@WilliamFleming - If you are talking about the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Commission or dreck of that ilk I do agree with you. There is no shadowy new-world-order cabal.

However, I would point out that Mark Zuckerberg definitely has an agenda and no one is immune (see Flowerwall's post preceeding). Elon Musk has an agenda and it is not wise to dismiss him as a rich kook.

History demonstrates that often times, major things (good and bad) occur because a handful of people bend the masses to their will. "Nature sets the agenda" is too sweeping and broad for the idea to be useful to me.

So there is no appropriate usage for the word unnatural then ?

@Fernapple Everything is natural, some natural things we don’t like.

@Fernapple, @LatentumCattus Well, aren’t Mark and Elon also natural? They do have power in certain areas, but that power is limited and temporary. Those guys won’t be around forever.

The power they have is power we give them. Nobody makes me use Amazon. Nobody makes me own a computer for that matter. Hollywood moguls control people through their shows, but they don’t reach me.

@WilliamFleming - :::groan:::

Your position is as tautological as saying 'the shovel was truly a groundbreaking invention'.

You wear glasses. They were invented by hominids to correct eyesight. "Naturally" you don't see as well without them. It was not "nature" that invented them, it was not "natural" for hominids to invent them and evolution is not correcting the problem.

Agendas exist with hominids - if anything, natural selection has no agency whatsoever - it is "blind", to now abuse the point.

@WilliamFleming Although all things fall within nature in the big sense of that word. Are not words like 'artificial and unnatural' words that we use to define things developed from, and after, the emergent principles of culture and technology were produced as developements beyond what was there before.

@LatentumCattus Is it natural for a chimpanzee to use a rock as a tool for cracking nuts?

@WilliamFleming - No. It is a learned behavior by watching other chimps.

Different troops of chimps use different tools in different ways, as they learn. By generalizing, you make the assumption that all chimps always use rocks as tools. They don't.

It must be liberating not being burdened with the grinding pain of active agency awareness.

@LatentumCattus So then using learned behavior for survival is unnatural.

Some ants engage in agriculture. Life itself must be unnatural by your definition.

BTW, I made no assumptions or generalizations about Chimpanzees. You are being illogical.

@WilliamFleming - And some ants don't. Natural selection has seen to it, without active agency involved. Conflating instinct with learned behavior is yet another logical fallacy. Using tools is learned behavior and passed on from one individual to another, effective strategies proliferate.

I'll do you one even better - humans also learn from one another, but in an act of hubris unbecoming of Nature, also record their observations. They memorialize it for future generations, not just from parent to offspring or individual to tribe. Entire libraries containing the body of knowledge of all humanity are here for the learning. The concept itself is quite unnatural.

Unless we apply your original tautology, of course. I suspect that you may believe that you sound more pithy than is actually so.

You are welcome to your perspective; I can't see how your examples are relevant to the point of the OP that active agency does exist, it does affect you (whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not) and that education provides the means by which we may at least identify and understand, if not resist or accept, the influence of others.

Thanks for the points, BTW, I hit 5.5 in no time today

@LatentumCattus I’m glad you are enjoying yourself. Congratulations

@WilliamFleming - Thanks, this is fun. I truly appreciate you playing!

@WilliamFleming Did you say that chimpanzees have rocks which they use as tools ?

@Fernapple I saw some YouTube videos about some primates that were breaking open some kind of nuts with a rock. Also they were using sticks for various purposes.

I have learned to use sticks for knocking down spider webs when I am walking in the woods.

@WilliamFleming And do they also have toenails ?

@Fernapple Not the spiders. I’m sure our primate cousins do.

@WilliamFleming And are the chimps toenails also called tools.

@Fernapple Hmm...good point. Their whole body is one big tool. How did we get to this quandary? Please enlighten me.

