Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@NEStalgia the fact we did indeed evolve into forming large societies kinda proves you wrong. It's not philosophical banter or anything, it's plain observation.

@ThanosReXXX - Ah, sorry, I misunderstood. I’ve never had some random person come after one of my posts like that. It’s difficult to comprehend how someone could consider that a worthwhile use of their time. If someone is targeting randos, they’re probably pretty deep into social media session. Probably best to shut it down and go for a walk at that point. I pretty much agree with what @gcunit said earlier, except there does seem to be some sort of inherent buzz in the illusion of “being heard” built in to social media that seems to be quite addictive to some people.

@bimmy-lee Yeah, it's like I always say, that the internet in general, including social media, gives a voice to individuals who should never have gotten one in the first place. And the anonymity of it all also gives them the courage to speak out, whereas in real life, they're probably the secluded, introverted type, the people that are next to invisible for one reason or the other, and from behind their computer they can finally lash out at whatever bugs them.

P.S.

No offense taken, buddy.

Meanwhile....

My Nintendo toys from Happy Meal McDonald yesterday. 😀

@ThanosReXXX As I said, family, clan, village but not bigger. Those were the natural groupings of humans. Pack hunting (business?) when necessary, etc. But then the groups would split up again.

I'd read a compelling writeup once (I don't recall where) of a theory that cities themselves sprang up as a result of a survival-state during some sort of natural disaster (maybe major famine, etc. I don't recall the specifics, it was a number of years ago I'd read it.) Basically humans adapted to unnatural imbalanced conditions to survive a forced natural disaster by forming cities and living densely, and then never ended up - we've existed in crisis-survival mode for 5000 years basically because everyone forgot to stop

@StableInvadeel But we didn't evolve into forming large societies. They happened. They exist and people are born into them. Considering the only way to END that model would be to raise an army large enough to obliterate said societies, and actually do it, makes ending it and switching to something else impractical, even if that's the natural result. If you were dumped on an empty planet with loose gatherings of humans in patches, what would you elect to do? Mirror the current Earth model and pile as many people as possible into as dense an area as possible, or spread out and live in less homogeneous villages of smaller sets of people? Most would not choose to rebuild Manhattan and L.A, or even the density of the Europe in general, if given a chance to build a new civilization balanced naturally for humans. It's what we're stuck with because it's here, not what we evolved into.

There's a reason the smattering of tribes that don't live in that dense society fight to the death to preserve that, after all.

Similarly, what's the more pleasant adventure? Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Tales, Witcher? Or Cyberpunk, WoW, etc? (I don't mean good game, or such, I mean in which is there a more pleasant/memorable feeling of adventure?) The small villiages of the former group resonate strongly with most people. Small groups where everyone has a place and value, and makes up a part of the local color. Large groups where most people are disposable organic masses of little or no overall value aren't terribly memorable or enjoyable.

You agree, you just don't realize it.

I'm sure giraffes didn't just wake up one day thinking, hey long necks?

They just happened. Due to situation and necessity.

Humans in a new planet would most likely choose to stick together, and their small fantasy town would eventually become another big city (if they're able to thrive). Because that's kinda what happens when humans survive long enough.

@Anti-Matter Awesome! Suddenly I really need a Big Mac......

@StableInvadeel Giraffes are nearly extinct. Maybe just rolling with "what happened" is a bad plan?

Silly, giraffes don't make plans.

@StableInvadeel Apparently neither do humans.

Dunno, they gotta plan their cities

@NEStalgia Sorry... was slammed at work so it was a stream of consciousness post. I'll follow up later.

@StableInvadeel If you've seen many cities, you wouldn't mistake what you see for having been planned....

@Ryu_Niiyama heck my own reply feels incomplete despite it's length! No rush, it's not like the WiiU is going anywhere between now and forever.

What the heck? I came back to the site just now, and was somehow logged out, while I did not do that myself, when I was on here earlier today. Weird...

@NEStalgia And I quote:

It would seem like we were already in agreement...

Well, largely anyway. As for the reason for cities: I don't know what documentary or program you've seen, with what kind of theory, but to me, it being because of natural disasters sounds kind of useless. There's only so many natural disasters you can fend off by building a city, not to mention that from the early dark ages right up to the Victorian age, they also brought new disasters with them, such as all kinds of diseases and famine, to name but a few.

