I've been on VS for years, initially attracted by the "SIFT" in videosift... as in it sifted out videos like this.

It was the place I came to watch videos that were enjoyable.. not solely controversial, or violent. I knew that by coming here I could avoid the shit I see on LiveLeak and WorldStarHipHop, which activates and enervates the primal recesses of my brain.

If you're gonna post this type of goony shit, a certain portion of the membership (myself included) will comport themselves accordingly.

I'm glad you liked it.

There's something primal and special about the old bluesmen like this gentleman.
In reply to this comment by Mad_Hatter:
I always melt when I hear a good guitar performance, and when I hear one's soul singing like this... oh what a bliss !!! Thanks for sharing this.

>> ^gargoyle:

not "siliac" in the tags, but "celiac"


hey,
thanks for pantsing me in public.
very awesome of you!

so i watched this and for some reason thought you would enjoy it also.
http://videosift.com/video/primal-mind-nutrition-and-mental-health

Exactly. I am so not into self help books but The Gift of Fear is an interesting read. Most of what we call fear is really anxiety based worry. True fear is a primal instinct and learning the difference cam save lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear

>> ^blankfist:

Seems the real objection people have with other people's right to open carry is that they're afraid of that person even without provocation. Fear vs reason.

That would solve a lot of religious hatred. But most people in turbans and those thumping bibles wouldn't be as grownup as you.

>> ^Shepppard:
>> ^blankfist:
I was raised not to hit women. In my core I think it's wrong, though I think it's a terribly biased and arcane belief. Once in high school during a breakup my ex-girlfriend started wailing on me and trying desperately to kick me in the nuts. I wanted to defend myself, but felt I couldn't outside trying to catch her arms before they hit me.
I think in the deep recesses of my mind, I watch this and feel some sense of perverted justice for all the times a girl was violent against me and I felt I couldn't retaliate.
Also, how many times has a woman put your ass in danger by mouthing off to some dude? And all of a sudden you have to fight to defend her honor or some crazy archaic primal bullshit like that.

I was raised the same way, but whenever something like that happened to me, I found the best possible way to resolve the situation (And I actually mean this in all seriousness)
Was a hug.
After a few seconds of taking a hit or two, I'd grab an arm, spin them so their back was to me and hold their arms in a "Hug" type of stance.
It was almost an instant de-escalator. They're either forced to talk about why they were taking swings at me in the first place, or too embarrassed to keep going because they got beat by a hug.
In this situation mind you, I don't think the hug would go so well.

@chilaxe, I have racist relatives. I have watched them go bananas when a black person does something they don't like. I found her reaction to be way over the top - it appeared to be fueled by something more than just thievery.

Have you been around racist folks in the South? Have you listened to the vitriol and bile that comes out of their mouths about black people? It is astounding, irrational, and deeply rooted in something primal and rage-filled.

There are all sorts of people here, commenting on how irresponsible and weird it is that she risked her life and limbs over a couple of cases of beer. Something set her off. I guessed -- guessed -- that it might be racism.

I could be wrong. I don't know. I'm just looking at the evidence in front of me, paired up with my knowledge of the profound irrationality of deeply racist people.

I just thought the tags were really cool. Sylvester Sylvester Sylvester is funny.

>> ^MrFisk:

I thought Buddhism was the religion peace.
Oh, and religion doesn't cause violence, it's only used by people who want to do violence.
http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201101/2274226241.html


Very compelling and comprehensive article, pity the opening comparison is so disingenuous. (Speaking of which, I disagree that it's "only those who want to commit violence" that do so. How do you fit the application of sharia law, for example, - and its support from the population - into that narrow point of view?)

Some commentary on one of the conclusive passages (and I quote):

"If religion plays a significant causal role in anything, it is maximizing and maintaining in-group cooperation and identity. But so do sports, political parties, gangs, music, universities, etc. Religion does provide two things beyond what these nontheistic groups can. First, religion can unify much bigger and more varied groups of people than sports teams and the like. Second, religion offers a vaguely defined supernatural agent whose presence is unverifiable and thus unchallengable. While this may increase the likelihood that someone will engage in costly behaviors, these costs are demonstrations of commitment and thus provide reliable indicators that one won't betray the group. Beyond supernatural claims, there is not anything about religion that is not found elsewhere."

