The Mantle, or The Glory?

Kirjoittanut Guest, 01.04.2014 at 21:39

Kirjoittanut Chomdax, 01.04.2014 at 19:51

Neither, really. I'd MUCH prefer a mix.

Morality's generally good, but I fucking hate too much of it. I know that sounds crazy, but I despise crap like political correctness and that school in Sweden where they're getting rid of gender-specific pronouns.

I don't want too much Power, either. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but who the hell wants a dystopian future? A world where people must die and be recycled to feed the masses at a certain age? A land where corporations can do whatever the hell they want, and people are just numbers? Sweatshops everywhere, the peak of human suffering?

I'm not going to vote for either on the poll, I think a mixture would be best.

I see political correctedness as an institute of power, personally, and you are also the first person to successfully match my opinion on this subject. Have a cookie.

Easily the same argument is made that political correctness is an aspect of morality - one should act in a manner as not to offend historically-oppressed persons.

Lainaa:

Which is more important to Humanity, in your opinion?
Morality (Progress, Moderation, Emotion)
Power (Technology, Radicalism, Logic)

Morality.
If you had asked this question of a hypothetical me living any time in human history, up until the twentieth century I would have unreservedly answered Power as being the most important to humanity.

The Will to Power forged change. Most changes meant nothing. A few changes were improvements. From hunter-gatherers, humans moved inexorably to tribes, city-states, and nations. Fire. Agriculture. The wheel. Writing. The Steam Engine.
For every one step back people moved two steps forward. Societies that focused inward towards harmony (notably China and India) got their asses handed to them by dynamic, competitive, outward focused societies like England. Competition often brought misery and war. It also brought material wealth and greater autonomy for increasing numbers of people.

As hunter-gatherers, all people were equal, and likely, equally miserable.
The human population grew fast; the population of 'happy people' grew more slowly, but indeed it did grow. Sometime around the end of the 19th century, people knew that they were on the cusp of Utopia. 200,000 years of human existence, 5000 years of recorded history, were almost nothing to the amazing progress made from 1600-1900.
In the foreseeable future, everyone would be fed, housed, educated, employed and free. With all basic material needs satisfied, the abundance of wealth would eliminate the need for war.

Then came WWI, WWII and the threat of The End of Everything.

We became more moral: People went from sacrificing each other to their gods, to sacrificing livestock to their gods, to praying to one god and then to looking to each other as the source of human dignity and rights, without the need to resort to superstition. We imprisoned criminals instead of killing them, formalized codes of conduct in warfare and to the state's responsibilities to its citizens, vanquished enemies went from being slain to enslaved, to being subjugated, and finally to becoming obligations of a conquering nation. An end to child labor, an increase in social welfare, general literacy and the near-elimination of arbitrary murder.

We became more powerful: From fire and stone tools, we harness the power of the sun. Work isn't measured in human labor, and 'horsepower' has given way to megawatts and exabytes. From fist to club to spear, and from spear to arrow to rifle and missile, we can project death to millions from half a world away.

Our morality increased arithmetically, but our power increased exponentially* - our growth in morality has not kept pace with our power, and all five people who read this post have always lived under the threat of the end of the human race, held back not by the morality of the men holding the keys to our annihilation, but by the threat of that power being used against them by their enemies. It is power, not morality, that keeps us all from dying - but it is power, not morality, that put us in this predicament.

Soon, even the threat of human extinction will be out of the hundred hands that hold it today. At least thousands of people have the technical ability to create biological pandemics, and soon even the privilege of racial suicide will be lost to our planet rebelling against our treatment of it.

*stolen from Malthusian Population theory and applied to morality and power.

Note: Bluecher and I are not the same person, alting.