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Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

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Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#11

Post by drivebycomment »

falcolas wrote: post #3

Tell 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.

...and the article has a direct response to your first part:

> He suggests that people will indeed do nasty things on a mass scale if they are convinced that it is for the greater good. It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination.

For your last point about people in poverty, I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalism's reign, and generally overall humanity has been toward helping poor countries and poor in their countries. Is there enough social protection for everyone? No. That does not invalidate the article's points. The fact that humans do not achieve perfect or near perfect does not mean we are not generally good.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#12

Post by zozbot234 »

jadbox wrote: post #2

While 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…

The whole point of that Great Dictator's Speech is the beginning, the "I'm sorry, I don't want to be a dictator" part. We need fewer wannabe-great-dictators in the world, and more successful tribal leaders striving to unite people via voluntary consensus, tolerance and moderation. That's just as true today as it was in the bad old 1930s.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#13

Post by cousin_it »

> Bregman is horrified by the Holocaust, as anyone who believes in the goodness of humankind must be. He suggests that people will indeed do nasty things on a mass scale if they are convinced that it is for the greater good. It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination.

How about all the mega-killers in history - Genghis Khan, Timur, Alexander, Napoleon? It seems to me that will-to-power is innate, it doesn't require indoctrination or appeal to greater good.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#14

Post by falcolas »

drivebycomment wrote: post #11
falcolas wrote: post #3

Tell 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.

...and the article has a direct response to your first part: > He suggests that people will indeed do nasty things on a mass scale if they are convinced that it is for the greater good. It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination. For your last point about people in poverty, I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalis…

And yet he has no explanation for why people will torture other people, to the point of death, for getting quiz answers wrong.

This kinda points to his hypothesis of these being outliers as being incorrect. The inherent selfishness, as he himself refers to, of humanity leads to the nasty and brutish behavior.

> I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalism's reign

And yet the poverty numbers for the US, one of capitalism's biggest proponents, remain fairly static over the last 4-5 decades, times in which productivity and the GDP have flourished.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#15

Post by zozbot234 »

drivebycomment wrote: post #11
falcolas wrote: post #3

Tell 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.

...and the article has a direct response to your first part: > He suggests that people will indeed do nasty things on a mass scale if they are convinced that it is for the greater good. It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination. For your last point about people in poverty, I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalis…

> It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination.

Arendt's entire report on "The banality of evil" was essentially a direct refutation of that exact argument. Nazi evil was 'banal' in a way, to use Arendt's term, precisely because it was, unambiguously, evil. There was not even the start of a colorable argument that it could be for any sort of "greater" good, no matter how construed. And the whole indoctrination part was as banal and as evil as the rest of it. Complacency towards authority demands and the diffusion of responsibility were the key mechanisms, not indoctrination per se.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#16

Post by vorpalhex »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #8

I 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!

I'm working from the article and not Bregman's work (though it's been added to my reading list) but the article does setup Bregman to respond to a strawman instead of Hobbe's actual argument.

One of the differentiators here is that difference between intent and reality. Most everyone, even very bad people, typically believe they are behaving ethically and "doing good". It's just that sometimes one persons good is another's evil. That's one of the issues the Leviathan fixes - it prevents these kind of oversteps by keeping externally enforced standards on behavior.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#17

Post by falcolas »

throwanem wrote: post #6
falcolas wrote: post #3

Tell 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.

And yet he has no answer for why people will willingly kill people over getting wrong answers in a quiz. Perhaps his hypothesis is wrong.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#18

Post by mjfl »

Seems to focus way too much on the bystander effect as a straw man example of "human evil". A much better picture of human evil would come from studying war rape, especially that of a victorious army. Any victorious army. Think Soviets in Berlin, Japanese in China, during WWII. The English civil wars were full of it as observed by Hobbes. Furthermore, it is ubiquitous throughout history. Any human convinced of their impunity, such as a conquering army, will absolutely be brutish and nasty to their enemies.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#19

Post by vorpalhex »

cousin_it wrote: post #13

> Bregman is horrified by the Holocaust, as anyone who believes in the goodness of humankind must be. He suggests that people will indeed do nasty things on a mass scale if they are convinced that it is for the greater good. It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination. How about all the mega-killers in history - Genghis Khan, Timur, Alexander, Napoleon? It se…

Geghis Khan and Alexander would both make the case that they were helping the world by uniting it and ending micro-conflicts - the people they killed along the way were necessary sacrifices who had the option to instead surrender to something greater. There's also an element of "divine right" at play - they believed they were fulfilling a religious entitlement.

Napoleon would make a similar argument, likely one more based on a worldview about exporting French culture and values.

There are very few cases, perhaps the destruction of Babylon, where someone basically says "yeah, I did it because I was angry and didn't care".

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#20

Post by cousin_it »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #8

I 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!

What Hobbes actually said:

> To speak impartially, both sayings are very true; That Man to Man is a kind of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities.

In other words, within a group we often see niceness, and between groups we often see nastiness - both are parts of human nature.

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