Human Nature

[Ivan Denisovich]

@Ivan Denisovich

I want to say, first, that I agree with you.  It aint a kids story - at least unless your kids like a little blood and gore.  That's the background noise on a largely heterotrophic world, though.  So when I say that I think people are generally good..as opposed to generally bad....  general decent rather than degenerate - ofc being some thing doesn't mean we're not capable of another.  Not all this, or all the other.  Not always this, never the other.  Not the one thing just because we aren't the other.  

Conflict, genocide..these things exist and would exist regardless of the balance of our natures.  Conflicts over resources, for example - they don't have good endings for either party.  Genocide is bad...mmmkay...but it took a world war and atomic weapons to stop the genocide in ww2...and that's decidedly Not Great either.  I mentioned exclusively suboptimal decision fields earlier in thread.  This is what that looks like.  Where the moral conundrum is not which option is good..because none of them are good - but which is the least bad.  Do we commit self righteous suicide (and murder) by avoiding conflict over the last watering hole at any cost?  Might it produce less suffering in aggregate if we allow a genocide to reach culmination rather than fight to stop it.  

Some part of our disagreements (you and me, and people in general) come down to personal experience.  We both have anecdotes and a life where we've seen x y and z.  If your life has mostly been shitty people making life difficult, and you've mostly been a shitty person making life difficult, then there's no way I could argue you out of that apprehension.  IDK if what poland is doing in politics right now is a good sample for human nature in toto..there are what, 30-40 million of you..and you haven't always had these politics, have you?  People have chosen other politics in the past..and still do, no?  At any rate, if the trigger for you "admitting" that human nature might be good is people immediately around you and in polish politics changing......who knows what tomorrow holds.  

As far as apologia...not to me.  Christian apologia over moral conflicts is the doomed effort to try and find some way to make a bad thing good.  Not to come up with a sober accounting of the balance of moral good or ill.  They're angling for good in an unqualified and even blameless..especially blameless, way.  Because their god is good everything it does must also be good and because it is the moral standard in cannot be deficient.  I don't say these as matters of a moral fact - but as expositions of the belief.   That, I think, is a great example of our capacity for evil.  The whole bit about how, without religion, there would be good and evil - but it takes religion to make good man evil.  For me, coming from my moral pov... this view -is- a childs view of morality...but so is the idea that bad things would never happen to or because of good people (or acts).  That humans can;t be said to be generally good so long as things like wars exist.  Exclusively suboptimal decision fields are interference in the business of moral accounting.  Stealing is bad.  Stealing a $5 necessity with $20 bucks in your pocket demonstrates "bad nature" in a way that stealing a $5 necessity when you're $30k in debt with zero bucks in your wallet just doesn't.  In both cases something is stolen.  You can see how this isn't (or shouldn't be) an issue for the moral accounting of a gods alleged acts.  So, for example, "god" tells people to steal fertile land from other people, and commit genocide in the process.  That strikes me as a recognizably human justification for doing some shitty thing...and the idea that god says so..again to me..says something about the people who actually ordered it or mythologize it.  They didn't say their neighbor bob said it was ok and/or required.  Or that they did it because it was a tuesday.  God brings the permissive and moralizing juice, the juice being necessary to the effort.  In their belief system or in their cynical estimation.

All of the people choosing their politics (that we don't agree with) based on their morality (which we also, presumably, do not agree with) - I'd be willing to wager they think they are doing good.  That's really all that's required to comment on mans moral nature - which is distinct from mans competence as a moral (or utilitarian) agent...and the view I have on the matter is itself distinct from the christian view - which posits that we cannot help but intend and prefer the bad.  All falling short of some ridiculous ghost standard..that the ghost itself  also..apparently... falls short of.

I disagree and it is plain as day to me that we will never agree on this. So I will only say this - were there even shred of goodness in human nature then genocide not only wouldn't happen, there even wouldn't be word for it.

[The Grand Nudger]

We can disagree on arguable matters..and our opinions of human nature are definitely arguable...but I don't think that particular support for your opinion could withstand factual scrutiny. I think it arises from the mistaken impression that bad outcomes necessarily follow bad intent or bad means (and, conversely, that good intent could never produce such outcomes). As if bad things like genocide wouldn't happen for any reason other than lacking a single shred of goodness.

OFC there would be a word for genocide. It's something we can do. Europeans very nearly completed the genocide of native americans before they even knew they were there. We nearly killed off brown pelicans, on accident, trying to prevent malaria. Wondering the whole time and very concerned about wtf was happening to the pelicans.

[Ivan Denisovich]

We can disagree on arguable matters..and our opinions of human nature are definitely arguable...but I don't think that particular support for your opinion could withstand factual scrutiny.  I think it arises from the mistaken impression that bad outcomes necessarily follow bad intent or bad means (and, conversely, that good intent could never produce such outcomes).  As if bad things like genocide wouldn't happen for any reason other than lacking a single shred of goodness.  

