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?
Flaws are just variation. Variation begets adaptation. Adaptation begets survival of the species. Without flaws, evolution wouldn’t exist and life wouldn’t exist.
And if somehow we overcame all these “flaws” everything would be so incredibly boring.
And one of those flaws is thinking that the world needs to be full of shitty people just so it’s not “boring”
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I wasn’t necessarily saying these flaws were or have ever actually been positive traits. Just that they were indicative of variation, which is kind of at the core of life.
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That’s an interesting question that has been been asked a lot in philosophy / theology.
My take is basically is, that the premise is already flawed. Negative traits are not binary. When does industriousness become greed, assertiveness become ego, etc…? Everything lives on a scale. So where is the cut off? Is there an objective cut off? Isn’t rather someones industriousness someone elses greed? Then wouldn’t the absence of all greed also kill all industriousness? In that case @treadful@lemmy.zip would probably be right, civilisation would have a hard time existing.
Islamic theology has a take on it, that I find more logical. Basically angels are like humans but without free will. So they do have all the traits humans do, but cannot act on it, except when deemed acceptable by a perfect being. That way they managed to create a perfect community.
What do you mean by binary in “Negative traits are not binary?” I only know the definition of binary as 1’s and 0’s.
Not binary in this context means, that there isn’t two opposing choices (true or false, black or white, greedy or generous). We’re rather looking at a scale in between opposing concepts.
Ohhh
Strangely, these stupid religions had a really successful path of delivering some of the most ideal traits possible. Modern, people despise religions, and feel malicious towards good intentions. But, the post-theist world - knock on wood - really knows not to use nuclear weapons. It’s amazing that these religious nuts became such epic scientists, and the recipients of their awesome powers somehow maintained the insanely creditworthy ability to hang onto integrity despite whatever storm.
And weirdly, despite the storm being cult-mania mass-suicide level idiocy they were not even pushed over by a handful of demagogues coming to power in the recent right wing push.
A lot of that stuff is a freakish coincidence in a world that could have delivered it’s own extinction a million times over or more already.
And there are just as many people earnestly working on removing further blights to humanity - including that of itself and the sins of its development past. Most rational people would have already killed a few million more people a year, but the religious nuts really set up a world that cherishes human life. (Probably a shame they weren’t all more interested in wildlife protection)
It’s eroding, obviously, as people leave religion. But they did get it to a level that’s been pretty intense considering we live in a world that’s normally an absolute warpath of idiot animals.
Probably really boring.
I’d be okay with that. All the excitement today gives me anxiety.
This is roughly the premise of The Giver butis probably not a new concept as mentioned by others like @ISOmorph
Like those cities in the memes that say “If [blank] was the default [blank].”
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ID be so boring i and probably others would kill someone or themselves just for some excitement
Have you ever seen the movie Logan’s Run? It’s not a bad representation.