@WilliamFleming Perhaps it works this way. We divide the world into groups or categories to which we give names, such as birds and bees, which are two groups of things that fly, or hammers and saws for example, two types of tools. Of all the things that chimps could own, I think you will agree, there are at least two groups. Those, such as toenails, which are made following the instructions found in DNA working through RNA and then ribosome's ( the phenotype, ). And those which are made by DNA working through RNA and ribosome's, but only after they have first produced a fully functioning brain, followed by neural nets, which have then added another layer of instructions. These, such as stones and peeled sticks used for fishing out termites, we can then call, tools, artefacts, and sometimes cultural products, though that is more complex yet since it needs several brains working together. ( Technically they are all called, I am told, the extended phenotype. )

Artefacts, meaning literally, the products of art, are as you quite rightly say, just as natural as anything else in the universe, using natural to mean all the products of nature, or in other words the whole universe. However artefacts are a special sub-group of things, because they are the products of that extra layer of instructions coming from brains. And we use the term 'artificial', made by art, to describe the groups character. Unfortunately it is a convention of our language, that there is no word for, none artificial, defining the other group of things that do not fit in that group, except 'natural'. And that of course results in natural, (and its opposite unnatural, ) having two meanings, both, all that there is, and, all that does not go into the sub-group of things made using artistry. In another language except English this problem may not occur.

It just shows the problems of trying to use language, which is a series of historical accidents cobbled together, often badly and very imperfectly, to express concepts in reason and logic, and why humans felt it needful to invent mathematics and science, in part, as a more rigorous alternatives to language and culture.

@Fernapple Good analysis, thanks.

Maybe the root of the matter is my perpetual optimism. By seeing everything as natural, and trying to understand the natural roles of different kinds of behavior I escape fear, anger, recrimination. etc. I am accused of playing my accordion while Rome burns, but there is some logic in that. I notice that in the past the world has overcome all adversity and has survived. Remember also that the entire earth is a temporary phenomenon slated for destruction at some point. A person’s world view should take that into consideration IMO. What it boils down to is that where there is hatred I try to sow love; where despair, hope; where sadness, joy; where fear, courage.

It is a selfish position on my part to leave the anger, fear etc. as a burden to be borne by others. After all, playing the role of revolutionary social reformer is also natural behavior that fits into the scheme of things. The fostering of suspicion, fear and hatred might result in actual warfare, which could result in a desired reduction in population, a very good outcome.

So keep up the good work. I’ll sit on the sidelines.

I do not know much about the US constitution , but that seems to be the trend world wide.

@Flowerwall @Fernapple

It is not a loss of privacy if given willingly.

Do you have a Facebook page?

A Google account?

If so, you gave two of the largest "legal" criminal enterprises full access to your entire life and introduced them to everyone you know or will ever meet. You have given them permission to follow you anywhere and observe what you buy, eat, and drink, even how much time you spend in the bathroom. Everything you do and will ever do.

Ask this. How can a company that sells nothing and provides services for free be a multi billion dollar sucess?

@moosepucky Yes i do use Google and always will perhaps sadly. Facebook I have an account for my business but not personally, and as I am now getting close to retiring that will soon be gone. And a good thing too, FB is loathsome.

@moosepucky This is how society is fooled. I believe at some point it's going to turn on us in a really big way, if it hasn't already. I mean I don't understand, the warning given by FBI two days ago. How did we get to this point? Can someone EXPLAIN?

@Flowerwall @Fernapple

To protect yourself, get a different cell phone number every 2 years MAX.

Your cell # is more tied into your life than your SSN. In fact your cell is tied into your SS account as well as medical, auto, home, taxes, any loans, credit cards, everything.

When I am required to give a phone # I give a land line number. Try and text me there. Following only goes as far as the cord will stretch. Beyond that I wear my tin foil hat

@moosepucky I only have a land line for going on line. My mobile is kept only for medical and other emergencies, and is only switched on twice a year, to keep the contract live.

@Fernapple

Good. It is safer in a drawer than with you, telling everyone where you are and where you are going.

Yeah, sigh. I wiz just thinking about that on the drive home again...

A good summation.

@Fernapple - Thank you. I found your OP thoughtful. I find it interesting to take the "long view". We live in such a moment-driven society, transactional and reactionary.

I would like to think that even though things may even get worse in my lifetime, overall there is hope for the pesky talking monkeys. Ultimately, History is an optimist - we live in better times now than 100 years ago, and better still than 250 years ago, etc. Five hundred years from now, I would like to think humanity as a whole would be better than now.

The book "War and Peace and War" by Peter Turchin really helped me to frame the long view and the cycles that societies experience. An interesting read - I wouldn't take it as all factual as a philosophy or method, but still worth checking out.

@LatentumCattus I hope you are right about the long view, we do tend to get things right in the end. Though as D. C. Peatie said "The speed drunk monkey tends to act faster than it thinks." Thank you for the book hint.