>I'm just saying that if we could evolve past such petty ego-based sentiments in the world
That would be nice, but it seems that would make people no longer human. Happily following a petty ego-based Dear Leader's orders into warfare seems to be the norm for much of the human population, looking at history, so this tendency appears to be deeply-rooted into the human psyche.
why? the majority of humans are peaceful and friendly. the problem is that we have been raised to follow leaders instead of thinking for ourselves. that is what needs to change. when people learn to think for themselves then we won't have that problem anymore.
as the quote above says:
thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor
it all comes down to better education, specifically moral education, and learning to critically evaluate any information we get.
if people blindly follow a leader, then this is exactly what they are missing.
So, the problem with that is that not everybody is equally good at "thinking for themselves." A sufficiently-large group of people will always divide itself, as inevitably as if Maxwell's Demon himself were prodding them, into subsets of people who can be easily herded and people who can't be. By the same token there will always be a small minority, drawn from both subsets, who are unusually good at doing the herding.
Everything that goes wrong later can be traced to that inequality. Things that go right can usually be traced back to it as well. Any faith or philosophy that doesn't begin with an understanding of that aspect of human nature is a waste of time at best. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
> not everybody is equally good at "thinking for themselves." A sufficiently-large group of people will always divide itself, as inevitably as if Maxwell's Demon himself were prodding them
true, but perhaps we do have capacity to learn to think well enough to pick leaders who are better people than the most of us overall, e.g. learning to not mistake charisma for pure intention or intellectual insight
with some self awareness, it takes less effort overall to know who is better than us or our friends in terms of ethics and intellect, than it is to be right on every issue
and thats probably more important than the specifics of each issue, especially since the lay person doesn't have time to delve into the finer details of everything
now if we can get in a cycle of electing leaders like that then that would set us on a trajectory of constant societal growth, but to get to that our system probably also needs to change so as to actually present people with realistic options
that is probably a lot harder, and the two are certainly locked into a feedback loop
and I don't have answers on that one, but I believe if its possible to get to where we are from pond scum, then perhaps we can get to that point in the future as well
That would be nice, but it seems that would make people no longer human. Happily following a petty ego-based Dear Leader's orders into warfare seems to be the norm for much of the human population, looking at history, so this tendency appears to be deeply-rooted into the human psyche.