SecularFuture

Why do we enjoy noise?
- Why do we clap?
- Why do we shout during concerts?
- Why do we play our music loud?

Why is pain entertaining?
- Why do we laugh when people trip, fall, etc?
- Why do we celebrate Halloween (make fun of the dead)?
- Why do we watch boxing and / or “professional” wrestling?

Why do we worship?
- Why do we believe in god myths?
- Why do we idolize celebrities?
- Why do we idolize “pop stars”?

Other nonproductive activities
- Sports
- Ceremonies


GENERAL QUESTION
Do you feel that we are still in our primitive stages?

Emmanuel Goldstein

Why we watch boxing is an easy one.

Boxing and similiar sports are like play fighting, they hone our own fighting skills in a non deadly manner. A baby cougar who has play fought with his brother is more likely to survive a real deadly encounter as an adult than a baby cougar who has not developed those skills.

Dancing has me baffled though ...

Seb_Maya

Often in this day and age it seems to me that we like sound because we cannot stand to be alone, we have things like TV, radio, internet, cellular phones etc. People cannot stand to be alone with their own thoughts even for a short while.
In respects to music concerts we are all fans of the music and in shouting we achieve a sort of catharsis, and the elation of being united with others. I believe Halloween was never intended to make fun of the dead, but some bright spark realised that there was money to be made out of commercialising the event.
The notion of God and myths is one of absolutism it is universally present around the world and in different cultures. It seems we feel the need to believe in something greater than ourselves and also to explain the world of phenomena (e.g. lightning because zeus was angry.) God, myths, religion give our lives meaning, they satiate our need for transcendance and assuage our angst about
matters such as death.
Certainly humanity often seems to behave in primitive and barbaric manners. But how can we know if the human race is still in its embryonic stage, with regards to knowledge and behaviour?
Are we close to reaching our potential? Probably not. In terms of human knowledge "We cannot anticipate today what we shall know only tommorow."

Amos

Because each one of us has been given a blank slate to write our life experiences on. The advances made by previous generation may be written upon our soul but if we do not have direct access to this storehouse of knowledge we must begin with what we have been alotted.

Keith Russell

Why do we enjoy noise?
- Why do we clap?

(Clapping isn't done because it's noisy, it's done to show appreciation of the performance.)

- Why do we shout during concerts?

(I don't, I sing along.)

- Why do we play our music loud?

(Loud music is energetic, and life is an energetic--NOT a peaceful--process. Loud music--and I even listen to Bach LOUD--is a celebration of LIFE.)

Why is pain entertaining?
- Why do we laugh when people trip, fall, etc?

(I rarely--if ever--laugh in such situations.)

- Why do we celebrate Halloween (make fun of the dead)?

(Make fun of the dead? Not hardly. Hallowe'en is laughing, not at the dead, but at death itself. Again, for me at least, Hallowe'en is a celebration of LIFE.)

- Why do we watch boxing and / or “professional” wrestling?

(Um, YOU might, but 'we', don't. 'We' includes me, and I never watch that crap.)

Why do we worship?

(Again, 'we' don't. 'We' includes me, and I have never worshiped.)

- Why do we believe in god myths?

(Um, 'I' don't.)

- Why do we idolize celebrities?
(Nope, I don't do that, either.)

- Why do we idolize “pop stars”?
(Depends on what you consider 'pop stars'. I idolize Kate Bush, does that count?)

Keith.

Anderson

Who is that quote from? I want to use it in a paper I'm writing.

Seb_Maya

It is taken from the seminal book by Karl Popper
"The Poverty of Historicism."

hinduwoman

I think...

Loud noise means we know what is happening. Most predators are silent. but clapping and shouting at concerts are simply showing approval.

I don't think pain is entertaining. We laugh when people fall or trip because that is not what we expected to happen and the shock makes us laugh.
Halloween is celebrated as a way of appeasing spirits of the dead so that they won't haunt the living. We watch wrestling because as Goldstein says it is a way of honing our survival skills.

We worship gods because it is comforting to have a guardian figure. We idolize celebraties because out herd nature makes us yearn for an obvious leader.

sports and ceremonies are not really nonproductive. Sports makes us use our physical skills, a way of honing our survival skills. Ceremonies is a way of affirming social bonding.

hinduwoman

We are very definitely in our primitive stages yet. We had not biologically evolved since we came down from the trees. But culture evolves faster and hopefully we can become more civilized as a whole.

Ms. Siv

Depends on what you mean by "primitive". A lot of our behaviour is a result of hard-wired algorithms which helped our genes propogate in the environment we spent much of our evolutionary history in - living as hunter gatherers in the African plains.
The default objective was gene propogation ... and our genes did the best they could given the environment they found themselves in (not intentionally of course .... all by default!)

Now, given that our objectives are not gene propogation (at least, not for many of us ), and that our environments have changed ... is it time to reevaluate these traits of ours ? Yes, of course !
But we should also realise the limitations ... there's only so much we can change, given our natures. We're currently not smart enough or wise enough to indulge in large-scale human genetic engineering. All we can do is try and learn as much as possible about our natures and tamper around with the environment to give the desired behaviour patterns (or to prevent the undesirable ones!)

- Sivakami.