Authoritarians a danger to a peaceful society..

[undergroundpanther]

About 20 years ago, a disaster struck the Forest Troop of baboons in Kenya. There was a tourist lodge within their range, and the biggest and toughest males in the troop would regularly go to the garbage dump there to forage for food. Subordinate males, however, did not go — so when the brutal and despotic alpha males of Forest Troop all ate meat infected with bovine tuberculosis at the dump and promptly died, the less aggressive 50 per cent of the group's males survived. And the troop's whole culture changed.

Male baboons are so obsessed with status that they are always on a hair-trigger for aggression — and it isn't just directed at male rivals of equal status. Lower-ranking males routinely get bullied and terrorized, and even females (who weigh half as much as males) are frequently attacked and even bitten. You really would not want to live your life as a baboon.

Yet after the biggest, baddest males of Forest Troop all died off at once, the whole social atmosphere changed. When it was first studied by primatologists in 1979-82, it was a typical, utterly vicious baboon society, but after the mass die-off of the bullies the surviving members relaxed and began treating one another more decently.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1230-05.htm

[sui generis]

1. yeah well we're just gonna have to give Darwin a helping hand then

Although to look at their waistlines, house-and-car-poor, hyperconsumer lives you'll figure out pretty quickly that they're already running on borrowed time.

Most are just one paycheck away from mega disaster. If the republican saying is that everyone's a liberal until they get mugged, then I'd like to add that everyone's a republican until they need a handout.

[htuttle]

2. Two words: Mad Cow

The vegans will inherit the Earth.

[undergroundpanther]

4. The vegans

will inherit the Earth? I gotta ask but in what shape will it be if nobody cares NOW?
No animals will left alive, and no plants able to grow in the dead depleated soil after the abusers of life on Earth are dead from thier own greed and power trips..
It's sad.

We as a species have let the bullies run our world into destruction because we wouldn't be independant enough of others ,to stop bystanding when abuses occur and we as a society would not stop making believe abuse does no harm,and making excuses for people who abuse non agressive people under the banner of might makes right..
Perhaps the microbes and viruses will inherit the earth.

[sui generis]

8. unless those vegans are living in a grass hut

that hasn't displaced field mice, insects, the larger local food chain and don't use most adhesives, cosmetics, protein shampoos, some medicines, or plywood anywhere in their lives, they're just as guilty of destroying animals for the sake of being alive in modern society.

Nobody can really make a claim to being alive except at the expense of other (formerly) living creatures.

[htuttle]

11. Of course not

I don't see a huge ethical question in whether to eat meat or not. Hell, how else would Nature move the carbon, nitrogen and yummy sugars around the planet if it weren't for things eating other things?

But it's not an ethical issue that will doom us and save the vegans -- it's a prion issue, and they don't eat as many prions as the rest of us do.

[DireStrike]

3. It's "a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested."

[DBoon]

7. A socialist is a conservative

whose job has just been outsourced, whose house is in foreclosure and who cannot qualify for private health insurance anymore

[bpilgrim]

5. it's been an 'acronyms'ce Aug. 6th 1945

and INSANE since 11:02 am, August 9, 1945

"Hiroshima is the 2nd most HORRID word in the American lexicon, succeeded ONLY by NAGASAKI" - Kurt Vonnegut

this writer seems awfully conflicted, though i certainly sympathize

The present political fragmentation of the world into more than 150 stubbornly independent territorial units will doubtless persist for a good while to come. But it is already becoming an anachronism, for, in every other context, from commerce, technology, and the mass media to fashions in ideology, music, and marriage, the outlines of a single global culture (with wide local variations) are visibly taking shape.

"there is NOTHING healthy bout being well adjusted to a sick society" - i forget, D'oh!


Japanese aircraft bombed south Shanghai Station Aug.28,1937.
About 200 people in the waiting room were dead or wounded by the bombing. A crying baby was left alone after the bombing. - Life Oct. 4, 1937

peace

[bloom]

6. Here the bullies are all safe and sound

in the White House and the Pentagon.

And if something happened to them - there are plenty more to take their place.

[undergroundpanther]

9. Yes there are

But they can't get power over anything if NOBODY trusts them enough to give them any authority or'power'to dictate what others must do. If nobody falls fort the sales pitch or threats.Bullies can't do anything unless our CULTURE at large is somehow convinced they are not free to say no to a 'command'.In our society people are taught to submit by being traumatized,cocered,or manipulated in a million little ways until we are numb to domination,until we give the bullies in our midst a collective social sanction for some unconected self motivated rationale . Humanity are made sick subservient and stupid, by authoritarian people...It starts early on like growing up in a generational system of sick authoritarianism ,that underlies the civilization process itself.

http://davidwiggins.net/How_to_Defeat.html

Disobedience to all authority you don't want to trust is the fisrt step to a world with no more bullies in control..
Don't wanna be a gun in a human suit for haliburton?
Than don't be one.Don't be bullied into being one.Don't pick up agun,don't put on a uniform.Don't obey.

[bloom]

10. That is why my heroes

are the soldiers who refuse to fight. (As well as the people who work to put themselves through school, etc.)

[undergroundpanther]

12. A neat side effect is

When people see an alternative to blind obeyance as an option and courage is demonstrated for them sometimes they choose to act in a way that is healthy,because they find it is what they really wanted..
When there are no options demonstrated they do as they are told to.
It seems passive bystanders just don't want to be first to break the rules because they are unassertive against authority and not used to acting for themselves or on thier own understandings of right and wrong..and taking the consequences.

But neither are bullies willing to take the consequences of thier actions.

But there are assertive people who are not bullies,who are not kowtowing to authoritarians who don't want to dominate but are willing to risk.They are who we call true heroes.Like the guy who brought the truth about Abu Gharib to the public's attention...
Or the little honest kid in the Emperors new clothes story who dared to say, at the parade in front of everybody the vain king was really nekkid.

[el_gato]

14. antiauthoritarianism

remove the tools of domination and you remove the problem

[el_gato]

13. a point of contention with one assertion the author makes

"War is deeply embedded in our history and our culture, probably since before we were even fully human"

Many anthropologists and archaelogists disagree.For example, according to a study by University of Michigan anthropoligists Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warfare did not begin until after people formed villages.
Maybe the author should do a little more research.

[sui generis]

15. "maybe the author should do a little more research"

sounds like el gato been living in the village

:evilgrin:

[el_gato]

16. you got it

[undergroundpanther]

17. I agree

The author isn't perfect,he makes alot of assumptions and in some cases needs more resaerch and is sloppy.I think every author can be prone to that.We all forget one thing or another and might not be well versed in one area or another.No use being anal.
BUT The observation of the baboon cultural change when the asshole alpha males gone is compelling. That is why I put the article up.
Put a leash on the dominators,by taking back your power.