The troublesome minority

[ChimneySweep]

Every so often on this board (and in countless other places) people call for humans to “take down their barriers” and “ditch their façades” and to “reach out to one another” and “embrace one another”. Rather than only loving those around them, let every person love every other person! Let’s all share all our problems and our weaknesses! Let’s coöperate as never before, as one!

Why don’t we behave like this? It’s mainly because it’s an evolutionarily unstable strategy from the individual standpoint, because if everyone was “nice” to everyone else, then “mutants” would gradually start appearing who wouldn’t be, and whose exploitation of the “suckers” would lead to them being more successful than the rest. (I won’t go into this argument in too much detail.)

My point is this: in any situation, the reason the “optimal” behaviour doesn’t arise is because there’s always that irritating minority of troublemakers, idiots, or whatever else they may be, who would ruin it.

This state of affairs is depressing for two reasons. One: the obvious fact that we’re living in a sub-optimal world. Two: because rather than these being errors that can be corrected, they’re inherent in the way the universe works. Think ESS. Think competition for finite resources.

We must accept that “problematic individuals” are unavoidable in any society or situation. It’s the yang in the yin.

[Joker]

I would rather have everyone tear down all barriers and facades only for people to tear each other apart afterwards as nature has intended.

( We are a natural predatorial species after all.)

I want a reality where anything and everything is possible without having to be approved by someone elses moral superstitions.

In a way I want to destroy all that is embraced as being sacred.

[Darx]

Okay…sidestepping Joker’s genocidal anomie, I respond to your post, Sweep.

The fluffy New Age-hippie-comedy-Christian premise that you deconstruct fails because it is ahistorical. Humanity is a species designed to overcome its animal-evolutionary conditions by discovering new physical principles of art and science, or mind and matter, that can be transmitted and assimilated into social practice thus altering “human nature” as if through a genetic change in the structure of the brain. Any comparison between refined, educated people and coarse, uneducated people gives a fair approximation of the degree of difference that true Ideas are capable of working.

“Let’s love (and lay) each other!” is a parody version of Matthew 22:39 “And a second [commandment] is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself”. It fails, again, because it is ahistorical, it has no understanding of the past, of the great ideas, and, therefore, can have no guide into the future. But, as a fundamental pillar of classical humanist civilisation’s mission to remake the world in accordance with higher truth, it is certainly approachable. That additional difficulties will present themselves along the way avers not to the invalidity of our progress.

In an advanced society, civilising ideas become so widespread, and inextricably associated with progress, question, debate, and crisis, that it becomes a self-reinforcing network that serves to immunise the population against the baser moral errors. That individual cases may vary is of no consequence; they will inevitably be detected and dealt with in a reasonable fashion before they can destroy the social fabric.

Games Theory is fun enough, but only applies to human beings to the degree that they are not acting on the level of ideas, instead acting like animals. Study Games Theory in order to get a sense of the animalistic dynamics at work in the species, but don’t jump from that to the hoax of “finite resources” or “permanent human nature.” There is always a better way.

Darx

[ChimneySweep]

@Darx

Humanity is a species designed to overcome its animal-evolutionary conditions by discovering new physical principles of art and science, or mind and matter, that can be transmitted and assimilated into social practice thus altering “human nature” as if through a genetic change in the structure of the brain. Any comparison between refined, educated people and coarse, uneducated people gives a fair approximation of the degree of difference that true Ideas are capable of working.

You think art and science have changed human nature? I disagree. Here’s a crude sketch of how I see it:

Men are sex mad. A man invents a camera. Do men become less interested in sex and increasingly interested in cameras and the art of photography? Not really - rather, they takes photos of each other having sex!

Technology doesn’t change men - men use technology to enhance what they were doing anyway.

In an advanced society, civilising ideas become so widespread, and inextricably associated with progress, question, debate, and crisis, that it becomes a self-reinforcing network that serves to immunise the population against the baser moral errors. That individual cases may vary is of no consequence; they will inevitably be detected and dealt with in a reasonable fashion before they can destroy the social fabric.

The ideas you’re referring to are memes which, despite being strong, require a certain foundation to persevere. For example, if standards slip in primary education, then the next generation will be less morally worthy than the previous, because lots of their values are absorbed at an early age. The rise of civilisation is not a monotonically increasing function! (Example: the fall of Rome and the dark age that followed.)

Games Theory is fun enough, but only applies to human beings to the degree that they are not acting on the level of ideas, instead acting like animals. Study Games Theory in order to get a sense of the animalistic dynamics at work in the species, but don’t jump from that to the hoax of “finite resources” or “permanent human nature.” There is always a better way.

But we are animals

And as a poet said, men are guided more by instinct than reason.

[SuperCulture]

@ChimneySweep

Every so often on this board (and in countless other places) people call for humans to “take down their barriers” and “ditch their façades” and to “reach out to one another” and “embrace one another”. Rather than only loving those around them, let every person love every other person! Let’s all share all our problems and our weaknesses! Let’s coöperate as never before, as one!