OFC there would be a word for genocide.  It's something we can do.  Europeans very nearly completed the genocide of native americans before they even knew they were there.  We nearly killed off brown pelicans, on accident, trying to prevent malaria.  Wondering the whole time and very concerned about wtf was happening to the pelicans.

Same to you. I don't think that there is any factual basis for opinion you hold. In fact it is hysterically funny to me this trying to square up alleged goodness of human nature and existence of genocide that is perhaps most evil thing that can be done. For me what you engage in is nothing other than apologia but instead of defending celestial tyrant you seek inherent goodness in bloodthirsty animals which only (relatively) recently acknowledged that slavery is bad (yet it is still practiced)*.


*An estimated 50 million people were living in modern slavery on any given day in 2021 [https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/map/]

[The Grand Nudger]

Why would we acknowledge that slavery is bad if there weren't an ounce of good in us? Why would we care if it was bad...for that matter? Why do we have Otherwise Decent People going to great lengths to attempt, and fail...even in their own estimation, to justify such a thing as they themselves were doing? Deciding that it is a necessary moral evil for utilitarian good, for example? I strongly suspect you think I'm saying something that I'm not.

That you and I would largely feel and conclude about the same things with respect to matters of moral import and our human track record. I also think that if we use different metrics we could see exactly the same thing and derive alternate conclusions. My view on this, simply put, is that if we employ a rational and fact based appraisal of moral matters we will find that human condemnation is often spread much further, and laid more heavily on, than the facts of those matters would support. Not just in these types of summaries...but in everyday life, as a habit. Illogical ideals and impractical demands will more often than not skew to failure in a wholly non-representative way.

[Ivan Denisovich]

Why would we acknowledge that slavery is bad if there weren't an ounce of good in us?  Why would we care if it was bad...for that matter?

Maybe because of such thing as civilization imposing morals on us? Or inefficiency of it? Also were we naturally good slavery would never be a thing. Nowhere I claimed that human nature is evil, merely that it isn't good which leaves other options in between. If human nature is anything worth writing about then it is malleable. Frankly I'm with Marx on this - being determines consciousness and society (in great part) determine morals.

[The Grand Nudger]

If we were naturally good there would be no prisons. If we were naturally good there would be no addiction. If we were naturally good there would be no infidelity. If we were naturally good there would be no word for lies.

More examples of statements I would say were even less than wrong. Being wrong-in-fact is, as it happens, one of the major ways I believe that we're fundamentally compromised moral agents. Not just in our behaviors, but in how we think about morality and how we construct our moral demands and appraisals. Granted, this has to do with my view that morality is fact alike...but if it isn't, then people aren't really morally good, or morally bad..none of these things we're discussing is actually bad...it's just against some opinion or some counties rules.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I just gotta say -- the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

There's also that Law of Unintended Consequences thing.

That's not to say that we humans don't have evil intentions as well. It's just to say that even the best-laid plans of mice and men aft go agley.

[The Grand Nudger]

Right, and it's not a novel observation. One that only you and I, or the west, or any other group of people have exclusively made. Poor outcomes are not a great marker for human nature because we understand that outcomes do not necessarily depend on our natures. There may only be poor outcomes to a given situation, the good outcomes may be comparatively difficult to achieve when they exist, and may even be made manifest through exactly the same means as might produce a bad one at equal or even greater rates.

That's not a human nature problem, it's the realization that situations do no always start at neutral or naturally proceed toward good, and that human effort and intent is not always enough to tip them one way or the other. Me, personally, I try to reserve moral condemnation for those who know better, and do their worst anyway. For people who have options, then wake up and choose violence all the same. Rich magats are worse than poor magats. Smarts magats are worse than ignorant magats. etc etc etc.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Right, and it's not a novel observation.  One that only you and I, or the west, or any other group of people have exclusively made.  Poor outcomes are not a great marker for human nature because we understand that outcomes do not necessarily depend on our natures.  There may only be poor outcomes to a given situation, the good outcomes may be comparatively difficult to achieve when they exist, and may even be made manifest through exactly the same means as might produce a bad one at equal or even greater rates.  

That's not a human nature problem, it's the realization that situations do no always start at neutral or naturally proceed toward good, and that human effort and intent is not always enough to tip them one way or the other.

Right. Setting aside human proclivity for horseshit, the fact is that even when want to do right, we don't and often cannot control circumstances which cause a shitshow.

Not to say we're inherently decent or indecent -- and I don't think most people honestly care so long as they got their own -- but even when we aim for the best, it still turns into a shitshow.

Sometimes I think our worst inclinations are hampered too by our incompetence.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a double edged sword, fortunately. If fascists didn't tend to be incompetent we'd be in real trouble. That realization is itself why joking about fascists is verboten in a fascist country. They would prefer we see them as dangerous men than bumbling pretenders. They've got Koncentration Kamp Karen out there acting tough like her heaviest lift isn't a tossup between the double soy triple caramel macchiato she gets at Woke Coffee Inc or the pen she signs her name with at the mar-a-lago face and duck lip surgeons.

Clowns, all of them caked in paint and ready for their closeup. They wanna do bad shit and they just don't know how. Biden is still beating them on monthly deportations.