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Can? Yes.
Will? Far from certain.
Yes. I believe in humanity. We have done so much and the potential is unimaginably high.
I think humans (like all animals) are fundamentally flawed for several reasons. Animals, including us, are programmed to procreate and consume and (for some species) construct things. It’s all about survival and thriving. All animals all have a general “I got mine, fuck you” mindset.
We despise cancer for its brainless infinite growth programming…when our operational model is hardly different.
In short, I think we’re all a bunch of selfish idiots competing against each other and other life forms. There is no greater purpose or benevolent spirit watching, much less cheering us on. Where there is life, it’s just reproducing and eating and dying and repeating that cycle for as long as the local environment allows.
So no, I don’t think the good in humankind will prevail. There’s evidence all around that goodness is losing the battle to greed and other self-destructive tendencies. Things which are hard-wired in the human animal. Don’t look up!
Is that an excuse to not even try? No, I don’t think so. I think we are still morally and ethically obligated to always strive to do better and fight against that brainless animal programming. Even if goodness ultimately fails, it can greatly reduce suffering along the way. And perhaps keep the concept of a new “enlightenment” alive long enough that we do eventually figure out a way to break out of that animal programming and build some kind of egalitarian utopia. Because there is also evidence all around us of people performing selfless acts of self-sacrifice to help others.
I think the chances are very, very slim of that utopia ever happening. Because quite frankly, evil is like a force of nature and goodness is like a guy with a shovel and a plan. But I do think utopia is theoretically possible.
In short, I think it goodness will not prevail, but I would love to be dead wrong about this. I hope goodness wins.
how do you explain the values indicating that the world has never been a safer place than it is today, and gets safer constantly?
i smell a lot of confirmation bias in your comment.
This sounds like Pinker. I think his book was debunked, wasn’t it?
It’s not one person, its a tremendous amount of statistics.
Sources?
Some good and encouraging stats in there. Most of which do little to undermine my position about fundamental human nature.
Article last updated in 2018. The war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, rising inflation, food and petroleum shortages, global warming, mass extinction of myriad species, and ascending fascism are all pulling these graphs back towards regression to the mean, I’m afraid.
The media tends to overstate these things on the crime and despair side, I will quickly admit that. But there’s plenty of wishful thinking and denial coming from psychologists and sociologists (and often-cited airport books) on the other side.
Pinker and others in his camp were/are arguing that giving more power to the state helps mitigate and even reverse many of these social issues. I agree with them on this. But, the staristics and context of the underlying data is a bit dubious.
Appreciate the article. Thanks.
Sadly, no. I think most people are apathetic about anything that does not immediately and directly impact themselves. Evil doesn’t need much more than that to thrive. Meanwhile, good requires active participation, selflessness, and continual vigilance to thrive.
Judging by the number of people who cannot literally lift a finger to make roads a safer place through the use of turn signals, I don’t hold much hope for humankind, as a whole, to put in the continual effort to quash “evil”.
Everytime I look to my left and right and the people surrounding me, I come to the conclusion that most people are nice and good. It doesn’t look that way if I’m reading the news, however. I think most people are in fact good and the media coverage is skewed. But we definitely need to defend our world from the assholes. It’s a constant struggle to prevail.
If it could, it would have by now.
Obviously. I mean look around you. You think any of this would be possible if evil were more powerful? I’m talking the clothes, the lights, the shelter, the food, the relative safety, the infrastructure, the language, the libraries of entertainment and knowledge. How about the open source software we’re using right now to communicate, and the fantastic technology that’s running it?
It’s all evidence of the power of Good
The clothes is the first thing you listed and that’s funny because they are a product of sweatshops exploiting people from the poorest parts of this planet consuming insane amounts of potable water to make and 40% of them are sent to landfills never ever being worn.
If it’s not slave labor, ie if the people are there by choice, then that “sweatshop” is a job those people find preferable to all the other ways they can spend their days. In other words, a step up. I have no problem with sending my money overseas to people for whom it is more valuable, for whom it has more purchasing power.
You are attempting to justify exploitation and it disgusts me.
is a job those people find preferable to all the other ways they can spend their days
Like dying of hunger. Do you think garbage collectors in our society chose this career path?
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I’m an optimist, but I think so. The overall trend in humanity’s history is things are getting better. There are less wars, crime, hunger, disease, etc. There have been missteps and steps backwards of course, but overall humanity has been able to overcome major obstacles and I think that will continue.
It may be hard to see right now because there are so many crises we are facing, but it’s always been that way, people are just more informed now.
Yes.
I don’t mean to say this to sound like a pessimist (in fact, humans have been shown to be wonderful on an individual level), but I have low faith/regards to “humankind” as an entirety having their appreciable side endure. I define this similar to what Aristotle would say is the tripartite soul, where balance of thought is prioritized and people see passions for what they are, but in my experience, this couldn’t be further from how most people act. I’ve seen families and even cultures befallen because those contributing to their demise are so accustomed to each other and their own pre-existing customs that “due process” becomes a memory, perhaps a beforethought to a certain question. Even as one might remind us how crude and imperfect the human being is as a construct, the same people often choose to wear it, demonstrating that “human nature”, which is a term we use to excuse a myriad of things, is worse than any other form of neurodivergence I have come across, which in a poetic sense may be why my closest associates are outside the neurotypical realm. In such a dog eats dog world, I’d be regretfully glad to be eaten.
Good cannot flourish while greed does.
Capitalism cannot exist without extensive, institutionalized greed.
Yeah. The good in humankind is the reason why we’re not currently rioting in the streets.
The goodness is holding out hope that our innermost desires for what’s best for ourselves and for the future of humanity will win over the short term narrow-minded greed that is currently ruining everything.
What did not good doesn’t know is that the good has already won, and if the not good does not concede defeat soon enough the good will strike with righteous and ignition and a fury that cannot be abated short of blood.
No. I believe we are likely witnessing the inevitable answer to the drake equation.
The same lizard-brain instincts that allowed our ancestors to survive (competition, resource hoarding, power centralisation) are fundamentally self destructive to that same society as it approaches post-scarcity capability.
In other words, when you have a society that evolved on selfishness and power imbalances, potential post-scarcity will always see those in power try to artificially create scarcity in order to remain in power.
I used to think we could rise above our baser selfishness when the time came. Now I don’t believe we will, nor that its even likely possible.
That lizard-brain instinct to protect what’s “yours” at the expense of everyone else is what got our civilization here in a resource poor world, and will cheerfully destroy it in order to maintain that scarcity for the sake of some.
Evil empires are nothing new. The have came and went as long as humanity has existed.
Nope.
For that to happen, the good ones would need to be bad enough to shoot the really bad ones in the face.
We should have been blowing up pipelines and sinking mega yachts for decades by now.
But this civilization is just too damn polite to do more than kindly ask the parasites among us to please stop killing us before they don’t have anything left to eat.
If things get better, if will be after we nearly go extinct.
And even after that, there will be some who take actions that risk the annihilation of us all, rather than have lass then others.
Yup, any catastrophe is a reset. But the problems in us remain. The fundamental shifts aren’t learned. I gives weight to that idea of filters of civilizations. We can delay them, but not avoid them
A person needs to be strong to be kind.
… and all that variations of noblesse oblige principles out there.
with that out of the way:
If the most prevalent form of strength is money, like capitalism, then the way to earn it must be through greed.
…the good in humankind…
with greed, no. excessive greed is not good.
… can prevail
especially the prevail part. There’s a few notably strong people not swayed by greed, but it can only go that far. Greed is a really strong force for both incentive and corruption.
