Re: ruffled feathers

Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Tue, 30 Nov 1999 13:50:19 -0500

Rob Harris <rob@hbinternet.co.uk> wrote on November 30, 1999 11:17 am,
> Harvey wrote:
> >I resent people who deliberately ruffle other people's feathers to get a
> >response. If intelligent comments aren't good enough on their own to
merit
> >response, I would suggest working on the content and not the
presentation.
>
> No, No...by "ruffle feathers" I didn't mean irritate or snipe at. I mean
> structure sentences "This IS the way it is..." rather than "perhaps it is
> conceivable that...".... using the latter just gets "yes, that is
> conceivable"...or nothing at all.

My apologies, I misunderstood your meaning. I agree! I get ruffled feathers at people who put so many qualifiers on their messages that when you pin them down, they never expressed anything definite to even discuss!

> You've missed my point. I never said that the same and only the same unfit
> deviations are produced - hence "New deviants will.....". I used
> homosexuality as a classic example of an evolutionary dead-end. It just so
> happens that this trait is very common and repeating.

No problem. I just have a hot-button when people mention homosexuality as an evolutionary dead end. In my mind it indicates the classic flaw in believing that every single individual has to propagate or else it is not furthering the evolution of the group. This is clearly false to anyone who has studied biology. Anything that helps the group survive improves the breed.

An example: Drones help a beehive survive. Just because they don't produce does not mean that they are an evolutionary dead end. Their evolution was crucial in the survival of hive-based groups. By having non-reproducing workers do all the engineering and work, this frees up the breeders to do nothing but breed. Neither could survive without the other. People who think that the breeders are highly evolved while the drones are unevolved, deviant evolutionary mistakes, is not recognizing the full range of evolutionary processes. Evolution developed the entire hive structure to allow the propagation of each succeeding generation.

> Rob wrote:
> >>after all, cats leave
> >>"offerings" to their human "gods" too, but I suspect that it has bases
in
> >>other things like fear of death, and self-glorification.
>
> Harvey wrote:
> >You are reading too much into the cats' motivation.
>
> This is very common knowledge

I don't object to the fact that cats bring "offerings" to humans. I think ascribing the motivations to fear of death, self-glorification, appeasing of the gods, is projecting human motivations onto the cat. I don't think that cats have religious beliefs, fear death or retribution from humans, of understand self-glorification. They are just gathering food and bringing it home to the rest of the group. 

--
Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com>
<http://harveynewstrom.com>
Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.