Well, I think they are there naturally, in some, and not necessarily as a mistake, but as something undesirable. But I think that in times past they would simply get you killed, hopefully before the genes got passed on.

I think that the infinite wiring variations in human beings makes for the inevitable variety in the spectrum of personalities. Couple this with the exigencies and pitfalls of living and it’s miraculous if warped human beings aren’t the norm.

Nature’s mistake? On the contrary, I think humankind is rather tame compared to most of the natural world. Example: when human males establish a sexual relationship with a female we, by and large, don’t kill that female’s offspring from previous matings.

Darth…probably because we have so very, very few offspring, and we don’t have them very often. Compare that to wolves who have 2 to 5+ new kids every year. We humans have 1 kid every 2 or 3 years.
I bet male elephants will take on offspring that aren’t theirs .

It’s not a question of morality.

A natural thing, not a natural mistake.

I think it tends to be about projected fear and ego dynamics.

For instance the pattern that we imagine some terrible behavior (most often, because we experience it from others, or sometimes just see it or even just hear about it), and the fear of it leads to overwhelm and a coping mechanism picked arbitrarily but then developed as a pattern we latch onto automatically to avoid facing the fear and/or unprocessed trauma. One common coping mechanism is to act out or identify with the role of the person doing the terrible thing, so as not to be the victim of it. It becomes part of the ego-identity, but that doesn’t protect or process the trauma, and it reinforces a pattern of perpetration.

This tends to explain why most abusers experienced abuse. And why abused animals are sometimes little/no real provocation away from violence.

Instincts, like all the other feelings, are completely normal and innocent.
How one responds to them defines one’s degree of civilization.

Horrible perversion is my life’s spice.

What a radically unorthodox philosophy. Nature has no hand in giving birth to and developing those kind of thoughts and behaviors. Mother Nature care about physical evolution, not psycholohical evolution. We, ourselves, are the ones who create and nurture the vast idea of different way of thinking as the result of our environment and upbringing.

The idea that some instincts are “perverted, darker, contorted” is a culturally based judgment. It has no place in the natural world. And the notion that some things are “perverted, darker, contorted” is not universal across all cultures.

@Dutchess_III

I had in mind other primates who are closely related to humans. Gorillas, for instance, being one of our closest relatives. They also reach reproductive maturity at a roughly similar age (10–13 years), have a gestation period that’s almost as long as humans (8 months) and only give birth to 1 or 2 offspring at a time. They still engage in infanticide, so no, I don’t think numbers has anything to do with it.

Might have to do with needing enough hands to plow the field.

Nature loves diversity and doesn’t prefer the big over the small, the quick over the slow or the kind over the cruel. Nature produces an extraordinary variety of creatures and of types of men beyond what human beings could ever imagine. There is no master template and there are no mistakes, simply what works, works. The idea that some creatures are perverted or contorted, that some are good and others are bad doesn’t exist in nature. Ideas of this sort come from man and from a desire to live harmoniously in a civilised human society.

Humanity are the most vicious, murderous, destructive creatures on earth. They have butchered billions of their own kind. There is NO animal that come close to the slaughter and destruction of humanity.

Not only have they butchered billions of their own kind, they have tortured and abused billions of animals. They over fish, chop down the rain forests at a rapid rate and continue to pollute the earth with plastic and fossil fuels. Scientists have warned that humanity have about 140 years left before they become extinct.

@mightym

What scientists have warned that?

@mightym I’m with Darth. Do you have a source that supports your claim that you can provide for us?

This research article by Philip D. Gingerich.
“Plain Language Summary
The Paleocene‐Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) is a global greenhouse warming event that happened 56 million years ago, causing extinction in the world’s oceans and accelerated evolution on the continents. It was caused by release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. When we compare the rate of release of greenhouse gases today to the rate of accumulation during the PETM, we must compare the rates on a common time scale. Projection of modern rates to a PETM time scale is tightly constrained and shows that we are now emitting carbon some 9–10 times faster than during the PETM. If the present trend of increasing carbon emissions continues, we may see PETM‐magnitude extinction and accelerated evolution in as few as 140 years or about five human generations.”