"A classic study in 1964 found that hungry rhesus monkeys would not take food they had been offered if doing so meant that another monkey received an electric shock. The same is true of rats. Does this indicate nascent morality? For decades, we've preferred to find alternative explanations, but recently ethologist Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder has championed the view that humans are not the only moral species. He argues that morality is common in social mammals, and that during play they learn the rights and wrongs of social interaction, the 'moral norms that can then be extended to other situations such as sharing food, defending resources, grooming and giving care'."
Returning to the issue of fate, and the fact that a football result can have a big impact: I have long realised that the world is largely planned rather than random - there are big vested interests in some things happening, so if events can be modelled (in human minds or on computers) they will be, and I have noticed too many "coincidences" in things that have happened. I regard myself as an agnostic - I've veered towards believing in God, but (perhaps largely due to subscribing to New Scientist) now veer towards atheism. There does, however, seem to be some sort of collective consciousness in the world (and perhaps the universe) much as explained by Richard Lovelock's Gaia theory, which encompasses everybody's free will and ensures that things work out, even with respect to football matches!
I have often felt, rightly or wrongly, that it has been vital for me to do certain things to prevent a dictatorial capitalist society like the one predicted by George Orwell in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from coming about. Arguably Russia already has that sort of society - Putin decided upon Medvedev as his successor as President, the Russian media gave him far more coverage than any other candidate, and (according to the BBC at least) there was no doubt that Medvedev would be elected, which he was; if you don't produce a passport or ID card when stopped by the police on the street, you can be arrested. If the whole world was like Russia, and New Labour are trying to take the UK in that direction, there would be no prospect of revolutionary change, but interactions with ordinary people (including football fans) across the world can bring about real democracy there and internationally.
Returning to the issue of fate, and the fact that a football result can have a big impact: I have long realised that the world is largely planned rather than random - there are big vested interests in some things happening, so if events can be modelled (in human minds or on computers) they will be, and I have noticed too many "coincidences" in things that have happened. I regard myself as an agnostic - I've veered towards believing in God, but (perhaps largely due to subscribing to New Scientist) now veer towards atheism. There does, however, seem to be some sort of collective consciousness in the world (and perhaps the universe) much as explained by Richard Lovelock's Gaia theory, which encompasses everybody's free will and ensures that things work out, even with respect to football matches!
I have often felt, rightly or wrongly, that it has been vital for me to do certain things to prevent a dictatorial capitalist society like the one predicted by George Orwell in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from coming about. Arguably Russia already has that sort of society - Putin decided upon Medvedev as his successor as President, the Russian media gave him far more coverage than any other candidate, and (according to the BBC at least) there was no doubt that Medvedev would be elected, which he was; if you don't produce a passport or ID card when stopped by the police on the street, you can be arrested. If the whole world was like Russia, and New Labour are trying to take the UK in that direction, there would be no prospect of revolutionary change, but interactions with ordinary people (including football fans) across the world can bring about real democracy there and internationally.
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