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thinkinginpictures
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05 May 2021, 1:48 pm

* The majority of humanity disagree that people with disabilities (incuding people with mental disabilities/illnesses, including autistics) deserve a decent and as normal a life as possible with the neccessary help to get as many opportunities in life as possible despite their difficulties.

* The majority of humanity disagree that all people deserve a right to a fair trial (ie. the right not to be tortured before conviction, a right to a legal defense and right to unbiased party reading your case).

* The majority of humanity also disagree that the world should do something to counter human-caused climate changes.

* In addition, the majority of humanity disagree that we should do something to combat the COVID-pandemic.

The evidence is that you can just take a look at this world with the current events and all its history.
The entire history of all of humanity is evidence, scientific evidence that ALL the above statements are TRUE!



techstepgenr8tion
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05 May 2021, 1:59 pm

I agree with all of the above observations but I'd slightly disagree on a nuance.

There's a common take people have, even if atheist, materialist, or secular, that at least a simple majority of people, if not a wider majority, are like little Greek philosophers waiting to happen whose core value is seeking out truth and human progress, ie. beautiful rational humanists. That dovetails with the notion that if you give people who are wrong about something a rational argument that - like Sam Harris says of himself and has tended to project in the past - that they'll be helpless to turn down sound reasoning. The disparity between that assessment and what we actually see is absurd. OTOH looking at it through the lens of Darwinian evolution and game theory it makes a lot more sense.

The confusion is that we're some sort of 'anthropos' divine or enlightened creature, IMHO we might be better described a kind of daemon species in that we have more sophisticated language and abstract reasoning potentials but outside of that we're first and foremost like other animals particularly our last common ancestors in the world of apes.


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techstepgenr8tion
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05 May 2021, 2:06 pm

The strange horror I feel like I've been slowly sinking into - every year life gets stranger if you didn't fit in, didn't have a place, people can't read you, and you're still alive, not in jail, etc. into your 30's, 40's, 50's, etc.. It's a bit like if you're the odd one out you're supposed to sort of just find a way to solve yourself, kind of like the mentally ill kid in the movie The Village managed to make a villain of himself and get killed (convenient!).

I stick around in part because I'm really sick of feeling like cheap B Hollywood movie plots are being jammed down on my life by society for expectations and it's a way of thumbing that impulse in the eye, and the other part - I find plenty of things to research and do that are actually interesting to me even if things are on an uncomfortable drift in other ways. I used to think the later was my problem, now I know it's something completely beyond my control and has everything to do with what I think of as willful exclusion, the kinds of mutual exclusion people already have for each other through economic and social competition getting doled out to me as well for not having a proper place in the pyramid, and the lifetime archaeology of accrued disadvantages caused by people not being able to read my body language or personality easily seems, but regardless of that I really want to see if sanity can do anything - at all - to carve out a place for itself in existence without needing the graces of the right genes.


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05 May 2021, 2:43 pm

The (vast) majority of humanity doesn't give a damn about the (vast) majority of humanity.

The world isn't evil. It is indifferent.

It takes active effort to be evil... just think of the years and years of training needed to perfect the Mwahahaha! laugh.

Indifference, on the other hand, can be practised 24/7 (even while sleeping!) with impunity without breaking a sweat.



thinkinginpictures
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05 May 2021, 3:02 pm

GGPViper wrote:
The (vast) majority of humanity doesn't give a damn about the (vast) majority of humanity.

The world isn't evil. It is indifferent.

It takes active effort to be evil... just think of the years and years of training needed to perfect the Mwahahaha! laugh.

Indifference, on the other hand, can be practised 24/7 (even while sleeping!) with impunity without breaking a sweat.


If you ask people on the street, on social media or elsewhere, randomly, on the question: "Do you think the disabled and mentally ill people deserve better care?", I think the most common reply you'll get is: "No, I think they all are leeches deserving to be punished".

That's not indifference. That's evil.



GGPViper
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05 May 2021, 4:47 pm

thinkinginpictures wrote:
If you ask people on the street, on social media or elsewhere, randomly, on the question: "Do you think the disabled and mentally ill people deserve better care?", I think the most common reply you'll get is: "No, I think they all are leeches deserving to be punished".

