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"Humans Are Bastards"
2011-06-14 11:25:35
edited 2011-06-14 11:25:35 in General
Because you never know what you might see.
If this is true, why do you give a shit what horrible things other people do to one another?
Comments
(Yes.)
But it's not the OP that bugs me, it's the Fridge Logic that griping about how humans are apparently bastards induces.
^ I'm fond of Humans Are Flawed. Still a generalisation, but if interpreted to refer to the whole of the human race, it seems reasonably accurate, I think.
As such, as much as humans appear to be bastards.... it is more a case of their just being idiots.
Really... when you get a feel for how the average human mind operates and compare that to human ideals and perception of their own workings... well... the gulf between them is horrifically wide. The span of human ignorance and just plan cognitive vacuousness is frankly rather horrifying.
Ultimately, the only differences between this and them just plain being bastards are that there is no way to reason them out of it... and no point in blaming them for it.
Potential capacity... most commonly squandered in the most embarassing of ways.
But ultimately, if anything that is just nature's fault. It is just how the game works. We develop the freedom of multi-stage reasoning, of pattern-recognition and memory... We can learn, analyse and utilise so much more data than most other species...
And what does it get used for? Religious pissing contests, football riots, tabloid newspapers, and the ability to make all sorts of things in the form of giant penises.
All that potential for understanding, discovery and realisation... and yet just a slither of the population amounts to anything more than any other animal out there: a life of rutting, squabbling and barking at our own reflections.
Acknowledgement of one's flaws is a step towards betterment. Working around them is too.
But ultimately what it fails to address is that it is results that count. Intent means nothing in the end.
Flaws make it more difficult to achieve the right results. This is inevitable.
That warped aesop that everything is the fine the way it is, that humans are fine and shouldn't attempt to self-improve.... that is frankly a disgusting way of thinking. The only way to achieve humanity's ideals is through actions that any individual human unit would have a seriously hard time accepting. Humanity holds back out of fear, wanting the final outcome but unwilling (or even unable) to take the steps to realise it.
>All that potential for understanding, discovery and realisation... and yet just a slither of the population amounts to anything more than any other animal out there: a life of rutting, squabbling and barking at our own reflections.
I don't think this is true. People spend a lot of time doing dumb things, but we're still a bit more intelligent and complex than that.
As for the reason it bothers this one - moral implications aside, self-preservation. This one would rather not be abandoned to die or exploited for minute gain as an opportunity too good to pass presents itself. This one would rather not be trampled to calm other people's alarmed herd instincts. Which means that she cannot approve of such actions and attitudes.
Besides, it's not as simple as that. I daresay in the right circumstances, I could have grown up to be a concentration camp guard, but I didn't and, for all my considerable faults, I'm reasonably confident that I never will be.
But the self-preservation angle does make sense, as, I suppose, do moral stances which aren't motivated by concern for others.
Remember that you, as a living being, are born biased. You get more biased as you age and take in data from your surroundings. Every thing you learn is you blotting out all the other things it might otherwise have been, narrowing your view of the Universe.
Intelligent and complex we may or may not be... BUT the fact that believing we are gives us a biological fitness advantage makes it INSTANTLY suspect... How can we make fair and objective decisions when our own subconscious pushes its own agenda for the outcome?
Well, they are exceptions that prove that people are bastards, but you know my stance on this issue. Basically, if people were incapable of acting in any other way, just like wasp is incapable of deciding that maybe it really shouldn't lay it's eggs in a helpless victim so that they may eat if from inside alive, then humans, like said wasp, could not be considered bastards. There cannot be any blame for something humans have no control over.
But existence of people who refuse to act like bastards proves that the rest are bastards indeed, for they were capable of the same but choose not to. And as such pre-disposition is rooted not in evilness of particular human, but in instincts and reflexes - as it is natural - it's humans who are bastards, not [particular]humans who are bastards.
I don't think all people are capable of being non-bastardly. A bastard is a person who, as the result of prior experiences, winds up behaving in a manner which is morally abhorrent, either because they don't see the problem with their behaviour, or because they don't see any reason to care, or they think they're powerless to do anything else. A person who is a bastard could not be anything but a bastard at that point in time. Of course, they may improve under the right circumstances.
It's cool to be edgy and cynical.
Don't get me wrong, humans can be cunts at times, but at least they're interesting cunts. What do earthworms do? They eat and shit dirt. That's boring.
The implications of this seems to be that people do not have free will and can't be held accountable for their choices.
Which...is rather more cynical attitude than thinking that humans are bastards.
But holding somebody accountable for what they have actually done is not the same as being preposterously judgemental.
Actually, I didn't say I wasn't a cynic, either. Not that I think of myself as one.