(March 22, 2025 at 10:45 am)Fake Messiah Wrote:

(March 22, 2025 at 8:45 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote: How can a democracy, based on religious mores and ethics, from a culture based on religious mores and ethics evolving from human society, itself based on religious mores and ethics act in opposition to it's own self interests?

Democracy is not based on religious mores and ethics.

Take the Bible itself, which is written almost with the specific intent of keeping the humanity from the values the vast majority of us embrace today.

The Bible is against democracy where we don't entrust power and authority to one man.

You will also discover that the Bible is against our pluralist society where everyone is free to worship or not as they see fit. The notion of equality for women and the LGBTQ communities.

The right to privacy. Sexual Freedom. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. The right to publish. Questioning of authority. - none of these things you will find in the Bible.

For more than a thousand years, Christianity demanded that the authority of the church and its leaders be respected almost entirely without question. Needless to say that our values today are the opposite of that.

Sorry about the double-back but whatever gave you the impression I was an apologist for Christianity? You and I are generally sympatico in that respect.

(March 22, 2025 at 11:34 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote:

(March 22, 2025 at 10:45 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Democracy is not based on religious mores and ethics.

Fair enough, share where it derives it's authority? There are no natural law parallels prohibitions or proscriptions for stealing, deception or killing these are all effective survival strategies rewarded in nature and anathema to democracy. Clearly it's not based on anything natural. It's not nature, evolution and biology that has an issue with LGBTQ, those objections come from society, governed by mob rule (your Democracy) based on something other than objective reality and natural selection.

First, no country has a true Democracy.  They have "representative democracy" or "Republic" at best.

The U.S. Democratic system is partly based on the government of ancient Rome.  It gives enough power to various classes of society so that they feel their voices are heard.  There may be moral philosophy behind the concepts of "one person, one vote", but in the end the system has to promote stability.

Democracy gives the governed a say over their lot in life.  I say that is a moral imperative, but it isn't actually required for stability.  A brutal dictatorship can be stable if it listens to the people just enough to quell rebellion.  The rest comes from control of media and instant suppression of dissent.

As for community-positive vs selfish action, those have nothing to do with democracy.  Collective action have clear survival strategies for a clan or group, and are always at odds with selfishness.  A stable society will find ways to balance these in a way that people can support.  Good law is a benefit even to those who would prefer to screw over others, even if they can't see it.

Moral systems come from a combination of complex human nature, and human-generated philosophies that we agree should benefit us all if universally followed.

(March 22, 2025 at 11:59 am)HappySkeptic Wrote:

(March 22, 2025 at 11:34 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote: Fair enough, share where it derives it's authority? There are no natural law parallels prohibitions or proscriptions for stealing, deception or killing these are all effective survival strategies rewarded in nature and anathema to democracy. Clearly it's not based on anything natural. It's not nature, evolution and biology that has an issue with LGBTQ, those objections come from society, governed by mob rule (your Democracy) based on something other than objective reality and natural selection.

First, no country has a true Democracy.  They have "representative democracy" or "Republic" at best.

The U.S. Democratic system is partly based on the government of ancient Rome.  It gives enough power to various classes of society so that they feel their voices are heard.  There may be moral philosophy behind the concepts of "one person, one vote", but in the end the system has to promote stability.

Democracy gives the governed a say over their lot in life.  I say that is a moral imperative, but it isn't actually required for stability.  A brutal dictatorship can be stable if it listens to the people just enough to quell rebellion.  The rest comes from control of media and instant suppression of dissent.

As for community-positive vs selfish action, those have nothing to do with democracy.  Collective action have clear survival strategies for a clan or group, and are always at odds with selfishness.  A stable society will find ways to balance these in a way that people can support.  Good law is a benefit even to those who would prefer to screw over others, even if they can't see it.

Moral systems come from a combination of complex human nature, and human-generated philosophies that we agree should benefit us all if universally followed.

Let's narrow the scope a bit and reduce the hiding places for the 800# gorilla in the room. In this context democracy vs republic is a distinction without a difference they are essentially the same and always subject to the prevailing world view of society. Society based on agreements and cooperation where people agreed not to steal, murder and oppress one another based on "you name it" and succeeded, point it up, please. We've been here 600,000 years give or take a couple thousand years "societied" up about 8000 years ago so it shouldn't be to difficult to point up one egalitarian society mainstream or fringe that's didn't oppress some group in the last 10,000 years. 

Human nature is no different from animal nature nor anymore complicated. It's a handy excuse when you want rationalize tossing the baby but keeping the bath water and argue for the same environment with different people in charge. As Huxley put it "in the garden protected from the ever-pressuring cosmic process", I believe your words were "selfish actions". Human generated philosophies indeed, Judeo/Christian philosophies. There is a price to the perceived safety in the garden.

The cooperation argument presupposes agreement, when in reality, for the majority of our history, cooperation likely manifest itself as Denisovan Prime deciding it was best that everyone cooperated with him or risk exposing their brain housing group to a lighter knot or other Mousterian tool. Do not confuse cooperation with domestication, self or otherwise.

I think it would be difficult to look at a stone age human population and say that their politics and ethics -let's just accept the view offered as their way- was the better survival strategy in an evolutionary sense.

