Saintly

One of my favorite scientists, Carl Sagan, and his wife Ann Druyan talk about an experiment done with Macaque monkeys that is very similar to the experiment Sutherland told us about.


Instead of offering money, the monkeys were offered a reward of food if they shocked a fellow Macaque monkey. About 87% of the Macaques refused, even when they had been starved of all other food for up to two weeks. This tells us...


"The argument that humans have some monopoly on ethical behavior, and all these other animals are just beasts and beneath contempt, is clearly human conceit. It's wrong. And how many other of the proported distinctions of humans are also wrong when we take a close look at how animals behave?"


So, we can eliminate the argument that a reward of money reduces us to "primal, brutish behavior," because clearly animals which we consider to be less ethical than ourselves have in fact, a better sense of what's moral.


I can't stand PETA, but I am very pro-animal rights. There is much we can do for this world by reducing the consumption and testing of animals.


Carl Sagan wanted for his Cosmos to help people understand the universe... The infinite potential of the human race, and its' gift of supreme intelligence. It is pretty black and white, our options. We can destroy ourselves or discover ourselves.


As said in the videos about Milgram's Authority experiment, violence is not some detached force, it's something that may very well become something we believe we can justify.


But violence, as I know, and as I hope everyone knows, is never justifiable. The thousands of nuclear weapons-a tiny fraction of which could bury or destroy the earth, are perhaps the most depressing evidence of human conceit, of the childish wish for dominance.