So, I don't think it was because of that. I mean: being a rather sturdily built city certainly didn't help Pompeii, when the neighboring volcano Mount Vesuvius decided to bury it...

I think the answer is far simpler: man started in caves, with fire to scare away the animals, then moved on to build huts, then small settlements, then villages, and eventually, they started to make gated communities, to protect their houses, but also their crop fields and live stock from outsiders. Later on these wooden fences turned into walls made out of giant poles/beams, much like the later Roman forts, and from there on out, it kept evolving ever further, to small cities built around castles in a ring, with a surrounding wall and lookout posts.

And these were actually rather well organized and very structured in design. It's when we got to a point where all the nations had divided all the land that there was to divide, and we started to expand in numbers, that the real issues began, because instead of building outwards or moving to new places to make new settlements, we had to start building ever higher.

Romans already had flats, as we know, but they were only ever 4 stories high, and were only for the richer people, for the most part. But modern societies took that idea, of stacking living quarters on top of each other, and ran with it, building ever higher, more voluminous and more crowded.

I don't think we'll ever live to see the day, but a small reset might be just the ticket, whether that's by means of a stray comet, or a large solar flame, wiping out all our tech, flinging us back into the early settler age...

Man, life would sure be boring if we all had to live like Amish...

P.S.

Since when are giraffes on the endangered species list?

@ThanosReXXX Oh that would have been long before the dark ages, before Rome, etc. I suppose it went back to Sumeria or such. It was a whole archaeology thing, but whatever the disaster was, the idea of closely grouping together seemed essential (and made sense.) This was before the Great Pestilence told us the extreme danger of doing so (and which we've since summarily ignored said warning and assume the miracle of science will always save us from everything were simple common sense is out of fashion.)

Well, obviously, we wouldn't live to see the day if a comet hit But yeah...I strongly agree there. Life may be boring without internet feeds exciting us in advance of playing Astral Chain on a handheld screen.....but something tells me it would actually be more fulfilling.....we use our little flashing light shows to distract us from the lack of fulfillment from everything else, after all....

I thought giraffes were endangered for quite a while. I didn't check any official WWF lists or anything, but there's been great efforts to try to preserve and breed them due to their immensely decreasing numbers. Maybe they don't "quite" qualify for endangered status yet? But if not yet, they will in the not distant future.

@NEStalgia Well, like I said, it may have helped with some disasters. Perhaps I should have worded it differently and a bit more elaborate. Building high has been done by several civilizations, for instance, to both escape floods and certain wild animals. And the added bonus was that it made the place harder to reach for enemies...

And there's more examples to be made, but on the other side of the scale, there's the example that I actually DID mention: volcano eruptions, and then there's earth quakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and so on. All natural disasters that even modern day civilizations can't properly defend themselves from, so that's why I don't believe that there's a strong support for some kind of general rule or idea, that says that civilizations made cities to defend themselves from natural disasters.

But as always, I'll keep an open mind, and if you do find the information and/or documentary which theorized that this could be the case, then I would most certainly be interested in seeing it.

On a side note: the comet could be a smaller one, effectively allowing most of us to survive, but knocking us back into the dark ages nonetheless. After all: early mammals also survived the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs...

@Anti-Matter AlRIGHT !! You got the eurosaver meal

@Anti-Matter Yeah, I'll stick to the animated version. Really not a fan of these live action remakes. As far as I am concerned, they are little more than Disney spitting on something I loved as a child to make a quick buck. Which seems like all they do anymore. On another note, that's a nice little collection of Nintendo stuff there. Kinda bummed that the McDonald's toys look like a sticker on plastic though. Would be nicer if it was painted, but I guess that'd be too expensive. How many Amiibo do you have?

@Heavyarms55
Well, as you seen from my photo, there were 12 Amiibos :
Tuxedo Mario, Wedding Peach, Dapper Bowser, KK Slider, Cyrus, Reese, Timmy & Tommy, Tom Nook, Kicks, Rover, Isabelle, Poochy.

Plus 2 Amiibo cards i have but was not on the photo: Digby, Tad

@Anti-Matter Ah, so is that your whole collection pretty much? I guess you aren't as obsessive as I am. lol. I've got... a lot of Amiibo and other various collectible figures. I spend way too much money on this stuff.