... is peace.

Survival instincts drive us in everything we do. Survival instincts are basically the same thing as a fear of death. When the universe created us, it also gave us the tools to protect ourselves from it. That is our survival instincts. Everything we do is an effort to propogate our survival individually, as a species, and as a planet. Knowledge itself is a product of the necessity to survive. Our basic and primal function is, you guessed it, to survive.

I was looking at my dog and realized that that's all he cares about. He has knowledge and he is intelligent, but he only has knowledge that can be used for his survival. Survival is his religion.

In human religion, we strive for a relationship with a creator through peace and love and things of that nature. Animals don't do this at all. So why do we?

The sun is our friend but is also our enemy. It keeps us warm and grows us food but also has the power to eliminate us in a way that nothing else can. When it created us, it wanted us to be able to survive. The question is, when it wants us to die, will we have gained the knowledge to divert a catastrophe? I think the pinnacle in human evolution will come when we gain the ability to live through anything the universe can throw at us. But that accomplishment will remain an effort of our basic survival instincts.

Peace is the opposite of survival. For the animals who only know survival, peace is a foreign concept. We, however, are somewhat familiar with it. We have experienced it and know it exists. The point of this thread is to raise the question, "If animals know only of survival and nothing of peace, then is it possible for an entity to exist that knows only of peace and nothing of survival?" Surely that entity would live forever in some form. So another question is, could we live off of peace and peace alone? It sounds ridiculous, but if peace is real and is in fact the opposite of survival, then I believe it is possible.

Peace is a product of order, the opposite of whoch is chaos. The universe is always in a state of chaos, with the illusion of order therein. Therefore, we can conclude that peace as a concrete concept in every venue of life cannot exist. Inner peace, however, is the true way to real, lasting peace. Inner peace can only come from comfort.

So, in words, comfort is the opposite of survival. We must he careful, however, of fabricated comfort in excess. This can lead to us becoming numb and passive, and leads to being unempathetic.

animals fight for survival over "limited" resources, humans will live in peace when the technology is there to insure enough resources for everyone, when the fear of limited supply is taken away we will all be free to live as much as we can possibly live!

The opposite of peace is war, and vice verse. We as humans survive in both times of peace and times of war. Without the will to survive you may as well start digging a hole about 6 ft down because you have just given up and will only be a burden to the rest of society anyways. (Not you personally, speaking in generalities).

Originally posted by smithjustinb
...
I was looking at my dog and realized that that's all he cares about. He has knowledge and he is intelligent, but he only has knowledge that can be used for his survival. Survival is his religion.

In human religion, we strive for a relationship with a creator through peace and love and things of that nature. Animals don't do this at all. So why do we?
...

I completely disagree with these observations. Why does a dog roll around in the grass? Survival? It looks like they are having fun to me.

And humans are animals. We need to understand that fact so we can treat animals compassionately. (Not that I'm implying you don't treat animals compassionately of course.)

Originally posted by smithjustinb
... is peace.

Is oblivion. Oblivion is not peace. Oblivion is non existence. You, as a human being, can never not-exist, now that you've existed. Peace is striking a proper balance between survival and the efforts of adhering to a conflicting ideology. No peace can ever be achieved by a sentient being and a philosophical ideology that teaches that survival is evil.

Survival is the essence of sentience, so the odd-man out for any sentient being is any philosophy that teaches that survival is to be seen as undesirable. The conflict itself will always be impossible to completely overcome.

Originally posted by TheRealTruth84
The opposite of peace is war, and vice verse. We as humans survive in both times of peace and times of war. Without the will to survive you may as well start digging a hole about 6 ft down because you have just given up and will only be a burden to the rest of society anyways. (Not you personally, speaking in generalities).

But what is the reason for war? Perhaps war is just humankind's survival instincts being expressed that way due to the fact that most humans don't have to directly deal with their survival instincts everyday as do other animals. By that I mean we don't have to hunt for food, we can just buy it at the grocery store. So there might be a part of us that wants to kill and war is a good avenue for us to do so.