Suna Genin Graduation Event

A little bit too fairy tale-ish I guess.

Yeah, definitely. A merit called 'power of friendship' is a little... no, a whole lot of rainbows and unicorns for me. Too much. Yuck.

Sakurai Akira wrote:

Comedian Theo Maassen on tv:

"Life is no fairytale! There is no good and evil! There are only the strong and weak. The strong will win, and the weak will fall."

...for some reason I thought I wanted to share it.  

Comments anyone? I realize it's a bit late for philosophicalities but whatever. And yes, I know that wasn't a word. Let's philosophize, all!  

It's true. What is good and what is evil? Nature is about survival, whether you think of elements of that as good or evil doesn't matter. Besides, different people have different opinions about what is good or what is evil. Morality doesn't exist in nature.

And the strong and the weak is true even more so. That's what evolution by natural selection is all about! The strong will survive, they will be able to pass on their genes, giving their offspring the features that made them superior to others.
The weak won't be able to survive long enough to pass on their genes, and even if they do, many species know social structures in which the strong will be the ones to pass on their genes. Look at lions, only the strong males get to mate with the females.

That's how nature works, like it or not. There is no morality and the strong shall survive.

But on morality: yet I'm glad we made up our own moral system. I'm glad we sat down together and through rational thinking, through logic like ''what do we not enjoy happening to us'', somewhat figured out what we should consider as good and bad. Absolute morality doesn't exist, but we can get somewhere!
Our justice system is not perfect, partly because of different opinions concerning morality, but killing is illegal, and you wouldn't want to be killed right? That's why I'm glad we did make up morality.

But on the strong/weak: yet I believe a sign of a strong society is being able to take care of the weak. Should someone just die just because he happens to have been born without a right arm? No. We take care of these people, and give them some extra help if needed. We've made it so that both the strong and the weak can survive.

And two notes:
- I'm taking a look mainly at the Dutch system here. The Dutch system has social security for disabled people for example, and has a functioning justice system. There are countries where this is not (yet) the case.
- I'm trying to argue from the scientific viewpoint here. For example a religion might say ''God's law is absolute'', meaning there is absolute morality. That's really up to what you believe.

... This got way longer than I intended and it's probably boring as f***. It's late at night, sorry.


Anyway, Deidara was a pretty cool character yes. But my favourite Naruto characters are... I'm terrible at choosing favourite characters, but Itachi and Jiraiya would definitely be in my top characters.

Sakurai Akira wrote:

Yeah, definitely. A merit called 'power of friendship'  is a little... no, a whole lot of rainbows and unicorns for me. Too much. Yuck.

Alrighty then, let's go with the ordinary "Merit: Suna Four"! With no fruity pebble involved.

Nature does work with morals, however to see that one must look beyond the mere numbers and lines. That is what the world is made out of indeed. And there is no moral in those functions, but there is moral in that which these things created.

For example, where do you think you even got the incentive to think about Morals?
How did we humans even become interested in things like morals, peace, kindness and so on?
It was given to us by this same nature you speak of. And companionship can be found all over the world, not just in humans.
And not just among the same kin.
Even wolves that eat bunnies make sure to only take as much as they need to feed on and make sure not to take too many, or at least try.
This is to make sure there will be bunnies left for another time as well as for the next generation.
By doing so they weed out the weakest bunnies, and thus HELP the bunnies evolve into stronger, faster, better beings in general. If not for the wolves, bunnies wouldn't be as fast today. They evolved this to escape from their hunters. And wolves kept developing catching them, evolving at THAT...
One might disagree but I see this as the ultimate form of companionship.
Also watch a few documentaries about the planets nervous system connection and mushrooms (no not the magic variety)....you'll probably be mind blown at how well balanced, peaceful and united the world around us is. We as humans are pretty much the only ones right now disagreeing with nature and it's cycle of life, considering ourselves and our ego's to be more important and having ascended above nature itself, which is foolish.
Those documentaries show how a problem with a forest in canada makes the animals there send out a form of signal which is then picked up in south America and causes a huge bunch of fish to move to that place in canada, doing a huge migration, just to die, kill themselves to feed bears and certain types of insects so that those two animals could go ahead and fix the problem. DAFUQ? Right?
So all in all I honestly don't believe in the whole survival of the fittest mentality....That like morals is something human made. Animals and nature for the biggest part function like a well oiled machine.
It's just us humans who seem to phfail at it.

Sorry admin, I disagree. Predators don't keep prey alive just so there will be prey left for the next generation in the future. By saying that, you're saying they're instinctively careful not to exterminate their prey, or else they'll die out themselves? Like they're aware of it?

But that would mean they can think about the future and have sophisticated thoughts about cause and effect. Not only possess self awareness (something only few species are capable of) but also awareness of the greater picture?

I don't buy that. Predators take what they can get, whenever they need it. They don't think about the future and the effects their actions will have ten years from now for their grandkids.

Although I really, really like the idea of animals having a more sophisticated thought process and communication skills than we're aware of at present time, and I hope that in the future we might find evidence for this. I don't think animals think or care about the future or possess knowledge of the greater picture.

