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Re:Finding the biological roots for pathological social with... by toyg on Saturday July 30, 2022 @06:31PM (#32291012)
I find these takes pretty silly, if you look at them in a historic perspective.

Is it more human to live in a village where the local feudal lord has right of life and death on everyone? Where people are bought and sold as cattle with the land they are forced to live on?

Is it more human to live in a kingdom that will go to war with another because someone stole someone else's woman, or because they are arguing about whom is the son of whom? You are minding your own business, until one day some authority drafts you and suddenly you're in a field with a heavy pole, shouting that you'll butcher or be butchered in the name of something that makes no difference to your life.

Is it more human to live as a slave and drag massive rocks day in and day out, in order to build funeral monuments to some "living god"?

An ever-increasing percentage of the world population lives in the best of times - something undeniably demonstrated by the enormous demographic rise. There are more humans that ever, how can you seriously argue we are "less human" than before...?

Re:Finding the biological roots for pathological social with... by jongjong on Saturday July 30, 2022 @07:30PM (#32291431)
Although these times seem less fair, I feel that these societies made more logical sense when you consider people's beliefs at the time. For example, people thought that kings were divine beings chosen by god(s) so that justified why they had all this power, status and wealth. Nowadays it's difficult to make sense of why things are they way they are... Once you factor out the religious framework and you factor out the false narratives about success and power being attained as the result of hard or intelligent work... The modern social structure doesn't seem to make any sense.

It all seems to be about luck these days. Why should randomness determine everything and why should we pretend that our social structures are based on anything but meaningless randomness? Part of the mental illness of modern society is that we're constantly pretending that random events mean something.

Re:Finding the biological roots for pathological social with... by mandada on Sunday July 31, 2022 @01:14PM (#32296997)
> Is it more human to live in a village where the local feudal lord has right of life and death on everyone?

Certainly, marginalized communities probably feel this was about their local police force. How do you think people feel about the police during the Uvalde shootings?

> Where people are bought and sold as cattle with the land they are forced to live on?

People live in expensive cities because that is where the jobs are and where they live are controlled by landlords who were eager to evict them during the pandemic until some cities enacted eviction bans for a time. Private equity are buying entire neighborhoods to rent them out. Sure, in theory no one is forced to live anywhere, but in practice they are.

> Is it more human to live in a kingdom that will go to war…

You mean the War on Terror? The proxy wars against communism (e.g. Vietnam)? The World Wars? The numerous conflicts the US fought to overthrow democratic elected leaders in South America and the world to install dictators more aligned with US business interests (for their oil, their resources, to “liberalize” their economy so US multinationals can take over the local economy)?

> Is it more human to live as a slave…

Is it more human that productivity has increased 10x in the past decade but wages have been stagnant? Is it more human that we are increasingly forcing people to have bullshit jobs when automation could do it better and faster and we could instead re-distribute the wealth robots make into a UBI so that everyone could enjoy a life pursing their real passions?

> An ever-increasing percentage of world population lives in the best of times…

An ever-increasing amount of the world are living under a dystopian nightmare where people are being dehumanized and the planet being made unlivable all so arbitrary numbers on a spreadsheet gets bigger and bigger.

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The problem is not that we feel less human than we did before, but that we don’t feel more human now. With all of our progress and advancements, with our increasing understanding of ourselves and our world, why isn’t the world more human (more humanistic)?