<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/20/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Dan'l Danehy-Oakes</b> <<a href="mailto:danldo@gmail.com">danldo@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 10/20/06, Joe Smulkstis <<a href="mailto:jismulkstis@nyc.rr.com">jismulkstis@nyc.rr.com</a>> wrote:<br>> Adam Thornton is exactly right when he points out "Chivalry *is* biology".<br>> This ethic may have made sense when we needed to increase the
<br>> number of villagers or be eaten by wolves, but with 6.5 billion people<br>> in the world and a human-induced mass extinction being the current<br>> situation, maximizing our numbers is no longer a desirable outcome.
<br><br>Nonetheless, to the extent that "women and children first" is an<br>evolved behavioral tendency ... and I have some anecdotal evidence<br>(from, among other things, the '89 Loma Prieta 'quake) that suggests
<br>to me that it really is ... the fact that we're overpopulated isn't going<br>to change that. Each successful gene in the genome has been<br>selected over billions of years to maximize its own replication.<br><br>Fortunately, as brilliant biologist and idiot philosopher Richard
<br>Dawkins has pointed out, we are emphatically not the slaves of<br>our genes. We prove that every time we use any form of birth<br>control (including voluntary abstinence).<br><br><br>> "The more I know people, the more I like animals".
<br><br>It was "The more I know of men, the more I like my cat."<br>Voltaire.<br><br>--<br>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant<br>-----<br><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer">http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
</a><br><a href="http://www.danehyoakes.com">http://www.danehyoakes.com</a><br>Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open<br>sewer and die.<br> - Mel Brooks<br>_______________________________________________
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