Why do you think we think?

who says I do?

The punctuation of this is ambiguous, to start with. I think the comma has to go.

But of course, the problem of thinking is very deep, if not spooky. Human consciousness doesn't seem to be all that functional in evolutionary terms. I mean, cheetah thinking is all 'there is an antelope. I'll have it for dinner' type stuff.
Whereas human thinking leads mostly to drunkenness and despair

You mean, 'you don't think therefore you're not'? I've heard that theory before somewhere

Duly edited

but human thinking and being able to put ourselves in a position of how another person or being would do or react to a situation gives us a huge strategic advantage as does dealing with absences which is surely an evolutionary process?

I thought you would say that

Yes it does, in theory. But to my mind that's mostly come down to a variety of ways in which horrible people can do down more valuable people. It's not evolutionary advantageous to be out-numbered by horrible people.

I'm pink therefore I'm spam

agree with that last comment Mrs Grabec, but this must come down to the desperate subconscious struggle to pass on one's own genes and eradicate competitors, even if the victor's genes are inferior. In the natural world of wild animals, this gets sorted out by survival of the fittest, but it's different in people.
People can hatch plans to do away with perceived intellectual superiors. Years ago intellectuals were condemned as heretics etc, and were eradicated. Luckily in a lot of cases, their legacy survived to lay new foundations of thinking and learning.

A modern day maverick, David Icke, is getting pilloried by a lot of influential people, but it's because they fear he might have the psychological tools to loosen the controls on peoples' way of conditioned thinking. Not that I agree with everything he says, but the guy is obviously quite clever at what he does and there's powerful people out there who don't like what he's doing.

I'm waffling now, I think.

David Icke. I've tried to read some of his books, but are we being ruled by aliens knobbing kids?

Hmmm, for evolution to have continued good people must outnumber horrible people, which supports the strategic advantage of being able to think as others do in order to survive, however, the ability to think deeply, logically and abstract is ( i think) what differentiates intellect and intelligence and to some degree highlights your horrible person theory. Animals such as chimps and apes are considered intelligent, but not intellectual, in human terms I believe George Bush Saddam Hussein Bin Laden etc to be intelligent but not neccessarily intellectual because they think differently.


Does that mean we are now living on the Planet of the Apes
My head hurts

It's all wrong, the aliens should be selling us death-rays the bast@ds.

never was a truer word spoken

And of course all those wonderful books, films, albums, inventions, explorations, adventures, discoveries, foods and the internet, without which you'd never have been able to make the above point.

But purely to stay within the ethos of the thread, is my glass half full and yours half empty??

Or aren't I allowed to start sentences with 'and' and 'but' because it breaks the mould??

I'll have to think about this.

This has been an ace thread and it's helped me get some woolly thoughts together on the subject
I've always thought the question of consciousness/thinking/language is bogglingly weird. It's hard enough just saying what consciousness is. But one thing's for sure, it must have changed the whole nature of experience because, before its evolution, animals/people weren't aware of themselves as entities separate from the universe and now suddenly there's this huge chasm. So, whatever evolutionary advantages it gave, it was at this huge cost of alienation. (I also think it's weird that this reality is encoded in quite early legends such as Adam and Eve...the eating of the tree of knowledge and then never being at peace again.)

As for creativity, it might have had an evolutionary advantage in that it helps the creator make a small area of order in the chaos, and also to become totally immersed in something again...sculpture, composing or whatever. And, possibly unintentionally at fiirst, out of this need we get creations which are among the peak of human achievement.

They do say there's a correlation between creativity and depressive states of mind. It might also explain why the lucky (?) people who never feel depressed or alienated often just don't 'get' art at all

she's not saying Mr + Mrs eve were legends you div!!
the story is the legend....


i think

Thank you, Salty. He wouldn't speak to me like that if I were a moderator.
To-day I'm starting college where I shall find new friends who won't sneer at me
(I hope )

I watched a programme which demonstrated that children are generally not self-aware until they reach six years old. It seems to be something borne out of nurture as much as nature. We are complex creatures, no doubt. There are many more facets to our "raison d'etre" than mere survival and reproduction.

HMP Deerbolt, is not and has never been, a college.....however I'm sure you'll find some 'friends.....'

The whole point about creativity is that there's only the residual resources to work with. Ergo there's only so much you can do with them and then the whole thing gets out of control. Thanks to the Iron Age and Isaac Newton we now have the cattle prod for instance, amply wielded in the African States in their jails. Curie was probably a genius, as was Walter Raliegh in his field, pity the creativity didn'r predict the cancers that plutonium and tobacco would produce.

Like this Hadron lash up, is there really any need?? How does it advance the human race?? The septics will only find a way of making a weapon out of it, starve a million babies to death to pay for it and then postulate until the Chinese come up with summat else that'll neutralise it with a phone call.

what always makes me chuckle, is the fact that in the Middle Ages some of the most cutting-edge technology was in the field of physical torture!!!! What does that say about the need of certain humans to control others? And what has changed, other than the means by which control is achieved?

AND!!!

In this world where we can space walk and communicate in micro-seconds across galaxies and worlds, thousands of miles with a small piece of electronica, why does the fookin' toilet roll NEVER rip across the perforations until it's dumped several score sheets onto the wet floor where you just had a shower??

I think therefore, that's a right shitter.....

As for philosophy, try this out: Only users lose drugs.......

That's either a symptom of your age or due to Chinky shitwipe being of inferior quality.

Or both.

Ah well, I bet you're one of them working families shit-tax credit snobs who has two hands to snap off the bum fodder when you've done. Us intellectuals have either a book, magazine, a mobile phone with a game running or a filthy Swedish blonde nymphomaniac scat fanatic semi-naked in the other hand.

The arsewipe companies simply don't cater for us types.

If you were a pinball wizard with a supple wrist you'd have no problem, perforations or no perforations.

aye it's alright for them deaf dumb and blind kids!!!

I don't like scat, or acid jazz, it's just too fanatical for my taste.

I'll have you know that as far as I'm aware, I still hold the record on the 'Doozie' pinball machine in Nobles down the front, although I'm probably still barred for booting the penny falls and nicking a huge heap of pennies to spend in Don Bees......