Why “human nature” takes a higher priority than “common sense”.
Human history is rife with people fueling vicious cycles, most notably surrounding conflicts between certain groups of people like we see today. These cycles are excused under the crutch of “human nature” but wouldn’t exist if those people stepped back and thought “wait a minute”.
When I was little, me and my siblings were taught that our outcomes are our responsibility and that our physical/neurological/psychological shortcomings are no excuse for a member of society, so when I see someone talk about someone having done something wrong and say “it’s only human nature”, I just want to say “dude, I’m a woman with several medical conditions and yet you’re worse than I am if you use the plain fact that someone is human to justify their behavior”.
Because we've been superstitious for a long time as a species. When we didn't have anything that we do have now, some thousand years ago, all we had to go on was whether it was by God or some other made up reason for why things happened the way they did.
Reality is a team sport, to some people. They only accept or reject claims based on interpersonal trust. They don’t think there’s anything else. Science is just trusting smart guys. Being real smart grants them the power to decide what’s true, this week.
I make lot of decisions on emotions too. The joy of helping people. The pain of seeing others suffer. Admiration of what people create. Fear for someones safety. Anger of hearing about unfairness.
What I don’t get is why so many of these “emotional” people dont seem to have any emotions like that. How is it to live like that? Only living with emotions like fear for oneself and oneself only? This isn’t a fight between logic on one side and emotion on the other. Not science versus beliefs either. It is empathy versus greed. The only emotion these assholes has is a fear of losing whats “theirs”, I’m pretty sure. And if scientific reasoning says its smart to share, of course they disregard it.
We evolved in a climate where that reasoning worked well for our species’ expansion. The amount of time we’ve had written language is only a blink of an eye compared to our species history, so of course we are maladapted to the modern world.
People who don’t use emotional thinking are the exception rather than the rule.
A lot of people are seemingly completely unable or unwilling to take a step back from their own position and look at a situation at least slightly more rationally. Everything is only seen and interpreted as how it affects them.
The cashier is not super friendly? Must be, that he’s an asshole, can’t be that he just had a bad day.
There’s a minor inconvenience to me because of some public good? Well, fuck the public, I want mine.
An argument with a friend, and I’m already angry? Better get even more angry and start screaming, that’ll show him!
If you don’t like the act that leads to reproduction, you’re less likely to reproduce meaning that your genes will probably not be represented on the next generation and therefore the likelihood of people not enjoying reproduction is generally low.
I guess that’s the whole point why most people tend to build some kind of relationship before jumping into bed. It’s not weird if there is trust and affection between the people involved. It’s also a basic instinct of most animals, it’s something you want so any awkwardness that may arise is secondary.
Simple: For most people (not everyone) even the thought of it releases stupid happy drugs in brain. It suppresses the feeling of disgust very effectively. Free will my ass, we are chained to those brain chemicals.
Weirdly enough a lot of humans are very opinionated on who are allowed to think about who, even if the brain chemicals doesn’t give a shit. Its all a big mess really and earth would probably be better off if humans didn’t produce these chemicals.
I was thinking last night how weird it is that we can suspend disbelief while watching a movie. Like, we see Tom Cruise on screen and know he’s the most famous person in the world and we saw him alive on TV today, yet we get worried that he’s gonna die in a ten year old movie?
Why any human being actually believes they're somehow going to find salvation. That's what I don't understand. We're all prejudiced, we're all full of our own bigotry toward others, we're temperamental, gun happy, torture-loving monsters. Humans are not designed to be "loving" creatures, and we continue to think the horrors we do will somehow be forgotten or forgiven. I'm reminded of the movie "From Hell." This is what people are, the rough smut of beasts, slouching toward Bethlehem, not to honor or repair but to destroy it with our anger.
We do pretty well on average. Problem is, destroying things is a lot easier than building things, so it only takes a small number of absolute bastards to ruin it for everyone, and helpful people are much less likely to just kill those guys than the other way around.
We have this notion (bred by a delusion of civility) that we are somehow a peace-making race. Which is about as true as saying that rabies is a fun disease of peaceful bliss. We are all rabid monsters, humans have what anthropologists call a "reptilian brain." We're about getting everything for ourselves, and leaving nothing for others. We grab all we can off the table, and then spit bile over what remains so those below can have nothing good for themselves. We're evil, we're sick, we're all the same. So this war in the middle East is just a fun lark, once you see the real truth.
Screw that. Humans aren’t “evil” or “sick” or “vile”, but we can be cruel. We also aren’t peaceful, but we can be kind, and at least give it the old college try more than most people like to admit we do. All we are is just animals, and slightly smarter or otherwise, we do as other animals do.
