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Author Topic:   Is The World Getting Better Or Worse?
Percy
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Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(6)
Message 12 of 762 (838408)
08-21-2018 8:58 AM


A Couple Clarifications
My comment that "we're still the violent, brutish thugs we were 200,000 years ago" was in the context of evolution. We are not improving as a species regarding qualities like kindness, generosity, peacefulness, empathy, etc. To whatever degree we as a species possessed those qualities, and their opposites, 200,000 years ago we still possess them to the same degree today. Evolution doesn't work that fast.
Any improvements that we as a species appear to have demonstrated are actually societal and cultural improvements that result from increasing wealth. The more wealthy a society, the more generous it can afford to be. When that wealth dissipates then the positive qualities of the society and culture also drop away. We've seen this in all the hotspots around the world, from Somalia to Sudan to Gaza to the Boko Haram to ISIS to the Taliban.
As climate change and diminishing resources rob us of our wealth they will also rob us of the trappings of civilization. We see it already in the rise of right wing influences in the western world that encourages a culture of "I've got mine, I'm keeping it, I'm not sharing it, you're not like me, you keep away." The irony is that many of the people displaying such attitudes don't actually have much. They're much more in need of a culture of sharing and mutual support and working together across our differences toward common goals than those who do support such policies.
Not done but gotta go.
--Percy

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 Message 14 by Diomedes, posted 08-21-2018 9:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied
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 Message 18 by Percy, posted 08-21-2018 4:52 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 38 by caffeine, posted 08-28-2018 3:02 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 18 of 762 (838448)
08-21-2018 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Percy
08-21-2018 8:58 AM


Re: A Couple Clarifications
Percy writes:
Not done but gotta go.
Continuing now...
The western world is to the point now where it can afford to implement a health and social safety net (more so in other parts of the western world than in the United States), but we do this not because of some enlightenment that has come upon our species but because we can afford to believe that our obligations to our fellow man include these things. In earlier times when we couldn't afford them then we didn't believe our obligations included them.
What happens should our prosperity diminish to the point where we can no longer afford these things? The answer is both obvious and inevitable: they will go away. A country cannot pay for what it cannot afford. It's already happening here in the United States. Welfare, radically transformed under Bill Clinton, is a shadow of its former self. The retirement age for Social Security has already crept up to 66 and will continue to creep up. It is already part of law that Social Security benefits will shrink to 75% around 2034 if the trust fund becomes depleted as expected. The Trump administration wants to reduce Medicare benefits.
Some will argue that the United States is richer than ever and that this diminishment of benefits is being driven by increasing selfishness. But the truth is that the US is both richer than ever and becoming increasingly poor. These are both happening because of wealth inequality. Wealth is concentrated among a very few who are growing increasingly wealthy. The rest of the country is becoming increasingly poor and hence is becoming increasingly against redistribution programs that they see as taking their money and giving it to someone else. There is some incongruity and illogic involved in these feelings, but I won't get into that now.
While the US provides an example of the political effects of decreasing wealth, it isn't due to climate change or diminishing natural resources. The people of the US are doing it to themselves through financial and tax legislation that overly benefits the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. How did this happen? Some trace it back to the Reagan administration, and while I'm not so sure myself that's a discussion for a different thread.
The important point is that diminishing wealth causes people to adopt attitudes of a decreasing sense of obligation toward their fellow man, and climate change is going to make us poorer. It's already starting as waters creep inland along coastlines worldwide, including the US. This is from today's Washington Post:
She thought she’d sell her home for nearly $1 million. Thanks to rising sea levels, she’s tearing it down instead.
Elizabeth Boineau is one of many homeowners on the front lines of society’s confrontation with climate change, living in houses where rising sea levels have worsened flooding not just in extreme events like hurricanes, but also heavy rains and even high tides. The increase is undermining the value of coastal properties, according to three studies.
By John Tibbetts and Chris Mooney
I could take the attitude that, hey, it won't affect me, I'm 400 feet above sea level, but that would be wrong. While I won't experience the devastating loss of people along the coasts I'll still experience the loss because as my country becomes poorer then I'll become poorer, we'll all become poorer. Our crops will suffer, fishing banks will continue to diminish, weather will become more severe, fires will become more common. Then there's diminishing natural resources. Water will become more scarce, pollution of our air and water will increase, oil and gas will become more scarce.
Will our technology save us? For climate change it's already too late. Politically the world isn't equipped to unite to fight a scourge whose effects are gradual and whose worst consequences are decades in the future. We've frittered away too much time, so it doesn't matter what technology is able to achieve, climate change is going to happen anyway. By the end of the century average global temperature will be several degrees higher (I believe current projections of an increase of only a degree or two are low).
But will technology enable us to adapt to our transformed world? Pardon my pessimism, but given that year after year we can't even control wildfires in the west, and we'll certainly never be able to control hurricanes and tornados and droughts and floods and rising seas, I doubt it.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Percy, posted 08-21-2018 8:58 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 50 of 762 (839166)
09-04-2018 1:10 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by caffeine
08-28-2018 3:02 PM


