• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

The Delicate. soul.

Charlotte Thompson

Well-known member


“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small​
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief


“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small​

This is complex! We have divided attention. First there.'s a picture that always denotes tragedy - the life of a moth is so tenuous and the wings so fragile, like dusty surfaces, a slight mark ends their existence.

The quote is strange. It seems as if it must have truth in it but I do not clearly see that love, loyalty and gratitude belongs to animals any more or less than to ourselves. To you Charlotte, it must be self evident or you wouldn't have chosen this particular quotation. So how do we indeed rank in these parameters.

Then, why are the animals better off -because then the have no soul or what?

Asher
 

Charlotte Thompson

Well-known member
Dear Asher

Everything in this world has a soul imho.
This is complex! We have divided attention. First there.'s a picture that always denotes tragedy - the life of a moth is so tenuous and the wings so fragile, like dusty surfaces, a slight mark ends their existence.

As I see it so is man. Life exists.. always

I have many beautiful plants on the porch to greet. One was a petunia lost and old and dad I thought! A small pot. After many rains I noticed some green. I brought it into the fold and started watering it. Lo and behold it is small but blooming and coming back to life. Reminds me of soul. Shows me nothing dies.

Animals which I have had many ... many have shown me such as the quote- I have seen family divide over death.. I have seen money come come between - Animals have no such regard. So the quote.
 
Hi Charlotte
Regarding the Herriot quote, a book called The Price of Altruism: George Price And The Search For The Origins Of Kindness (2011) by Oren Harman provides a good and moving overview of the origins of the qualities you refer to.
Cheers, Mike
 

Charlotte Thompson

Well-known member
Mike

Thank you. We have a great library in Katy,Tx Maude Marks neighborhood small but wonderful. I will check those books out. They sound like they would be right up my alley. Much appreciate!

Charlotte-
 

fahim mohammed

Well-known member
Charlotte.

Insightful. The image posted ( as I have noted previously, that in itself tells me who the OP is!! ), and the ensuing comments deserve so much more than a few words; and more than a short span of time to absorb, and bring forth the various thoughts that one might have.

A moving quote and a hallmark Charlotte image.

Stay well.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Charlotte
Regarding the Herriot quote, a book called The Price of Altruism: George Price And The Search For The Origins Of Kindness (2011) by Oren Harman provides a good and moving overview of the origins of the qualities you refer to.
Cheers, Mike


Michael,

Can you are anyone else, better read than I am, introduce me to the essence of what George Price and Oren Harman say. I promise to study myself, but for now, can you provide some flavor of their thoughts on kindness and decency?

Obviously in has something to do with nurturing, family and neighborlyness, but what about the "Big Five"?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief


“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small​


I have to reurn to fragility and respect for its unlikley survival some 300 million years!

Asher
 
Sorry for the lateness of this reply. Work demands got in the way.

Michael,

Can you are anyone else, better read than I am, introduce me to the essence of what George Price and Oren Harman say. I promise to study myself, but for now, can you provide some flavor of their thoughts on kindness and decency?

Obviously in has something to do with nurturing, family and neighborlyness, but what about the "Big Five"?

Asher

Asher, Charlotte did the work for me by finding a good review/summary of Oren Hartmen's book.

Asher

Found a bit of info for you...seems a scientific and evolutionary debate altruism and species very exciting to read! I haven't had time yet to check out the book @ the library but I do understand what Price wrote-

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/books/review/deWaal-t.html?pagewanted=all

Charlotte, you can get a used copy for $1.40 or an ebook Kindle version for $10.35at <Amazon.com> if your library hasn't got a copy.

