Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Feminism and survival

I have nothing to my proof, but I still believe life is about survival. (At least partially). It is not that I don't care what folks at biology-online.org think; they have dispelled it as philosophy instead of science. Hell, I don't know what is for sure, but I believe that there is a brighter side to it. Perhaps one day in the future there will be scientific explanation that agrees with this insane idea of mine.

It has been quite a while I was infatuated with this thought of life. There was one time I used to think about feminism. My idea of feminism was rather subjective (while talking about survival). The modern definition or a dictionary definition goes on to saying something related to supporting women's rights or movements. It is something like allowing women to do what average men do (like for e.g. working late until night and returning home). In the context of survival, it has something to do with men involving themselves in the affair of child rearing.

Why should the father ever take care of his child? Again, a little knowledge of how primitive simian societies survived long ago would help. But for a mention, a man would live relatively much better if he had one child to take care of and support until it has grown up; too many children (from more than one female) are hard to keep. And in the former case, the child itself receives proper development. This is a cause that supports survival, hence ok.

Most males of other species and in primitive humans were known to be polygamous. They mated with more than one female and had many offspring. But what was the catch? All the offspring were not given equal privilege when it came to growing up. This resulted in some not surviving. There is another theory that all the offspring united and killed the father; this ultimately lead to something but I don't know what. I guess most males, the clever ones, started realising the importance of bringing up offspring from one female. Thus grew societies and higher organizations. Today, males have gone monogamous; or technically relatively less polygamous

It is difficult to actually point out how the idea of survival can be identified here. But really I hope you understood what I am about to say next:
Feminism is somehow related to survival.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Survival of the species and survival of the self

I assume my earlier discourse of love was rather interesting, or at least thought provoking. Now there are two things I’d like to call attention to: survival of the self/individual, and survival of the species.

If you ask me what the relevance of fear is, there is no direct answer. However, I can speculate that it somehow supports the survival of an individual. Yes, fear creates panic, which in turn gives us a sudden impulse to escape a situation of danger or threat to survival. It does not make sense if you extend this to a group which has many members in it. It fails to make sense there.

Now if you ask me how love is relevant to an individual, there is again no direct answer. However, it indirectly supports it's survival by surviving the species. How is this so? Well, it is actually a complicated process. Now imagine there is one predator that cannot be defeated by an individual alone. However, this predator can be defeated if it had to confront an army. No love, can imply cannibalism is a common phenomenon. Once that is true then how do you make an army if you keep consuming your soldiers the minute they are born…? No army means, not enough of defence to resist that predator. End result is that that individual can die due to predator attack.

Love and fear – together they make little sense. But with the idea of survival they seem to agree, but on different terms. In spite of this difference I see them both as constructs to survival, because they are elements or entities that aid in further survival in a way.

The opposite of love…Cannibalism

Having told you some strange fact about love let me put the question to you:
is it bad for the mother wolf to consume her offspring?

Technically, there is nothing wrong in the mother wolf eating her offspring, as long as it can act as an energy source. But once again, you have to think in terms of software and survival of the species.

The job of love is not only to bind the mother to the child. I believe it is to survive the species. Now if there was no such software, then yes, it is likely the mother can consume her offspring. But this does not happen that often. Well, it happens only in exceptional circumstances: for e.g., when food supply is scarce. In such situations the mother might be compelled to make a meal out of her offspring.

But otherwise, this event is unlikely. Why? Again because of the phenomenon called love. Now if there were no such software called love, then what do you think might be likely to happen? The mother eating the child – or cannibalism.

And cannibalism was a popular phenomenon in the days of prehistory. But then is it relevant today? Well, you might hear of small isolated cases, but they are not frequent. But then how do you explain why the phenomenon of cannibalism disappeared? Well, if you think of cannibalism to be the source of major diet of the wolf then naturally the species of wolves might turn out extinct. That’s why!

But then again, how is all this related to love? Love binds. In a society group where there were males and females, it was usually the females who reared the child. And sometimes it was possible that males consumed offspring of their own descent. So the females not only had to rear the child to maturity, it also had to protect it from other males. And love was software that supported this activity in someway.

The importance of love

People are likely to get a lot of ideas if I said “I believe in love.” Well, frankly I attach only a remote philosophical sentiment to it, because without love we would not have survived this far. I respect the phenomenon called love just because of this fact.

Maternal love is one of the most significant and popular forms of love. I mean to say that maternal love is something significant as far as proper child growth is concerned. But we should not think of only human beings as we discuss. Think of other animals and species. Think about the environment they live in where predators roam in search of food.

For the sake of discussion I take the example of a mother wolf and her offspring. This is an incident most likely to occur today if you are ever going to observe a wolf’s habitat and culture. It is strange to note that the mother cares for the child. Now suppose that the offspring is being cornered by a big black bear; the offspring utter a cry of help. And if the mother is nearby, she recognises her that offspring is in danger and rushes to the rescue.

What you might probably expect of the mother to do is challenge the bear. Yes if the mother wolf is successful she would force the bear out of her territory thus saving the offspring. Well, I hope now you gauge the importance of love from this small example.

It is love that binds the mother to the child. The mother sacrifices her life for the survival of her offspring. And this is an aspect of survival of the species. All this happens because of love. Now think of love in terms of some vital software. If this software was flawed then it could mean peril for the offspring.