More generally, I think it's a mistake to assume that bad actors possess unqualified advantages. Nice guys don't finish last. Women definitively love a gardener. The allies defeated the axis..etc etc etc.

(March 22, 2025 at 11:34 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote:

(March 22, 2025 at 10:45 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Democracy is not based on religious mores and ethics.

Fair enough, share where it derives it's authority? There are no natural law parallels prohibitions or proscriptions for stealing, deception or killing these are all effective survival strategies rewarded in nature and anathema to democracy.

You are a human and presumably an atheist, why don't you ask your self why you aren't killing, robbing, and raping people? Is it maybe because of the sense of empathy?

People are also social beings, and once they began living in groups, they realized that there had to be some rules of behavior or there would be chaos.

(March 22, 2025 at 11:34 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote: Fair enough, share where it derives it's authority? There are no natural law parallels prohibitions or proscriptions for stealing, deception or killing these are all effective survival strategies rewarded in nature and anathema to democracy. Clearly it's not based on anything natural.

They're very obvious survival strategies necessary for any social species. It's a pretty simple mental exercise to envision a society that allows murder, rape, or theft. Nobody gets ahead because they're being murdered, raped, and stolen from as quickly as they murder, rape, and steal. It's a negative sum game where everybody has to sleep with one eye open.

It's probably useful to be clear that our personal ideas about moral authority (and the contents of moral authority) are not interchangeable with the stated source of democratic authority. Democracy, as the term suggests, draws it's authority from the consent of the governed. While there may be a natural ethics - democracy is not in theory or practice limited to it. We can democratically decide to say fuck nature (human or otherwise) and fuck facts too, while we're at it. Intersubjectivity and aspiration is in principle good enough for democratic authority..regardless of whether or not our democratic decisions are fit, or well adapted.

I think it respects a fundamental fact of human nature which no system of organization can ignore (or ignores at it's own peril..if we prefer)...but we can sure as hell try!

(March 23, 2025 at 12:00 am)Fake Messiah Wrote:

(March 22, 2025 at 11:34 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote: Fair enough, share where it derives it's authority? There are no natural law parallels prohibitions or proscriptions for stealing, deception or killing these are all effective survival strategies rewarded in nature and anathema to democracy.

You are a human and presumably an atheist, why don't you ask your self why you aren't killing, robbing, and raping people? Is it maybe because of the sense of empathy?

People are also social beings, and once they began living in groups, they realized that there had to be some rules of behavior or there would be chaos.

I am a human and an atheist. I did kill and rob for 30+ years, I was in charge for a lot of it. I fought and led battles, burned stores, seized property. All done under the authority of the government, civilized society, Democracy er Constitutional Republic even.  I don't do these things anymore; partially because the lifestyle I live leaves little time to do much else.  Physical confrontation is never better than 50/50 even a minor injury can be mortal,  it's simply risk vs reward. I do not take what I want because the physical risk is great, I do not visit violence because the risk is greater. Simple, as nature intended it- outside the Garden.

Empathy? resounding no. I do not concern myself with anything that does not affect my ability to maintain 98.6F full stop. I don't care what happens out of my sight for the same reason.

Yes Homo Sapiens are social animals, dangerous ones. So are termites, lions, wolves and feral dogs. What makes our way better than theirs, other than the fact they don't shield themselves from the "cosmic" process or have society to protect them from mother nature. The second part is more profound than you realize, if you took the time to think about it. The "once they began living in groups" is illustrative.

Cheers,

Hippea

How it goes is when people started living in groups they lived in small tribes, meaning that everyone they knew was somehow related to them, thus going against someone was breaching the "selfish gene" paradigm.

But that also created the tribal mentality which frequently meant that robbing and raping members of other tribes is ok. And that's why the Bible, which was written by people with the tribal mentality, tells people it's wrong to kill and rape people of your own tribe, but it's allowed to kill, rob and rape people of other tribes.

And you can see how the tribal mentality still prevails today and people need to be "fooled" that they are of the same tribe like that they are members of one nation. And religion can play into that, so you can have the claim that the people are of one religion, but that is rather limited since people are of different religions.

The other way to vent out that animosity towards other tribes is sports. That's why you have people playing baseball or soccer against the other village or nation - to show them in a peaceful way that they are somehow better than them without going into war with them.

(March 23, 2025 at 12:39 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: It's probably useful to be clear that our personal ideas about moral authority (and the contents of moral authority) are not interchangeable with the stated source of democratic authority.  Democracy, as the term suggests, draws it's authority from the consent of the governed.   While there may be a natural ethics - democracy is not in theory or practice limited to it.  We can democratically decide to say fuck nature (human or otherwise) and fuck facts too, while we're at it.  Intersubjectivity and aspiration is in principle good enough for democratic authority..regardless of whether or not our democratic decisions are fit, or well adapted.

I think it respects a fundamental fact of human nature which no system of organization can ignore (or ignores at it's own peril..if we prefer)...but we can sure as hell try!

I'm not arguing with your definition of democracy. It's still mob rule. We only differ in the level of inherent malevolence.

I have more to say about human nature, but let me channel Voltaire first. Would you mind defining your terms? I don't want to speculate.

Cheers

Hippea