The universe is practically infinite in resources and places to live if you have the right scientific equipment and technology. Diseases, as we know them, wouldn’t stand a chance once medical technology advances long enough. So all seems well if humanity finally expands to “conquer” the rest of the universe.
Is humanity only barbaric and greedy because of scarcity, or do we just start a bigger war for some other petty reason?
No, it’s instinct. Back when we all lived in stone condos there was never any certainty regarding having enough water, food, fire…all the essential stuff. Having an abundance of anything was rare.
Imagine you’re in your cave…with your fire, food and family. You notice a stranger coming towards your cave. Do you garb another plate or a club? You likely answered that question before you read this sentence.
We are xenophobic by instinct. 200,000 years of evolution wired that in.
As humans evolved, formed loose societies and developed agriculture there was a path to abundance. But we are protective of our new found prosperity. Worse yet, there are those out there that may take our shit…so we may need to defend it…there’s that club again…
Gradually, the narcissistic asshole typically found in power decides we don’t need to go to all the trouble to grow food…let’s go grab the food down the road…which evolves into taking their land so we can grow more food…
Things get more sophisticated and involved as time marches on, but we’re all still just that caveman looking at an approaching stranger.
Technology and medicine advance in direct proportion to the ability to monetize said advancement. Altruism is just a word that rhymes with egotism. Egotism powers capitalism…which leads to scarcity based on access…which means that no matter how many worlds we conquer…nothing changes.
Yes. IMHO:
Humanity would still be terrorized by trivialities and self interest, and take that out on each other. We would still more often choose unexpected affronts rather than empathy. Our finest and most perfect art would still be hatred, even in the face of shared and inescapable mortality.
I’ve found that once a person accepts this state of humanity, though, it frees one to live on one’s own terms to a very large degree. So, you know, it’s not all bleakness.
Well firstly the term rotten barbarians is subjective, we are evolved apes, and behave in line with those characteristics, though of course our evolved brains are at least capable of denying some instincts, and favouring others, or morality would be impossible.
As for knowledge that enables technological advances, the choice here is either knowledge or ignorance, neither position alone improves morality, that requires introspection at the very least, and in my subjective opinion empathy.
so there is no “rot” to destroy for humanity to actually progress if humanity itself is the “rot”?
To imply there is rot, you first have to assume things were sound and healthy before the rot. To me, that’s a leap of faith.
Robin Dunbar theorizes that humans can only maintain stable and meaningful social relationships with up to around 150 people. As primitive groups tended to hover between 20-40 people, adding more than 150 connections tends to overwork our little monkey brains to the point that rules, norms and eventually laws become necessary to maintain cohesion.
If there is rot anywhere, it’s in this dynamic. It explains quite a bit about why social media is such a clusterfuck for humanity…and shines a very ugly light on the human character when pushed past this theoretical ceiling.
One of the problems with humanity is that our ability to affect the environment around us is much faster than our ability to adapt to those changes.
For example: Many of us carry a device that can contact in a few seconds, most everyone on the planet, but as a species, we are ill equipped to deal with those people’s culture/religion/appearance/etc. without prejudice.
I believe that this snippet from Forbidden Planet (1956) can provide an answer, Natasha.
The Krel were a long-extinct alien race that were on the verge of creating a machine that would give them infinite resources on demand, just by thinking about it. But what destroyed them overnight was the darker aspects of their minds, set loose by their dreams and given shape and form by the great machine.
So I think the answer is this. No matter how much the human race progresses, no matter how great our resources and technologies become and no matter much of the universe we ‘conquer’, we will still be, at heart, as destructive, selfish and greedy as ever.
Possessing infinite resources wouldn’t change the equation. We would still need to deal with the flaws and problems within ourselves.
Thank you,
Walter.
so we really are rotten barbarians imprisoned by our deepest biology no matter how “objective” and “logical” we say we are
Exactly. Human nature isn’t a product of scarcity. The removal of scarcity, want, disease, etc., would give us more choices, but would say nothing about the kinds of choices we’d make.
All that abundance does is make a better world possible, it doesn’t guarantee it; indeed, as this little clip shows, it opens up unsavory possibilities as well.
Even our partial and contingent abundance has done this. It has given us nuclear power, and along with it, nuclear destruction, potentially on a planetary scale, for example. Even now, the jury is out on how we’ll use that power on balance.
I tend to agree and think humans often form groups of varying sizes to better protect and hoard resources. The groups establish different outer shells, politics, religion, philosophy, etc. but they are all rooted in human evolutionary history.
Well I can think of a way to square the circle, but it would require the intervention of a benevolent (i.e, non-Christian) god to do it. Therefore, it’s just fantasy. But why shouldn’t I mention it, seeing as we listen to the fantasies of theists all the time?
All that god would need to do is to connect the pleasure and pain centres of the human brain to wherever our understanding of morality is seated. Then, performing a good deed is rewarded with pleasure and doing an evil one is rewarded with pain.
