These are selected quotes from John Gray in his book “Straw Dogs”
Then our own very TertiaryMindset.! here at ILP said this:
So what do the progressive idealists have to say at all of this?
Tell me why I should believe progressive idealism to be anything but the religious ramblings of the hysterical that I perceive it to be.
Maybe if I’m trying to control whether or not I grow webbed toes while living in a swamp then I’m shit out of luck, but if everyone agrees to vote on laws and things like that, then we can control at least the evolution of the legal system, (in at least a limited sense).
Its optimism based on the fact that progress has b een happening for thousands of years.
Well Darwin doesn’t teach that, infact Darwin knew nothing about genes and he stressed against random.
Accurate to say that theres too many factors envolved for a species to be able to say with confidence that it can control its fate. There could be a meteor or virus with our name on it. Or yours.
Well the fact is that humans have been doing that for thousands of years and all because of science and technology, you’d have to deny all of human history to say anything about it. Less war, less hunger, more cooperation etc etc etc. (still bad and it goes up and down but theres a progeressive trend)
we have been and each new bit of information demonstratably allows us more control.
Its not based on faith, theres progress everyday in medicine in technology, allowing people to live longer, survive the elements better, survive disease.
Thats nonsensical because evolution doesn’t happen by chance and evolutionary changes can and are part of conscious decision making and its absurd to suggest otherwise. Evolution happens as organisms adapt to environments if one organism makes 1 conscious better decision at survival and passes the genes on that helped it make that decision the gene spreads, those that have the gene thrive, thsoe that don’t die, soon its species typical. Thats how it worrrrrrrkkkkkks.
consciousness isn’t required, but conscious-choice making is a reflecction of the genes that produce it and thus subject to natural selection. Its ridiculous to say otherwise.
I think we can be cautiously optimistic because as a species we’ve been progressing in the ways that you claim we can’t since human history begun minus some fallbacks and black areas, overall as a general trend things are getting better and unless theres a nuclear holocaust theres no reason to say otherwise. (no one is saying we’ll end up in an eden, but certainly, theres lots of progress to be made)
As it already has been.
It isn’t religious ramblings. for it to be religious it would need the criteria of religion like diety, ritual etc etc. apples and oranges are both ideas but different fruit. Progressivism is an idea that has evolved that may help you and humans collectively or hurt us. It obviously has the potential of both.