Humanity and civilization are defined by going beyond any base instincts.
Even if you're correct (I don't agree), consider other things: if you look at someone and your body has an instinctive desire to have sex with them, you are obligated to realize that just doing so without regard for consent or other things is not OK. If you don't realize that and proceed based on instinct, that's rape.
You can feel whatever instincts you want. If you feel bad or harmful ones, you should acknowledge it. It doesn't really matter if you feel guilty or shame or whatever you want to call it, but you should absolutely internally recognize that these things are *wrong*.
>Humanity and civilization are defined by going beyond any base instincts.
Civilization is nothing more than "lives in cities". That's it. That's what the science of anthropology has to say on the matter. It's not even that big of a deal, you'd much rather be involved with some hunter-gatherer living in a tent who had noble ideas and a sense of fairness than with most of the very "civilized" people who live in Oklahoma City. Why?
You don't share their values. Humanity, for all its potential, does not scale beyond Dunbar's number, and attempts to do so have resulted in horrors beyond comprehension on a regular, cyclical basis, for many thousands of years. You're quite certain that your values should win out and exterminate their values (and if they're not enlightened enough to just let their values be obliterated, they too can be exterminated with them... leftists are, right now, trying to work up the nerve to go on the attack, we've both seen the internet messages and not all of them are russian bots).
> If you feel bad or harmful ones, you should acknowledge it.
I do. I like to acknowledge it. I despise dishonesty, but most of all I despise self-deception. But sometimes I need to keep my mouth shut, because others would be quick to punish me for words. For spoken-aloud thoughts. And it causes distress.
>but you should absolutely internally recognize that these things are wrong.
Why? What makes those things wrong? Can you explain, objectively and empirically what makes it wrong? From the other set of values (see above), you're the one with wrong thoughts, wrong feelings, and wrong desires.
What you really mean, but don't have the words to say, is that you want me to be one with your group. To accept its set of group-beliefs, to espouse no dissent (or at least below some tiny, acceptable threshold), and to support your causes. But I've seen what sort of world you want to make, and I do not want to live in that world. I do not think your group survives, even should it win.
The world I want might well have room in it for other peoples. They could do as they want, peaceful (distant) coexistence. Your world doesn't have any room in it for me.
Your strategy of indoctrinating young children in public education was working. It was absolutely foolproof, I think, none could fight against it. But then someone managed to sneak in behind its armor, to drop the torpedo in that trench, and now your death star blew up. I'm not even sure anyone on the left has noticed how bad this is for your movement.
If Trump were a bank robber and no one reported the bank robberies to police, but years later decided to "come out" and tell of how he robbed banks no reasonable person would think he was a bank robber based on that unfounded, unreported, unconvicted accusation.
But rape is the special crime, more special than any other, and the accusation should be enough, right? For that matter, we might even say women who don't report rape to the authorities in a timely manner are denying the accused the right to fight the allegations properly in court, so that the unsubstantiated allegations stain their reputation forever.
> leftists are, right now, trying to work up the nerve to go on the attack, we've both seen the internet messages and not all of them are russian bots
That's the funniest thing I've read in weeks. Leftists cannot get the nerve to band together politically on any kind of consistent basis. This is a persistent complaint within left-leaning political forums, "The Democrats are Spineless".
The idea that they are capable of banding together to commit some kind of political genocide is... hilarious.
You don't have to take my word for it. You can go hang out with some leftists yourself and see. If you think internet forums are a bit much and you think you'll get banned (first: behave, don't pick fights), you can try a Unitarian church service.
>That's the funniest thing I've read in weeks. Leftists cannot get the nerve to band together politically on any kind of consistent basis. T
That could be counter-productive. The left wants "lone wolves" doing this stuff. Banding together and coordinate action would go too far, it would implicate everyone. But if a lone wolf goes too far, they can plead ignorance and pretend that they didn't want that!
And it's unneeded. They just need to goad some of their true believers into "connecting the dots" and taking this burden on themselves. Leave little bread crumbs lying around so they have everything they need. "Look at them they wear masks!" is followed a week later by "here's the list of all their names, photos, and home addresses". Plausibly deniable. "We didn't want them murdered sleeping in their beds, just wanted to protest in front of their homes".