The enjoyment of giving and receiving pain by sadists and masochists would have to be compensated for so that neither could obtain what they desire by doing evil.
Human society would then change as people work out for themselves that doing good is a pleasant and enjoyable thing on mental, emotional and physical levels and that doing evil is the opposite. After a few generations, as children grow up treating this as the norm, doing good for an immediate reward would cause the doing of evil to wither away.
After a few hundred years our descendants might look back at our films, tv programs, books, comics and videos and be unable comprehend why people did violence and evil to each other or even to themselves.
Needless to say, this is wildly impractical nonsense and would probably destroy humanity rather than heal it. But is what I’m proposing any more ridiculous than a god sacrificing himself to himself to put an end to a curse that he himself laid on everyone because two people ate a forbidden apple?
Thank you,
Walter.
My goodness, this is Carrot and Stick Morality. I was raised like this. My entire existence as a “woman” is a sin because i’m “not supposed to be a woman”
Depends on if we decide to change what it means to be human, if and when technology permits it. Unfortunatly at this point its just an interesting mental exercise.
Well anyone with a working conscience already has this, however imperfectly.
Even the Bible understands that one’s conscience can be “seared as with a hot iron” and no longer function.
Conscience is just moral awareness and that has to be cultivated through empathy but once it becomes an established habit it does reward helpful behaviors and “punish” harmful ones. I think it’d also provide a lot of the purpose and meaning that many find lacking in their lives.
One fly in that particular ointment is that people exist such as Trump and Miller who get power highs from inverted moral systems that leverage cruelty and domination in preference to kindness and cooperation, not realizing that this isn’t sustainable for any period of time, most likely not even for the duration of their own lives. In fact they can’t even see their own lack of fulfillment or its cause; the sucking vacuum within is seen as just not getting the unchecked power to which they feel entitled.
Emerson said “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
Somewhere in here it was mentioned that we need to become more human. I would argue that this may be the problem.
We invent laws and make wars…all very well documented human traits. We also like simple answers…like creating gods. I wonder why people see some fanciful image of the future as a panacea where technology and science solve every problem…oh, there’s that creating gods shit again…
And where is this long awaited arrival of morality, decency and equity? I wonder if it’s playing cards with Jesus…just waiting on a bus…
War was not even a concept for early man. It wasn’t until we began developing agriculture…which introduced a relatively steady stream of abundance…which introduced social stratification…which gave us the concept of war and conquest.
Start with 500 years of colonial meanderings and bring it up to the never ending conflicts and wars over oil in the middle east. The more we have, the more we want. We used to look for it, then we planted it and now we just take it.
Why would you think that just because we have more shit we will miraculously become idolized versions of ourselves?
Schopenhauer believed that most humans operate just a hair higher than instinct. Intellect is rare and commonly berated for appearing condescending to the masses. This sort of makes it inevitable that the few capable of creating this futuristic shining city on the hill will most likely be marginalized by the aforementioned masses…
You really want to change the world? Change the way we raise the children that are going to live in it.
And therein lies the rub.
We can’t have little Johnny coming home asking uncomfortable questions of Mommy and Daddy after his critical thinking class.
My take on this question is a little different: In order to harvest the Universe, we must first transcend our barbarism.
I believe that we can only accomplish such a lofty goal if we first work together, and that means doing away with our barbarism.
If we don’t transcend our barbarism, then we will never harvest the Universe to begin with.
I imagine that it is possible that we may rise above our barbarity some day. A golden retriever dog is about as loving and civilized as a dog can be, yet its distant ancestors are ice-age wolves who were very territorial, protective, and vicious.
We have to transform from wolves into golden retrievers before we destroy ourselves.
People may disagree with me, but I believe that we are still Pleistocene-era cavemen.
Well that may well be … that would make it a chicken-or-egg sort of problem. It also is resonant with the Great Filter theory which says that every civilization encounters obstacles to advancement beyond a certain point. In the case of a technological civilization it might be things like having nuclear power but not the wisdom to restrain from general nuclear warfare, or simply exploiting the environment in an unsustainable way that causes either outright extinction or widespread diebacks. If you posit that multicellular life is rare, sentient life rarer, and sentient life that passes these filters rarer still, it explains why the universe doesn’t appear to be teeming with sentient life. That, and maybe interstellar travel is not worth the effort, especially to have contact with the likes of us.
Homo sapiens have been around for around 300,000 years. Most of that time we weren’t deeply engaged on a phone… Around 2400 years ago the Greeks figured out the world wasn’t flat. That means for 99.992% of the time that we’ve been a species this was up for debate.
In the 1987 book Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure, Flynn documented a significant rise in IQ scores, which he attributed to “better education, increased environmental complexity, and improved nutrition”. What does this say about the other 99.9997% of the time we’ve been wandering around?
The residuals of the prolonged caveman period are still rearing their ugly heads today. The forecast on tomorrow is mixed…