Enslaving and using others for our benefits like ants do to other ants, competeing for resources and territory for ourselves or own little group, without consideration for anyone outside of that group, just like chimp communities and various groups, and so on, and so on. It’s not evil. Just nature being cruel and messed up, as it always is.
At the very least, (and why I abhor this take that humans are a buncha monsters and/or are worse than animals) for all our flaws, we can look at all the above and decide to NOT go through with it as hard as an incect colony wiping out their enemies to complete extermination, or even to forgo violence at all or show restraint when grabbing things for ourselves–Reptile brain be damned.
You're wrong but I suspect you're very young and have yet to learn the real ways of the world. Humans ARE sick, evil and vile - but I totally get why it's not pleasant to face that and you'd prefer not to think it. You're right about assuming we have the capacity to be kind - but we more often choose to be cruel anyway.
Look at what happened on January 6th with the Capitol riot. Most of those people now say they regret taking part in it. But they DID have a choice at one point. When trump rallied them and told them to use violence against our nation - that's when a truly kind or intelligent person would have said, "Screw that. There's a line I'm not willing to cross, ethically or morally."
But they chose to cross it anyway. They CHOSE to cross into a realm of despicable dishonor and mentally ill horror, to do so willingly. They crossed the line because, as the Stanley Milgram experiment proves, humans will always do evil even when they grasp how evil or wrong it is.
Don’t really wanna play the “no, YOU don’t understand” game here, but I dunno, from what I’m seeing in both society and nature…the way the world works is that there is no objective good and evil in it. Those are labels humans made up to feel better about some actions we see around us that we don’t like or find abhorant. Not saying some of the things we and animals have done onto others isn’t straight up horrible, some of it ABSOLUTELY is (as someone who has deep roots down South of the USA, yeah, I’ve seen some of the horrible things the cartels have inflicted on others for various reasons), but I’m also not going to sit here and pretend it’s something only humanity does or that they invented to be evil. Animals can kill and torture for fun and sport too, that’s been documented several times over. Doesn’t make em evil tho. The whole “but we more often choose to be cruel anyway” is a fairly narrow mind generalization that dismisses the fact that just as much people choose to do the exact opposite of what you claim, but don’t get a spotlight on them because they’re not stirring things up, and so nobody actually cares about what they do.
That the Trump Supporters “regret it now” kinda proves my point too, actually. If the people rioting really were these evil monsters like you want to claim they are, they’d have zero regret or remorse about their actions and would be proud of what they did. And yeah, i know there’s always going to be that one handful of people that ARE proud of their stupidity, there always is and always will be these types of people for as long as people (and animals, because yeah, some animals display oddities that differ from known behaviors and patterns of their kin) are a thing. And it’ll keep going long after we’re gone and something else takes our place. But just because some of us act a certain way doesn’t mean the entire species is deserving to be damned or automatically makes us a lost cause. That’s actually a pretty narrow minded opinion to have, actually. And again, that’s deliberately ignoring the Trump supports you yourself brought up (the ‘truly kind or intelligent person [that] would have said, “Screw that. There’s a line I’m not willing to cross, ethically or morally.”’ that you mentioned in your response), the ones who saw all that chaos and did just that: saying “this is both wrong and disgusting, and I’m not taking part in this”. Because those people do exist. I know they do, because my brother in-law is one, so is one of my former coworkers, Hardcore Republican (almost cultish IMO, but that’s neither here nor there), but was thoroughly disgusted at what she saw that day–and they can hardly be the only ones. Since you mentioned them, you yourself know they exist too. But well, nuance is nuance, i suppose. It’s much easier to try and fit everything into a small little category and leave it at that vs actually acknowledging “life is simple, humans are complicated. Sometimes stupidly so”.
Well I have to concede that I was very narrow and harsh in my statement that all people are monsters, bar none. I agree with the idea that good and evil are not objective and are mostly subjective. We use our labels to say, "I'm with the GOOD group, the salvageable and honorable ones" and to segregate ourselves from others we deem unworthy. We're very tribal that way.
Sadly many of the trump supporters DO have zero regret and inability or unwillingness to see why what they did was so monumentally horrific. Animals do sometimes kill for "fun," if you can see it as that - I've seen footage of chimps torturing and killing their own kind just to pass the time. Somehow it still makes me recoil and see such acts as horrific.
And like you I have Republican acquaintances who find what happened on Jan 6th utterly repugnant, so yes I do agree such people exist. I have mostly distanced myself from these people, because I find I'm afraid to even be around republican-affiliated people anymore.
I'm just putting my ideas out there - not trying to argue for against humanity's capacity for goodness. At the end of Camelot King Arthur says, "some of the drops do sparkle." Not many, but some. We can only hope the ones that sparkle are powerful enough to outshine the waves of those who would drown us all in violence, crime, and stupidity.
We can only hope the ones that sparkle are powerful enough to outshine the waves of those who would drown us all in violence, crime, and stupidity.
