The energy within.
 

This is something that I just realized has been kicking around in my head for some time. Recently it found its way to the surface and was given life, sort to speak. This was recently posted by me in another thread:

Now this theory was developed as an explination of the differences between man, animal, and the current generation of A.I. There are a few main points of this that I'll attempt to outline:

1) As far as all evidence suggests humans are the only thing on earth aware of its life and eventual death. That is to say we are the only things that prepare and are accupied by the prospect of death.

2) Humans are the only living organism on this earth able to actively pass new learned ideals from generation to generation. Animals teach their young to hunt and forage but the knowledge passed on never changes and is in many ways instinctive to the animals.

3) Abstract thought is something that humans alone posses, at least in earth. We are able to conceive and understand things that we have never seen or never exsited. We are able to transcend our exsitance and realize that there is more. Which ties into the first point as well.

4) One can not forget the seemingly endless capcity for evil that the human race seems to posses. We point to animals that kill and destroy and call them evil, when they do it to survive or simply because we give them no choice. While we kill each other, the planet, destroy what we ourselves built, and build things able to destroy much more than our tiny world.

5) However, there is the flip side to that very coin. The other end of the spectrum. The humans that create, reverse the damage, save those that would otherwise die, and all because in the end they feel it is the right thing to do. This point and 4 are linked and often unified as one but I see them as two separate forces of similar origins but quite different in the end.

This as well as some evidence, like physic phenomenon, auras, phantom limbs, and ghosts, suggests something greater is contained within humans then some think. Perhasp it is a soul or maybe just the result of the chemical and electrical nature of the brain. I am as of yet undecided. I ask now for any futher thoughts on this matter so that this mystery may yet be solved.

I think that is what all humans end up asking themselves. Why are we here? What is the point of life? Why do good if someone will do wrong and offset our best wishes. I myself believe that is the point to life. To wonder why we are here and attempt to find the reason for life. I don't know if I believe this because of some divine intervention, or because my parents made me go to church, and therefore was conditioned to search for a greater truth.

As for you Sith it is something you must find out for yourself as all of us must. You may choose to spend your entire life searching for it, or maybe just some years in college, or maybe never again after this night. Whatever it is no one can tell you straight out what it is.

However in the spirit of message boards I submit all I have said all anything after this as what I have found in my years of searching. It is full of whatever faith I have but by noo means any specific religion so please dont turn this into a religion thing. I Believe that all religions have some basis of truth and that God didnt only show himself to the Jews or show any group of people that specific bias. However what I have seen of what religions that have survived is that whatever god is out there, is that god is love, dont kill people, be nice to everyone you come across, (in some shape or form) and believe that there is something out there greater then yourself. I know there is not much debate to this, but then again people can prove me wrong.

I would like to know however what you mean by phantom limbs. Ghosts and auras i understand, and feel sometimes on a regular basis, but limbs I'm clueless about.

well, you can't solve the "mystery" because there is nothing that you can solve. you may get a few people agreeing with you that humans are marvelous and that we don't understand ourselves, but that's about as far as it really goes.

a few things in particular that you shouldn't keep as main points:

its been stated that humans can't imagine anything that they haven't experienced. meaning that anything you imagine is a product of the things you've encountered thus far. abstract thought is thus limited (or non existant) in humans.

i'd agree, only that studies with captive animals, animals in contact with humans, and animals never before contacted by humans indicate that behavioral patterns between generations of animals that have encountered humans are directly linked to the types of actions that humans have shown to the elder generation. thus animals learn just like we do. not to mention that your point has to have a human society as the basis of ideology. i.e. maybe the animal choices fit their species' situation, like our choices fit ours. marxism, confusianism etc. all derive from observations and generalizations made by humans in regards to the human condition.

that's so untrue, its laughable. off the top of my head there's elephant graveyards, pet depression (when poochie needs a valium..), single cell species exibiting apoptosis for colony survival, herd animal self-ostracism...

monkeys have wars too, but why is this evil not the same as theirs? or are apes hiding the same "power inside"? if so, are all animals?

the psychic limbs are references to people who've lost arms, then feel pain when actions are done to where they percieve their arm to have been. teacup snatched away from phantom arm is the most cited.

I disagree with the basic thought behind the theory, that is that human beings are essentialy different from other animals beyond several incidental distinctions. That we are, in fact, something else. But to go in the details of that would be very off topic.

With that out of the way, I did have some thoughts on the subject, thoughts I mostly elaborated as part of sci-fi theories for stories. There's the possibility of a medium, inert to other things, that our presence as living beings affect. Our 'auras' or our fields caused either by our consciousness or our mere lifeforce (that would include the 'phantom limbs') would be more like sound waves in air than a source of light in vacuum.

That could also be related to rudimentary examples of telepathy. Thinking of it, that kind of sounds like the Force (tm), but there's a few major differences. Again, I refuse to assume that this wouldn't applicate to other animals as well.

Mr EDIT says: Someone went in details on the whole animal thing before I posted this message. Well I have to say I agree with the idea that animals are limited in their learning by their lack of communicative skills. Chimpanzees and Bonobos can be taught very complex things, and the transmission of knowledge exists in their societies, but is is limited by the fact that elders never teach, they only show.

Ah, I've heard of psychic limbs before then, just couldn't remember the term.

I think what Sith means lucas, is that humans are the only beings that know what death is. An elephant may only know that the graveyard is somewhere where a slow and old elephant goes (eventually to die), or that a depressed dog may feel depressed at a lost, although not understanding the loss.

