natural vs unnatural

  On 9/28/2011 at 9:45 AM, loganfive said:

(inspired by that troon thread about skynet)

 

just always makes me smirk a bit when people use the phrase 'it's unnatural' to justify their point of view about something not being right.

 

my pov is that everything, even your 19" flatscreen and your wee plastic lighter are natural.

 

mankind has it in its nature to produce tools of this sort, it's no less natural than a dog wiping its arse crack on some rough grass.

 

all are products of the evolution and nature of the universe, thus natural. 'unnatural' as a state is impossible.

 

i have not, as yet, had anyone give me an adequate explanation of the term 'unnatural'

 

 

discuss.

By following this logic, silicone tits are natural.

read this:

within an 100 lightyear radius there are trillions of wal marts on other planets

  On 9/28/2011 at 10:23 PM, Gocab said:

  On 9/28/2011 at 9:45 AM, loganfive said:

(inspired by that troon thread about skynet)

 

just always makes me smirk a bit when people use the phrase 'it's unnatural' to justify their point of view about something not being right.

 

my pov is that everything, even your 19" flatscreen and your wee plastic lighter are natural.

 

mankind has it in its nature to produce tools of this sort, it's no less natural than a dog wiping its arse crack on some rough grass.

 

all are products of the evolution and nature of the universe, thus natural. 'unnatural' as a state is impossible.

 

i have not, as yet, had anyone give me an adequate explanation of the term 'unnatural'

 

 

discuss.

By following this logic, silicone tits are natural.

of course they are.

how could they not be?

  On 9/28/2011 at 2:23 PM, keltoi said:

i think more along the lines of "natural vs shaven"

and which way do your thoughts prefer to go?

natural/unnatural, good/bad, right/wrong, all useless unless under a frame of reference.

my mind dwells on this quite a bit, and i've concluded that you almost have to consider a context when using a language or else you'll drive yourself nuts.

still, though, i don't care much for using terms like good/bad/right/wrong. they don't make sense to me anymore.

one time i said that something someone was doing was wrong, and the person i said that to told me that wrong was the wrong (but i suppose they didn't use that word) word to use, and said they were being 'insensitive'.. i don't think being insensitive is right or good, i think it's wrong and bad, is that wrong/bad? (it wasn't just insensitive, it was malicious, but anyway...)

i agree with the human creations being natural thing, always thought that but it does depend on your beliefs. a religious person might not agree.

When I carried out my dissertation on the social attitudes towards cloning, many people said they didn't like it because it's unnatural. Those people had obviously forgot about many plant life and identical twins.

actually, if you look at the etymology of the word, it contains the stem' nat'

like natal, native, innate etc.

all refer to a time or a state of inception.. so i guess natural in its truest useage would mean 'in the same state as it was when it was created/born'

unfortunately 'unnatural' has come to mean 'different' and is often unwittingly used by the less linguistically able to mean 'beyond my understanding' or 'beyond my levels of tolerance'. and it usually comes with a nasty dose of judgement

  On 9/29/2011 at 2:45 AM, Luke Fucking Hazard said:

natural/unnatural, good/bad, right/wrong, all useless unless under a frame of reference.

 

my mind dwells on this quite a bit, and i've concluded that you almost have to consider a context when using a language or else you'll drive yourself nuts.

 

still, though, i don't care much for using terms like good/bad/right/wrong. they don't make sense to me anymore.

i completely agree plantre.

  On 9/29/2011 at 12:24 AM, sneaksta303 said:

  On 9/28/2011 at 2:23 PM, keltoi said:

i think more along the lines of "natural vs shaven"

 

and which way do your thoughts prefer to go?

somewhere in the middle... totally shaven and enormous mound equally creep me out. landing strips and little hitler taches are just rediculous... a think a little trim is nice so you can see the beauty without it looking pre-pubescant.

[/raising the level of discussion]

This thread is eerily similar to lots of conversations I had a couple years ago.

My main "talking point" I suppose was honey. Is honey natural? Most people say yes, even though it's fabricated by organisms. And if honey is natural, it's hard to understand why silicone tits aren't (I totally used the example of silicone tits a number of times a couple years ago, so that's a creepy coincidence).

I think normally when people are trying to talk about natural/unnatural, they have this idea of a natural order that we've perverted. And that idea isn't totally absurd. For instance, you might think that our modern diet is bad for us, because we haven't developed the proper way to digest high-fructose corn syrup. There you have some idea of our environment changing faster than we are able to adapt to it, which is an argument that is probably also overused, but isn't completely stupid on the surface like the natural/unnatural distinction.

