Reply #260: That's great Warren, but do you think we exist in a vacuum? We're social animals, and we learn

[shcrane71]

behavior from somewhere. There was a great PBS special I watched years ago about baboons (I think). All the alpha-males were killed off when they accidentally ate some tainted meat. Now, these males were horribly aggressive and mean. The next thing that happened surprised the scientist that was studying the troop. The females would run off new males that wanted to join the group if they started to not exhibit "nice" behavior (i.e. sharing). The troop ended up being much nicer.

The point being that we get our information about what are and aren't appropriate ways to treat each other from many different places. Mostly, it seems were spending most of our time consuming various media images and displays of human interaction. Hell, when I watch the Wire (greatest series eva') I start throwing around f-bombs for almost every adjective and noun til I stop myself to think "I *do* have a larger vocabulary than this." Maybe I'm just weak, but I suspect that others are like me.