- Anything Else -

What is superior to man?

Posted by: Stuart Gort ( USA ) on June 11, 1999 at 10:30:11:

In Reply to: i can sqash you, therefore... posted by sammy on June 08, 1999 at 10:10:20:

:: if you don't mind my interruption, from what i've read, "superiority" is dependant upon that species ability to over come another species, or a species ablility to adapt to changing environmental conditions.

That's one of many definitions that humans meet. Dominance, better projection of power, and loftier position are other definitions met.
You don't have to like these features in humans in order to admit that at least the dictionary has defined the word and that humans meet the definition in several ways.

:: first of all, getting back to the scorpion, if you were to tell him in plain english that in one week, he would be thrown into your freezer, and he had better do all that is in his power to prepare, you could not consider him any more forwarned than a mexican who was told the same thing, provided that the mexican only comprehends spanish.

Why don't you just argue that I am inferior because I don't speak scorpian? I was pointing out that the developement of language has to rate as superior in some way to animals. Maybe we are not superior if this plainly beautiful and complex tool we use called language can be so clearly implemented by one only to be so woefully misconstrued by another.

:: you, and i'm sure many others, have overlooked that although animals don't speak our language, they are cappable of communication within thier species.

Thank you for educating me on that point. I had never thought of it before. Now point toward the dolphin library. I must have overlooked that too.

::and to argue the fact that even if the scorpion were definitly aware of his future freezer adventure, he could still not prepare, i only say that scorpions do not think of throwning one another into freezers, it is only humans who would waste thier superior intellect on such an experiment.

You only say that because it would kill you to concede a minor point, which is; humans are generally superior to animals - not equal.

:: enough of scorpions for now though. have you ever considered the lowley cold virus? it can adapt so frequently that we will never be able to block it from our systems. it so constantly mutates that we never get the same one twice. is it our superior, or at least, our equal?

Yeah? Well I'm not talking about eating a virus burger - am I? But to answer your point; virus, bacteria, and very very small animals have a difficult time getting their S.A.T. scores up high enough attend Yale.
Humans educate themselves to deal with virus, bacteria, and the like.
Other animals don't. I'm suggesting that you need to get all the criterion that establishes superiority out in this discussion and compare it all at the same time - not just find the occasional exemption to the generalized point. So what if the virus mutates? Where is his intellectual equivalant of the simplest human literary work - Dick and Jane - for example. Where is his ambition? Where are his dreams? Where is his poetry and art? Has he dominated man? Has he stopped man's proliferation?

There is one superior to man. He is God.
There is one nemisis to man. He is Death.
Man rules everything else and you all know it.

The one who rules is superior - by definition.

Stuart Gort


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