Do you think Humanity is getting better or worse?

[Troy Spiral (13)]

What do you think the general direction of humans as a whole is going?  Is it getting better? Worse? Not sure?  Why do you think this?

[Class-Punk]

The short answer is better.  There is less violence than there has ever been.  There is still time and resources to face large-scale problems.  We evolved from apes and our societies reflect that, the average person is more focused on short-term survival and wellbeing than long-term survival and wellbeing.  But I think if we constantly evolve what will happen will be that the mainstream media will eventually become the internet, the internet will eventually be uncensored all over the world, the dominant culture of the internet will eventually become opinions based on evidence and avoiding logical fallacies; and this will eventually become the dominant culture of the world.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Class-Punk

[Vater Araignee]

Worse.

Just look at all the snowflakes pushing their regressive bigoted ideologies in the name of social justice and winning because they have everyone else in fear of being called...

Sexist by a female supremest

Racist by a bigot who is a different color

Close minded by a religious dogmatic.

Intolerant by a gay who thinks he has the right to grope any dick he wants. Oh and if you tell him he is being rapey then suddenly your the one perpetuating rape culture even though that only exists in prisons.

[phee]

Will humans ever overcome human nature?

[Troy Spiral (13)]

On 1/16/2016 at 8:07 AM, phee said:

Will humans ever overcome human nature?

I think we have quite a bit already.   "Might makes right" is still an urge, but  mostly its not acceptable anymore.   Rape was super common, nothing like we could possibly understand nowadays.  Wars were far more "easy" to come by in days past, now we also frown on them far more than we ever did in previous ages.  

The book "freedom evolves" by daniel dennett covers  a lot of this.  It could have been titled "Human Nature Evolves".  Pretty interesting. 

[Troy Spiral (13)]

On 1/15/2016 at 7:02 AM, Vater Araignee said:

Worse.

Just look at all the snowflakes pushing their regressive bigoted ideologies in the name of social justice and winning because they have everyone else in fear of being called...

Sexist by a female supremest

Racist by a bigot who is a different color

Close minded by a religious dogmatic.

Intolerant by a gay who thinks he has the right to grope any dick he wants. Oh and if you tell him he is being rapey then suddenly your the one perpetuating rape culture even though that only exists in prisons.

 

I think all these individual points are accurate (some of them might be a bit hard to "read" but I am following you)  I'm just not sure that  "as a whole on average"  things are getting worse, these are what I'd call "things that are not good".   Taken in context of the direction of humanity as a whole since say...  2000 years ago, I think they tend to be less horrible than they sound.  Just thinking out loud here.  

[Troy Spiral (13)]

On 1/15/2016 at 3:59 AM, Class-Punk said:

The short answer is better.  There is less violence than there has ever been.  There is still time and resources to face large-scale problems.  We evolved from apes and our societies reflect that, the average person is more focused on short-term survival and wellbeing than long-term survival and wellbeing.  But I think if we constantly evolve what will happen will be that the mainstream media will eventually become the internet, the internet will eventually be uncensored all over the world, the dominant culture of the internet will eventually become opinions based on evidence and avoiding logical fallacies; and this will eventually become the dominant culture of the world.

This is probably a good summary of my current thinking.   Try to picture what crime / daily life / goverments (most not worth of the title) were like even say 200 years ago.  Its hard for me to picture "now" being anything but better on a larger timescale than say 10 years.  I do hold it open that I'm missing some very large shift that is making things as a whole worse, but I can't think of it.    Worse for MEN maybe, since unfortunately the tools we evolved (strength / aggression / spacial awareness just to name a few) which worked great for us in ages past, are either 1. almost moot  or 2.  frowned upon in modern society.  While all the skills that women evolved over the centuries are all still very useful.   /ponder

[kat (1)]

Worse, just disguistingly worse:

Example A, and like the man says at the end, we don't feel like we should be of service to others anymore:

 

 

[Troy Spiral (13)]

On 1/18/2016 at 2:49 PM, kat said:

Worse, just disguistingly worse:

Example A, and like the man says at the end, we don't feel like we should be of service to others anymore:

 

 

I think that might be a little bit too much cherry picking the really horrible stuff, and ignoring all the positive strides mankind has made over the decades/centuries.    Health care, despite its flaws, is awesome compared to what it was say 200 years ago , or even 30 years ago.  Crime in general is WAY down on the order of centuries, was far , far easier to get away with things in centuries past.  Child birth was often a death sentence for the mother or the child or both,  nowadays we know much, much more and infant mortality is way up , compared to even just a few decades ago, and its WAY up from over a century ago.   

 

Granted there is still ha lot of horrible shit in the world but taken as a whole, on average I'm not seeing "now" as being anything than better than its ever been in previous ages (on a larger timescale than just say 10 years).  Its easy (I do it all the time) to loose sight of the "big picture" since we don't think about it much.  We tend to just read the headlines or think about things in our personal lives, or lives of loved ones, which isn't really a good example of humanity as a whole. 

[Vater Araignee]

On 1/18/2016 at 10:09 PM, Troy Spiral said:

 

I think all these individual points are accurate (some of them might be a bit hard to "read" but I am following you)  I'm just not sure that  "as a whole on average"  things are getting worse, these are what I'd call "things that are not good".   Taken in context of the direction of humanity as a whole since say...  2000 years ago, I think they tend to be less horrible than they sound.  Just thinking out loud here.  

Well when I see regressives overwhelmingly becoming the "Progressive" voice I cant help but view things as getting worse. Now if I where to take things as the sweep of history then I can only say we are stagnating. Then I still want to say stagnancy is almost as bad as regression.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Vater Araignee

[Scary Guy]

I don't think it's gotten any better or worse, I think it just has become different.

I predict that neo-Luddites will riot when automation finally puts them out of a job.  Mostly truckers and fast food workers.  "Made by Humans" will be a label on things that will be as meaningless as "Made in the USA" (although Made in the U.S.A. carries great weight in China because even the Chinese don't want the bullshit they're churning out.)

Also, thanks to technology surveillance is at an all time high too.  There was a study that political dissonance online has gone down as a result because we're all being monitored.  Yes, even this post is probably going to be archived and logged in some government database.  Storage is at more capacity and cheaper than ever.  The government spent 10,000 on 10MB back in the 80's.  Thanks to Failbook thought they don't even need to store it because they just do it for them and the government can just pay for the access.

I think if we don't end religion and government things could get worse real fast.  Neither are easy because people cling to the old ways real hard.

I do know it will be interesting and I hope I'm around for a while to see it.