Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
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Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
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Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#2While reading this, I can't help but to hear Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator final speech in the background of my mind:
"... We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…"
https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-spee...
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#3Tell that to those disappeared by their political competition. To those in Chinese concentration camps for the crime of being Muslim. To those being black bagged in Hong Kong. To those stuck in poverty because they have nothing of value to trade in a capitalistic society.
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#4> As a rhetorical device, Bregman takes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's more hopeful account of humanity in a state of nature. For Rousseau the problem is not what is hidden by the veneer—human nature is fine—it is civilisation itself.
Hmmm, without the veneer of civilisation, we would be basically apes with oversized brains. Apes cooperate just fine within their own group, they are social animals after all, but between different groups it can get very nasty very fast. Which is of course what we can see all around the world at a larger or smaller scale (wars, social networks, election campaigns, racial tensions etc.) but I doubt getting rid of civilisation is a solution for these problems...
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#5> As a rhetorical device, Bregman takes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's more hopeful account of humanity in a state of nature. For Rousseau the problem is not what is hidden by the veneer—human nature is fine—it is civilisation itself. Hmmm, without the veneer of civilisation, we would be basically apes with oversized brains. Apes cooperate just fine within their own group, they are social animals after all, but between diff…
I haven't read the book, but I suspect you're disagreeing with Rousseau and not Bregman here. I don't think Bregman recommends removing the civilization, but rather augmenting it based on the moral principles that we already accept as humans.
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#6Tell that to those disappeared by their political competition. To those in Chinese concentration camps for the crime of being Muslim. To those being black bagged in Hong Kong. To those stuck in poverty because they have nothing of value to trade in a capitalistic society.
I think the point may be that systems which produce such behavior are perversions, rather than expressions, of whatever essential nature humanity may be said to have.
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#7We humans are short though.
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#8I think this article is rather unfairly quoting poor Hobbes out of context. Hobbes didn't say humankind was nasty and brutish, he said the life of man would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" in the absence of a community... Which is not contradicted by the examples in the article!
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#9While reading this, I can't help but to hear Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator final speech in the background of my mind: "... We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed h…
It's like the best speech ever. And IMHO the idea to add Inception soundtrack to it makes it even so much better.
Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish
#10> As a rhetorical device, Bregman takes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's more hopeful account of humanity in a state of nature. For Rousseau the problem is not what is hidden by the veneer—human nature is fine—it is civilisation itself. Hmmm, without the veneer of civilisation, we would be basically apes with oversized brains. Apes cooperate just fine within their own group, they are social animals after all, but between diff…
I haven't read the book, but I suspect you're disagreeing with Rousseau and not Bregman here. I don't think Bregman recommends removing the civilization, but rather augmenting it based on the moral principles that we already accept as humans.
Last time I checked, it was agreed that there are no universally accepted moral principles. In fact, counting purely by headcount (India and China do exist!), quite a number of things you consider to be universally or widely accepted may actually be accepted by the minority of the people. Is it "eye for an eye" or "turn another cheek"? More than half of the world would take the first options as morally correct.