Are we playing a fictional role in life?

[kadzbiz]

We have lost fang and claw, we have lost speed to escape the enemy. We are left with our big brain to overcome rather than to fight or flight.

Fangs and claws are not instincts.

 

[coberst]

These things protect our survival and thus we must find other ways ro survive, i.e. the big brain. Without these accessories the survial of the species required that instincts become subordinate to the big brain.

 

[kadzbiz]

These things protect our survival and thus we must find other ways ro survive, i.e. the big brain. Without these accessories the survial of the species required that instincts become subordinate to the big brain.

You contradict yourself. You said "instincts" being a cognative thing, and now you're trying to make physical things suit your argument.

Man's brain started to explode in size once he began to eat red meat. As his brains developed, we found more efficient ways of doing things. Losing our "fangs and claws" doesn't mean we have lost any instincts. People today still sense danger (some better than others), we still seek mates, we still find it necessary to kill live prey before we eat it (generally), so again I ask you, what instincts have we lost.

Until you can answer this question sufficiently, the rest of your OP is irrelevant IMO.

 

[coberst]

You contradict yourself. You said "instincts" being a cognative thing, and now you're trying to make physical things suit your argument.

Man's brain started to explode in size once he began to eat red meat. As his brains developed, we found more efficient ways of doing things. Losing our "fangs and claws" doesn't mean we have lost any instincts. People today still sense danger (some better than others), we still seek mates, we still find it necessary to kill live prey before we eat it (generally), so again I ask you, what instincts have we lost.

Until you can answer this question sufficiently, the rest of your OP is irrelevant IMO.

You are correct, I misspoke. I should have said that we have lost most of the effectiness of our instincts for survival.

 

[Willamena]

Karl Marx would certainly agree with this. (Well, the old Marx, anyway.) :yes:

There's a new one?

 

[elfy2go]

Well, admittedly I haven't read the entire discussion...my first thought upon reading the initial post is Erving Goffman...Dramaturgy. Read up on it a bit...it's basically the idea that the self isn't anything concrete that you carry around with you, rather, a self is only developed through a performance. Thus, it breaks down and analyzes human action in terms of the theatre...Consequently, we all have the ability to take certain roles and pull them off depending on how well we can manage our impressions.

Goffman didn't think the theory applied to every day life always, but it applied specifically in total institutions.

 

[gnomon]

Are we playing a fictional role in life?

Sapiens are a species that has lost many of their animal instincts and our “soul” replaces these instincts. I use the word ‘soul’ to signify what many might call consciousness, spirit, conscience, mind, reason, etc. We are thus thrust out of the arms of Mother Nature and onto our own ability to adapt and survive. We are forced into replacing the natural selection process, which has led to our evolution, and we are thrown upon our own abilities to adapt or to be extinguished. It is our “soul” that creates the games we play. These games replace natural selection; and determine our survival as a species.

Socrates was an intuitive genius, who may have been the first to understand that man needs to function in a shared social fiction before he can earn his own social honor, and social approval. But even Socrates could not intuit the degree to which this need was rooted. He could not see how deep ‘social performance’ goes and the degree that it is rooted in the anxiety of all sapiens. Humans cannot recognize their own self-worth without the word from their own social group.

We have successfully struggled against Mother Nature to gain great material wealth only to discover that, as Pogo might say, “we have met the enemy and it is us”. The enemy is our great material play-form itself; it is our own profit-and-loss economy, our money-over-the-counter game that is defeating us. We have lost all relationship with our nature. Our created fiction has crippled our ability to rationally adapt to our world we have created. We run as fast as we can from school to shopping center to the bank and back home in our new SUV only to discover that the gods have already made us mad. Our own fictions are killing us.

War itself is a fiction, it is a game, and it is a play-form. Roman civilization itself was a great “potlatch spirit” (a ceremonial feast of the American Indian of the northwest coast marked by the host’s lavish distribution of gifts or sometimes destruction of property to demonstrate wealth and generosity with the expectation of eventual reciprocation). What begins as simple contests, develop into complex play-forms. “Poetry, art, law, philosophy, war—all are contests or play-forms.”

To call them play-forms is not to say that they are not serious. In our great game of society we create meaning; fictional meaning but nevertheless these fictions are life-meaning fictions. Me and Earnest agree, our problem is that we must create better fictions to live by, because our present fictions are killing us.

What is the difference between playing a fictional role in life versus a non-fictional role?

Ideas and quotes from Beyond Alienation by Ernest Becker

Does anyone play a "fictional" role?

What evidence is there that humans are removed from natural selection?

War is a fiction? You tied fictional role into a particularly human aspect. Then why do other species engage in war? Notably ant species engaging in large pitched battles across species and inter-species. Are the ants engaging in a fictional role even though that would violate the first premise of the OP, losing animal instincts?

Just to note, a bee can become intoxicated and in doing so will most likely find itself shorn of its limbs and pushed away from the colony. How human.

 

[coberst]

Does anyone play a "fictional" role?

What evidence is there that humans are removed from natural selection?

War is a fiction? You tied fictional role into a particularly human aspect. Then why do other species engage in war? Notably ant species engaging in large pitched battles across species and inter-species. Are the ants engaging in a fictional role even though that would violate the first premise of the OP, losing animal instincts?

Just to note, a bee can become intoxicated and in doing so will most likely find itself shorn of its limbs and pushed away from the colony. How human.

Humans are meaning creating creatures. We create things that we will live, die, and kill for. We create such things as religion, nations, economic systems such as capitalism and communisim, we create money that we dedicate our life to acquiring.

Objectivity is our shared subjectivity.

 

[Willamena]

Well, admittedly I haven't read the entire discussion...my first thought upon reading the initial post is Erving Goffman...Dramaturgy. Read up on it a bit...it's basically the idea that the self isn't anything concrete that you carry around with you, rather, a self is only developed through a performance. Thus, it breaks down and analyzes human action in terms of the theatre...Consequently, we all have the ability to take certain roles and pull them off depending on how well we can manage our impressions.

Goffman didn't think the theory applied to every day life always, but it applied specifically in total institutions.

I read a bit about Goffman's ideas. Marvelous stuff. Thanks for the reference, I'll look for the book.