There are a few key elements that the author of this article glosses over:

1) unlike sports, gangs, political parties etc., religious belief is instilled into a person practically from birth, acting on a person's belief and behavioural systems long before they are mature enough to make calculated (not to say rational... what's rational about rugby? ) decisions of adherence. As Dawkins points out, religion makes use of a child's primal trust in its parents, transferring that trust onto an unquestionable power.

2) most religious beliefs present a parallel of parental authority, with its motivational corollaries (punishment-reward), but the figure(s) of authority are absolute, unchallengeable because of their supernatural nature. Add to that the fact that the "punishment-reward" usually concerns an eternity of either bliss or torture, and you get a motivator/rationaliser for unethical acts that is effective even when there are practically no other motivations.

Why did these people do what they did? Why did middle-class, educated individuals fly planes into the twin towers? What did they have to gain? If such acts are simply "reliable indicators that one won't betray the group" (how does a dead person do that already?) than maybe that right there is an indicator of religion's particular virulence.

The brilliance of the US government/big bizness is that they realize that humans are still psychologically more primal than cognitive. And they use that fact to control the workforce. Politics is theater designed to create emotional reactions, not thought.

Sarah Palin might be a bad candidate, but she's a media darling, and a wonderful distraction to the simple fact that you're going to get fucked in the ass no matter who's in office.

I've occasionally thought about if i was behind someone with a gun and had the drop on them. I decided that i'd have to get the heaviest thing near to hand and bring it down on top of their head with the most violent and primal force i could summon up. You do NOT want that person getting the upper hand after what you've just tried to do, i can't believe she swung at him with a handbag.

thinker247 wroted:

I was with you on the first two sentences. It's not capitalism that causes trampling of fellow humans for a deal on electronics. It's primal urge and a little too much enthusiasm.

It's a failure of self-control, which either wasn't taught well or even at all. But humans are first and foremost dangerous animals with a thin veneer of "reason". The stores can certainly share some of the blame by not being prepared, or caring.

How is morality brought into this?

Considerate people would not trample others for a damned stereo. We would be more forgiving if this was a video of people fighting over food or water, but not much.

If we all went to church on Sunday and paid our taxes on time and tipped our hats to passing lady folk, would that prevent the actions of this video?

To a certain extent, yes. The practicing of consideration would be more ingrained. But an anonymous mob?

And by the way, we don't all believe that all values are equally valid.

Yeah, I didn't mean that as a sweeping statement, even though it was a sweeping statement.

Murder would always be wrong to me, even if every blue-blood Democrat told me it was okay. I also try not to judge people before judging myself, but not because a deity told me this in a book. A good idea is a good idea, regardless of who started it.

Maybe you should look into Buddhism. Older than Christianity, and no deities.

I'd like to create a world in which everyone gets along, no matter what the voices in their head and in their literature tell them.

It won't happen, but it's a nice idea.

May Dog bless you this fine Kwanzaa season, QM.

Dog has been somewhat lacking of late, but I takes what I can gets. May Joyous Kwanzannukah befall you as well.

I was with you on the first two sentences. It's not capitalism that causes trampling of fellow humans for a deal on electronics. It's primal urge and a little too much enthusiasm.

But after that, you lost me (as usual.) How is morality brought into this? If we all went to church on Sunday and paid our taxes on time and tipped our hats to passing lady folk, would that prevent the actions of this video?

And by the way, we don't all believe that all values are equally valid. Murder would always be wrong to me, even if every blue-blood Democrat told me it was okay. I also try not to judge people before judging myself, but not because a deity told me this in a book. A good idea is a good idea, regardless of who started it.

I'd like to create a world in which everyone gets along, no matter what the voices in their head and in their literature tell them.