Today love is perfect software; if it wasn’t, there would not be any wolves; and there would be humans either.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Another dimension

A friend once told me that fear is the most primal of our emotions. I never went to verify this fact. I was not keen in doing so for a long time…

Blindly assuming what my friend told me to be true, I asked myself, ‘why is fear important?’. I was expecting an answer for why we have emotions; but instead I had bumped into another realm.

When we perceive some immediate danger or threat to life we begin to panic. As consequence to this we take to our heels. Sometimes we may fight against our fears, but that is different. Running away from danger is one of the most primitive of actions, but seemingly one of the most important ones, because that is arguably why we have survived for so long.

We unconsciously don’t want to get ourselves destroyed. We don’t want to feel pain, suffering or face death. Remarkably, this is how we evolved. This is probably why you don’t see mass suicides because of some irrational reason. (For e.g., once believed lemming rats running out to sea).

With this concept in mind I developed another idea; I gave the term survival a new significance – a new meaning. It is not survival of the fittest. It simply means merely staying alive. It is not about natural selection either. I believe the evolution of every species on earth somehow supports or reflects this idea of survival.

Both survival of the fittest and natural selection has something in common. I think they signify or suggest competition as a means to stay alive. The idea of survival is no different; it does suggest competition as means to staying alive. But there are other things this idea suggests. You will learn more about it in the coming blogs…

But this argument should be viewed at from a philosophical perspective only. And I am only saying this thanks to the forum people from the biology-online.com; I had this confusion whether this can be viewed scientifically or not. But now I think it is safer and probably healthier to look at it philosophically.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Original quest

Understanding behaviour has a lot to do with evolutionary science. I hope I am not speaking like a scientist. But it somewhat perplexes me.

Well, the reason behind this existence of this blog started with inquiry into emotion – why we have it, what is its purpose? “Communication” might be an answer, but it is only a part of it. However, it is evident that emotion requires some sort of interaction. Meaning if humans existed in isolation, then emotions would not make sense...

Trying to find a reason for that I guess I’ve stumbled into other things. Let me warn you, you might appreciate whatever I mention in here provided you look at it with a philosophic perspective. I am not a philosopher yet!!! But this frame of mind can broaden the scope of this blog.

Coming back to emotion, well I have not got any thing yet. But I rake it out at another place: biology-online.org; I’ve joined a forum there and I never believed I would get a response, but people are actually into it. Click here to go to the forum page.

People don't often die...

The title is not meant to be ironic or sarcastic. Every second someone or the other dies around the world for some reason. If you look at the title with this perspective you might feel it is kind of negative, but it is not. It is actually something interesting. Look at it from another angle.

Have you ever heard of any living species committing mass suicide?

Well, lemming rats are known to die in unison; they are reported to simply jump into the ocean. But even that has a reason:



Humans have actually observed this phenomenon so long ago and it has been handed down to many generations as a legend: The Pied Piper of Hamelin. But people might be more familiar with this tv commercial which is based on that legend:



The point is its rare to see any species commit suicide in large numbers. However, if you have heard of such a case, I bet it is infrequent and, the numbers of individuals who die form an insignificant percentage of the whole population. You probably would have heard of the phrase "survival of the fittest"; this whole post revolves around one word in that - "survival".

The question you should be asking is why are we designed to survive?

For human beings although death is an inevitable part of life, no one lives life thinking they will die the next day. But a less observed fact is that our body is a fortress in itself to a degree. There are so many mechanisms which are kind of pre-wired without which our "survival" would have otherwise a challenge in an evolutionary sense. Humans have come a long way on the road of evolution...each turn has had its impacts as a result of which we are alive today. It may be misleading to believe it was merely because of "those impacts", but the inevitable fact is we still survive today.

I'll leave you to figure out the answer to the question I've opened. After all that is the point of this whole blog...

Last updated: 19th March 2013

Figuring out life

I happen to be a civil engineering student presently. I am not a biologist, evolutionist, or a psychologist. I just happen to enjoy understanding more about life, culture, finding reasons for absurd questions, etc.

This blog is meant to be a place to share few of my thoughts. But I want everyone to understand that I am not consciously trying to rouse a conflict.

This blog was started a long time back. In one sense it is revived. Some things have changed. I plan to write my blogs short in logical stretches. That way I believe I don’t have to engage you in reading long, really long articles where you stop in between and find that you are lost. I am not a professional writer you know.

Although this blog may sound formal to you, it is because otherwise you would misconstrue something or the other. All my future blogs will be short (with no guarantee however). But they will be definitely logical and concise. However, I want everyone to realize that ‘sharing ideas’ and ‘sharing ideas via blogs’ is completely new to me. It does not mean that I don’t know how to use a blog; it simply means that I have not done such a thing like this (i.e. sharing strange ideas) before.

Well like I said I am trying to share ideas. I am not an expert at making them either. But I find fascination in trying to find answers to strange things: phenomena. For e.g. why aren’t there cases of mass suicide? You’ll know more about it in the next blog.

I would like this place to be interactive. Sometimes I may write some blunder without the knowledge. Your criticisms will definitely support this blog, my quest for knowledge about weird things and will widen your awareness. Although this is not a forum to have an actual discussion, which is what I prefer, you can at least give a comment. This blog allows you to do so. (just look of “comments” link after every blog).