http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

9/15/2006 12:46:13 PM

Monkey Hive

9/15/2006 12:53:24 PM

amusing. strangely sobering too...

9/15/2006 12:57:21 PM

Sounds like a monkey is narrating this.

9/15/2006 1:00:43 PM

Embed.

Here. And in Chit Chat. And the rest of the world.

If we'd all watch portions of that video like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates every morning (sorry if I ruined it for you, but I saved you time and money you'd want back) before we left home, I bet you a billion dollars that we'd solve a fuckton of the world's problems without necessarily needing to fire a shot.

Of course, I said portions. For about three solid minutes I was totally with him. He went a little thick on the moralizing towards the end, without it being clear where science and objectivity ended and speculation beyond the data began. Overall, I give it an A.

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 1:06 PM. Reason : ...]

9/15/2006 1:05:18 PM

It was amusing. Sounded like an exerpt from a emo feminist diary.

^I think you only said that because of the "meaning less lines in the dirt" part

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 1:59 PM. Reason : .]

9/15/2006 1:56:37 PM

A+

9/15/2006 2:02:45 PM

^^ Right. The constant comparisons to monkeys didn't please me at all. I'm such a simple monkey I cannot have multiple reasons for saying things!

9/15/2006 2:25:25 PM

I thought it was stupid.

He said "All the monkeys hate each other, they hate monkeys from other places, other colors..." Blah Blah

I've seen National Geographic, does anyone remember what happens on Meerkat Manor when a neighboring Meerkat tribe visits for tea? They try to kill each other.
Anyone remember what happens when a roaming male Lion comes across Lion Cubs that are not his own? That's right, he kills them.

Last I heard, Humans very rarely go to the mall, find other Male's children, and kill them.
Very rarely do people go next door to borrow sugar and get killed for violating territory.

9/15/2006 6:11:06 PM

preachy

9/15/2006 7:25:29 PM

^^That's not hate. Hate relies upon a rational thought process.

9/15/2006 7:32:44 PM

One thing that can be said is that monkey's certainly don't make preachy, self-righteous youtube videos.

9/15/2006 7:36:08 PM

^^ They thought about it and decided to kill each other.

What's so hard to understand?

9/15/2006 9:22:37 PM

Wait, but we're just animals. What's this "rational thought" mumbo jumbo?

9/15/2006 9:25:48 PM

Monkeys can reason.

9/15/2006 9:45:50 PM

Hatred implies a rationalized fear, usually via fallacious reasoning and overattributing objective merit to anecdotes, stereotypes, and emotional experience.

I've seen National Geographic. I've seen Fox News. I've seen CNN. They all look like monkeys killing one another. You've proven nutsmackr's point, LoneSnark, without even meaning to.

Of course, you're guilty of employing a salisburyboy-like play on selective evidence in your arguments as well. Plenty of examples of cooperative animal relationships exist within the wild, as synergetic relationships form both within a species and across species as well. Tribes of elephants have been known to adopt orphaned young elephants, dolphins have been proven to cooperate with one another, and Bonobos resolve conflict by fucking. Clownfish and sea aneamonae, dogs and humans, are good examples of cross-species cooperations as well.

While people rarely are killed for violating territory of sugar, why doesn't the same hold true when nations rich in oil resources are involved?

bgmims's point is a good one. What is this rational thought mumbo jumbo? I don't claim to have much better of an idea than anyone else I've ever met. But in fact, I've met fewer people who are doubtful about what they believe than myself. But as best I can tell, most humans do not exhibit rational thought in most of their behaviors. And that's my guess as to what underlies this seeming contradiction.

Monkeys, as Josh8315 correctly pointed out, can reason. So can humans. But that doesn't in any way imply that either of our abilties to reason can't be hijacked by more base manipulators such as ourselves or our environment.

[Edited on September 16, 2006 at 2:38 AM. Reason : ...]

9/16/2006 2:37:50 AM

Quote :

"He said "All the monkeys hate each other, "

no he didn't

he said "a lot of the monkeys hate each other"

big difference

don't be selective in what you hear

9/16/2006 4:13:59 PM

bttt

11/30/2006 12:53:04 AM

It was too preachy, especially near the end. All I really heard was "blah blah blah bitch bitch bitch." Don't get me wrong, I agree with much of what was said, but this vid demonstrates one other important trait of us "monkeys;" the ability to piss and moan and whine and gripe about a given problem (real or perceived) without actually doing anything about it. Yes we wage pointless wars, yes we have pointless divisions between ourselves (what religion you are, what your skin color is, etc) yes we are slowly "killing our planet," blah blah blah yackety shmackety. But how about a suggestion to magically patch up all the world's problems in one fell swoop? Failing that, how about a reasonable plan to make everybody care and fix each problem one by one?

As for the whole oil thing, I see it like this; oil is like any other scarce natural resource that animals compete for. It's a resource just like food, water, and territory, the three most basic things that any animal on this planet attempts to acquire. Failing to achieve and maintain all three, an animal will die. Now maybe the other animals on this planet do not stake their livelihood and well-being on oil, but we humans do. Whether we should be or not is another topic for another thread, but it doesn't change the fact that we currently do. Each nation fighting over oil is like one of those tribes of meerkats, or pride of lions. And each pack or collective group is competing with one another. They are competing for a scarce resource, just like any other animal will fight tooth and nail for food, water and territory. Now admittedly the analogy isn't perfect because a nation of people will not just plop over and die without oil because oil is not essential to basic survival, but you might say that it has become essential to survival for another type of organism; modern civilization. Without a (relatively) cheap source of energy that delivers a pretty decent amount of energy per unit of fuel, all of our cities with their thousands of lights, heaters, automobiles, and microelectronics cannot function. Most of our high-tech ceases to be operable, many of our basic services shut down (hospitals run out of power and can't perform their vital functions, ambulances can't respond quite as fast as they normally could, plastic and other modern means of sanitation become a no-no, garbage trucks can't haul waste away, police and firefighters can't get to where they need to be at as quickly as they can), and the thing that you and I call "modern civilization" basically collapses under its own weight.

And with that, I have become just as preachy as this video.

11/30/2006 2:07:31 AM

And yet the human race invented something long ago which would allow us all to equitably share the world's scarce resources, such as oil, food, shelter, water: Money. That's right, it's called the allocation of resources through the price system. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a group of meerkats go to the border of another clan and agree to share their water in exchange for flat-screen TVs, yet the island city of Hong Kong makes this deal every single day. Hong Kong does not have any resources to speak of, not even enough water. What it does have is a lot of hard-working humans, willing to provide the world with high-tech goods in exchange for the resources necessary to feed/cloth/house its inhabitants at a standard of living on par with many Western European nations.

In other words, it is not the need for resources that drive men to war over resources. Quite the contrary, even Hitler realised war was not necessary for survival. Instead, it is a cultural and philosophical belief in the right of autarchy. Germans invaded its neighbors for the same reason meerkats invaded their neighbors, they felt they were superior and therefore had a right to a free lunch. Contrast this with the beliefs of Adam Smith and his ilk who believed, rightly, that war is irrational because all sides benefit far more by engaging in commerce even if one side refuses to participate.

But as with all animals, Adam Smith's teachings sometimes fall on deaf ears. This is not because humans instinctively act like animals, again to the contrary, it is because humans sometimes forget themselves and yearn for the simplicity of animal existance.

11/30/2006 4:06:55 AM

And the Free Market was all that was left with objective truth, objective meaning... all else fell before it.

Money might be a nifty invention, but the alienation of workers from themselves is a pretty horrible result.

11/30/2006 7:26:16 AM