>You don't have to take my word for it.
No need to worry about that. It's not your statements of facts that bother me, but your conclusions and interpretations.
>you can try a Unitarian church service.
It might shock you to learn that I was in one, recently. It was enlightening. If by enlightening I can mean disgusting.
> That could be counter-productive. The left wants "lone wolves" doing this stuff. Banding together and coordinate action would go too far, it would implicate everyone. But if a lone wolf goes too far, they can plead ignorance and pretend that they didn't want that!
You're describing what they call "stochastic terrorism". To the extent that the left wing practices it (and sure, some do), they learned from the best - the right wing.
This is why overwhelmingly domestic terrorism is a right wing phenomena. It's juuust starting to change this past year with a few attacks which plausibly at least were on the left-wing spectrum. The small town I live in has a group which practices this - any place which hosts any kind of pro-LGBT even gets protested, and then vandalized or receives bomb threats. The last year has been better, but it was A Thing People Were Talking About all over the state for a few years.
But to address the point. There may be base instincts to which we are all subject. But that doesn't mean we should embrace them or proudly wear them as a badge. Violence is entirely natural. And yet most will agree it should not be embraced. Someone proudly declaring themselves as violent will (and should!) be judged harshly. I say the same holds true for racism, whether it is "natural" or not.
Much (all?) of civilisational progress is characterised by moving away from the natural state to a higher strata. The civil part of civilization is entirely unnatural
What's silly about it? I am neither unnatural nor supernatural, and my nature is who I am.
>But that doesn't mean we should embrace them or proudly wear them as a badge.
Maybe. But it also means that I shouldn't be ashamed of them or try to suppress myself into neuroticism. And since the left has made a point of that for decades now, has tried to bully people into doing just that, the pendulum was primed to swing the other way. So yeh, I think I will be proud. It feels good.
>Violence is entirely natural.
It is, but also something to be avoided unless there is no other reasonable option. I would recommend not trying to drive an SUV over the top of me. That's caused some strife recently. I can remain nonviolent indefinitely.
Apologies I shouldn't have said "silly", that's too charged. More I don't think it's a good argument or justification. I think the rest of my comment outlines, along with counterexamples, why I think that.
Making this some left-right polemic has made me not want to continue this conversation further
> If that were true, how could it be anything but ok? Should I feel guilty because I evolved from monkeys and carry around the leftist equivalent of original sin?
I think that there's a gap between "how can it be anything but OK" and "should I feel guilty." There are plenty of things that aren't OK, but about which you don't need to feel guilty. Should you feel guilty that your body intrinsically craves foods that aren't good for you? I'd say that no purpose is served by feeling that way, but that doesn't mean that it's healthy to indulge those cravings.
I'm missing the well-reasoned argument with subtlety. It sounds like parent is saying that "X is a natural product of evolution and hardwired" so "X must be ok".
I don't see subtlety here. As others pointed, the story of human civilization is one long arc of going against our base animal instincts in order to build a society that benefits everyone.
>As others pointed, the story of human civilization is one long arc of going against our base animal instincts in order to build a society that benefits everyone.
I'd add that it's cooperation and the ability to moderate impulsive behavior that, over the long term, differentiates us from our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzee.
If we were just our base instincts and nothing more, we wouldn't be having this conversation as we'd likely have died out, because our ability to accept and work together with each other allowed us to flourish despite the threats of predation, climate change, natural disasters and other challenges.
As such, making the argument that we're "hardwired" to hate and fear our fellow humans doesn't make sense, whether that argument is an intellectual one or an evolutionary one.
I feel sorry for folks who feel so isolated that they can't understand just how closely related we all are. It must be quite lonely.
USofA was probably the only place that actively resisted the global effort.
I think people do want a better world.
Greed is not universal.
Most countries that grow a middle class find most people prefer to stop work. I.e. there are not that many infinitely greedy humans. And they can be taxed.
Despite neocon economic theory, most people aren't selfish. And those that are, are often happily rewarded with a plaque in their honor or a medal.
Just look at the length Trump goes to for an award.
COVID didn’t cost anyone anything in terms of improved standard of living. Curbing emissions growth would do that.
