This is what I hope would happen. Unfortunately, I think this is lost. Everyone is "what's in it for me?"... For example, nothing is in it for any single person when it comes to global warming. But we don't make a strong enough effort. But if an alien from the sun landed here and told 4 people "you and your family are going to die from global warming, everyone else will survive" then you bet your ass they will do something about it. Because if we ALL suffer, then the idea is that the individual is not losing. But if only I am going to suffer, then I'm falling behind in the game. We've stopped keeping count of what humans are losing. This is by far the most individualistic group of humans ever. Sure, every generation is worse than the last. But that doesn't make it ok. It is wrong. Our societal values are constantly being erased and our individual values becoming more central to our thinking - and then you have the rest of the world making individualistic things more popular. So you don't want to be in a band, you want to go solo. You want to be famous. Screw who suffers - I want to shine. Then yuo take a beautiful thing like freedom and you start attaching materialism to it. You don't want to be free to spread happiness, you want to be free enough to make as much money as possible. You don't want freedom to be able to achieve fairness in the world, you want it to be able to buy more stuff. To make yourself (singular) famous rather than make 5 poor people average. Because you "earned" it? How could you earn it if they didn't allow you to earn it? Who would visit your business unless they were similarly willing to stomp on you to get to the top? It creates a lot of hate. Sadly, everyone agrees that we won't learn. Even given a fresh start, we'll still mess it up. Tells me a lot about human nature. Should I treat people a certain way knowing that this is their nature? Why not? Who so? Man, it's really bad, and it's become so casual. It's not even about winning anymore. It's just about killing. It's murder. We have the technology to know that we're killing people with our materialism - but we ignore it. Why are we like this?
I am not proposing this world. I'm discussing human nature. I know it's unrealistic, as i stated several times in the original post.
Why the need for the hypothetical though? We lived in that world once before and ended up here. You shouldn't even have to ask that question because history has already given you an answer. Also, the idea that we are worse now than we were then is crazy. Man has always been selfish. He is selfish from the moment he is born. If they weren't selfish to begin with we wouldn't have ended up where we are today.
Under this scenario, the strong and the treacherous take everything. The weak die. We would quickly emulate lions -- the pride leader eats first and all he wants, the lionesses eat next and the cubs get whatever is left. The old are driven out.
Because, it's like seeing the future. If you saw that a nuclear bomb was going to destroy America and it has "USSR" written on it, then you would do what you can to eliminate all Russian nukes. It's like the world we once lived in, plus knowledge of what will happen in 1000 years.
The problem is . .. .we want Freedom . . but we don't want the responsibility. That is the most major part of any society .. . the social contract the agreement spoke or unspoken about the acceptable behaviors alot of the behaviors are universal [IMO similar to alot of the 10 commandments] Don't kill folx Don't screw ya boys wife Gold Rule . . . etc The problem in modern society is that our technology is racing so far so quickly .. . that responsibility is becoming less and less we have DO OVERS . . and we all wanna eat what ever we want. . .but we don't want to get fat everyday we are gaining new ways avoid being responsible for our behavior much of medicine is dedicate to 1. Undoing the results of free flowing eat whatever you like food supply 2. Frivilous thing like - baldness cures, Makeup, design a better Air Jordon Judging by the amount of money we spend on things. . .what is most important to the modern man? American? once the necessities are taken care of . . .what does a man do?? If you have Food, Shelter, Clothing and Protection . . .what does a man do? what do you do? The strive then becomes for frivilous things. . . . do we fight over these frivilous things? . . . YOU BETCHA . .. in a way you would think they would think they were necessities. We fight over oil? Why? because we feel it is necessary. It drives our cars to get to work it heats our homes It fuels the jumbo jets that drop bombs to keep our enemies away as the modern man is now . .. . You are taking away THINGS in order to get where I think you trying to go You will need to not only TAKE AWAY THE NEED for war but the PERCEPTION OF A NEED FOR WAR Rocket River
Because of the immutable law of life -- survival. The strongest takes charge and survives. The weakest dies. There is no changing that -- from amoeba to mankind. Break the law of survival and the species ends very quickly. But this thread has decayed into the meaningless. I share it with everyone else until it becomes nothingness -- like the original question.
The Taliban would take over the world with suicide plane attacks. We just can't win against them without weapons.
But what if it's not a perception? What if it's innate? If it is, then like inflation, we are headed for eradication and only two things matter: 1) How well of I am till my life is over. 2) If I believe in the afterlife, how well have I set MYSELF up. Which makes the whole thing more vicious. Selfish morality? Are you considered a person of good morals if you do everything you need to get by in the world and the afterlife but you disregard your effect on the rest of society? You may not be directly hurting them, but you know that if everyone took your stand, everyone would suffer. and that's what's happened. Something small turned into a stampede. We're running and we don't know where we're going now. It's the same for everyone. We're struggling to do something but we don't know what we're doing. Stopping to think about it is liek a rhino stopping in a stampede and saying "where we goin?" It gets ridiculed. It is the definition of unusual and abnormal. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means it's not what the majority and the visible are doing. We put a price tag on suffering and immorality. There is a dollar value at which me and you and most of us are willing to allow people to die now. If I worked hard for a Mercedes, I don't care if I could've saved a life with the money I spent on the expensive car. It's worth it. What do we call it? Opportunity cost I think?
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