I feel like we’re living in a Billy Joel - We Didn’t Start the Fire song 2.0 (Fall Out Boy did a 2.0 version of the song where they used more recent events.) 3.0 and the events in the song are happening at 1.25 times the speed of the original.
I feel like we’re living in a Billy Joel - We Didn’t Start the Fire song 2.0 (Fall Out Boy did a 2.0 version of the song where they used more recent events.) 3.0 and the events in the song are happening at 1.25 times the speed of the original.
I think the capacity is there to function at a higher, pro-social level; but it is severely compromised by societal systems that at some point were shaped by scarcity and real world dangers but have just become obsolete and out of control. We’re living a traumatic legacy that we can’t shake and just keep dumping on successive generations
I’d like to believe that, but some people I have met who are not struggling for resources and had kind and loving families are still somehow just some selfish motherfuckers. I don’t know where they got that trauma from that made them want to hurt others so badly.
Of course we are all individually somewhere on a continuum of capacity. But I think that the overall system in which we live accounts for much of what you describe (see: messaging in our entertainment, commercials, social media, how they shape people). And also, perhaps that a kind environment like these people had is not a sufficient condition for pro social behavior, if it doesn’t teach them perspective building for instance; or exposure to, and legitimization of, alternate lifestyles and realities.
idk. All this coexists with the inherent flaws of the human organism. Selfishness is one of our qualities. It’s biologically built it in. Ideally our environment nurtures the executive functions to override and temper it. But, again, a capacity being there is not a sufficient condition for it to emerge