Comment on Profit over people is a failed system
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 5 days agoThe fact that society is an emergent property of humanity instead of us killing each other to extinction has already proved you wrong about humanity. Please do not add anymore shit to the conversation.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
Um what. Where in the history textbook did you read this part about humanity not killing each other?
The entire course of human civilization has been about humans killing each other, sects killing each other, kingdoms and nations killing each other.
The only reason we’ve enjoyed relative peace for the last 80 years (and I understand how much weight that “relative” is pulling) is because of the rules-based-order that emerged as a result of human societies utilizing governments as a medium through which to engage in diplomacy. Which, in case you missed it, largely occurred due to each respective nation-state engaging due to self-interest.
So no, we’re not some essentially altruistic species that only survived to procreate and evolve due to our perfect selflessness. Humans are primarily egocentric, and as individuals develop they expand their “sense of self” to larger in-groups: to their family, to their neighborhood, to their schoolmates, to their subcultures, to their geographical region, to their nation, and if they don’t stop there, the enlightened cosmopolitans among us might expand our sense of identity to humanity as a whole, or to the entire planet, or to all sentient life throughout the universe. But that is far from the default state of humanity, and the relative few who reach that level of collective awareness are a very small minority indeed. And most people who stop short of reaching that level of consciousness only end up killing whoever is left outside of their personal “in-group” anyway, no matter how small or large that in-group becomes.
The altruistic few are mostly even regarded with suspicion by their peers and estranged from society, because most people simply don’t trust the intentions of someone claiming to have a selfless motivation.
Resting the fate of society as a whole on the good will and inclinations of the average member of it is a terrible idea, especially when billionaire oligarchs are already being allowed to basically live anarchistically, and they show you every single day what they’re deciding to do with that. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not altruism.
So no, you’re wrong, and telling me to stop contributing to the discussion is not going to change that. Seriously, what kind of anarchist tries to win a discussion by bullying into silence anyone who shares a conflicting opinion? 👀 Hmmm…
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 5 days ago
Nice way to cut off “killing each other to extinction” so you could make your point. You had to misquote me to do this.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
What part of
did you miss?
Humans didn’t go extinct, not because we’re altruistic, but because we’re self-interested. The post-WWII peace period (again, very relative), the UN, the rules-based-order, nuclear non-proliferation; there’s about four reasons why we didn’t go extinct in just the last century, and every single one of those reasons only happened because of nations engaging due to self-interest.
It’s also too early to claim humans haven’t wiped ourselves out yet, because so far it’s looking like nothing is going to be done to stop climate change or AI from leading to our extinction, unless the oligarch-class decides it’s in their self-interest to do something to stop it; or, ideally, concerned citizens acting in self-interest finally convince their political representative (who are also, by the way, acting in self-interest) to impose and enforce regulations to put a halt to that destruction.
Humans didn’t survive the past several millennia since the dawn of settled civilizations because of altruism. All along the way, civilizations have been conquering, overthrowing, dominating, colonizing, and enslaving each other. They keep the local people alive (when they do) only out of self-interest, because slaves and serfs are more valuable to them than corpses.
Now, before you misattributed evil inclinations to me, I’m not saying there’s anything morally right or good or just about that. But no honest reading of history will tell you anything to the contrary.
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 5 days ago
If the natural instinct of human fucking beings was to just murder and cheat each other we would never have formed society to get into wars in the first fucking place. It takes trust and mutual aid to build society. I dont need to read your madman eugenics scrawlings about the finality of evil to disprove this. The world we live in literally would not even exist in the capacity it does if human society was built on deception instead of trust. This is factually why it is falling about now.