[spinestein]

Excellent post and very well said.


Especially this:

[Totalitarianism is not caused by a desire to be godlike or some innate human opposition to god. It is caused by fools without complex or far-reaching foresight, acting on the most base, the most monkeyish of human instincts, in the ignorant belief that the trinkets and fast-fleeting neurotransmitter rushes acquired with such behavior will somehow grant them something real and non-fleeting.]





We all have a "me and mine" drive inside our primate brains which we've inherited from our most distant ancestors, and a more science-based and less mystic-based understanding of our own behavior and biology would better serve humanity.

[microgood]

We all have a "me and mine" drive inside our primate brains which we've inherited from our most distant ancestors, and a more science-based and less mystic-based understanding of our own behavior and biology would better serve humanity.

In what way? Are you saying if a scientist comes up with a theory about why humans behave certain ways that this will somehow change our behavior?

What if people do not accept that point of view (another aspect of human behavior)?

This is the reason all ideas of morality and ethics have always been looked at in a univeral and higher power point of view. Because any point of view attributible to man or a group of men will never be accepted. That is why we have had so many wars and so much death. That is why a belief in inalienable rights granted to us by our Creator gives of freedom from other men. No other formula does.

Even now many in America want to take away these rights. What has made it harder are the fact the rights are not granted by men, and cannot be taken away by men. And if they are taken away, the only solution becomes the establishment of a new government and reinstitution of those rights given us by our Creator.

We can learn to live with others and maximum happiness given our nature, but the blood of all the wars we have had since the beginning of our time should have taught us we cannot change our basic nature. If we fail to heed that lesson, we will continue to fight and die for the foreseeable future while someones view of ethics and morality is imposed on people and then deposed over and over.

The last 1000 years of Western Civilization has driven us to a belief in inalienable rights granted by our Creator and defended by government. This philosophy has created the greatest and most just civilization in the history of the world. Why argue with success?

[illinoissmith]

"We all have a "me and mine" drive inside our primate brains which we've inherited from our most distant ancestors, and a more science-based and less mystic-based understanding of our own behavior and biology would better serve humanity."

I mostly agree, but with two caveats:


First, socialist ideology is rampant in the academy. Some of what is coming out of the academy posed as a scientific take on human nature, is in fact very biased in favor of collectivism, and very biased against anything that suggests the impossibility of socialist utopia. (Although, the founder of much of this research, E.O. Wilson who wrote _Sociobiology_ in the '70s, got communists dumping buckets of water on him, etc., for his trouble.)

Insofar as efforts to confront this problem aim at evolution in general, they are wasted, because there are very good reasons serious scholars believe that evolution exists and formed life. Efforts should instead be aimed at the those flaws in thinking and argument that cause a scholar to use evolutionary theory to bolster socialism.


Second, I don't think the "me and mine" drive is all bad. I think there is a lot of crass selfishness that is bad, but I also think that "me and mine" helps allow for a great deal of good: relative decentralization of power (divorce "me and mine" from, say, family structure, or the economy, and you have Hillary's fantasy), and helps provide encouragement for self-sufficency, hard work, and competition. Related, from Hesiod (through Wikipedia):

"So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature.

For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due.

But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night (Nyx), and the son of Cronus who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with [h]is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel."