Typing exercise from Achilles in Vietnam.
Posted: September 4th, 2006, 11:36 pm
SPECIES ETHIC
Our animal nature, our biological nature is to live in relation to other people. The natural enviornment of humans is primaily culture, not the "natural world," narrowly defined as other species, climate, etc. The sudden and startling growth of The human brain around one million years ago was not in response to saber-tooth tigers, retreating glaciers, nor the intellectual challenge of getting nutmeat out of is shell, but in response to the emergence of culture itself. The brain mechanisms of self-defense, of predation, of territoriality, of sexual and family group affiliation, and of defending offspring have not been supplanted by culture, but raher speak through it in ways that we poorly understand. Culture is not illusory, movie-theater projection of bodily "drives' or "instincts." nor is the body a metaphor; wholly conructed by culture. Culture is as biologically real for humans as the body. Unless in a coma, we are always both culture beares and bodies at ever moment.
Our animal nature, our biological nature is to live in relation to other people. The natural enviornment of humans is primaily culture, not the "natural world," narrowly defined as other species, climate, etc. The sudden and startling growth of The human brain around one million years ago was not in response to saber-tooth tigers, retreating glaciers, nor the intellectual challenge of getting nutmeat out of is shell, but in response to the emergence of culture itself. The brain mechanisms of self-defense, of predation, of territoriality, of sexual and family group affiliation, and of defending offspring have not been supplanted by culture, but raher speak through it in ways that we poorly understand. Culture is not illusory, movie-theater projection of bodily "drives' or "instincts." nor is the body a metaphor; wholly conructed by culture. Culture is as biologically real for humans as the body. Unless in a coma, we are always both culture beares and bodies at ever moment.