Re: Somalia
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Consider not only my argument, but also the animal kingdom. It goes on even though it is rife with predation.
edit: every living thing consumes some other living thing (or something that was once living) to survive. Yet the system does not collapse but rather flourishes as a whole.
[/ QUOTE ]
Do you think a species would flourish if it only consumed those of its own species?
[/ QUOTE ]
Of course not. But are humans going to give up eating animals and vegetables and turn instead to cannibalism? I don't believe so.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's what "pradation" in the Hobbesian sense essentially means; predation upon the property of others is predation upon their person, since that's what "property" is; an extension of self ownership to produced goods. In the presence of such predation, who will bother to produce more than what they can carry and defend with their own hands? Nobody. If you think such a scenario can possibly lead to any kind of "flourishing" . . . I don't know what to say.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think humans would still predate more upon other species than upon their own, even using "predate" in the very broad sense.
That everyone may be a predator in the hypothetical scenario, does not mean that they will all be voracious or reckless predators. Predators must be very leery of getting hurt in their attempts to predate, and generally must select only targets perceived as weaker. An all predator scenario does not mean they will all just immediately attack the closest target. And as mentioned earlier, humans would still predate upon other species for the most part.
A group endued with unstoppable powers over others, on the other hand, very well might become highly voracious because there would be no deterrent or potential heavy cost to their predations.
Are we perhaps talking past each other somehow?
|