The way I see it is that we have two huge cognitive impediments to get past. The first huge impediment is that the people that want to be 'in charge', and that are constantly acting to gain that responsibility are exactly the people that we should never allow to be in charge of anything. The very fact that they want this control so intently is very strong evidence that if they get the control they crave, they will only abuse it. Time and time and time again we humans have allowed those who will do anything to become our 'leaders' to get that control. And once they have gained it, they have used it to cause everyone else great suffering and harm. And yet as soon as one of these despots falls, there are three more vying to take his place. And we will stupidly allow them to do so. Why can't we stop doing this? Why can't we set up a system that would identify and preclude these F'ed up control freaks from gaining positions of social responsibility. We can see them coming a mile away, so it really shouldn't be that difficult.
The second gigantic impediment to human ethical advancement is the blindness caused by our own fear, greed, and stupidity. We continue to compete with each other for everything we need in life to survive and thrive, and we continue to pile it up far beyond the level of our need, and then we continue to guard, hoard, and protect it even as we watch the humans right next to us suffer and die for the lack of it. This is INSANE behavior and yet we cannot see the insanity of it through the blindness of our own fear, greed, and stupidity. Everyone's life would be so much easier and better off if we simply stopped competing with each other for everything and began cooperating with each other toward the goal of increasing everyone's collective well-being. But we just can't seem to overcome our fear of being left without. And because we cannot, billions of us are being left without. How is it not obvious to us that cooperation is far more efficient and effective than competition? I don't know. It should be obvious. But it's just not.
Yes, insatiable greed and the lust for power are human failings that hold us back. Earlier on this thread, I worded a similar sentiment like this:
"If we [humanists] could only wrestle control from the authoritarians, underregulated capitalists, and regressive religions, we could reshape the world. We could end war, feed the hungry, control population growth, reverse climate change, and mitigate or prevent poverty." All of those apart from humanism exist to concentrate wealth and power.
It is common knowledge that there is a spectrum of people both intellectually and morally. There seems to be two main strains of human beings - selfishly antisocial people and socially minded people. Whether it is cultural or biological evolution, some of us are simply not connected to the rest of humanity. I'm leaning toward there being an element of both cultural and biological evolution involved.
We saw these two types depicted in The Lord of The Flies and also in Gremlins, where one group seems culturally evolved and another is primitive, selfish, violent and brutal. We see that in politics, especially American politics these days, with Biden and Trump serving as archetypes for these two, and the MAGA members of House Representatives behaving like gremlins post-watering as their Democratic colleagues sit shaking their heads in disbelief.
We saw it again during the vaccine and mask wars - one group of scientifically literate (or at least not antiscience) community minded people thinking about herd immunity and a group of watered gremlins selfishly acting out in public.
These types aren't new, but it feels like the bad gremlins are more prevalent than in the past, or more vocal, or more organized. They're a palpable threat today. Yes, we grew up in the Cold War years, which constituted a nuclear threat, but this is so much worse today what with democracy close to collapsing in the States and climate change dwarfing even actual nuclear war as a threat to life on earth.
I just don't identify with any of that. Such people are so different from me that I feel like I belong to a different and more evolved strain of humanity than they do. And increasingly, I resent having to share a planet with them.
We live humbly and want little. There's nothing that I want that I don't have. There's nothing that I want to do that I can't do. I literally want no more money or power. Neither have any allure. When I first started earning money as a physician, I did spend a lot, but that due to the novelty of having money, which eventually got boring as well.
As soon as I could afford to retire, I did. That was fifteen years ago (age 55), and most of my similarly aged colleagues are still working to pay for their big homes. I wanted that once and had it, too, but as I alluded, I outgrew it and downsized my life.
Maybe that's the result of my profession and career. During my working years, I had both more money and more power than most people. I wrote "orders" on medical charts and others carried them out. I was self-employed and didn't take orders from a boss. Yet even as a child, I never wanted anything more than personal autonomy, not control over others, and I had no dreams of being rich, just comfortable. So who knows why I feel as I do. I don't.
It's interesting to me how you and I can agree on matters like these and then have such different conversations about gods and empiricism, where we disagree about virtually everything. That's rare for me. I find most people compatible or incompatible with my thoughts on both, which kind of supports the idea that there are two strains of people.
There's another poster on RF with whom I have the same mixed experience, but it's the other way around. He's a MAGA atheist. His comments on science versus religion resemble mine, but his political opinions make me shake my head.