Indeed. “Wait, and hope” as the Count of Monte Cristo says (at least I think. Haven’t dusted off that book in a while), but also, if possible, become one of the few that sparkle among the masses.
Appreciate that we ended this discussion amiciably in the end!
I usually am just posting my thoughts and am surprised when people get angry over them. I'm fine with someone disagreeing if they can be reasonable and thoughtful as you definitely were. I appreciate the amicability also!!!
At the end of the day, we’re all just dumb, stupid animals. Natural selection may have given us brains with more folds, but the process of selection cares not for things that don’t impact immediate survival. Anxiety, depression, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer… the list goes on. Those things don’t matter for selection because they don’t really have an impact on our ability to continue our gene line.
It’s evident in the way our society works. Everyone, at the end of the day, just wants to get by. Some feel that in order to do so, they have to be better off than everyone else. They have to have the big stick. Meanwhile most of us would be happy if we didn’t have to struggle to pay rent or buy food.
We’re no better than viruses at the end of the day. We’re just unique (or maybe not so?) that we can comprehend the thought.
So true. That's the point of the novel "Animal Farm." We want a human society where justice and peace prevails. But, inevitably, there are some pigs who feel they deserve a bigger slice of pie and don't care how they get it. It's not pretty, it's not some mythic ideal of paradise, but it's the reality we live in. Yeah it's true we have the ability to comprehend yet we still lack the ability to feel and to care. In a way, that's even worse than being a dumb animal.
No not all, but people who study violence (such as the council on criminal justice) have found that more and more humans lack the (previously thought to be innate) traits of empathy and kindness. We live in a world where shooting people in video games is perfectly OK and causing death is entertainment.
I play God of War (and House of the Dead) so I can't say that I'm above any of that. Only that I see how it dissuades people from being able to care very much and even enables some people to murder others for fun. For every mass shooter who plays violent video games, there's 10 million more playing those same games that aren't mass murderers.
But, and this is the big BUT, violent media (even if it is big business) does inure people to feelings of empathy and compassion, it accustoms people to seeing acts of violence, and it even makes it seem like nothing but a game. These are just my thoughts - not moral judgments about what others do with their free time.
People that sit in air conditioned offices and do 3 hours of work all day get paid more than people who work on the factory floor for 12 hours with minimal breaks. Makes no sense.
It really doesn’t. Sure, some designer in an ivory tower may have designed the product, but they sure as hell aren’t the person that builds hundreds of them.
I've yet to see the big wigs even do 3 hours of actual work during a work day, let alone the kind of physical labor that factory floor workers have to perform all day long. In the last company I worked for (and I'm now retired) there were 34 managers on my floor, and 3 of us doing sales, customer service, repair, delivery, and distribution for the company. The managers mostly spent time on Amazon, but often had meetings to decide what they could do to prompt us to work harder with more duties.
Why do people tap their breaks in the left lane when passing someone slower on the right?
Please stop. Tap your breaks if you're signaling something going on in front, or if you need to slow down faster than just taking your foot off the gas will slow you.
Why are you braking?! I find myself asking that out loud at the driver in front of me too many times. Sometimes I see drivers in other lanes doing it too. It’s as if they were driving a runaway vehicle that accelerates on its own.
One of the many myriad things I don't understand is why humans don't think of themselves as organisms. Like they know they can train dogs to do things with positive reinforcement but don't think other people do that to them. Or if someone did it's some kind of insult.
There’s a weird disconnect between humans and nature in general.
It’s against the law to let animals suffer to death in cases of injury, sickness, etc. Euthanasia is almost mandated. But the same thing for humans is a horrible crime, even if the person explicitly asked for it. That’s insane.
There are people that destroy things with no benefit to themselves or do things that hurt themselves just because it hurt who they consider to be “the right people.”
It's like shouting into the void expecting an echo. If you can't change the world for the better at least leave a mark. At least that was how I felt trashing a park bench when I was 13. It's probably the same trail of thought.
The primary goal is to show off how much of a team member they are, by picking on some “other”. It strengthens their ties to their group, by having an enemy to unite against.
With limited resources, this makes sense. If half the population gave away all their money, they other half would have all the food/housing/etc. We work for potential resources to survive, and on that premise having more potential resources saved for our own future (when the future is so variable) makes sense. That doesn’t mean people don’t donate/give things they aren’t using/don’t use anymore, but greed is apart of capitalism and barter economies.
Harm done to them by other people, and justifiably and rationally looking for answers to how/why/what/where/when/who, so they can make the harm less likely to be repeated in the future by altering their behavior appropriately.
With special emphasis on the “who”, because it’s easier, when they should be focusing on the “how” and “why”. The “why” part is the most important, but also hardest to tackle.
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