I think it's also keeping in mind that lots of natural things suck. Like poisonous mushrooms. And malaria.

  On 9/29/2011 at 5:28 PM, Root5 said:

I think it's also keeping in mind that lots of natural things suck. Like poisonous mushrooms. And malaria.

This reminds me of the best anti-drug video I have ever seen. Mostly because of the lyrics "If it comes from the Earth, it can't hurt."

I suppose I should add the disclaimer that you can't unsee this once you've seen it.

  On 9/29/2011 at 5:28 PM, Root5 said:

There you have some idea of our environment changing faster than we are able to adapt to it

our environment is changing because we're changing it, which is entirely in keeping with human nature, thus perfectly natural. there are those who are adapting faster than others. this is evolution.

  On 9/29/2011 at 7:36 PM, loganfive said:

  On 9/29/2011 at 5:28 PM, Root5 said:

There you have some idea of our environment changing faster than we are able to adapt to it

 

our environment is changing because we're changing it, which is entirely in keeping with human nature, thus perfectly natural. there are those who are adapting faster than others. this is evolution.

"Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever increasing population. instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment." - David Attenborough, BBC : The Life of Mammals (2002)

  On 9/29/2011 at 7:36 PM, loganfive said:

  On 9/29/2011 at 5:28 PM, Root5 said:

There you have some idea of our environment changing faster than we are able to adapt to it

 

our environment is changing because we're changing it, which is entirely in keeping with human nature, thus perfectly natural. there are those who are adapting faster than others. this is evolution.

Yeah, dude, I wasn't saying that the way we've changed the environment is "unnatural". We're just animals too. What I said was that, when people say 'unnatural', they tend to refer to those things that we have made recently, but have been maybe unable to adapt to. Reread what I said. I just meant that, though if you interpret the words "natural" and "unnatural" literally, then everything that exists is natural. But if you try to understand what people are trying to say, then it's not an absurd point.

I dunno bout you guys, but the shits that I take after eating McDonald's are pretty fucking unnatural.

  On 10/2/2011 at 5:15 AM, chenGOD said:

I dunno bout you guys, but the shits that I take after eating McDonald's are pretty fucking unnatural.

Truth right here.

  On 9/29/2011 at 7:26 PM, TwiddleBot said:

  On 9/29/2011 at 5:28 PM, Root5 said:

I think it's also keeping in mind that lots of natural things suck. Like poisonous mushrooms. And malaria.

 

This reminds me of the best anti-drug video I have ever seen. Mostly because of the lyrics "If it comes from the Earth, it can't hurt."

 

media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQe4XVrJFGQ[/media]

 

I suppose I should add the disclaimer that you can't unsee this once you've seen it.

I just gave up weed altogether. Thanks Hannah.

There's a difference between honey and silicon tits. Someone made a conscious choice to make or have fake tits. If that choice hadn't been made, there probably wouldn't be silicon tits. If you take out choice of the honey formula, there would still be honey existing in nature. So I guess my definition of natural would be that things are natural when they exist in nature without choice. With silicon tits, someone made a choice to replace her natural tits.

Of course this definition is already cripled at inception, because suddenly anything choice-related becomes unnatural. But to put it differently: silicon tits are definitely in the collection of unnatural things whatever the definition turns out to be.

  On 10/2/2011 at 5:44 AM, goDel said:

There's a difference between honey and silicon tits. Someone made a conscious choice to make or have fake tits. If that choice hadn't been made, there probably wouldn't be silicon tits. If you take out choice of the honey formula, there would still be honey existing in nature. So I guess my definition of natural would be that things are natural when they exist in nature without choice. With silicon tits, someone made a choice to replace her natural tits.

 

Of course this definition is already cripled at inception, because suddenly anything choice-related becomes unnatural. But to put it differently: silicon tits are definitely in the collection of unnatural things whatever the definition turns out to be.

what about honey-coated silicon tits?

unnatural but tasty. just like those honey bacon burgers at the golden arches (well, assuming they sell them)

That Puff Puff Give video will fucking scar you.

You know those videos that make a not high person feel high? Well, that was the opposite of one of those.

So you're convinced that bees don't choose to make honey. Well I guess that's fair.

What about crows using rocks to raise the water level to get at food. They presumably choose to do that. Is that unnatural?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/aesopscrows/

Cows with artificial legs are unnatural.

  Quote

made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural

  On 9/29/2011 at 12:24 AM, sneaksta303 said:

  On 9/28/2011 at 2:23 PM, keltoi said:

i think more along the lines of "natural vs shaven"

 

and which way do your thoughts prefer to go?

I'll field this one folks, natural of course.