Also... the ultimate form of companionship?



Meet Lizzie. And Lizzie begs to differ.

She was caught and eaten by a hawk, falcon, buzzard or kite yesterday. This is nature. It's harsh, cruel, unforgiving and does not give a flying fuck about morals.

My honest opinion.

I disagree on the "This is to make sure there will be bunnies left for another time as well as for the next generation." as I don't think food chain works that way. Food chain does maintain itself in a pretty elegant way.

Let's assume a food chain of grass -> rabbit -> wolf. The wolf doesn't really "make sure" there's bunnies left, they don't really have that kind of thinking either. If the wolf amount went overpopulated or the amount of rabbits are rapidly decreasing, the nature will adjust itself automatically. Some wolves will die of starvation and eventually bring the wolf amount down to a range of amount that they will have enough food to survive. Vice versa, if there's a ton of rabbits, then the amount of wolves can grow continuously in the future until the ratio is right again.

Human will always try to work on this and that when things go over or under but animals and plants just let nature take care of that. Human though, sometime destroy the balance and lead to the extinction of some animals.

And you might consider putting the picture in a spoiler tag since it can be heavy for some people or at some moment(like eating).

I've got a strong stomach. I'm currently watching Attack on Titan. (everyone, go see it!)

I guess I understand if people have trouble looking at the picture, I was kinda making a point.
If more people complain I could put it in a spoiler tag. As it is, the original picture was effing huge and I made it a tiny picture. *shrugs*

And I suppose the one who has most trouble looking at the picture is me, who had an actual emotional attachment to this animal.

But right now, it's nothing but a carcass. She's gone, and some predator bird got to live another day.

Nice explanation by the way, Ryochoku.

On a side note: THE WOLF HAS RETURNED TO THE NETHERLANDS!!! Too bad he was hit by a car. BUT if one wolf has traveled so far into our country unnoticed, then my reasoning is there must be more already we don't know of!  



Yeah, another animal corpse! This time no fleshy bits are showing though, if that makes it any better.

Well, it's more for the people than yourself since it's obvious you have no problem with that. Although it's more of a in-case suggestion since I am quite sure most people on the site can handle that(guts feeling). But I am just thinkign for some people that are more sensitive to...gross stuff. Yours are of an emotional attachment, them from a "grossphobia" perspective. Although judging by the discussion on another thread, plenty of horror lovers here so should be no problem.

Akira, it doesn't necessarily mean that there are more wolves. It could be a "lone wolf". (The omega being driven out of the pack or some other wolf leaving.) But, I guess those are rare, so I understand your reasoning.

Ryochoku, while you're right in a way, that there often is some kind of balance with the increasing and decreasing of prey and predator (Predator-Prey Model, with the graph and stuff.), there are however cases where the predator completely exterminates their prey, and thus, in effect, eradicating themselves.

Uh, Hina, there are no 'alphas' and 'omegas' in wild wolf packs. Except maybe for a few really large packs in Yellowstone that have multiple breeding males and females in one pack.

The suggestion I've read in the newspaper this morning was that it could be a young wolf, a youngster from one of the wolf packs in Niedersachsen. Two packs there bred again this year, and it's entirely possible that a youngster from a previous litter has decided to leave and search for a territory of its own.

You are so right, Akira. I stand corrected. (Almost embarrassing to see how I've believed this misconception as well.) ^^

But, this would still mean that that wolf was alone?

This one was alone, yes. But maybe there are others who are alone and wandering over our borders, searching for a place to stay? That's what I'm hoping for. We only see them when they're dead, we didn't even know they came here until we found this one. There were suggestions they were coming our way, yes, but never evidence they had actually arrived.

Chikamatsu no Hina wrote:

Ryochoku, while you're right in a way, that there often is some kind of balance with the increasing and decreasing of prey and predator (Predator-Prey Model, with the graph and stuff.), there are however cases where the predator completely exterminates their prey, and thus, in effect, eradicating themselves.

Interesting but it doesn't seem very likely since most predator usually have more than one kind of food source? While they might exterminates a type of prey in the area, there are still other type of preys anyway so they will not eradicate themselves...just yet?

Edit: Meh nevermind, I guess they can just eat everything in sight and eventually eradicate themselves at the end.

Tenshu Ryochoku wrote:

Chikamatsu no Hina wrote:

Ryochoku, while you're right in a way, that there often is some kind of balance with the increasing and decreasing of prey and predator (Predator-Prey Model, with the graph and stuff.), there are however cases where the predator completely exterminates their prey, and thus, in effect, eradicating themselves.

Interesting but it doesn't seem very likely since most predator usually have more than one kind of food source? While they might exterminates a type of prey in the area, there are still other type of preys anyway so they will not eradicate themselves...just yet?

Edit: Meh nevermind, I guess they can just eat everything in sight and eventually eradicate themselves at the end.

