DescentBB

vision wrote:Biology isn't the only thing subject to evolution. Ideas evolve too. Culture evolves. Evolutionary systems don't need direction. Systems are continuously created and we keep the ones that help us overcome obstacles. Other systems fall out of purpose get discarded. It's why we don't have tails anymore, haha. Culturally, we've had lots of chance (ideas, inspiration) and lot's of trial and error (every kind of "ism"). Some systems work and we keep them around (democracy). Others get discarded (slavery).

You have a lot more confidence in human nature than I do. Given the right circumstances, I could easily see that some society could re-institute a system of slavery, or any other of your "failed" systems. I also have less confidence than you do that the metaphor linking biological evolutionary theory and it's mechanisms with the social sciences is much more than a metaphor. We like to think that we're more "advanced" than earlier peoples, but you can still go to the library and find stuff written by the ancient Greeks, Chinese and others that pretty well describes a lot of our current problems.

And yes there are more people. We can't live in isolated groups anymore and occasionally war & pillage the neighboring tribes. Time to start looking for global solutions.

Yeah, and that's where I think there is legitimate reason for concern. There is no book we can look this stuff up in with an answer section in the back. Humans, like every other creature, are just making it up as they go along. You're right that we need good ideas. We also need a heaping helping of humility**. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

( ** edit: "humility" is the word I wanted to use, not "modesty" as originally posted)

dissent wrote:You have a lot more confidence in human nature than I do. Given the right circumstances, I could easily see that some society could re-institute a system of slavery, or any other of your "failed" systems. I also have less confidence than you do that the metaphor linking biological evolutionary theory and it's mechanisms with the social sciences is much more than a metaphor. We like to think that we're more "advanced" than earlier peoples, but you can still go to the library and find stuff written by the ancient Greeks, Chinese and others that pretty well describes a lot of our current problems.

You're right about my laughable amount of optimism. And yes, as our populations and cultures are thrust upon each other left and right total anarchy could erupt. I guess one of the things that makes me feel better about humanity was surviving the Cold War. And even though the Doomsday Clock still hangs eerily near midnight, I don't have regular nightmares of nuclear annihilation anymore. (I do, however, still worry about climate change, over-population, famine, and disease.)

Granted, I don't live in a place where I encounter the level of violence people in Africa do, so I certainly have a bias toward sunnier days. And maybe it's my own confirmation bias that makes me want to read Steven Pinker's book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." Mr. Pinker claims that the world is far less violent today than it has ever been. Here is a short article he wrote for WSJ about it.

If we really are living in the most peaceful time in human history, you can easily say "it's the calm before the storm." ... Or, maybe not. Maybe things really do get better. I'm excited to find out no matter which way it goes.

vision wrote:If we really are living in the most peaceful time in human history,

where did you get that Idea???

Utopia is a fantasy that will never happen. strictly because of mans innate selfish desires, and sin nature, and I'm using sin in the secular meaning. men (not man) will always choose what benefits himself and not what benefits the whole.
Even using evolutionary time lines, man has been on this planet for billions of years. you'd have thought we would have figured it out by now. man has always killed man and the only thing that has evolved over those billions of years is the efficiency at which we kill each other. we make the same mistakes OVER and OVER again because for all our intelligence we are too stupid to figure it out

I’d be willing to believe that we are living in the most peaceful time in modern history, but not in all of human history.

CUDA wrote:

vision wrote:If we really are living in the most peaceful time in human history,

where did you get that Idea??? Utopia is a fantasy that will never happen.

Whoa, whoa, settle down there old man. Did you even read my post? I never said we're in Utopia, I said according to research by Steven Pinker we're are living in the most peaceful time, where violence is at it's lowest. That's where I got the idea, LOL.

Spidey wrote:I’d be willing to believe that we are living in the most peaceful time in modern history, but not in all of human history.

I agree, and that's one of the reasons I'll probably pick up his book -- to see the criteria it's based on and the depth of the research. I too can imagine more peaceful times in human history, but I might just be romanticizing.

It all depends on where you live, hence the narrow-mindedness..

CUDA wrote:Logan's Run
It depicts a dystopic ageist future society in which both population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by requiring the death of everyone reaching a particular age.

I saw that movie in the 70's. They controlled their population by killing off older-than-30 people, not by preventing excessive birth rates. Kind of defeated the reason to even live at all.

