What tribe was she from? (Native American?) Or is he talking about someone of East Indian decent, you know, that country that Britain invaded in the 1600's to harvest resources from?

(I'm so confused)

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

But everyone saying that doesn't think of this single fact:

The society today is not what society was ages ago.

Before it was small clans / tribes. Now it's megafuckingultralarge cities and countries! I know folks on facebook that has fkn 500-800 "friends".
Even my modest 80-90 is fkn huge compared to the friend list of someone in the 1840'ies.

Education is not the same as 200 years ago, Work isn't the same, almost nothing is. So individualism might have been über for the advancement of industrialism, but it's a different world now. Maybe it's the close connection (in ya'll yankie-minds) between communism and the word collective: that's making ya freak out so bad? I don't know.

What a total dick....That kid was pissed but he was probably a better sport than his pack of Rhode Island-lookin' tribe o'trailer rats....

I'd go all Alexandre Dumas on his ass and wait till he had a reason to hate his own birthday....

@Buck said: "We should close factory farms and teach people how to hunt again."

Hunting can't scale to support a larger population than a hunter-gatherer tribe. So the cost of meat would skyrocket because demand stays high, and supply can't increase.

Meat costing $75 per pound instead of $5 per pound would be a huge reduction in quality of life for everybody.

That's why humans left hunter-gatherer lifestyles in the first place.


The answer will probably end up being the vat-grown meat Silicon Valley is working on now. It will be the health equivalent of organic and free range meat, since it's not fed pesticide food, antibiotics, etc.

*promote the toddler tribe

@tomspeed, yes and no. There are certain parts of Maori culture that have definitely been adopted, various Haka, some waiata (songs), pounamu (jade) carvings

But there's still a lot of racism and resentment toward Maori as well.

If you want to see an example, here's a story on one of the largest media sites in NZ about a local Maori tribe who had the audacity to charge a fee to have a commercial event run on their property. Read the comments.

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

The moral standard of western civilization is founded upon judeo-christian beliefs. Read:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595555455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366921071&sr=8-1&keywords=book+that+made+your+world

Following the morality the biblical God advocates is the hardest thing you will ever do. The standard of today is a superficial, politically correct morality where you pretend to be nice to people but curse them when they aren't around. God requires a transformation on the inside where you have genuine love for your fellow man.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Are you saying nigh universal adherence to certain moral standards isn't evidence for an absolute standard of morality?

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

You don't understand what God was doing in the Old Testament, or why He did it the way He did. It is morally consistent with His goodness and holiness, and there are logical reasons for why this is so. So far you are not interested in hearing them or discussing them. When you are let me know. In the end you don't have any excuse for suppressing the truth about Jesus, no matter what you think about how God acted in the Old Testament.

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

Basically, what you're saying is that because 2+2 probably equals four everywhere in the Universe, you are free to make absolute statements about morality? The fact is that your belief system leaves you with no justification for any absolute statement what so ever. Why should 2 + 2 always equal 4 in the first place? Can you tell me why the laws of physics should work in the same way 5 seconds from now without using circular reasoning?

Can you justify any piece of knowledge without God? If you can then tell me one thing you know and how you know it. Could you be wrong about everything you know?

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

It comes back to the same question: As the giver of life, and the adjudicator of His Creation, is it wrong for God to take life?

And here's another interesting brain tickler. If everything god commands is right, and god has a track record of testing his faithful with their willingness to commit infanticide, how can you say that this lady isn't moral?

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170166_1_baby-s-death-baby-s-father-documents

The scripture is finished and anything which contradicts it is not of God.

Wrong, I know that things are wrong because humans and cultures have a long history of interacting with reality, and certain strategies have been more successful than others. You haven't spent one iota of your time discrediting this notion, whereas I have given you plenty of examples crediting mine and discrediting yours.

What I am supposed to be discrediting? You're asking me to nail jello to a wall. You have not even defined what "successful" is supposed to mean beyond pure survival. In that case, every civilization has been successful. Tell me what your definition of success is supposed to be.

For the millionth time, I have no hopes of convincing you of anything - you'll defend your stance against literally any proof. But you seem to come here on the sift with the intent of demonstrating to others that there is some logical basis for your beliefs.

What proof? The foundation of atheism stands upon the shifting sands of relative truth. You, the atheist, ultimately make yourself the measure of all truth. Because of that, you can't tell me a single fact about the world that you can justify.

Well you're failing miserably, mainly because you are only capable of restating the following sentence as if it is an agreed upon truth:

"Not only is the entire concept logically contradictory, but it doesn't match our experience, which is that some things are absolutely wrong. "

I don't expect you to have any good support for that, but the audience out there just waiting to be convinced, they will need at least something.

Torturing babies for fun; not absolutely wrong?

I'm still waiting for you to give Stalin some kind, any kind of argument as to why he should adopt your morality and abandon his own. If you can't tell Stalin why he is wrong, then you have no hope of escaping the charge of incoherency.

