On human relationships

My thanks to con for entering my debate. I hope you do well, but lose, con. I will now proceed to dismantle con's arguments from the ground-up. "4. an adequate comparison statement would be the presence of vinegar leads to the presence of honey. " I would've hoped that you had actually read my argument before making a culinary analogy to it. Had you read with the intent of understanding, con, you would've realized (I hope) that as long as short-sighted, arbitrary classifications of those in the "in" exist, it will invariably create a counter-sect, namely those who are in the "out". It is unavoidable. With an "in", there is always an "out". There is no "Life" without "Death", no "dark" without "light", no "love" without "hate". I am trying to push forth the understanding of the basic yin-yang contrasts of life that give it its meaning. I do not know how honey connects to vinegar in any way that pertains to this philosophy, unless there is some obscure cooking reference in there that I have missed. "3. Friendship has nothing to do with survival. " Thank you for proving my point. You are right: Friendship, as the philosophers define it, has nothing to do with survival. It has mutated to the point that we expect "friends" to act certain ways before they fit with our preconceptions as to what friendship should look like. Is a friend the person we laugh with the most? The person who helps us in our time of need? What about the one who listens to our troubles? And that person who gave us money for food when we needed it most, yet had never shared "deep" and "meaningful" conversations with us before? There can be good people who dislike us and unscrupulous criminals who gravitate towards us. Is friendship, then, the people who pay us the scant amount of attention we crave? You can see how convoluted it can get. Which is why there is not such thing as a "sacred friendship". People have differing views as to what constitutes a "friend", but the basic, underlying premise is that social bonding WAS extremely important for human survival. It is a given fact that societies have a higher survivability rate than individuals. I have nothing against social bonding; merely the naive concepts of different "society blocs". Imagine the greater prosperity available to the world were people to cast off the societal dogma laid upon them like so much manure. "Xenophobia", the irrational fear and/or hatred of people from different sects, is the extreme manifestation of the naive, prejudiced preconceptions that pervade societies as a whole, which I shall collectively dub "manure". What if there could be simple, human-to-human bonding untouched by nationalistic tendencies? There are phrases such as, "China is a burgeoning world power that poses a threat to U. S hegemony", which have such an irrational impact upon short-sighted, "proudly patriotic" people. With the thought that "China" might "threaten" us, we have anxiety attacks and prepare for fight-or-flight. America, our "in-group", after all, is "under threat". How much better would it be if the newspapers could say, "Our slender, diligent, black-haired, black-eyed kin across the ocean have managed to produce enough surplus merchandise that they could provide for the entire world. As we are now having difficulties upholding our standard of living, perhaps we could send a diplomat over and negotiate for some aid? " But it is BECAUSE of nations, BECAUSE we have arranged ourselves into insular, self-contained societies, that now everything else on the "outside" becomes simply that: on the outside, and thus, either to be exploited or eliminated. And we wonder why nations make war on each other? Only fools would ponder the question with the keyword staring at them right in the face. "2. He seems to be arguing that nihilism outweighs the simple good in life but this is purely a personal perspective. " I see the word "nihilism" being bandied about a lot on the web these days; no doubt people steal the term from pseudo-intellectuals in an attempt to shore up their own lack of critical thinking. I'd advise a thorough reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Will To Power" before you casually toss the term around, con. After you have finished, come back to this debate and please realize that "nihilism" does not have any grounding in my arguments. Predigested concepts from prominent thinkers that have been wrongly conceived of, and then misrepresented, only sway the less learned. "1. This is also evident in primitive and emotionally detached environments such as bee hives or ant hills. " I would hope that you are not trying to speak for the bees and the ants. Had they a profile on this site I have no doubt that they will take issue against your ignorant assumption that they are primitive and emotionally detached. It is precisely this sort of thinking, that anyone outside our pre-drawn social circles does not deserve their own objective analysis, that I wish to dispel. "1. A question for pro: to our knowledge, are meaningful friendships and relationships formed outside of our species? " Again, you assume that our pets view their relationships towards us the same way we view them. Does our cat consider our liaison a "meaningful friendship" or "forced slavery to the one who holds all the Kibbles"? Do not attempt to speak for your cat or any other pet until you, too, have been put on a leash to be a companion for a human. Your naive assumptions that the way you view the world is exactly the same as others view it is frighteningly similar to the mindset held by the American government during the Cold War. After all, "Communism" sounds like some unholy disease while "democracy" sounds like the angel of salvation for all mankind, no? It was for this fool notion that America allowed itself to be consumed by the "Red Scare", as well as two disastrous wars with no clear benefit or winner: the Korean War and the Vietnam War. For the sake of the absurd notion of "containing Communism", as if any form of government not similar to our own was a blight, America sent men to fight and kill Vietnamese and Koreans; all because they were not part of our bloc, our circle of society that thrived on democracy. Mark Twain once said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. " That is all I ask: that we do not cloud ourselves with preconceived notions of societal circles and caste before we have seen the world, unfettered by the phrases which society has brainwashed us to say so easily yet have little understanding of: "Friendship, Family, Love, Peace, and Understanding. .. except for those outside our circles. "