RE: Human Nature
April 26, 2025 at 5:01 pm
(This post was last modified: April 26, 2025 at 5:04 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
@Ivan Denisovich
I think you'll find that the pressure is often on those politicians to engage in those conflicts. Your frivolities probably pay some third worlders wages somewhere...and there would be no wage whatsoever without it....not that this helps them to be less hungry, as you note. Hunger is definitely a human problem, and one which highlights our potential for apathy and exhaustion, especially at a distance. I certainly wouldn't point to hunger or to conflict as proof of mans good nature. Those are, I think, on the opposite ends of our nature, and examples of things which we do under duress, and which create a vicious cycle of duress. I think it should go without saying that hungry people in conflict zones do not make great decisions. None of us do under those circumstances. As far as the wests ability to end conflict.,..the american century has been remarkably peaceful. That looks to be coming to an end. With that end will come the end of an amount of money already spent on charity just in the united states which could feed the world ten to two times over depending on who you ask and how a good diet is defined. That itself does (and would do) alot to end conflicts...but we'll still find other reasons to fight. We make them up when we have to.
Yes, I think we're generally good natured..but we're still the most dangerous animals on this rock. If aliens came here on safari it wouldn't be to watch lions anymore than we go to a lion hunt to watch mice.
@Alan V
There's a point of view that insists, were it true that doing moral good could be bad for the planet...we should defer to the moral good and not the planets state of stasis. The planet is not a moral agent or exemplar or metric or judge. It does not suffer in any way other than metaphorically. It can be harmed, but it doesn't know that..and if we're choosing between harming a conscious moral agent and harming a planet...morally speaking..that's a no brainer. Insomuch as that may cause future humans problems...A, that's the human condition..we also inherited those problems our predecessors failed to resolve. B, it's murky ground to decide which group of two groups of other people you're going to cause problems for. C, self righteous suicide by any description is a non starter in any deontological sense practically speaking. As in....maybe we should kill ourselves.....but we won't.
I do think that future people will be better positioned to resolve issues (assuming we don't fall off a demographic cliff and so lack the labor required to support replacement cycles)..in the same way that we are compared to even the recent past...and in the same way that all throughout history the solution to mans previous problems has become obvious and trivial across so many fronts. That is, granted, another part of my generally positive view of humanity. I don't think we're bad or getting worse. I don't think we've reached our developmental limits. More like put a toe in the pond. Some solutions to our current problems already exist and come from the past when it was less clear why we'd have chosen them over our contemporary processes, too. The first plastics were organic and minimally processed - and are still of higher quality than most heavily processed inorganics - my favorite example. We live in a plastic economy and the people who live in the places where we can grow the bests plastics are not all princes. Something is askance.
Similar to my response to Ivan, we'd find that the reason this set of circumstances is in effect is not because human beings are generally shitty...but that a vanishing fraction of a fraction of us definitely are shitty in specific ways. This is actually something were my opinion and yours probably mesh. Because we're not all monsters, we have trouble anticipating monstrous individuals, or responding to them in kind. Why are we not literally eating the rich right now, eh?
I think you'll find that the pressure is often on those politicians to engage in those conflicts. Your frivolities probably pay some third worlders wages somewhere...and there would be no wage whatsoever without it....not that this helps them to be less hungry, as you note. Hunger is definitely a human problem, and one which highlights our potential for apathy and exhaustion, especially at a distance. I certainly wouldn't point to hunger or to conflict as proof of mans good nature. Those are, I think, on the opposite ends of our nature, and examples of things which we do under duress, and which create a vicious cycle of duress. I think it should go without saying that hungry people in conflict zones do not make great decisions. None of us do under those circumstances. As far as the wests ability to end conflict.,..the american century has been remarkably peaceful. That looks to be coming to an end. With that end will come the end of an amount of money already spent on charity just in the united states which could feed the world ten to two times over depending on who you ask and how a good diet is defined. That itself does (and would do) alot to end conflicts...but we'll still find other reasons to fight. We make them up when we have to.
Yes, I think we're generally good natured..but we're still the most dangerous animals on this rock. If aliens came here on safari it wouldn't be to watch lions anymore than we go to a lion hunt to watch mice.
@Alan V
There's a point of view that insists, were it true that doing moral good could be bad for the planet...we should defer to the moral good and not the planets state of stasis. The planet is not a moral agent or exemplar or metric or judge. It does not suffer in any way other than metaphorically. It can be harmed, but it doesn't know that..and if we're choosing between harming a conscious moral agent and harming a planet...morally speaking..that's a no brainer. Insomuch as that may cause future humans problems...A, that's the human condition..we also inherited those problems our predecessors failed to resolve. B, it's murky ground to decide which group of two groups of other people you're going to cause problems for. C, self righteous suicide by any description is a non starter in any deontological sense practically speaking. As in....maybe we should kill ourselves.....but we won't.
I do think that future people will be better positioned to resolve issues (assuming we don't fall off a demographic cliff and so lack the labor required to support replacement cycles)..in the same way that we are compared to even the recent past...and in the same way that all throughout history the solution to mans previous problems has become obvious and trivial across so many fronts. That is, granted, another part of my generally positive view of humanity. I don't think we're bad or getting worse. I don't think we've reached our developmental limits. More like put a toe in the pond. Some solutions to our current problems already exist and come from the past when it was less clear why we'd have chosen them over our contemporary processes, too. The first plastics were organic and minimally processed - and are still of higher quality than most heavily processed inorganics - my favorite example. We live in a plastic economy and the people who live in the places where we can grow the bests plastics are not all princes. Something is askance.
Similar to my response to Ivan, we'd find that the reason this set of circumstances is in effect is not because human beings are generally shitty...but that a vanishing fraction of a fraction of us definitely are shitty in specific ways. This is actually something were my opinion and yours probably mesh. Because we're not all monsters, we have trouble anticipating monstrous individuals, or responding to them in kind. Why are we not literally eating the rich right now, eh?
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