_
I think that humanity needs to re-balance, and become more inline with nature again.
Science and technology are guiding nature/Us, not nature… it is not a good idea/wise, to become dependent on them, or we will lose what made/makes/will continue to make Us, human.
Yes, exactly.
Self-sustaining eco-cities and towns, running on clean energy…
I can see it all now. [wafts extended hand through the air]
Existing: openaccessgovernment.org/to … rld/53998/
Under development: borgenproject.org/eco-cities-in … countries/
Oh yes they have a very “sustainable” future already planned out for you. Just you wait. I’m sure you’ll just love it. 
Ones, sans all that ‘agenda’ input… obviously.
It’s all good and well to imagine upward human evolution, however one thinker comes to mind:Malthus may become relevant again. Some say overpopulation is an exaggerated phenomenon, look how the numbers have become staggering from ancient polis of a few hundred thousand to megapolis counting tens of millions, the world population stunning billions. Add the miracle of medical science and even if Elan Musk denies it, technology is putting workers out of jobs, and major industrial nations can be appraised by their levels of poverty, homelessness and expanding social inequity.
The trend was supposed to go with third world countries upping standards of living to match modern western industrial models, but the opposite appears to be taking place/ the slippage of the West falling to come close to the Spenglarian trend , as the decline predicted. Looking more like third world countries as never before.
Then how would it come to be, that politics leading social welfare through economic opportunity, when those opportunities do not bare out the facts?
Talk about ethics, when morality and violence knows little to none about the rules of behavior as they should apply to what really is going on across the board in all levels of society,
Theories based on hypotheticals are simply an inaccurate predictors of real life, as day to day unexpected events shorten planning on an accelerated pace, preventing appropriately longer range planning to account for the rate that population appears to
Increase.
I agree with Dan when he writes that ethics is about “Making the self and the other feel joy and positive emotion.”
And I definitely agree with those who point out that the human species needs to work to achieve a better balance with nature. I am not sure that the size of the population is the cause of our problems; I would argue that it is our lack of education, or miseducation, as to the basics of Ethics is the problem; and the failure to make the field more precise and exact, and well-presented. We need to reduce the vagueness and get straight to the point that we are to create value in our interactions with others. They then, if educated well, will have an attitude of joy and gratitude, etc.
In other words, they will know “which way is up.” They will know their values. See for details the References below; read through them, and give us your comments on them.
Our tendency to stereotype one another is another way of being unethical. It is also known as “prejudice.” Those who feel prejudice are fearful of diversity. That is an empirical fact. Here is a relevant quote [published in the Edmonton Journal, Toronto, Canada] on that ethical mistake, in an article praising diversity written by Irshadd Manji. The article is entitled “Don’t Label Me!”
"Labeling drains diversity of its unifying potential. ‘Out of many, one’ (e pluribus unum) is the symbol of The United States of America …a unity out of diversity. " ----------------------------Irshad Manji
In that article, a beautifully-written letter to her daughter, she is affirming that diversity is valuable; it has positive value for us. It does NOT have to divide us; instead it can unify us!!
It seems to me that she is affirming in her words, the brilliant moral insight of Dr. Martin King, in his “I have a Dream” speech, that we are to judge individuals by their tcharacter, not by their skin color.
So a good moral principle to add to your repertoire is: When encountering another individual, in deciding whether one is confronting a good person or a bad person, go by the color of one’s character not by the color of one’s skin!!!
Your comments?
To understand the potentials for the net stage of evolution on must understand the forces that govern selection.
For this you must ask what is it that we now do that causes people to fail or succeed in the task of reproductive success. Reproductive success is any practice which leads to the success of viable progeny.
It is this and only this consideration: whatever is distinctive about those that achieve reproductive success will be preserved in the gene pool, and that which leads to the failure of reproductive success will be removed.
This is the stage upon which we all walk. There may be no “stage” in the terms understood by the thread title since such changes are very small and gradual.
Since there is little pressure upon our survival and reproductive success it is highly unlikely that humans will achieve any significant change, and we are much the same species as we were 100 thousand years ago.
The advent of culture and civilisation has also made us immune to the daily forces of nature. We have adopted an extra-somatic means of change and evolution which means that there is no biological selection.
