Friends, this morning on the BBC I saw an item about rhinos. It said that rhino poaching in Zambia was on the increase because of the huge market for powdered rhino horn which some men believe will increase their libido.
That humans could believe such a preposterous thing is amazing. It defies all logic, scientific knowledge, commonsense. But of course that is not the only preposterous thing that humans believe. No, humans believe all manner of crazy things. Some of them are:
- that there exists a god who, if they’re good, will give them eternal life.
- that there exists a perfect soul mate for them.
- that money brings happiness.
- that their nation is special and should rule the world.
- that might is right.
- that war is the best way to solve problems.
- that free markets and unregulated capitalism is the best economic system.
- that competition is good because it rewards the ambitious.
- that their political party is the only reasonable choice.
- that white skinned people have superior intelligence, etc.
Like the rhino horn myth, these beliefs and many more are widespread. In fact, almost universal.
It might be said that most humans could believe anything and do.
This brings into question the level of our claimed intelligence.
Perhaps, that is a myth too! Perhaps the gap between those who eat powdered rhino horn and the bulk of humanity is very small.
Poor rhinos! Silly humans.
So well said, David
G.,
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David G Reply:
July 10th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Therese, it’s sad that these animals are being slaughtered to appease some lustful human fantasy. When humans aren’t killing other species they busy themselves with killing their own kind. Cheers!
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it’s just too disgusting…………………………..
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Yes indeed, well said, David
“- that their nation is special and should rule the world.”
As we all know, racism is on the increase, in the EU/west. The latest horrible results of this was in Germany, a week ago, a young Egyptian, impregnant lady with a three year old son, Marwa Sherbini, stabbed to death by the very same she had sued for making discriminating remarks against her. Not only did the defendant succeed in killing her in the court, by stabbing, the woman but her husband too was shot by the (court-police) when he tried to save her wife from the insane German racist..
-and the hole western media is, AS USUAL when the crime goes that way, – completly silent – so silent that you can hear a pin falling to the ground.
It’s yet another ugly reminder to what happend in the 1930/40, Hitler ‘NAZIONAL’ Germany. How people could be manipulatet to believe that the Germans (aryan-race) was superior and it was ok to kill those marked ‘untermenchen’.
This is really ‘the question’.
“This brings into question the level of our claimed intelligence.”
Sadly for those who try to follow the rules. It unfortunately goes down to, what matters for all other creatures/beings on this earth, a simplistic beastly behavior for survival at any price.
I am really sorry on behalf of (today it’s) the muslims, and disgusted on the behalf of that braindead?, German .
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It is hard to think outside of the ideas you mentioned. Everyday and everywhere those same ideas are being force feed into people in endless ways. It seems like almost everything you see, read or hear has some of those ideas in it.
Sort of like everyone thinks this way so this must be the right way to think.
I really have to go out of my way and search to keep in touch with alternative ways of thinking and seeing the world.
It is easy to just lay back and go with the flow. As that great thinker Sarah Palin said, like a dead fish.
Still, with such easy access to alternative info today is there any excuse for such ignorance?
Or are we just too lazy to think for ourselves?
Or maybe too scared that we will be seen as different?
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John, the killer was from Russia. Not that it makes much difference. Suspect that their old education system did not embrace tolerance but I might be wrong. To kill someone in cold blood like that……
Tough to look at the rhino. The other day, BBC showed a shark whose fins were cut off to supply soup for the Chinese. I SWEAR the look in the shark’s eyes was pleading and “human” when the fishermen threw him back into the water where the shark will die without its fins. I am still haunted by the shark’s look for help. Life is unfair and cruel at times!
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coco Reply:
July 11th, 2009 at 6:45 am
if you want to see what really goes on with the sharks take a look at the documentary ‘sharkwater’……………..it’s horrific and totally unnessesary.
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Therese Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I will try to watch Sharkwater. Thanks, coco.
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Thank you Margit, but you’re right, it doesn’t make much difference. Unfortunately those kinds of ‘diseases’ can not be enclosed by borderlines.
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david, can you please take off the rhino photo. it’s giving me nightmares. really.
thanks if you can do that.
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Coco, it is disgusting which was the reason I selected it. People are used to seeing violence in movies, think it’s funny, but when they see what happens in real life it open their eyes.
John, we are being mightily deceived so that the rich and powerful can become more so. We, the people, must rise up, put a broom through the corrupt system that enslaves us.
Jeannie, not too lazy but too heavily indoctrinated. It begins at birth!
Margit, it’s humans who are most unfair and cruel. Most other animals only kill for food.
Coco and John, the photograph above exposes mankind’s unfairness and cruelty. If more photographs were put on display, especially those of the hideous reality of war, perhaps more people would rise up and help to create a better, more compassionate, peaceful world.
Cheers.
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You can not speak logic to ignorance. When delusional beings believe they are God’s gift to the humanity and they are destined to rule… well, what can I say except that stupidity knows no bounds.
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I like to think there is a Hell that exists for the people that so these unhumanities to animals. I always thought Hell is a weigh station on the way to swan filled ponds. A place where a person sees the true nature of what they have done and are horrified, yet there is nothing they can do about it, because the time and place for doing is while we are here on Earth. How we walk in this world is how we will walk in the next – if there is such a thing. The Vedas say that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. If that is the case. we do have a chance of existence, in some form, even if we are not in our human forms. My sorrow for the animal in the photo above and all who sufferr needlessly for human ignorance. These kinds of horrors against nature didn’t happen with the regularity that they do now, now that native, local communities don’t have control over criminals that come in and do this crime. There are good men, cruel men, and ignorant men. It seems in the current paradigm we live in; the cruel men rule the ignorant men all in the name of the good men who would want nothing to do with such cruelty and ignorance.
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Therese Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
There is no life after death, no hell, no heaven, no purgatory. I have absolutely no use for humans who abuse animal life. That’s why I am a vegan.
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LT, the notion of God is one of the causes of man’s cruelty.
Grace, humans have been trashing our world ever since they came down out of the trees. In the last two hundred or so years, the amount of pollution and poisoning of the soil, the air and the water has reached quantum levels.
We have fouled our own nest over and over. A nuclear war will finish the job!
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Humans are completely destroying the cycle. We are a destructive race and we are too stupid to fix any problems. We just create more. In the end, there is no chance for humanity to be saved. We will at some point cause the downfall of our own race, and almost all other life on our planet. It may not be in 50, 100 or 500 years. But at some point the planet will fail.
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Some excellent, provocative thoughts but also some questions.
Isn’t evolution (survival of the fittest) basically racism and speciesism in action? Aren’t there many life forms that, left to their own devices, would and have consumed all needed resources to expedite their growth, causing the extinction of other species in the process?
Aren’t you also more or less suggesting what you accuse God of? i.e that if we (occupants of the planet) are good and do what you suggest (and I am not opposed to what you suggest) we will be rewarded by continued happiness and co-existence?
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David G Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Phil, the questions you raise are interesting. Regarding the first paragraph, to my knowledge humans are the only specie that kills other species to the point of extinction.
Regarding the second paragraph, I am unclear as to what you are saying. There is no god so he, she or it can’t be accused of anything.
Cheers.
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