this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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If mankind started out without any negative traits that like greed, ego, anger etc., how would it shape our civilization up to this date? Would we have created the perfect utopia or made ourselves extinct long ago? Are our flaws holding us down or are they the reason our society made it to this point?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

A human with no ability to feel unpleasant feelings would die of malnutrition or exposure. A community where everyone has the exact same needs and therefore could only act in ways that were beneficial to everyone would inevitably die out when those needs couldn’t be met.

I think viewing any of these situations or feelings as good or bad ignores the inherent chaos of our existence. And I mean chaos in the sense that slight changes to initial conditions can wildly change a system’s outcome.

I also think viewing “bad” characteristics as inevitable is often used as a way to dismiss change which is clearly a massive net positive. And looking at society’s problems as simply the aggregate of individual people being greedy or angry ignores the nature of systemic problems and suggests individualistic solutions that are doomed to fail