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I think it's the other way round - The car was made specifically to cater to our present ability to, y'know, sit, and move things with our hands and feet. One of our race didn't just mutate suddenly with the capacity to drive cars, then pass on his driving genes to the rest of mankind.

Or maybe he did? Just how many of us can trace our roots back to Mr. Ford, anyway? =o

If we weren't meant to murder millions of people, we wouldn't be able to; we are able to murder millions of people, ergo we were meant to?

In most individual cases, I see suicidal tendencies as stemming from anger without hope. On the evolutionary front, the teen years are universally recognized as a time of life when the old way of doing things is more likely to seem annoying, as are parents. They *used* to be when the young man would have a go at a career path, getting his own place, getting married, and all that. The girls would have a go at looking pretty, getting together supplies for running a house, and making awesome food (in other words, finding a promising young man). Suicide then was for girls who were looking at not being married by 20. I often wonder if maybe society set itself up that way *because of* the natural tendency, in the teen years, to be dissatisfied. These days, that period of life is a vast no-man's-land between getting braces and (if you're fast) finishing college. In other words, here you are with all your rage and frustration, and all you can see is more school, at least half of it being spent with bits of metal stuck to your teeth. It's hardly surprising that a fair number (and rising) can't take the prospect. And what's the reward for the survivors? Office Space. neutral Hardly seems worth winning, does it?

Nomadic hunter-gatherer cultures would be more natural to humans, based on their evolution and the length of time they have been living that way.
Agriculture is a mere 9000 years old. Homo sapiens evolved 250,000 years ago. For 241,000 years, Homo sapiens lived as hunter-gatherers. That is a very impressive length of time. Even after the advent of agriculture, very large groups of humans were rare. A town of a couple hundred would have been a very large town. It's once you get people living in these HUGE numbers together, with thousands of people all in one place, that you see the psychological defense mechanisms come into play. Suddenly, people don't know all of their neighbors...and they don't WANT to. They treat other people like scenery, unless they MUST interact with them, or they are in a specific place to try to add to their circle of friends. They tend not to strike up random conversations with strangers...because there ARE so many strangers.

Subcultures, and more relevently small close-knit groups of friends, are defenses against PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS. This is not a role parents alone can fulfill.

Blind Guardian, have you actually read any books on these subjects? Or perhaps books that contradict them, which you chose instead to believe?

There is absolutely no valid reason to believe that humans are free from instincts, or that adverse social conditions do not harm them psychologically.

I'm sure we've all heard of what happens to rats when you overcrowd them, and how that has compared to human cities. Humans aren't rats, but we also aren't that unique. We have some exaggerated features, but nothing unique. Our differences are nothing but a matter of scale--not of type.

There is no need to 'link' human behavior to that of animals. Humans ARE animals. By studying other species with similar evolutionary niches and social structures, we can learn more about our own species. Comparisons between species are useful.

What makes no sense is to somehow assume that humans are mysteriously devoid of instincts or inherent traits, and that everything they do and are is learned behavior.
We KNOW that isn't true, now, so it's hard to imagine why anyone would believe it.

The reality is that human behavior is a mixture of the inherent and the learned. Disregarding one of these factors will leave you with errors and unanswered questions.

Not only have I read books on the subjects, it's my course of study at University (Social Anthropology) and I have written several well received essays on the cases of biological determinism in humans, regarding race and the aforementioned Evolutionary Psychology. If you want to read them, you just ask.

Subcultures, especially teenage subcultures, are a product of varying culture. If subcultures were a result of the general psychological distress present in human cities then they would be everywhere. But they're not. They are almost entirely a modern phenomenon, so how can it be an evolutionary module in the human brain?

Also, just because you choose to believe in the biological determinist view does not mean it's the right one. I took the time to weigh up cultural and biological arguments and conclude that most biological explanations just do not account for 90% of human action.

Rats are not people. It is improper practice to look at an organism such as rats and apply the data to humans. In fact, the only generally accepted comparison to use for people is that of the great apes.

Right, so you're saying we've got all the same behaviour as rats, but bigger? No, sorry, that's just a baseless assumption. Even Evolutionary Psychologists wouldn't agree with that.

Humans are animals, I don't disagree. But to say that all animals behave the same is 1. foolish and 2. wrong. So therefore, to say humans will act like other animals because we are animals is the worst kind of false syllogism you can get. By your logic, a chimp will act like and ant because they are both animals. neutral

Comparisons between humans and other primates has some merit, yes. But rats? Birds? Hedgehogs? No. We've got to draw the line somewhere, and even primate studies do not have all the answers. Primates cannot understand anything like the complex languages we use, they cannot use tools like we do (there is no documented case of a chimp using tools to make tools) and cultural transmission does not exist on the same scale of humans either.

I never said humans are devoid of inherent traits. But to apply them to all human action is absolutely rediculous. Let's face it. We don't live in the stone age anymore, so our culture will inevitably change how we think. To suggest that it's all biology and no culture is as idiotic as saying it's all culture. I say it's a mixture of both, but it's clearly evident from basic morals that humans are not the same as other primates anymore. Our culture has changed our behaviour beyond them.

My problem is not with this perspective of mixed behaviour traits between biological and cultural. My problem is people overstressing biological traits and searching for mystical genes which will unlock the key to human nature, especially people who love to draw comparisons between human and animal behaviour because they think they are one spiritually. neutral