We're all just rats in a planetary cage, waiting for the Behavioral Sink to kick in. Then we'll start eating each other when we can no longer make enough food for ourselves, or have enough space to live separate from one another, aka, Soylent Green.

tunnelcat wrote: Soylent Green.

worse movie ever

You notice how all those apocalyptic overpopulation movies came during the 1970's? Hmmm. About the last time anyone thought about the human population bomb. Maybe it's time to think about it again, with a world population now around 7 billion?

My thoughts about a utopian society, religion, and science:

Vision, I'd venture to say that there are probably a quite large number of people who feel the same way. In a sense, I agree with you... you're right that the ideal would be a society in which no government was necessary. I think that the government's two mains jobs are to protect its people from each other and from other countries. I'd also say that I don't agree that a divorce from beliefs would be necessary to accomplish this (in fact I'd say that such a divorce is an impossibility). I'm not sure what to think about organized religion... it would certainly need reforms, but I'm not sure that it would really need to be eliminated beyond the fact that the government of organized religion would also cease to need to exist.

The problem is, I'm not sure that I can imagine a society that modeled this that didn't also consist of people who all had perfectly identical sets of beliefs. In a sense, part of what governments accomplish is mediating between people's differing opinions on how each other should be treated. Furthermore, (borrowing from C.S. Lewis) I think that pretty much everyone (psychotics being the main exception) has a sense that they ought to behave in a way that would encourage such a utopian society, but also fail to live up to the standard that they claim. (I.E. The only way to avoid being a hypocrite is to have absolutely zero standards, which would ultimately lead to the opposite of utopia - something akin to anarchy.) So, I don't think that there's ever been a soul out there (with the exception of Christ) who could ever honestly say that they would actually belong in a utopia, because they would inevitably act to corrupt it.

(Here's where people may disagree with me more.) Science, knowledge, reason, and human progress have acted to make it easier to police ourselves and possibly actually approach approach an ideal society, but I don't think it's capable of actually changing people's inner workings... it does appear to do a better job of getting people as a whole to behave more nicely to each other, but it'll never get society, or even individuals "there" - to a point where they really do live up to the standard. Some might argue that evolution will get us "there" eventually, but I'd argue that it hasn't managed to make any progress within recorded history when it comes to people's real inner workings.... if you take away all of the trappings of society, I'd argue that each and all of us would regress back into the brutal ways that we like to think that we've put behind us.... In other words - I don't think we've really changed at all, we just have more societal pressure to "behave" so most of us do a better job of repressing the monster inside, with a few slips here and there. The reason I don't think evolution can get the job done either: I think it's something that we all have in a binary fashion (better people just do a better job of hiding it) & it's linked so tightly to our self-awareness that any evolutionary change that would eliminate one would eliminate both; making animals out of us... which in a sense might be considered the anarchy end of things rather than the utopia end of things.


On intolerance:

I sort of hit on this above. Being intolerant of intolerance is in itself a hypocritical stance. It's where a lot of people are, but it's inconsistent to give yourself a free pass on intolerance and not give others a free pass on the things that they don't tolerate.

In my option, the bottom line is this: When it comes to philosophical views, we all have a really hard time agreeing to disagree. We all, ultimately, think that our take on things is better than the other guy's whose take is a bit different. The real question is: What do you do about it? If you go protest at people's funerals, you're not really responding to your disagreement in the right way. If you call all of the "religious people" looney whack-jobs, you're failing to see your own looney whack-job opinions.

I'd say that correct responses contain the following elements:
1. They carry a recognition that each person has value as an individual, and act upon that sense of human value
2. They acknowledge the fact that many opinions are irredeemably different, and don't try to act like the differences are necessarily trite or artificial (though, some probably are)
3. They carry the ability to disagree on philosophical matters without violating point #1
4. They recognize that reason & analysis may be employed to make judgements upon philosophical matters; yielding a genuine ability to rank philosophical ideas in terms of their quality
5. The acknowledge that all human's ability to reason & analyze is inherently flawed, meaning that the true ranking of philosophical ideas probably cannot be known in this world barring some other-worldly revelation
6. Recognize that people hold their philosophical views extremely closely, and that disagreements on philosophical matters are easily personalized to be interpreted as disagreements on the value on individuals (back to #1), and, likewise are easily confused in ones own person to be the same.