Stereotypes and prejudices exist because they are useful for survival. They reflect real conditions in reality you should probably pay attention to. God/evolution gave us instincts and intuition, so use it.
Yes of course you should also be smart enough to realize that not every member of a group will conform to stereotypes about that group. Judge individuals, but don’t ignore your intuitions and instincts either, they were crafted in eons of natural selection and they exist for a reason. The evolutionary crucible of group survival is a real bitch.
Pretending all prejudice and stereotyping is bad/wrong is WAY stupider and WAY worse than accepting that some (not all) of it is quite justified and accurate.
HumAnIze tells us that the human species does not evolve, but that technologies evolve. I’d like to know who it is that produces this advanced technology. …whether it is a better wireless bra; or a windowpane that captures energy from the sunlight and converts it into electricity for us to use; or whether it is a new improved method of designing, and imparting knowledge …say, Open Source AI.
Who innovates, who invents, who creates? Human beings do that.
This is one way they evolve.
He also tells us that stereotyping and being prejudiced are beneficial and positive. Would a shift in his thinking be a kind of evolution?
HumAnIze wrote
Agree.
youtube.com/watch?v=Qdg4uQW8Dlg
Oct 12, 2022
International Climate Science Coalition Executive Director Tom Harris discusses how he was once a climate alarmist but now sees it as a scam
I disagree; and rely on genuine climate scientists, not quacks who get on so-called news shows that are really propaganda outlets of stupid billionaires who have some dysfunctional agenda. See credentials for one ofmy sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann
See some real evidence presented, instead of quackery:
bing.com/search?q=writings+ … o=Moderate
Check out the evidence for yourself, as to what humans are doing to the planet Earth! We will pay for our neglect, and for our spewing out of CO2 gas (the Greenhouse Effect) and for the damage to the quality-of-life already done …and what yet might be done.
How shameful that a major power company in Alabama relies only on coal for its power. Lately we witness a number of formerly relatively-rare but now simultaneous climate events, such as severe hurricanes, sudden flooding, polar cold ['polar vortices] in the USA, along with the accelerated melting of glaciers in Greenland and in Glacier National Park in Montana, the diverting of The Gulf Stream, the release of Methane from our oceans, etc., etc. Wake up!!
These events are very expensive. We are paying now. Great waste of true wealth that could do a lot of good if spent elsewhere. The next stage of human evolution will be to have more-enlightened, more-ethical people. And more of them.
I have no memory of saying that.
Um, yeah. I know. Like… ok and?
If you mean that humans directly change their environments to be more suited to their own needs and preferences, then yes of course. I’ve said that here before. If you want to call that a form of evolution, ok. It’s not really evolution in the strict sense, but I don’t see a problem with including the term as long as we maintain the distinction between evolution proper (natural selection, adaptation and random mutation) and this aspect of evolution you raise regarding how humans are capable of directly changing their own environments rather than merely adapting to them or not.
I don’t remember saying it that way. Are you being deliberately dense or disingenuous? Just scroll up and read what I already wrote so I don’t need to repeat it.
No idea what you mean. What shift in thinking, and how would that be “a kind of evolution”?
Please try to be more clear and precise in your meanings.
HumAnlize said: “be more clear and precise in your meanings.”
I agree with that. It applies to everyone - especially to anyone who writes here at a Forum on Philosophy.
And while we at it, let’s not claim that ‘some stereotyping is justified. and that (even some) prejudice is okay, or appropriate.’
If those who believe that would shift their thinking over to an opposite view, they would find that life goes better for all …and thus for they themselves. They would become more ethical.
Prejudice is defined as taking one attribute, one feature, of a person and then generalizing from there to an entire group who may possess tthat attribute.
Suggestion: Do read this, and then we’ll [have a good basis with which to] continue thee dialogue. wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadeharvey/ … Course.pdf
Some stereotyping is justified, and some prejudice is ok.
What are you, some kind of oddball social justice warrior? I thought this was a philosophy forum.
Literally no idea what this is supposed to mean, sorry.
False. You have it backwards.
Prejudice is defined as recognizing the FACT that a certain group of people are statistically more likely in reality to act in certain ways, and therefore it makes logical sense to increase the expected likeliness that a random member of that group would manifest those same type of actions/behaviors/etc. more so when compared to someone not in that group or compared to a random member of the population at large.