Among the contributions of George Price's to evolutionary science, most notable was his mathematical demonstration of the viability of what became known as kin selection. The traditional evolutionary model of individual selection proposed that a gene gained frequency within a population if its inheritance increased the production of offspring, such that a greater number survived to reproductive age. In contrast, kin selection proposed that a gene gained frequency within a population if its inheritance resulted in increased survival of offspring to reporductive age. An implication is that genes able to facilitate altruism toward kin (e.g., nuturing, kindliness, helpfulness, compassion) can become more frequent in the population. A proviso is that such facilitation provides a favourable survival balance for the recipients compared to costs to the donor. For example, Price's contemporary, JBS Haldane, laughingly reported that "he would willingly die for two brothers or eight cousins".

Price's own life ended in tragedy after his all too brief sojourn at the University of London. In 1970, he had a religious conversion to Christianity and became a New Testament scholar. Quickly disillusioned with bible scholarship, he began community work with the homeless and alcoholics. During this time, he tried to demonstrate the benefits of altruistic behavior through acts of kindness to random strangers and dispossession to needy others of nearly all his assets. By the end 1974, he had been evicted from his rented dwelling, now lived in squats, and became increasingly disillusioned and depressed. He killed himself in January of the following year. At his memorial service, only two former academic colleagues attended, along with a few random strangers.

For over a quarter-century his contributions to science and attempts to demonstrate the positive side of community altruism were ignored or forgotten. The title of Harman's book, The Price of Altruism was well chosen: few people before Price championed altruism to the extent he did: the cost of altruism was the price of his life.

So what happened to altruism in the half-century since Price's death? First, the contribution of kin selection to survival of the fittest became a recognized landmark in evolutionary theory. Second, altruism rose to occupy center stage in the positive psychology that emerged during this millenium. Briefly, current state of the art findings in positive psychology depict comparable genetic underpinnings for the Big Five personality traits and subjective wellbeing (e.g., life satisfaction, happiness), with altruism a structural mediator between the former and the latter. In other words, positive psychologists envision altruism as both a natural consequence of favourable personality traits (e.g., emotional stability and extraversion) and a positive determinant of happiness.

Therein, perhaps, lay reasons why altruism failed George Price. Harman's biography indicates a less than favourable profile of personality traits, with altruistic inclinations foreign to his nature. Consequently, his support of altruism arose from intellectual reasoning rather than emotive and behavioural dispositions. Only after such reasoning caused him to adopt altruism as a modus operandi for everyday living did his behaviour incorporate such tendencies on a regular basis. Sadly, altruism proved to be a foreign body for him that brought about not happiness but depression and disillusionment. How awful it must be when the major work of your life proves toxic to yourself. Surely it must have made him question the viability of the mathematical model that was to be his legacy to posterity. The lesson, I guess, is that the costs of altruism may be excessive for individuals with non-supportive genetic profiles, the receipt for which they are not to blame.

Cheers, Mike
 

Charlotte Thompson

Well-known member
Mike
Therein, perhaps, lay reasons why altruism failed George Price. Harman's biography indicates a less than favourable profile of personality traits, with altruistic inclinations foreign to his nature. Consequently, his support of altruism arose from intellectual reasoning rather than emotive and behavioural dispositions. Only after such reasoning caused him to adopt altruism as a modus operandi for everyday living did his behaviour incorporate such tendencies on a regular basis. Sadly, altruism proved to be a foreign body for him that brought about not happiness but depression and disillusionment. How awful it must be when the major work of your life proves toxic to yourself. Surely it must have made him question the viability of the mathematical model that was to be his legacy to posterity. The lesson, I guess, is that the costs of altruism may be excessive for individuals with non-supportive genetic profiles, the receipt for which they are not to blame. from Mike-


Your assessment seems a good understanding. I believe understand this theory as a good one. I think the soul was made intentionally for the greater good of all. Hierarchy being the universe as it was made. Seems the same. Albeit many souls even though they cannot be true to this genetic voice "altruistic and made so genetically could not by some circumstance to be fathered to albeit in altruism as for all living as is Earth which is all that is created to be one. The simplicity of animals give without regard. They genetically coded as we but have much less ideas of destruction and greed etc. as man.

Charlotte- btw thanks for the info on where to find the books if not in my library!
 
Top