Friday, July 7, 2006

Stupidity is contagious, with death being the only cure.
The other day I was watching a documentary on Animal Planet and they were talking about Chimpanzee societies and whether they really existed. There were all these recognised scientists talking about the porosity of the behaviourist’s suggestions, and that really ticked me off. But what really made me angry to begin was the fact that all these behaviourists were claiming that they only just discovered this within the last five years. I was sitting there thinking oh my god, Ryuji was right humanity does really have a subconscious desire to become extinct. Ok I should probably explain the whole scene, which is kinda complicated but hey who cares I’m pretty sure no one ever reads my posts anyway.

Lets start with why I was so damn angry to begin with. Humans have always believed themselves to be the highest intelligent life form on this plant for three reasons:
1 They can talk
2 They have culture
3 They are capable of thought recognition (I’m not real sure on the correct wording for this one)
They are all pretty simple matters, but due to stupidly of the intellects that have the money to write thesis, with the help of the media we have been fooled into believing everything we are told. The third one isn’t that big a deal as far as I’m concerned so I probably wont go into any depths of it.

So starting with the obvious we can speak, due to anatomical features that only the human species has evolved with. Now according to this show that was made in 2002 a behavoural scientists discovered that her Chimpanzee’s were also capable of speech just through different vocalisation methods. And she was able to tell what type of food the chimps were being given by their vocalisations. And from that point she was able to research that matter further in her controlled environment. Thus proving that not only did Chimps share 98 % of our DNA but they could also communicate through vocalisation. WOW THAT’S AMAZING. That would be what most people would say, but it’s like HELLO, are you some kind of moron or something. Primates have been communicating through vocalisations since before we even new they existed, naturalists have discussed that for years but because they were not observed in controlled environments and not always by trained professionals their discoveries were not taken seriously. That really tick’s me off.
Next matter culture and society, it was believed that because we use tools, that vary in purpose we subsequently have a society made up of various cultures, again making us the more intelligent ruler of this planet. But than LOW AND BEHOLD a scientist discovered that chimps use tools in their hunting efforts, WOW that must have been such a find. Well maybe if it hadn’t already been discovered and discarded. Again we are looking at the deadly sin of pride, no scientist ever wants to believe that some one without the same training as them has made a great find that every scientist dreams of making. Jane Goodall discovered that the Chimps at Gombe used various tools; rocks to crack nuts, grass to fish for termites and balls of leaves to absorb and drink water. But due the fact that she was untrained her findings were not recognised. But than when other scientists discovered the exact same thing and that there was variation between troops therefore bringing into question the existence of culture it was considered a great scientific discovery and closed the gap between humans and primates even further.
You would think that as our society apparently advances that we would learn from our lessons, at first no one believed Goodalls finding but now it’s considered the law for Chimp culture thus leading to the ignorance of any new findings of chimp behaviour. This being evident through the way the chimps especially of Gombe display violence to the level of sadism, while chimps that have had absolutely no contact with humans are suggested not to display this. But again due to pride this discovery has been discarded with scientist trying to rationalise this behaviour rather than investigate it.

Now that all those major points has been discussed who is Ryuji? Well he is just a fictional character within the novel Spiral (the popular sequel to the Japanese novel Ring) ok, I know you should never mix fact with fiction when you’re trying to make a valid argument, BUT COME ON MAN, BREAK FREE. We all live according to what we are told, which brings me back to the point that Ryuji made, Humans have a subconscious desire to become extinct, although my reasoning is very different to that discussed in Spiral. Throughout this piece I have suggested that pride was humanities downfall or scientists more specifically. What if it isn’t pride but stupidity? Stupidity could very well be the most contagious and life threatening disorder known to mankind. Why, you might ask? Because it’s a known fact that we don’t use our entire brain, but is it that we don’t have the ability or we are just too lazy to do so? We constantly believe what we are told we rarely ever question the facts, and those that do are only questioning within the restraints or are considered crazy until eventually they are proved or disproved, therefore leading to the development of a new barrier (as in the chimp violence case). Therefore by never questioning what we are told we have been slowly delivering humanity to oblivion, because we are to stupid to recognise our mistakes and take a chance. We are like a bird in a glass house with a single open window we panic and keep hitting invisible walls, because we are told so by societies conditioning. But if we break free of the stupidity that is our glass walls and find that open window, we can really experience life.
Ok it may sound a little incoherent, but there is evidence to support what I’m saying, the whole ozone layer argument is a great example no one believed that it was possible to damage it until it was too late.
But the real source of our stupidly comes from societies conditioning of children in schools, from my experiences anyway. I first went to a catholic school where the study of biotechnology was pretty much limited to the basic, so in spite of that I emersed myself in the study of biotechnology and as result lifted my grades tremendously because my work was so original, compared to everyone else’s, but by the time I was 18 and my HSC approached I had began to experience what I like to call conditioned stupidly. Because at my last school there were only 6 students in my Biology class we were allowed to choose our final topic to study, I had almost managed to persuade my entire class to choose Biotechnology when a few decided that they didn’t want to because of the ethics of the subject although I was disappointed, I was really angry when they started using outdated arguments that they had heard on the news. They had no idea on what the real ethics of the subject were because they had only listened to the small shreds of information that were being presented by the media. It only got worse when we had to study biotechnology in Agriculture, what we were being taught was totally outdated rubbish. If the people writing the curriculum had sat down and actually read the fact rather than the accepting the common belief that was so damn outdated it wasn’t funny I think I would have died of shock. Therefore this is where I believe the whole idea of stupidly leading to humanities extinction really becomes clear. Children are educated according to common beliefs and than they grow up to become what is thought of as intellectuals, when really they are stupid to the point of ignorance, only using half their brain and slowly leading humanity to its demise.

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