Such is possible for small groups of people who share an advanced understanding of their own ego and the souce of their own feral instints.

The truth is, it’s the nervous system and psychological reward model, there are different classes of human beings who are rewared for engaging in behaviours that are increasingly animalistic and feral, because they’ve inherited that cognitive-reward model from their ancestors which belonged to more barbarous times…

So we basically are the descendants of vicious immoral barbarians… hence our world.

It would require something like Religion and dedication to go against one’s own instincts and “untrain” your mind and nervous systems repulsiveness to things that cause your hatred/instincts/etc to flare up by repeated exposure to your worst fears/hates/extremes over many years

Of course people would cry “abuse” or “torture” or some other claptrap because they are ignorant and lower down on the cognitive food chain.

The truth is, as plato said… the sane men and women in this world are EXCEEDINGLY rare.

[Darx]

Chimney,

What I confront with you is a case of demoralisation. The hoax that has been perpetrated against you has in effect robbed you of your self-identity as a human being, and, thus, paved the way for your manipulation by propaganda experts working for the ruling oligarchy. By eradicating from your purview the idea of ideas, they have cut you off from any intelligible conception of human progress. Instead, you are placed inside a kind of psychic rat maze or dungeon where the history of ideas is inaccessible, and all events are inexplicable eruptions out of the chaotic well of “the way things are.” This can only lead to pessimism about the human condition and the potential for genuine advancement of political freedom.

Your broaching the subject of pornography is a clear indication of your mental bias in this regard, typical of the times, and one that I wish to stress is not the real you, but is a personality you have been encouraged to develop as a concealment of your real self, which languishes in despair somewhere deep within you. There is a tendency to feel an emotional upsurge at confronting such declarations, triggering smirking facial muscles and reactionary words, of course, but this is part of the mask, attempting to wash away problematic considerations rather than reflecting on them. Push past that to the idea being conveyed, here.

The great art, the classical art, from composers, poets, authors, playwrights, sculptors, and the like, always exists to convey what Schiller referred to as “profound conceptions respecting man and nature.” To experience classical art in a receptive manner, and to assimilate it into oneself, is to gain knowledge about one’s own mental processes and, thus, think more clearly and more humanly. The audience members leave the superior play better people than they were going in, because they know more of themselves and their world, and how to overcome problems that heretofore seemed intractable and thus reason for pessimism.

Mankind is unique among the species in his faculty of cognition, allowing him to discover universal physical principles (principles of truth, of natural law) as regards both the mind, called art, or the material world, called science, which allow him to transform his mode of production, including his socialisation. We may degrade into acting like animals, out of ignorance of the higher ideas, but this is not our foredoomed nature in the way that a dolphin or a beetle has an immutable genetic nature.

Ideas are key, genuine beautiful Ideas. Without ideas, we have a world much like the one you and I find ourselves living in, filled with ignorant people whose ignorance generates insane conceptions of existence, which in turn yields stupid actions that perpetuate the degradation and push the society toward disaster. With ideas, we have the American Revolution and kindred humanist struggles to overthrow oligarchy and establish productive and human societies based on ideas rather than arbitrary fantasy.

I recommend starting with this article on Schiller, to get a better sense of what an aesthetical education entails.

Why Are We Still Barbarians?

Darx

[ChimneySweep]

@SuperCulture

Such is possible for small groups of people who share an advanced understanding of their own ego and the souce of their own feral instints.

Good reply, particularly this part, which I very much agree with.

Darx: It’s not often I get a post like directed at me! The last time I was told how I was being extensively manipulated was by David Icke (via youtube)

I can see how science and technology improve objectively, but not mankind itself. My knowledge that we moderns are physiologically (brain included) the same as stone age people prevents me from accepting your ideas!

[Murex]

@ChimneySweep

Every so often on this board (and in countless other places) people call for humans to “take down their barriers” and “ditch their façades” and to “reach out to one another” and “embrace one another”. Rather than only loving those around them, let every person love every other person! Let’s all share all our problems and our weaknesses! Let’s coöperate as never before, as one!

Why don’t we behave like this?

Because we will all die of vd.

[Darx]

Darx:I can see how science and technology improve objectively, but not mankind itself. My knowledge that we moderns are physiologically (brain included) the same as stone age people prevents me from accepting your ideas!

That’s like saying Og the Cro-Magnon’s muscles and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscles are the same. Likewise David Icke’s versus create fundamental changes in the individual. Whether this is genetically heritable is beside the point.

Conditioning is exactly what has brought you to your conclusion and dismissal of what I have written. Unfortunately, this conditioning is pandemic, so that even people on a forum such as this almost always end up debating irrelevancies with no truthful moral framework to work from, just whimsy. So, is philosophy amputated from society and pickled in a jar.

Darx