emboliart

(From another answer I wrote in this thread) Think of dental braces. In old times, without orthodontics, misaligned teeth would be a visible marker of less than optimal fitness. Ugly. Negative selection pressure. As orthodontics becomes more prevalent, in the beginning lots of people get a beauty boost. Celebrate! Yet, in a few generations, a larger and larger fraction of the population now needs more and more sophisticated dental braces. Teeth simply don't fit on the mandible anymore, because there is no selection force to prefer people with good teeth as marriage partners. Everybody has visibly good teeth! We can keep this illusion going with technology, but it's a growing problem. Should we close orthodontics clinics tomorrow? Probably not, but that should not prevent us from recognizing the long term hidden costs of medical technology. Use sparingly, mostly for emergencies.

That's the point. Live your life being ready to depart next week. Live your life being ready your loved ones to depart next week. That's not to say it's something to look forward to. Or not take reasonable precautions to avoid it. You will know worry, you will know suffering, and when the inevitable happens, you will know grief. Know that death is natural and inevitable. And yet here we are. We are here because our ancestors had the strength to raise the next generation, not because somehow individual death was defeated.

On the urban side, we are acting as if we have somehow become immortal, and that everybody must sacrifice everything, school, work, family, friends, so that some can live to 85 instead of 77. That is an unprecedented high price to ask.

Natural selection, it's cold and harsh. It doesn't fix individual, aside that the immune system is a natural selection mechanism within the organism level natural selection. It simply selects fit individuals to reproduce. We are well atuned to this mechanism, witness 'youth' or 'beauty'. Think of dental braces. In old times, without orthodontics, would be a visible marker of less than optimal fitness. Ugly. Negative selection pressure. As orthodontics becomes more prevalent, in the beginning everybody gets a beauty boost. Let's celebrate. Yet, in a few generations, in absence of any selection pressure, a larger and larger fraction of the population now needs dental braces. Teeth simply don't fit on the mandible anymore. We can handle this with technology, but it's a growing problem. Should we close orthodontics clinics tomorrow? Probably not, but that should not prevent us from recognizing the long term hidden costs of medical technology. 'Use sparingly, mostly for emergencies'.

Good point about the Volk. To be noted, contemporary Anglo culture has constructed the photo negative of Volk. Everybody of the Volk is intrinsically broken, worthy of contempt and deameaning. Everybody not of the Volk is intrinsically virtuous, worthy of praise and elevation.

History will tell what the consequences of corporatism + negative Volk will be.