Which is the most universal human characteristic?

Ahh, I see what you're saying now. It may be something like that, but I don't know how overpopulation might trigger it, as it's not a biological or even a very social environmental condition. It may be triggered by certain social enironments though, which seems the most likely to me. But I've never seen an actual experiment about this, and we don't even know that it's genetic yet, so I really shouldn't be surmising.

Memes don't eliminate the ability to have free will. They just means that culture is taught, which we knew already. Culture doesn't predestine human action, it just defines a set of loose rules for certain loosely defined types of situations and a few ritualistic rules that are very specific and made for very specific situations. But generally, it doesn't determine personal decisions or thought much at all.

Yeah, I only know a few people who like really thin people, too, but that doesn't really say anything. And there's still smoking and drinking. You can't deny that drinking is a major part of sex in America.

America does a horrible job at supporting poor children. I don't mean lower middle-class children, I mean POOR children. There's a lot more of them than most people know about. And actually, if poor families in America put their labor into subsistence farming instead of factory work, they would do a lot better. But you can't grow currency on a subsistence farm, and consumerism takes hold of everyone eventually. And most low-paying jobs don't pay for food and rent. You can't survive on minimum wage. I've done the math. People on minimum wage survive on welfare.

Yeah, the homosexuality/celibacy thing was just a pondering, sort of stab in the dark.

Sure, you can survive on miniumum wage. If I remember correctly from sociology, minimum wage is calculated based on an average living wage. Depends on what you eat, and where you live. Living in New York City is a lot harder than living in rural Idaho. I'm going to keep my opinion that America is a good place to live for a large number of people who would not be working elsewhere - based on history more than on cultural ideals or no child left behind ideals. There will always be someone left behind, maybe that is the way it should be. It would be nice if the people who get left behind were always those who did not try or were bad people! Children are innocent and do not chose their parents. genes, or where they live. Not every child should live. Sad but true, if everyone who was born lived to reproduce there would be problems. Sometimes people don't like things that are ugly, so they try to idealize them. I try to be a realist, and you'll notice a bit of friction between realists and idealists in all areas.

The woman who wrote the book on memes doesn't beleive in free will, even the act of writing the book she attributes to her memes, and not herself. A lot of it seems self-explanitory. Memes is fun to say.

Memes...mmmeeeemes....hmmm....

I like how you just sort of shoved that in there..."memes is fun to say"

I don't know how they calculate minimum wage, but you cannot live on it. I've never been ANYWHERE where you can live on minimum wage, and that's not even including places like New York or California. Even people who have two jobs have trouble. And in actuality, you rarely get a full 40 hours a week even if you only have the one job. You can learn all you want about economics and calculations and what the government says it does and how this all SHOULD work, but the fact is that it doesn't. And it's not just the government either. For instance, work-study financial aide. You're supposed to be able to make $1000 a semester here if you work 10 hours a week. You can't. In fact, someone finally made a student group drawing people's attention to this. It's amazing.

I don't know about books written about memes, as far as I know, they're just a name given to something we knew about already for a long time. Doesn't really change the status of free will at all.

You can live on minimum wage (theoretically), as long as you're willing to cut back on a lot of luxuries.

Not if you have kids. And I suppose that depends on what you mean by luxuries. You could live without a house. You could live without a car or without means to take the bus. So how do you get to your minimum-wage job? You probably walk. If you happen to have a more or less stable structure to live in, you probably don't live very close to the center of town. So you have to get up at 4 AM to be at work by 8 or 9. You can live without sleep too. For a while.

I've never tried, but I was thinking something along the lines of living in your car, buying the cheapest sort of food (the stuff that nobody else will buy), skinning your irish kids for your clothes, etc.

You're not going to be able to afford a car on minimum wage....

Oh yeah...
Nevermind, it must be hell trying to live on minimum wage.

Like I said, it all depends on where you live. Yes, you can afford food and a car and have kids (maybe just 1 kid as a single parent) on minimum wage - if buy the car in payments, and have a really cheap apartment. You'd have to cut back on luxuries, buy cheap clothes, maybe have no tv, but it can be done. There are also public schools and a mass of scholarships available to underfunded overachievers - if your kids really work their butts of and want to go to college (stopping the poverty cycle.) I've seen it happen.

New York, no, you wouldn't be able to. Downtown chicago, no. Outskirts of Austin, Texas, yes. Rural Idaho, yes. Trailer park, yes.
There are also (non-government) social programs through charity and organizations that can help.

Did you ever think that people who can't afford to have a child shouldn't have one until they can afford it? That's why I believe in family planning (and the planned parenthood organization.) There doesn't have to be as much suffering if you plan ahead. I believe in individual responsibility.


Many of the people who are really poor in the united states are the illegal immigrants. They take all the very low paying jobs because they can't get good ones (being illegal.) This also means that residents of the United States can't get the jobs they fill (and if they were working those jobs, they would get paid more.) This is why I believe in tightening our borders. Bush doesn't want to increase our border security because he has a relationship with the Mexican president. (And then after tightening our borders the government could sort out who to make American citizens.)

truth
I suppose the most obvious UNIVERSAL human trait (but not one exclusive to humans) is MORTALITY. Everything else may be debated.

Not necessarily...

In order to have things like cars you have to have things like credit. Again, that's very hard to have on minimum wage.

Your kids won't be able to work their butts off in school because if they survive they'll need to get minimum wage jobs of their own to survive. Forget about scholarships, I'm talking about eating. A lot of people are too proud to go on welfare. Could you blame them?

You can solve the problem of illegal immigrants by not making them illegal. Make them considered as human beings under the law that deserve to get paid a decent wage. Sure, it mean other people won't get those jobs, but it also means that those people won't be starving (or maybe they'll just be starving more slowly). They're human beings just like the rest of us.

JL. I thought you were a fan of Neitzsche.

Characteristic: a DISTINGUISHING trait, quality, or property.

Distinguish: 1: to perceive a difference in. 2a : to mark as separate or different.

Sex, mortality, and even poverty are not unique to the human experience.

Neither is smiling, for that matter, nor slavery, nor building and decorating our homes.

What separates humans from all other living things is--to borrow a phrase from Steel Magnolias--"our ability to accessorize."

We dress.

truth
I havn't waded through the murky mess of this thread, so my comment may have been out of key, as it were. I was not referring to things humans GENERALLY share. I was trying to think of something that humans share UNIVERSALLY. And that is, of course, the fact that we will all die. Of course we share that with all living things, but I was not trying to define human uniqueness.

JLNobody, so good to be discussing with you again!

As it turns out, I had not read the question correctly, but just took it straight from the title.

The question has to do with laziness vs. fear.

Well, I guess I'm an example of laziness, and should probably have a little more fear before I respond to questions I have not fully read.

Don't worry about it, dupre. We've ditched our efforts to limit the options to fear and laziness. JL, I knew what you were talking about but whether or not mortality exists is a debate in itself.

We aren't the only animal to accessorize; there is a certain species of crab that dresses itself up. Any other ideas?

truth
Individual, you think our inevitable death is debatable? I would debate you but that would be very difficult because I would want you to win.

Yes, Dupre; it's been too long.

Should I start a thread on the topic of mortality or not?

I'm going to have to go with Bernard Lonergan here and say that Man's Unconditional Desires are to know and to love. These two and their counterparts (to be known and to be loved) summarize human desires. These two appear in every human, unlike other desires.