May Dog bless you this fine Kwanzaa season, QM.
>> ^quantumushroom:

I fail to see how this is 'capitalism's' fault.
What you're really lamenting is the breakdown of the civil society. That's that thing that says, "This value/trait/behavior is more desirable than selfish savagery."
Remember, 'you' voted to end the reign of the civil society when you agreed with the lying vermin that told you, "There are no moral absolutes. All values are equally valid."
Now 'you' don't have anything to bring out the best in humanity. There is no God and there are no angels, and therefore no "angels of our better nature".
Welcome to the world 'you' helped create.

>> ^Mcboinkens:

No way this is real. Probably her account or he was quitting anyway to go overseas or something. No one I know would tell their GF/BF a WoW password unless they play it aswell, and if they played chances are they would understand their endless raiding. The guy's reaction was too crazy, there is no way that was real. Who would literally destroy their computer(monitor) as a first reaction? He had to have known it was his girlfriend, no hacker would leave just one character remaining.
The joke is on the girlfriend though, if this is real. He will definately break up with her, and what she doesn't know is that Blizzard can recover deleted characters and items if reported relatively quickly. He could likely get everything back.


I call real, it seems to me like he left the account logged in while popping out for 10 minutes to get a pack of smokes. The reaction is not too extreme as it is (almost) the same as taking the drugs away from a junkie. He left to get some smokes so he could really enjoy his daily fix of MMO and then finds out that the thing he has spent 100's if not 1000's of hours on is gone. The Guildmates, the relationships, the standing in that "tribe", the epic loot that took 52 runs of a hardcore raid to get and so on is all gone. Some people value their online personas more than their RL ones as their online ones might be respected high standing members of a society and their opinions matter, which might not be true in RL.

The primal response to all bad things in life is violence. Ergo kill monitor.

(I am not a lawyer but...)
The joke is not on the GF as she could face charges for unlawfully tampering with somebody else's computer system and destroying data (there is probably a fancy legal term but I can't be bothered to look it up now). Heck he could also probably sue for emotional damage, and get a new computer screen, and probably win too as she was dumb enough to record what she did and state reasons for it, premeditated/shows intent... and she posted it online, increases the emotional trauma of the victim.

Actually, DFT, if you allow me a tangent. I don't deny our communal urges at all. I understand that's a primal instinct that is meant to ensure our survival as a species. If you didn't get along with the tribe, you were either killed or banished (which surely meant you would die without the protection of the tribe).

There's also downsides to this communal desire. Think about this. When one tribe ran across another tribe, they were not primally driven to coexist but rather to murder them and take their women as booty, right? That, or just run from the other tribe. That's because it's also instinctual to identify with a social community with specific identifiable similarities. That can mean race, class, geographical location, belief systems, etc. Would you agree? This is where nationalism and racism and any other type of segregational thought comes from.

So, when one tribe met another tribe, they would instantly recognize a difference in the other tribe whether that be race or simply that they were not part of their tribe (geographical location). That difference sparked a primal fear, and that primal fear is a necessary survival mechanism. I mean, no species would last very long if it didn't have a fear of that which is different. A mouse should not instinctively suspect the best of a cat's intentions.

So, in that way, I think our primal instincts are detrimental to our survival today, because we have a society in which we don't need to fear our neighbor as much as primitive man needed. This is why I believe in individualism, because we don't need to live in such fear of our neighbors anymore. We can now work to persuade people to "judge a man by the content of his character, not by his..." geographical location, belief system, race, class, etc.

Tangent over.

I actually have heard of it and someone had recommended that I see it. I think it is on streaming Netflix, so I'll be sure to check it out.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
It doesn't surprise me at all about the customers' reactions to the change in corn dog taste. It's the same reason people go to McDonald's when they're on vacation. Yeah, they might have traveled a thousand miles for a change of scenery, but familiar tastes are comforting at a primal level.

On an almost completely unrelated note, have you ever seen The Corndog Man? If you want to see something bizarre and wickedly funny, then you might like it. I emphasize might because it's gotten mixed reviews from the people I've known who've seen it. For example, one friend of mine loved it, but his wife fucking hated it. I mean she was mad at him for even renting it. So be warned. YMMV