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.