People aren’t “greedy,” but my family in Bangladesh absolutely wants to live like my family in America, or at the very least like my family in Canada. They don’t consider that “greedy” and if you tell them it is they’ll laugh at you.
The country’s CO2 emissions per person have increased by a factor of 5x since we left in 1989, consistent with per capita GDP going up by 10x. Even on an efficient development path it’s going to go up another 5x in order to increase the country’s GDP per capita another 10x, which will put it at the level of a poor eastern european country like Hungary or Croatia. That’s the earliest anyone is even going to listen to you about CO2 reduction.
> COVID didn’t cost anyone anything in terms of improved standard of living. Curbing emissions growth would do that.
We live in a horrendously inefficient way. We ship everything from half way around the world in diesel ships, trucks, and trains, we buy shitty single-use plastic items packaged and shipped in single-use plastic packaging, we replace our phones instead of our batteries, our clothing and shoes degrade within a couple years, our restaurants and grocery stores throw away half the food they purchase, our agricultural system spends nitrogen and pesticides like they're free to grow corn as an industrial chemical component. I don't know exactly how much meat there is on that bone, but there's a whole lot of emissions we could remove that wouldn't negatively impact our lives and would probably improve them.
Forget how we live. Take the per capita CO2 output of Norway—which already generates 99% of its electricity using renewables—and somehow halve it. If the Indian subcontinent increases to that level, the added CO2 output alone will be double that of the entire EU currently.
And that’s the steady-state number. It’s impossible to believe that these countries can become twice as efficient as Norway, which already has a fully renewable grid, while building a ton of housing and infrastructure that Norway doesn’t have to build because it’s already built.
The is one trick that doesn't require political will. If you can make the microeconomics work it can be made to scale it self.
E.G. Make CO2 extraction so cheap it's worth everyone doing it and say, make a market to sell the CO2 to farmers. Then make burying inedible bits of plants so cheap it's done on a large scale.
Then you just wait. Microeconomics takes over.
They did this with plastic clean up. By building a machine that makes plastic into fuel & construction pellets. Then stuck such a machine on a plastic poluted island and waited.
For this trick. All you require from your políticans is that they don't lie or bomb the place.
This is true, but can be mitigated if the plant parts are first converted to to charcoal. It’s doable, but not trivial enough for farmers to do it without some other incentive.
That was probably a node / npm thing, because they had no stdlib it was quite common to have many small libraries.
I consider it an absolute golden rule for coding to not write unnecessary code & don't write collections.
I still see a lot of C that ought not to have been written.
I'm a grey beard, and don't fear for my job. But not relying on AI if it's faster to write, is as silly as refusing a correct autocomplete and typing it by hand. The bytes don't come out better
>If someone is advertising something at you, it's because you can get it and you are potential market.
>Not rocket science.
Yep. I see adverts for Psoriasis and so, of course, I developed Psoriasis although I never had it before I saw the adverts. I see adverts for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and, of course, then developed it because I am a "potential market."
Even better, I see adverts for tampons, sanitary pads and "feminine' deodorants. As such, I underwent gender reassignment surgery so I could then purchase said products because I'm a "potential market."
Yes, the above is satirical. And no, I don't purchase products because " they spend that money advertising"
If I show you an advert for brassieres, are you then forced to purchase them because of all the money spent on such adverts? Are you even slightly tempted to do so?
If I show you an advert for literal snake oil as a cure-all, are you then powerless to stop yourself from purchasing it?
I hate to break it to you, but we Americans aren't slaves to, or required to spend money based on, consumer advertising.
Heck, I don't drink Coca-Cola or Budweiser. If what you say were true, I'd literally be drowning in that garbage.
Please take your ridiculous stereotypes elsewhere.
Taking the drugs legally, maybe; it is very much illegal to sell the kind of amphetamines used to treat ADHD. Ritalin, for instance, is a schedule II drug, and it is a felony to sell without a prescription.
Oh and the fact that in USofA, Big Pharma in cahoots with corrupt doctors and a broken police/judicial system let you legal amphetamines if you have adhd is, of course, nothing to do with this.
I'd say calling him out as a racist is not exactly speaking ill of the dead in this case.
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