As for the evil statement, evil is relative, just like right and wrong.

Really how I've always seen it Humans are much more animalistic than you would think. Everything a person does can be broken down into it's more basic need. We are run by hormones and basic instinct. So this evil you say isn't evil in my thoughts. It's more of us reverted back to a more primalistic stage. It's to protect our territory, show our dominance, or whatever the case may be. Sure the scenario and problem would be a lot more complex than an animal would ever take on but it's no different. We're advanced animals nothing new.

Animals can all sense what death is. But whether or not they conceive what death actually is will remain a mystery. They do know or can feel when they are about to die though as can be stated easily by a number of examples. We do know about our lives and that we are going to die. But I don't know if that gives us a big jump on animals.

Yes abstract thought. Truely a remarkable thing we have. And quite possibly one of our only evolutionary advantages. We don't have claws or sharp teeth,we're not that strong nor can we run incredibly fast. We have the power of the mind and the power to pass on knowledge. So it must be this that truely separates us from animals. No it's only adaptation. It was the gift that keeps us alive. I don't see how it makes us higher beings. Other animals use tools or limited knowledge and they aren't half as destructive as we are. Ok in defense they couldn't be with rocks and sticks but anyway. It makes us more dangerous as a species. What good is knowledge if people are only ignorant of it or put what little they know to poor use? When it gets down to it we're only separate from animals because we can kill all of them.

The one thing that truely makes us different is what we do for others. Not just for other ppl but for animals for the enviroment for everything. This is what makes us different. Making everything around us better along with making ourself better. An animal isn't going to give a shit if it bites everything that comes around it. A person might feel sad or lonesome after a while and try not to do that anymore. I think we as a ppl to get further away from our primal states of violence and such. Then we as a ppl would be able to advance.

Phantom limbs has been explained before. It's just electic pulses and miss readings off the brain basically. I used to know it in detail but it's been a while. Though I do like to believe that we have some kind of inner energy such a soul. It could very well be just chemical and electrical activity of the brain but you never know.

So you've seen atoms or perhasp a 4D hypercube. Either that you think other humans have seen them. Perhasp you know someone that has been to a blackhole and back.

For one these animals don't live in the same area which means behavior will vary. Secondly, if one where to make contact with a group of animals then leave them be for a generation, with no other human contact, humans would soon be forgotten. The animals in contact with humans I'd wager have ongoing contact with humans. Just to drive the point home there was this bird, forgot where it was, that learned to catch fish by placing bread he begged of people into the water. After this bird died that was the end of his knowledge.

Like has been said before I was talking more about the peroccupation with death. The time and energy we spend on it and our limited ability to stop it.

Sure monkeys war. They kill each other for food and over land. Have you ever known of an animal that went around killing because killing made it happy? Or went around needlessly destroying the world around it, unless it were frightened or otherwise provoked into it?

We've seen cubes, and we defined the concept of dimensions. Extrapolating the 4D hypercube isn't that far behind. And atoms... we'll we haven't really pictured atoms in a way that doesn't ressemble something else. Yes, we abstractly identified them with their function and their use, but our imaginings of them are lacking at best.

Everything we imagine is a remix of something we've experienced. I've never seen someone really go beyond that... would we even have words for things we've never experienced?

Birds lack the ability to transmit complex skills? Check. Does that means no other animal can't? No.

Dr EDIT: Whoops

when you think atom, you get the little spherical mental picture, or you think lewis diagrams, and so on. the concept of atom was first thought up by democritus, and he just thought of it as the smallest unsplittable piece of "stuff". the pudding model of the atom was also based on something we can see. blackholes aren't something totally unexperiencable, since they're a result of the extenuations of patterns viewed from earth. taking a hypercube is counter productive, because the shape is the product of pattern on earth as well. dot, line. square, cube, hypercube. seriously, imagine something which is TOTALLY original, name it originally, and so on. you can't. period.

dark ages. point set match. who cares if this bird didn't transmit his trick, the point is that animals learn like us, but in ways relevant to his species. if the humans are forgotten because they weren't in contact with the monkeys long, then that means that the monkeys didn't need to know jack squat about humans, thus they forgot. i forgot how to make campbells soup, even though i was a cooking pro at 4, since now i'm able to afford better, tastier soups with harder preparations. hence, if event A is insignificant, and event B is important, event B is most likely to be taught.

i don't see how an animal, which acts for survival most of the time, isn't cognizant of his mortality. where are you getting this preoccupation with death stuff too? maybe western culture has it, but thats' not universal in humans.

so monkeys go to war over resources (i.e. to create favorable conditions) you say? i venture to say that humans do the same; you'd be hard pressed to counter that.

Gah. I'm done, I shall argue no more. You will not be swayed nor will you see beyond the surface of my arguments. I could give evidence all day and all I would do is back myself into a corner. I thought I said in the outset that these traits were all present in humans alone; at least I ment to say that. For every thing there is an exception, everything, one simply must know where to look. This thread has gone they way many threads in this forume go. Its focus has become debating facts and not the ideals behind them. There are few here willing to go behind hurling facts endlessly at each other as if it really proved anything. Nothing can be completely proven or disporven. Everything must be accpeted with a measure of faith which I find people lacking all to often. There is no longer any point to this topic unless the senseless arguments over fact are quelled. There is much truth in my orignal statments, they where not perfect though, and it was ignored in favor of picking at the chinks and gaps.