It doesn’t mean you stop judging people as individuals. It simply means you recognize the basic fact that, for example black people are more likely to commit violent crime compared to non-black people. This is just true, you can cry about it all you want but facts are facts. So it makes sense to keep this in mind as a potential evaluation metric for when you meet black people, not saying you will ASSUME every black person is going to commit violent crime of course.
And when you are walking down a dark street at night and you see a black man walking toward you, if you use your prejudice to cross the street to where there are white people walking, you just statistically decreased your likelihood of being violently attacked or robbed or assaulted. Simple fact. Or like if you have a choice to live in a majority black neighborhood or a majority white neighborhood. This type of basic pattern recognition when applied over many iterations is going to yield positive results in your life, just like your failure to recognize and respect these basic patterns will, over time and over many iterations, yield negative results in your life.
You are really arguing against a complete straw man here, as every SJW does. Their own position is so utterly black and white that they expect everyone else’s positions to be like that too. Smh.
No.
This is a philosophy site. I am a philosopher.
I stand by my definition of “prejudice.”
I do NOT have it backwards. The previous writer while attempting to give reasons for his position actually succeeds in displaying prejudice. He is wrong, both factually and morally. He says we are not to judge individuals; yet that is exactly what he is doing with that scenario where a person who has a dark skin, or seems to, is walking down the street towards him. To assume that party will commit violence no matter how you respond to his presence, or greet him as a brother, is an example of prejudice – and as W. S. Gilbert would write: “…a good one too!”
And, yes, I do care about social justice. And, no, I am not a warrior. I am a campaigner, a Conscientious Objector who did time for it I find in my research to develop a systematic framework for ethics, the theory and the practice, that nonviolent direct action is confirmed as the best policy that will result in the least cost of human life. Hence it confirms what I may know about Ethics.
That young whipersnapper who thinks he knows it all, and who too-rapidly jumps to conclusions, ought to judge others by the color of their character, not by the color of their skin.
Poor, desperate, people are perhaps more-likely to take to a life of crime, which includes readiness to commit violence, than others are. That is a truth.
There are good characters and there are bad characters among those of all shdes of skin clolor, and all subcultures.
So, live and learn 
You are free to ignore all facts about reality that actually in truth do lead to the existence of prejudices and things like racial bias. Your own ignorance will simply come at your own expense, but like they say most people don’t learn except through pain. Basically, most people don’t learn at all unless it becomes necessary… and even then they still have a hard time with it.
Rather than “ignoring the facts,” I am questioning the so-called “facts” as being true and reliable. I am skeptical that the source of those “facts” is unbiased.
I lived for a while in Harlem, N.Y., where 125th Street intersects with 5th Ave. - next to Mt. Morris Park. My neighbors were friendly and considerate, civilized and civil. It was a gang of white-skinned hold-up artists who committed a crime in a black nightclub 15-minutes away from where I lived. Going by my experience those with darker skin were folks of good character, and many of the pale ones who had North-European ancestry -as did I - had morally/ethically questionable conduct.
Any sentence that begins with “blacks are …” is already liable to be a prejudicial remark. It is highly-likely to be a gross over-generalization.
…And when someone refers to my ignorance, could it well be a case of ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ – or what the French refer to as the “tu quoque” fallacy. fallacy., Yes, HumAnlyze, I am ignorant, and maybe you are also.
[Trmpsters, thogh, cannot admit to it.] Isn’t that true?
And is that kind of ‘getting personal’ that you displayed what a consensus of the members here would refer to as correct philosophical procedure?
Do I need to pull out FBI crime data to show you the facts about race and violent crime?
The fact that some white people are violent criminals and some black people are nice non-criminals doesn’t change or refute anything I already said. This is a non-sequitur.
You don’t seem to know how statistics work.
Also, I never said “black are violent” or anything like that. I never said black people are better or worse, moral or immoral good or bad or anything like that. I am simply talking about statistics. It is a FACT that black people in America are the most violent racial group BY FAR compared to any other racial group. You can discuss about the reasons for this all you want, that’s fine. But don’t ignore the facts.
I wish I had an idea wtf you’re talking about, but I don’t. Try making sense please.
No idea what you are talking about. Is English your second language?