Though I mostly agree with you, sometimes I feel human nature is just ugly.
This is not true. Humans are created by the material conditions they find themselves in. “Human nature” when in an abundant environment is very different, we can see this among remaining hunter gatherer tribes like the Hadza (watch/read the whole thread).
Living in capitalism is what makes people the way you see them. Competition for resources with your fellow workers and an endless toil for the benefit of someone else enforced by the threat of homelessness and death if you don’t take part.
Being an asshole under capitalism is as natural as coughing is in a smoke filled burning building. If you don’t know anything different you can’t see that to constantly cough is not the natural way of human beings. When you take people and put them in different material conditions you get a completely different outcome.
The biggest issue with our environment that drives these problems is that human brains can only reliably grok a few hundred other humans as being people. Beyond that, to a greater or lesser degree, anyone else just feels like an object (which is why we feel upset when people we know die but the statistics of how many people die each day globally don’t have a similar effect.)
Some of us cope better than others but fundamentally any environment that requires humans to be reliant on interacting with over a few hundred other people will lead to people treating each other as objects.
It’s why conservative people often feel it would be inconceivable to mistreat someone they personally know but will casually do profoundly cruel things to people they don’t. If you view their actions towards people outside of their sphere of personhood through the lense of what is and isn’t an appropriate way to treat an object rather than a person they often seem perfectly naturally.
I know the research you’re talking about here but don’t think it should be viewed as something that makes people incapable of empathy to those outside their core group. It makes it harder, but that hasn’t stopped entire nations of people moving hard left towards extreme vocal empathy among one another as the working class. Unity, solidarity and love for one another is demonstrably possible among very large numbers it just requires the right set of prerequisites to achieve, these prerequisites are what socialists should be working towards ticking off in order to set the stage for a wider revolutionary movement.
Nah. Some people have the capacity to have a wider net than others. Some people have the capacity to intellectually overcome the limitations of how we naturally are. Some people put sufficient effort into fulfilling that potential. We all should each do our best to do so.
Doesn’t change that even those of us who are especially good at it are still only good at it for a human. We are all terrible at it and it is fundamentally cruel to try to force everyone to live in a society that requires a level of empathic ability that is profoundly beyond what humans are evolved to be able to handle. It’s like expecting everyone on Earth to be able to lift 5 tonnes or outcalculate a supercomputer in their head. It’s a foolish and unreasonable thing to hang the success of society off people’s ability to do.
Aigh…let’s say you in fact can blame greed and capitalism alone.
Haven’t we all agreed that extremes are unessential?? It’s capitalism’s fault, it’s comunism fault…world isn’t white and black it’s grey.
It depends where you are and what it depends how you use it…fuck sake reality is way too complex for you to do these types of statement man.
If we are going to guess then mine is we need something more in the middle…
You make a statement about complexity but you’re not actually saying anything. This is all wishy washy.
There is no middle between “the workers hold power” and “the bourgeoisie should hold power”. There is no middle between “private property should exist” and “private property should not exist”. There is no middle between “profit should be the driving force of development” and “the human development index should be the driving force of development”.
Your wishy washy “we need a middle” is nonsense if you can not put into words what that fundamentally means in terms of actual functioning policy and societal design. Who holds power is THE essential question here. Capitalist society functions as a dictatorship-of-the-bourgeoisie. Socialists want the opposite, a dictatorship-of-the-proletariat. Flipping the power on its head and putting the workers in charge of the outcomes instead of the bourgeoisie.
If you can not fundamentally describe in absolute terminology what you think society needs to do in order to change the current situation then all you are doing in your opposition to people who do want change is supporting keeping it the way it currently is. That puts you on the side of the climate death cult driving us towards the inevitable end.
Oh yes I’m the one who simplified a complex problem… literally said it’s more complex then that. That’s it, is it simple enough for you to understand now?mm
Dude: “tErhe aRE nO MIdDLe tHeRM”
Is the most simplistic shit ever, just quoting slogans and not actually recognizing the complexity of everything.
You are very smart