Makes me think about something in economics Ryochoku! In economics, they often use the standard 'supply and demand' graph. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_and_supply) Most people know what it looks like, that one. The thing is, that graph would only be entirly correct on a perfect market, a market of total competitiveness. Because the economy isn't perfect like that, the graph is never completely correct, but still it represents a general truth about what will about happen. For example when employers need more employees, they'll raise their wages, making for more people wanting to work, and thus more people will make themselves available for work.
The graph enables you to somewhat predict what will happen.

In nature, using 2 animals also isn't entirly how it works in reality, but still you can use the model (the predator-pray model from Hina) to somewhat predict what will happen.

Seriously this is quite a useless contribution to the discussion but a random comparison that came up. That economic supply-demand model is quite similar to the predator-pray model. Both systems always come to a balance, but you can change it by human intervention. In the predator-pray model it's usually humans disrupting the balance in a negative way, but in the supply-demand system we often interfere, or rather the government often interferes, when for example the wages get too low, making for a low standard of living for the people (like you saw in the industrial revolution). The government interfering in the system is basically a form of economic socialism, depending on how much they do.

Just a random thought. Sorry!

Yeah, I get the demand and supply part since I played a political simulator game and they stimulate the economy part fairly accurately. And of course, tons of factors in real life situation but the typical food chain use only a few "items" since it's just a theory. Real life is like a heck lot of theories thrown into one bowl.

I'm still very new to this site and its systems, so I'm still learning them. But I'm creating my Suna character now (should have it done within 24 hours). And would like to participate in this event if there's still time...

Couple of things:
- I'm actually starting to like Isago more.

- "he still had himself attached to the ground with his invisible chakra strings, but also to the kunai which was now stuck in the roof allowing the Jounin to hang in mid-air as if floating" That's a genius strategy! As well as when he used strings to pull himself and dodge attacks. It's so great to see Admin fight with a puppet user and gain inspiration.

- GO GO AKIRA!!! I KNEW she was one of the best of us! Almost hit a jounin!!!    I can't stress enough the feeling of "WOW! AWESOME!" that went through me when I read that!

Sorry 'bout the double post, but I will blame this all on you guys. You should post here more.

Another person who hates Hina for something she couldn't do anything about! (Born into a certain family.) They probably think she's a brat too, because of her behaviour, but that's besides the point.

Also, it's pretty cool to see the political tension build up before our eyes. And we're so in the very middle of it! <3

Ayuuup. And Isago is actualy not at all so peace loving or Daimyou following as he tries to appear to be in the media.
He is doing what they call a 'Fake Political Threat'
A Candidate for elections if those happen who's job is to convert the hate and fear of the crowd onto himself in order to push them to vote or support another candidate. Yes this happens in RL politics a lot as well.
For Dutch people...check Wilders....and think about it
The scarecrow of the VVD meant to scare and confuse people, and gives other politicians a good chance to gain more of a good name by countering him in a debate or talking down to him.
He is there to take the brunts. Question is though, who is Isago really supporting in this, who's puppet is he and which way is he trying to scare the crowd. Given the fact that him and the Kazekage share the same Sensei should give you a hint.
Also this should explain why he accepted Hiten despite the answers the boy gave.


As for Souran, you see...I actually almost started playing a puppet master myself on the previous site, and actually almost made one here as well for myself, so needless to sat I love the Clan.

Yeah! I thought it was strange that he accepted Hiten even after Hiten gave answers that practically said "WAR!!!"

Awh, awesome. ^^ This is gonna blow Hina's mind when she finds out about this.

I'm so curious as to what Souran's gonna do. After reading that HEAT guy's comments in chapter 2 I'm almost worried Akira's not gonna make it through the first round.  I sure hope my worries aren't justified.

Good Luck....A...Aki...Akira...good...uhm...luck.... >___> .... <____< .... I'm sorry it's plot tied....and.....kinda has to do with a flaw you took...the ....certain mark and such... uhm....yeah...stuff...You'lll find out later....maybe.

I'm sure I'll find out.  

For now though, it seems Souran's intent on having her take the damage!  Geez, there's no stopping this guy, is there.

Well, Akira's gonna try something. Ditch effort to save her skin by me, her manipulator. Muhahahaha! Hahaha! Heh. *cough*

And then we'll see how your plot will unfold. Let the games commence.

Wilders: LET'S ABANDON THE EU AND GO BACK TO THE GUILDER LIKE WE HAD IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS, YEAAAAH!

It's somewhat naïve really. The Dutch economy is for such a HUGE part dependant on trade! You think it's going to help trade when you step out of the EU and go back to another currency? No it won't.

And even though there are undeniably some problems within the multicultural society you can't completely ignore, he's indeed kinda using Muslims as a scapegoat, like what you said Admin. He wants to completely shut off immigration, but fails to see the good effects of immigration. Our welfare state will collapse with people getting older and stuff, adults have to carry that all. Immigrant workers help keeping the welfare state possible.

Also, don't quote me on this one because I'm not sure, but if I remember their stance on climate change was that it doesn't exist... *sigh*

Yet when looking at Maurice de Hond polls it is the biggest party in the country right now... The VVD and PvdA have lost sooooo much seats when you look at the polls now.