That's not indifference. That's evil.

Is this something you have actually experienced?



salad
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05 May 2021, 4:58 pm

GGPViper wrote:
The (vast) majority of humanity doesn't give a damn about the (vast) majority of humanity.

The world isn't evil. It is indifferent.

It takes active effort to be evil... just think of the years and years of training needed to perfect the Mwahahaha! laugh.

Indifference, on the other hand, can be practised 24/7 (even while sleeping!) with impunity without breaking a sweat.


You are wrong. Absolutely wrong. A good chunk of the US population, a CHRISTIAN country, actively supports torture. Surveys showed that 39% of Republicans wanted to bomb the fictional city of Agrabah, meaning 39% of an otherwise Christian party want to bomb a nation only because it sounds Arabic. That's Hitleresque level evil and thats from the Christians in America.

During the Roman Empire the average person used to watch people being killed and tortured to death as entertainment in the Coliseum.

Human beings are one of the few species to invent torture and have went out of their day to create ingenious methods of extracting pain towards fellow human brethren.

Humans are evil, they are a blight, and its more than indifference.


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05 May 2021, 5:03 pm

I, myself, believe most people I encounter are indifferent......

Unfortunately, throughout history, it has turned out that people who are in positions of power have tended to lean towards the "evil."

I don't base my life or my philosophy of life on whether humanity is "evil" or not. I have a faith that there are at least some people who are decent.

I'm not going to just "chuck it" and say "screw it" because of the perception that people are "inherently evil."



salad
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05 May 2021, 5:15 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
I, myself, believe most people I encounter are indifferent......

Unfortunately, throughout history, it has turned out that people who are in positions of power have tended to lean towards the "evil."

I don't base my life or my philosophy of life on whether humanity is "evil" or not. I have a faith that there are at least some people who are decent.

I'm not going to just "chuck it" and say "screw it" because of the perception that people are "inherently evil."


It's possible to except the premise that 99% of humanity is an evil stain and blight while also maintaining that optimism and hope for a better future is still the path to live on.


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05 May 2021, 5:24 pm

But why 99%?

I know you've had some lousy things happen to you recently---so maybe that has led to that perception.



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05 May 2021, 6:47 pm

Indifference to the suffering or endangerment of others is evil.


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kraftiekortie
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05 May 2021, 7:23 pm

I don't believe most people are indifferent to the suffering that's going on in the world. I sense that you might have misinterpreted me. When presented with illustrative evidence of what's going on, say, in India when it comes to COVID, I find that people are not "indifferent" at all.

When I said "indifference," I meant more "indifference" as far as the "everyday" problems of people are concerned. If one is outside one's circle of friends and acquaintances, one tends not to be too concerned about that "one"---unless it's something really major.

There is the notion that people have "enough on their plate already" when dealing with the problems of those in their "immediate circle."



kraftiekortie
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05 May 2021, 7:30 pm

I just don't believe Homo sapiens is, inevitably, an "evil" species.

If one goes out in the world, and meets the right people, one would obtain a more nuanced view of humanity, I believe.



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05 May 2021, 7:38 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
I don't believe most people are indifferent to the suffering that's going on in the world. I sense that you might have misinterpreted me. When presented with illustrative evidence of what's going on, say, in India when it comes to COVID, I find that people are not "indifferent" at all.

When I said "indifference," I meant more "indifference" as far as the "everyday" problems of people are concerned. If one is outside one's circle of friends and acquaintances, one tends not to be too concerned about that "one"---unless it's something really major.

There is the notion that people have "enough on their plate already" when dealing with the problems of those in their "immediate circle."


Gotcha.


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05 May 2021, 7:39 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
I just don't believe Homo sapiens is, inevitably, an "evil" species.

If one goes out in the world, and meets the right people, one would obtain a more nuanced view of humanity, I believe.


I think I don't have the charitable opinion about our species that you have.


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05 May 2021, 9:16 pm

But how do you know this is a result of nature and not nurture? We have yet to live in a society without coercion and oppression. Perhaps in a truly free society, people would develop in better ways?