Re: A Couple Clarifications
caffeine writes:
My comment that "we're still the violent, brutish thugs we were 200,000 years ago" was in the context of evolution. We are not improving as a species regarding qualities like kindness, generosity, peacefulness, empathy, etc. To whatever degree we as a species possessed those qualities, and their opposites, 200,000 years ago we still possess them to the same degree today. Evolution doesn't work that fast.
I'm not so sure I agree with this. 200,000 years is certainly enough time for noticeable evolutionary change.
Oh, most certainly you are correct, 200,000 years is more than enough time to produce significant evolutionary change, depending upon generation time and adaptational pressures. I didn't express myself clearly enough.
200,000 years ago is just the approximate starting point of our species where I think we can agree that long before modern societies life was "nasty, brutish and short," to quote Hobbes. But over the past 200,000 years our species has demonstrated these qualities again and again. Any observed improvements are due to society moderating their expression, not to evolution gradually eliminating them. Proof is ISIS, the Taliban, the Khmer Rouge, Serbian atrocities against Croatia, etc.
These qualities emerge again and again when societal oversight breaks down. Evolution has not eliminated these qualities, nor is there even any indication of their moderation. ISIS lined up thousands next to trenches and shot them. Serbians lined up thousands next to trenches and shot them. The Khmer Rouge lined up thousands next to trenches and shot them. The Nazis lined up thousands next to trenches and shot them. In America whites lynched blacks with impunity well up into the 20th century. Racist and/or nationalist groups are springing up world-wide. Milgram's studies of obedience are object lessons for how cruelty can be transmitted throughout a group, and our own Congress's complicity in authoritarian provocations against our way of life also shows this (racial discrimination, family separation, etc.). I see no evidence of evolutionary progress.
So with these qualities being demonstrated so recently, not only could evolution not have played a role in their moderation, there is not even any indication that they've moderated. When societies crumble then violence and chaos and cruelty quickly emerge.
It seems very unlikely to me that the degree to which we possess traits like generosity, kindness, empathy etc has remained unchanged since the Pleistocene.
If such traits have evolved meaningly over the past 10,000 years, then doesn't it seem that entire regions descending into violent cruelty reminiscent of 10,000 years ago should not happen?
My own premise is that we are as a species behaviorally little different than we were 200,000 years ago. Remove the societal veneer and "nasty, brutish" behavior soon appears.
There's a cute little Twilight Zone episode called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street about how easily a society can descend into violence and chaos. Worth watching.
--Percy

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 Message 38 by caffeine, posted 08-28-2018 3:02 PM caffeine has not replied

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 Message 51 by Phat, posted 09-04-2018 1:43 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 53 of 762 (839169)
09-04-2018 4:06 PM
Reply to: Message 51 by Phat
09-04-2018 1:43 PM


Re: A Couple Clarifications
Phat writes:
I agree that the social veneer is kept in place through improved standards of living.
One counterpoint that can be thrown at the idea that a society is only as kind as it can afford to be is to ask why the Depression didn't create a less compassionate country. I think the answer lies in government's approach to the problem when under the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt it instituted social security and public works programs to improve employment. Hoover Dam, built by private companies with public funding, was a big Depression era project. I think the government's compassionate attitude toward the people had an outsize influence on the country's attitude in general.
Parenthetically, it was another Democratic administration, this time under Lyndon Johnson, that made Medicare universally available.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 51 by Phat, posted 09-04-2018 1:43 PM Phat has replied

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