Re: Birdbrain: "Damned dirty apes"

On Jul 3, 12:20 pm, alextangent <b...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 3, 9:18 am, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:



<richardalanforr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 2, 12:39 pm, Vend <ven...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2 Lug, 09:24, richardalanforr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Jul 1, 11:18 pm, Vend <ven...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 1 Lug, 21:09, Jason Spaceman <notrea...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

And remember, if you disagree with Birdnow and reply to him, it
means your obsessed with him. . .

From the article:
----------------------------------------------------------------
So, we are now just one ape among many. Does it surprise us that
our young people act like animals, when we are telling them that
they are just one of many beasts?

Non-human apes are less intraspecies aggressive than humans.

What nonsense! Humans are far less aggressive towards other members of
their own species than any other ape. That's one of the reasons why we
can live in enormous conurbations, and why it is possible for me to
walk down a street in Beijing or New York without much risk of being
attacked. The image we get from the popular media is very distorted,
and most of us do not live our lives in constant risk of violence.

Perhaps not most of us, but many do.

How many non-human apes live in a constant risk of lethal violence by
members of their species?

I don't live in constant risk of lethal violence by members of my own
species. In fact, I've rarely encountered violence from other members
of my own species. I've walked down streets in strange cities all over
the world and not encountered any violence.

The likelihood that someone will encounter violent behaviour in a
developed city now is lower than at any time in history. But we hear
about every single case, which makes us nervous.

True, but...





A chimp which moves into the territory of another group of chimps runs
a very high risk of savage attack.

Like an human who moves into the private property of another human.

I don't run the risk of attack if I go to the next town. A chimp which
did so would.

And a human that enters another's territory "in the wild" is met with
ritual threats, not actual ones. I recall seeing David Attenborough in
his first ever special in PNG back in the 50s. His local guides stopped
at the edge of their territory where a hundred fearsome warriors met
them out of the bush. They made the ritual threats and then Attenborough
smiling broadly shook the head man's hand and all was well. Nobody was
trying to steal territory, so they could behave politely. Chimps do not
do that...

... The young men that roam in packs some of the poorest parts of
cities here in the UK will kill you simply because you have trespassed
from your postcode into theirs. Or looked at them oddly. Or any of a
number of reasons (or non-reasons), such as appearing gay, different
or simply weak. The ritual has been replaced by the actuality for many
of the more feral members of our society.


The number of attacks in those cases is minuscule in the context of
the population as a whole. We hear a lot about it because the media
likes stories of brutality and violence, but the simple fact remains
that the overwhelmingly large majority of humans rarely encounter
violence in their normal lives. I live in Nottingham, which has the
reputation for being one of the more violent cities in the UK, and
have several children who are now grown up but who have enjoyed the
night-life of Nottingham into the small hours of the morning for many
years. One of my sons has been attacked once, but as he put it, it's
because he behaved like a twat.





Male orangs are fiercely
territorial, and if they encounter another male in their territory
will quite literally fight to the death to defend it.

I don't know about orangs, but if I remember correctly, gorillas and
chimps rarely kill individuals of their respective species.

Chimps do. Males kill each other over territorial disputes, which
given the far smaller social groups of chimps compared to humans
happens pretty regularly.

Chimps also make "war", raiding each other's territories and killing,
rather nastily (by, for example, ripping off testicles and facial parts
with their teeth) any individual they find from another troop.
...

Oh, I see something like that has been said upthread. But it bears
repeating.

Killing in the UK is by beating (usually by treating the victim's head
as a football), by knife or occasionally by gun. Kicking someone to
death is about as nasty as it gets. My nephew suffered such a attack /
while playing football (soccer) in a public park/, and was lucky to
escape with his life.

Killing in the UK is extremely rare, and is usually an act of murder
by someone in the same social group, most frequently the same family.
The simple fact is that most of us can wander around in all but the
most socially disrupted areas of any city without running an
appreciable risk of violence. We are more likely to be killed by our
wives or husbands than as a consequence of an apparently motiveless
attack by a stranger.


Life for some is cheap, short and brutal I'm afraid.

For a very, very small minority of people.

RF

--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

--
Regards
Alex McDonald

.

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