Who's the biggest Monster? Humans or non-Humans?

[FoxyBunny]

ProfessorX, you make it difficult to respond to you if, perhaps, we don't believe in things like eternal damnation or souls. That is, we can't without delving into a discussion of religion. Let's please all be careful to keep this on-topic and not cross lines.

[Humility]

From the RP forum when I was describing why horror films fail.

Here are what I expect would be typical human behaviors when confronted with these 'monsters'


"Guy 1 "Hey its a haunted house filled with demons that suck out your soul in the most hideous fashion possible!"

Guy 2 reaches back and grabs an empty beer bottle, the gasoline and a rag, "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Guy 1 "Hell yeah! Burn Baby!""

***

Guy 1: "I just saw Shirley get grabbed by a vampire and dragged off into the forest."

Guy 2: "What did you do?"

Guy 1: "Called the military, they turned the forest into a smoking crater."

***

Tokyo

News Reporter: "And thus Godzilla is dead. Less then five minutes into his rampage, the American Carrier Little Alaska stationed off shore launched repeated airstrikes against the foul creature, his hide resisted the rockets, missiles and bombs admirably, but he was eventually driven into the waters while severely wounded. He attempted to escape but was hunted down by multiple attack submarines within minutes, it took merely four more torpedoes to finish the creature."


Essentially there isn't a beast we can imagine that we can't destroy and there is no monster possible more sadistic and there is no predator with greater determination then humanity.

If there is a monster we are it for all living things fear us.

In the Jungle Boo, it was the Law of the Jungle never to hunt man, for if you did, then man would hunt you down relentlessly in return, killing anything else he saw without remorse, care or trepidation.

[FoxyBunny]

If there is a monster we are it for all living things fear us.

In the Jungle Boo, it was the Law of the Jungle never to hunt man, for if you did, then man would hunt you down relentlessly in return, killing anything else he saw without remorse, care or trepidation.

Rudyard Kipling was an excellent student of human behaviour and quite the philosopher. I love his works.

[Ikeni]

Humans are obviously the biggest monster. Being as intelligent as they are, for millenia they have attempted to create more and more devastating weapons and tactics to mercilessly obliterate the landscape for their own selfish purposes in war, and technology which opens up more ways of brutally killing one another, as well as other animals. No other anmal has ever came remotely close to what humans have done, and that's not particularly a bad thing.

[abracax]

Humans are obviously the biggest monster. Being as intelligent as they are, for millenia they have attempted to create more and more devastating weapons and tactics to mercilessly obliterate the landscape for their own selfish purposes in war, and technology which opens up more ways of brutally killing one another, as well as other animals. No other anmal has ever came remotely close to what humans have done, and that's not particularly a bad thing.

If you were to give Chimpanzees our level of technology, they would do the same thing or even worse. There was a study recently on why chimpanzees slaughter each other, they found it was to expand their own communities borders into other communities of chimpanzee's territory. What about Ants, they too have massive wars for territory. If you have ever seen an ant war you will have seen thousands of ants die in brutal combat. This is a recurring theme throughout nature, the only difference between humans and the rest of nature is our technology.

[Humility]

Also we have more physical endurance then any other creature on the planet.

[abracax]

Simple fact is that every crime or any action you can think of humans doing that is monstrous, you can find examples of in nature. The world is considered civilized because we have gotten away from our natural tendencies. Nature is eat or be eaten, if you want something you take it, if someone else is weak or sick you kill them, if you want more territory you kill whoever lives in that territory, if something poses a threat your pack kills it. And yes even in nature animals kill for no reason at all, teenage Chimps and Gorillas will kill young as a game, Killer Whales will kill a seal not for food but for fun tossing it back and forth to each other until they get bored.

Humans have evolved enough to see that this is no longer needed or accepted, we view killing in any form as something wrong, nature doesn't.

[rasterbee]

Essentially there isn't a beast we can imagine that we can't destroy

Crichton's book Sphere has a great little 2-3 page back and forth between a physiologist, biologist and an astrophysicist tossing around ideas of creatures man couldn't destroy.

I have that book somewhere around here.

[Holeypaladin]

Humans are really no more monstrous than many other creatures in the world... we simply have a much greater technological potential for killing.

The truth is, the ability for the human brain to understand and manipulate the laws of science merely adds to their inherent tendencies... emotionally driven in many cases, true, but worse than any other animal? I wouldn't say so.

Take, for example, the spider. You know why spiders lay so many thousands of eggs in their eggsacks?

The female spider will mate with the male spider, then eat him. She'll lay her eggs in a sack, but when they hatch, she will try to catch as many of the hatchling spiders as she can, and eat them. That's why the hatchlings try so hard to desperately flee... it's the only way to survive.

The female preying mantis must rip off the male mantis' head, THEN mate with him.

At least human women generally only kill their mates when they sleep with other women...

[abracax]

Also we have more physical endurance then any other creature on the planet.

You can drop an ant from 8ft and it won't get injured, drop a human from that height an they will be injured. When it comes to physical endurance most animals can last longer than humans with far less. Take the arctic wolf for instance, they will go for a week without food on the move constantly looking for food. If I remember correctly they can go 3 weeks without food. The Yellow Fin Tuna can swim 1200 miles nonstop. The Monarch butterfly migrates from Canada to Mexico rarely stopping. The majority of nature out does humans on Physical endurance.