(January 25, 2018 at 11:36 am)Cyberman Wrote:(January 25, 2018 at 11:21 am)wallym Wrote: You probably fear losing what you have? You don't want to be killed, jailed, be taken away from your family. Lose your house. Car. Access to the forum. Or whatever else it is you value.
The cost of committing atrocities is also so high, that the idea of committing them is a non-starter even if you'd enjoy it.
Add onto that, we're taught from childhood 'doing bad things is bad.' And there's just no reason to question it. But if you remove those consequences, like with the super rich or super poor, or if you're in one of those places there are large benefits instead of consequences, then all of a sudden, people start going the other way.
If there weren't a lot of redundancies in the system, humans wouldn't have lasted as long as we have.
Those things you listed are fundamentally different from any post-mortem judgement and ensuing punishment - I know they exist and can be taken from me without any notice. However, it's even more basic than the fear of losing what I have which prevents me from raping, killing and torturing, or even lying, stealing and cheating - I simply don't want to. I'm not wired that way. That some people think that the only thing stopping them being 'evil', for want of a better word, is fear of reprisal - illusory or otherwise - is a revealing commentary about them, as opposed to a thing lacking in me.
Why don't you want to do it, is the trick. It's all very tenuous. In my opinion, what keeps us from being awful is circumstance. If you and I were born 200 years ago, we'd very likely have no problem owning some slaves. 400 years ago, we'd almost certainly be devoutly religious, maybe burning some people for witchcraft? I don't think there's anything special about you and I that we aren't out raping and stealing. What's special is the circumstances into which we were born. That's primarily what's kept us from being a terrible people. A coincidence of time and place.
