chimpanzees, though very like us in behavior, were rather nicer. Then came a series of shocking and horrific events.
In 1971 one of our researchers, David Bygott, observed a brutal attack on a female of a neighboring community. She was set upon by a group of ?our? males who hit her and stamped on here, one after the other. During the course of this assault, which lasted more than five minutes, her infant of about eighteen months was seized, killed, and partially eaten. The mother managed to escape, but she was bleeding heavily and was so badly wounded that she probably died later. When David came back and described what he had seen we were stunned. We discussed it far into the night, eventually deciding that it must have been a once-only incident, a bizarre aberration. After all, the ringleader was the alpha male Humphrey, whom most of us considered something of a psychopath at the best of times, with a history of vicious attacks on females of his own community. Humphrey, we felt, must have encouraged the others to behave in such an uncharacteristic way.
Sadly, the ?noble ape? was as mythical as the ?noble savage?; we would witness many more incidents of brutal intercommunity aggression, several of which led to infant killing. Sometimes the interactions between ?our? chimpanzees and the ?stranger? females from other communities took a bizarre form. One of the unfortunate females was caught by a group of adult males as they patrolled their southern boundary. They climbed into the tree where she was feeding, her infant clinging to her belly. She made desperate attempts to appease the adult males who surrounded her, approaching with submissive grunts, crouching close to the branch. For a while it seemed that was working. Some of them even began to feed. When one male passed close by, she reached out to touch him with a typical submissive gesture at which he jerked away, stared at the arm she had touched, seized a handful of leaves, and vigorously rubbed at his defiled hairs. And then, a few minutes later, all the males joined in a brutal gang attack. Her infant died, and her wounds were so severe that, although we had no proof of her death, it had seemed almost impossible that she could recover.
In 1975 we recorded the first of the observed cannibalistic attacks made by the high-ranking female Passion, and her young adult daughter, Pom, on newborn babies of females of their own community.....
.... Why had this happened? There was no shortage of food at Gombe at the time ? Passion had not needed the infants flesh for her survival.....
Excerpted from Jane Goodall's book ?A Reason For Hope? from the chapter ?The roots of evil?.
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Valis
Sixo...the problem is when you wait too long and they get too tall and stringy for good eatin......
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wordlywife
I believe I saw a documentary on this a long, long time ago. Thank you for bringing it up in my mind again. For a moment I was getting jealous of you sixy, thinking Leakey had in fact sent YOU.
WW
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SixofNine
For a moment I was getting jealous of you sixy, thinking Leakey had in fact sent YOU.
Nah, he just sent mom
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JamesThomas
"JT, you make my head hurt."
Jeannie, it's not you so much as my ineptness of expression, and the radical nature of what I am attempting to explain. So, if you don't mind a little more pain I will attempt to say it another way:)
The problem of "evil" is not a crises of the worlds out-there (even though it certainly appears to be) but rather one of self. It is not solved via external discussion or action, but rather from silent investigation into the intimate sense of conscious-existence. When the self (which we believe ourselves to be) is seen as the conceptual characterization which it is, and the real/actual Self is realized, the truth and falseness of "evil" is also understood (as are all the other deep philosophical and theological questions we wrestle with).
In regards to "evil", one of the first steps we could take in the journey inwards is to first look outwards and observe and admit that the universe expresses in an infinite and often violent way: from an exploding star to the homicidal neighbor next door. Also see that the problem of "evil" has been debated by the sharpest minds since the beginning of human history and we have gotten no where. The universe is threatening and we can't figure out a fix. The only thing left to do is look elsewhere. Shift attention inwards and discover: 'Who am I, really"? What is true?
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talesin
WW
Jean Vanier is good reading on this subject.
He speaks of the duality within (good & evil, so to speak), along the line of James Thomas' thinking.
Vanier is Catholic in origin, and ecumenical in his outlook.
t
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one
ww,
I said the answer provided by the wt may be PARTIALLY right, as the source of evil or bad behaivor may be influenced by an external source.
In fact, bad behaivor, in the way i see it, has become an snow ball, partially motivated by materialistic desires, unrelated to the need for survival.
The obvious thing is that we dont know the answer, but it should not be a joking matter, as we ussually do when we can't explain something.
We demand to be able to know everything, when we dont even uderstand the invisible power of so common magnets and electromagnetic waves.
Not only the wt, but religion has provided or adopted an asnwer that so far is the most convincing for most individuals, of course those who try harder see contradictions in the answer provided by religion.
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one
The more educated a sociatiy becomes the less evil,.. not in reference to pure knowledge or "intelligence",
any insane external influence is more likely to have an effect on ignorant people.
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wordlywife
Sixy-
So is Jane your Mom? Seriously? Holy Cats!!
If not sign me gullible WW
