Human Nature

[Alan V]

I think we intend to be decent and even try very hard to be decent, but I am not convinced that being polite and going along with our social groups is actually good for us or others, our us-versus-them tribalism being what it is.  What we seem to be doing, instead, is going along to get along.  That's one of the reasons I have found Trump so alarming.  He has demonstrated that people, in this particular case Republicans, will sacrifice many of their most closely-held principles for the sake of conformity when they are socially dominated by a pathological liar.

You seem to dismiss and derogate the good to justify a focus on the bad.

What I am saying is that we weren't evolved to take the long-term into account, at least beyond a point, or to deal with such complex problems as climate change.  So what we are doing in the short-term is going to be very bad for us in the long-term, let alone what it does to the natural world.

You see motivated behaviors in the good but attribute the bad purely to nature.

People's priorities will always be people first, starting with themselves and their families, but including their communities and their nations.  That doesn't leave much left for the planet as a whole or the future.  This problem is caused by both our human nature and the motivations that spring from it.

How can anyone change that?  I don't think we can.  So my problem with human nature is that it almost inevitably leads to undermining our environments. The exceptions are, as of yet, too rare to make a significant difference in a timely manner.