"... If people rob and cheat you, you don't say that they are just executing their particular survival strategy, you say that those things are wrong. You know they are wrong because you have a God given conscience which tells you that they are. "

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

Do you see that these are absolute statements? On what grounds do you say there is no absolute morality? Saying there are no rules is a rule; this statement contradicts itself

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

When God issued the command to wipe out Canaan, it would have been immoral for the Israelites to disobey Him.

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

I would argue that one of the most powerful evolutionary advantages we have as a human species is human potential. By human potential, I mean traits like creativity, motivation, artistic talent, critical thinking, communicative ability, etc. It is a weird and nebulous thing, but we do know that it is not unique to any particular group of humans. It is not unique to men, nor is it unique to aryans, and it is not even unique to particular families.

I think that a decent argument can be made that creating a hospitable and reasonably equitable environment for all of these groups will maximize the percentage of humans who excel at these useful traits, creating a better world for everyone to live in.

So if your system oppresses any significant segment of the population, then there is a good chance that you will be less successful. I think that the Jewish brain drain from Nazi Germany is actually a very good example of this principle in action.

I should note that this is an evolutionary principle that is well established within certain groups. It is a massive evolutionary advantage to look out for people within your own group (tribe), which incidentally is why we have a long history of it being totally ok to kill other people's toddlers but not your own (see the Old Testament for examples). I think that now in these modern times we are realizing the benefits of extending that same principle of tribalism equity to the whole human community.

But yea, it's ultimately just a survival strategy. I have never claimed that my view of human morality has any absolute standard or guarantee of success. I can only be thankful that the society I live in has won out over the other ones.

Mind you, I still think it needs improvement - and leaving my little stamp on it is going to be a hell of a journey by the time it's over.

So why did God seem to think it was OK to murder toddlers and enslave people under certain circumstances? I thought that his absolute gold standard of morality was the only thing that was keeping us from devolving into such chaos.

Papua New Guinea tribe builds a Tree House 35M of the Ground has been added as a related post - related requested by Norsuelefantti on that post.

Your video, Papua New Guinea tribe builds a Tree House 35M of the Ground, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

To actually take the point at face value, it's an evolved response.

Let's say there was a group of early humans who felt intense grief at every death. They would be constantly grieving and never getting on with life, never doing anything productive with our lives, because someone, somewhere is always dying. Eventually, the more pragmatic humans who be more successful.

Equally, if there was a group that didn't feel a greater loss at the death of someone close to them, they would be less inclined to protect their tribe, and less inclined to co-operate. Again, the people that stick together would be more successful.

That's my theory anyway.

Lies begin when a non-omnipotent consciousness forms and that consciousness seeks, let's say, truth, yet finds only half truths that require mental gymnastics in order to believe. Sand exists. How? I don't know. God? It's only natural to invent things concept to fill in the gaps.

A civilization of people formed out of collective half truths has unfulfillable expectations in this world which creates the security breach which breeds more lies. Thus it becomes state authority creating lies to appease those that their ancestors lied to since the beginning of our time. Brother kills brother. How did your brother die? A member of the opposing tribe did it! Opposing tribe dies. Known "truth" then becomes fact and history remembers that a violent tribe of brother-killers was sacked.

Truth will ALWAYS be an illusion to mortal beings of limited perspective. Always. Even if you perceptively died and met God in Heaven, it still remains suspect that your experience could be a lie guided by carefully controlled stimuli. If there's a modicum of truth that we have observed with science, it's only truth within the system of our understanding of the universe, therefore not Truth.

Yes, science allows us to observe and our observations have allowed us to record "laws" of the universe, but even someone like Richard Feynman admits to making shit up and then, Presto! it makes the equation make sense. Lies. No matter how small, they can fill in the gaps just enough to create perceived truth. But that's mechanical truth. A mechanism just needs to work or not work. It doesn't matter if you did everything right using precise truth.

So you may think: If life is an illusion, then what about all of the scientific experiments which have allowed us to create civilization as we know it? Well, every game, or sandbox, follows rules, so experiments within that world can be valid in that world according to the laws that govern it, but it doesn't mean those laws are the Truth.

If the world we are in was akin to something like Minecraft, observation would indicate that the world is functional and that there are observations which can be repeated over and over again with the same or similar results, leading to the creation of technology. But what about the concept of a .JAR or .DLL? Checksum? How about a network? If we only know the observed laws of the current server we have access to observe, how do we record the Truth? Black box observation and nothing more. My kingdom for a scientist that can perform unit testing. A string theory unit tester might be a good start.

Anyway, just rambling for communal sanity, as always. Not all of us have picked a side, let alone a position of understanding in the universe to cling to like a crucifix or a meme.

I remember that it was about the clothing of nomadic Arab tribes I think..