Blackfish documentary on CNN - anyone else watch it?

[Taem]

I mention the perception of good because I believe your views of society as a right/wrong based ideology are overly simplistic and completely jaded by your beliefs of altruism.

Um, at what point did I ever state my view of society is based on right/wrong, or even ideological at all? As a Marxist, "ideology" is a dirty word to me, because all it is, is an expression of ruling class interests or values. Ideology is just another term for 'false consciousness'. Secondly, my view of the world has absolutely NOTHING to do with altruism - I don't know where you got this idea from but there is no correlation there at all. Altruism is a product of capitalist, or probably even pre-capitalist society, and has no bearing whatsoever on my "beliefs". In fact, in a classless society, altruism would disappear entirely as a natural consequence of radically different existing social relations. Socialism and altruism have nothing to do with one another, unless you are talking about some type of 'utopian socialism' maybe; but I'm no utopian socialist by any measure.

What, are you trolling me now? AGAIN, I’ll quote you:

Humans can be both good and bad, but by nature, we are generally more of the former. When you put them in a hierarchal social organization of society though, one that is based on exploitation and commodity production for profits, then yes, you are going to bring out the worst in them.

Right there, you are stating our species has the capacity for being “good” and/or “bad”, that it is part of our very nature. Then you go on to tie in this desire to do good and bad with social organizations, I suppose what you’d call Capitalism. Right there, right off the bat, you’ve just proven with your statement (and you’ve said this plenty of times before) that you believe it’s our Capitalist society that brings forth the desire to be selfish and material, but this just proves your ignorance of the human condition and why you believe our species can change (with Communism) when in fact we can’t suppress the survivalist aspect of our heritage anymore than we could cease to be human!

I feel we as a race do things for self preservation above all else, and greed is just a part of that.

But clearly, competition is much more threatening and destructive to our self-preservation than cooperation is. Greed has nothing to do with it - it is just a natural consequence of capitalist society and its culture of consumerism, and commodity fetishism. I think you are oversimplifying things here, or just parroting bourgeois rhetoric. Greed and self-preservation need not go hand-in-hand. Does a single mother on welfare collect money from the state because she is greedy, or because she is making a rational economic decision available to her as a means to provide for her and her children?

What a strawman question you present; I won’t even bother to respond to it. Regarding greed, again, its part of our very nature to gather material possessions (food, wealth, and power to pass to future generations) and no regime change will alter this. What you call greed, I call one man’s self preservation – it’s all matters of perspective. This is not an oversimplification of the concept, but a truth. You, on the other hand, are trying to convolute a simple concept with undertows you don’t like by trying to convince me Communism is altruism, or at least your point of view is how our society should be.

In the case of these captured animals, I don't see a "right" or "wrong"; I see someone trying to preserve his/her way of life through profits on one side, and I see another comparing the way animals feel with the way humans feel as a way to try and understand what the animal might be going through (rather it's true or not) to justify a cause.

Its not just a question of ethics or fairness, its also a question of safety - for both the animals and people involved. There is a right and wrong here.

Is one belief "right" and the other "wrong"? I don't believe there is any such thing, only the compelling urge to do what we feel is "correct" for our own lives.

No man. Right and wrong do exist. If that weren't the case, we would have gone extinct long ago. You have totally bought into this whole culture of 'social darwinism/rugged individualism'....

How funny, because in order to believe there really is such a thing as “right” or “wrong”, you have to believe in a social structure that adheres to standards of morality governed by a society of like minded individuals which seems to oppose your communist beliefs in a lawless society, where people do what is right because they intuitively know what is right. What a strange world you believe in. The truth here FIT is that our species has an innate feeling of what is “right” or “wrong” based on emotions that have evolved inside all of us for propagation purposes, nothing more (see my post to Kath regarding our emotions as a gateway to a more prolific species). Do you think people commit acts you consider evil or vile if it didn’t serve some type of purpose to them? Other than serial murderers who have the hardwiring in their head gone wrong, doing an act you might consider evil, such as putting young girls into the sex slave trade, is usually done for money, which means its just another means of survival for someone. Some might say it’s no more evil then putting cattle in a stall where they can never move their entire lives so we can enjoy veil. Animals have emotions to, that much has been proven by science, but as you can see, when gathering supplies for survival (rather food, money, or power), it’s easy to turn a blind eye to what you might consider to be evil.

In one of my posts a few years back, I linked to an article showing how scientists infused RNA into mineral salt and watched the salt behave in a pattern similar to what we consider life forms, i.e. defending their “offspring”, gathering and hording vital nutrients, and one other aspect I don’t recall. This was a non-living organism that expressed the same aspects of life we view as sacred taboo of the ten-commandments! We are not so special as you seem to think we are! We have evolved to feel what we do based on these core evolutionary concepts, the ones RNA already contains. Yes, it really is that simple, that these core building blocks have grown into what we now perceive as a way of life, into our belief structure of right and wrong. But don’t you see, if you strip away all that evolutionary process, we have nothing left. We are built upon this simple concept and have evolved into our being because of our desire, through RNA, to propagate our species and survive! That’s why there is no good or evil, just different methods of survival used in varying degrees by all the different walks of life on this planet.

I try not to confuse morality with self preservation because, as I said, there is no true altruism; when you look at the world through my eyes, people stop looking so selfish, and you begin to understand exactly why people do what they do.

It's almost impossible to confuse morality with self-preservation. One is a subjective set of values, the other is the epitome of rationality. But yes, self preservation does not necessarily equate to selfishness. And yes, I have a very solid understanding of why people do what they do (most of the time). Also, I don't think there is any question that altruism has indeed existed as an objective social phenomena for millennia now. I think philosophical questions of why it exists or should it exist are more relevant in understanding human behavior.

Noun: altruism
1. The quality of unselfish concern or devotion for the welfare of others
2. Behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

Then you are deluding yourself. It [altruism] exists merely as a tool of our evolutionary desire to further our species. I have yet to hear of someone watching their child get murdered in front of them and calmly walking away while the incident commences nary batting an eyelash. Of course not, because our instincts of survival are so strong, we will react to this threat! We desire to have our offspring live above all else, but feel discomfort in watching others suffer not because we are “good”, but because we have evolved to do what we think is best for the survival of our species. Its too bad there are so many varying opinions on what is best, so many different methods of gathering power.