What is hard wired into the modern human

[Buckterrier]

Sex, Greed, Love, Nurturing... what else and why.

What will eventually change. What has changed since mankind...

[Dantilla]

Selfishness.

Maifested in both good and bad ways.

Good- Working together as a community to place sandbags to prevent flooding.

Bad- Robbery.

Both are forms of selfishness.

[RWebb]

all modern humans have a tracking chip in their butts

source: Futurama

[syncroid]

A conscience. People without one are broken.

[Zeke]

The will to live?
I thought that was the basic meed.

[RWebb]

a conscience is instilled in young children by repeated work from the parents & society

really, this is not even the right question - humans have some general tendencies that are genetic

[red-beard]

Boobs

When I was eight or nine, we found playboys. It had the correct effect. ERGO, that is HARD wired...

[asterix031]

Originally Posted by syncroid

A conscience. People without one are broken.

I thought everyone has a conscience.

Now the extent to which one's conscience affects their behaviour is a different thing. Those that ignore their conscience are considered "acquaintances of society" ...

[crustychief]

It depends on where the modern humans are located on the globe really.

[DanielDudley]

It depends on where humans are located on the forums...

[GH85Carrera]

The human brain is wired in many different ways. What is normal to one person is abnormal to someone else.

Self preservation is probably the most universal. But some folks are such risk takers they suppress it.

Many people can't live without human contact, but there are a lot of hermits out there.

[M.D. Holloway]

Well, according to our 8yr old lil girl (taken from a paper she wrote for school):

"There are things (like viruses but different) that live in your brain and body help you live and make choices. Here let me introduce you. The Motion One, The Memory One, The Language One, The Emotion One, The Body Coach and The Body Coach Assistent. They all must work together to make the right choices so you can live a long time. When they all work together to help out the brain and body then nothing bad will happen till they get tired and they where out and they can not do what they are supposed to do. When this happens your body fights its self or you do bad things to other people or yourself or you just die of old age or cancer or you become broken. This will happen to everyone one day."

[The Gaijin]

Originally Posted by Buckterrier

What will eventually change..

Change, to what has been hard wired? I am not so sure anything. Not like modern society is the least bit darwinian..


But then again, those that are more adapted to schlepping back and forth via a miserable commute, spending hours and hours sitting under artificial light & staring into a screen performing some toil, and doing this over and over for decades might show some propensity for higher incomes (and therefore a measure of status) and more likely to breed off-spring, who are then willing to do the same..

Or maybe they are the poor schlubs who pay for the less so adapted people to sit home in and have kids?

[Laneco]

Compassion is hard wired.

There are alot of obvious examples that certain people lack this wiring, but in the range of "normal" humans, this is hard wired. The first domestic animals were probably orphaned youngsters that humans adopted. Pretty tough to tame an adult wolf, but very easy to raise a pup. Those born-wild but nurtered by early humans creatures wound up being cats, dogs, horses, etc.

The compassion thing is why humans took care of sick, elderly, and children. Very early evidence of such compassionate care in the remains of early humans. Severely injured people survived. No way to do that without compassionate care.

Compassion served the purpose of helping our species survive. The long time to raise our young, our relatively long life spans (compared to other animals), and our basic frailty, and our slow reproduction rate, required something extra for us to survive. We had to take care of each other for our whole life, not just the early part of it.

angela

[Superman]

This is one of those rare instances when RWebb is......inaccurate. Angela is on the right track. Consciences are hard-wired (except in those interesting cases called "sociopathic"). There is an innate sense of right and wrong that is NOT taught. Indeed, it also does not vary from society to society, or from one time period to another. Stays the same.

“"There Is A Voice Inside Of You
That Whispers All Day Long,
"I Feel That This Is Right For Me,
I Know That This Is Wrong."
No Teacher, Preacher, Parent, Friend
Or Wise Man Can Decide
What's Right For You- Just Listen To
The Voice That Speaks Inside."”

Shel Silverstein

Immanuel Kant did some brilliant thinking and writing, and explored the question of what is (and what must be) present in a human mind that is "a priori." He noticed that certain learned information is actually synthesized rather than learned, and cannot be synthesized without certain frameworks being already present in the mind. Time and space are not things we experience. They are constructs that helps organize what we DO see and hear. His works inspire awe to this day, when a student bears down to the point of really understanding and following his thinking. His works are intellectual thrill-rides. Really.

[Superman]

Sadly, as Dan pointed out, selfishness is also hard-wired. So........God and Satan are both in there. Each of us is a spiritual battleground.

[audiman08]

I wish I could believe compassion was hard-wired into humanity. Unfortunately, I think people are basically bad...and it takes good parenting, ethics/faith, culture, and education to work some of that basic selfishness out of people. Even then, it doesn't really work...

[Hugh R]

To quote Hawkeye Pierce from MASH (the TV series), the three basic human emotions are greed, fear and greed.

[RWebb]

thx, Superman - but as a research biologist, I assure you that what I posted is correct.

It actually takes a LOT of parental (and other adult) work to instill that in children.

Not to say that there is not some sort of underlying empathetic tendency in humans that is likely genetic.

[M.D. Holloway]

Holloway's Axioms of Human Condition - (published under separate cover)

1) People for the most part do not change. Do not expect it because it most likely will not happen.

2) People are most often motivated by self-interests, which also may act as defense mechanism. They may not be well understood by any outsider but the individual has structured them into a personality maze that often they are captive.

3) People rarely take advice rather they formulated rationalizations and rebuttals to cement Axioms #1 and/or #2.

4) Character flaws and "quarks of manner" transcend - just because someone is crazy, dishonest, or disingenuous in one aspect of their lives, do not make the mistake it does not carry over into other aspects - it does.

5) For the majority of comfortable people, food, sleep/escape, sex and warmth are still the most important things in life – behind admiration and acknowledgment. This will be the driving force behind all Axioms.

6) People want to feel important and needed – take that away and they will either do very interesting things to gain that attention or they will withdraw and become very bitter.

7) People want to do good and are not malicious on purpose but their desires and insecurities manifest into greed, fear or apathy.