Peak Oil News and Message Boards

When I was young I used to care about the human race as a whole but as I've gotten older I couldn't care less about most people. I think I was sheltered to begin with but seeing the real world now as I've gotten older I see so much stupidity, bad judgement, people acting like they're hot **** and entitled for simply existing and doing nothing to advance the world. I may or may not be right but I think some of us earned our good position in this world in one way or another beyond luck. But again sometimes people get what they deserve and it's only worth caring so much as asking the question what can you do about it? The way I see it the world is loaded with problems mostly due to the human race's stupidity and it isn't smart enough as a whole to fix it. At the end of the day we can't do much about it as a single person so the collective shouldn't be our personal problem. Maybe I'm just getting older but I care less.

Despite the fact that I pretty much resonate with you I voted "yes." It's kinda hard to not care at least a little when you have kids and grand kids. I want to see them thrive. But S for the rest? Meh, not so much.

I strongly believe we will see a rough 90% reduction is our population. Maybe 100%, no one here knows. I think it will be very difficult for humanity to recreate the chaos we have wrecked on the planet. Maybe Humanity 2.0 will be a better neighbor and tenant.

I do care about humanity.

I do not care in the slightest, about the fate of industrial civilization.

+1 Agent. Lack of basic empathy seems pathological & suggests some kind of deep internal damage. Not being able to change the trajectory shouldn't imply complete disdain for the victims. Though compassion is one of those traits which are dished out at birth & people only have so much capacity for. Also I find when my overall health is good my natural unforced compassion is much greater, when I'm run down & tired & things are not going well, I could almost care less about Armageddon itself.

Interesting question. I always thought doomers would be misanthropic compared to the population. I wonder how the poll would break down in the general population -- 95% cares?

I don't care. I don't think evolution is done, move over humans.

Goner - The human race? Of course. It's the inhuman race I can't stand. And not mentioning any names here, of course. That would be rude. LOL

AgentR11 wrote:I do not care in the slightest, about the fate of industrial civilization.

And since that is what sustains us, if you'd like to see that end, then you are by extension a misanthrope just as all anti-civs are, as you pine for the die-off.

I always say, I love people, and I hate people. I don't mean as individuals. Interestingly, I recently heard that we are programmed by evolution to accept people different from us if we see them smile when we first meet them. Emotions mean something. They are a big determiner of whether we will consider someone in our in-group or as a member of some out-group.

No. I care about the people of the human race, but the race itself, no. Maybe, if we evolved more, I would change my mind.

I voted yes wholeheartedly. What I do not care for is certain attitudes held by certain people. I think we can all agree that the world would be a better place if we got along better

I was thinking about this thread this morning when walking around my local park. It occurred to me that there are two distinct notions concerning the nature of humanity out there from two different streams of thought. Modern philosophy would call them the Rawls vs. Nozick positions. Rawls argued for a theory of social justice or morality wherein we have to understand that if we want to arrive at true justice we should think about our actions as from behind a veil of ignorance. He suggested that in order to achieve this the state would have to become involved on a deep level in people's lives. Nozick argued, much like Rawls, that social justice was important, but that the state could not impose itself upon any other than a limited set up operations without violating it. Nozick was for individual rights.

At the park I was thinking about how these two different points of view are kind of how the Jewish God makes it rain upon the just and the unjust while the Greek notion of gods made it rain upon those who offered the right set of entreaties or sacrifices. Both traditions are highly influential in Western Society. One would look upon the homeless, let's say, as a group that ought to receive whatever aid they needed in order to end their suffering while the other would perceive a homeless person who managed to talk someone who wasn't homeless out of some money as being like Odysseus, who was promoted not for his kindness but his cleverness.

Thanks EG for that intriguing post. It alludes to one of the root bifurcating debates in the social philosophical genre. Basically to what degree can people be trusted to do the right thing and the corollary question of whether people can govern themselves. I would contribute the following to this inquiry : I believe any hierarchical society that relies on what we would call a government is doomed to fail. People at the top and/or in leadership positions have the same flaws as everyone else. What's more their privileged positions encourage and tempt them to abuse their positions as the lure of power and wealth proves too irresistible. So a given society or community must not look for others to lead them but rather a set of moral principles. I say moral because at its core social cohesion and harmony is grounded in morality. The day to day of how to survive and prosper can and should be left open to debate and deliberation as circumstances warrant. However the overarching Ethos and Creed of said society must supersede , govern and inform all decisions made and courses of action agreed upon. In essence these principles should the supreme law of the land forever more

I think you are both way off base but am too tired to make a long complicated post. Maybe later. For now I simply think you give far too much credit to our reasoning, we are still 99.4% (roughly) running on pure animal instinct. That we appear to be operating otherwise is mass delusion.

My 2¢

Make a recommendation of you come across a good book.

Off hand I can think of three I'd recommend.
Diamonds World before Yesterday
Wilson. Social Conquest of Earth
Wasp. Our winner Ape

Newfie wrote:I think you are both way off base but am too tired to make a long complicated post. Maybe later. For now I simply think you give far too much credit to our reasoning, we are still 99.4% (roughly) running on pure animal instinct. That we appear to be operating otherwise is mass delusion.

My 2¢

And something like that percentage of our DNA is also identical to that of a chimpanzee, but we are not chimpanzees. Intellectual thought is not mass delusion. It is the basis of free will. Free will is not I want this right now or that right now, it is the freedom to form a world view out of which decisions are made, and to hold that against what would otherwise, animalistically or from a competing world view, oppose our decisions. Free will is the ability to choose what might appear not to be in our own best interests because we choose what we feel is right over that. It is up to deliberation, mostly intellectual, but sometimes as a nod to our base nature, to decide what we feel is right.

And this is not to deny that we are formed of the primitive or the hard-wired. If we had to go about every day without the influence of the primitive then we would spend every moment, literally, trying to figure out which way was up. As it stands we don't tire our consciousnesses with that problem, thanks to "pure animal instinct."

Even though we are social apes, adapted to conformity and hierarchy, the group as a living entity benefits from a inherited need to change and adapt.

Undoubtedly. And what may be our fatal flaw is we never adapted to our own successes and progress. We never envisioned how and why we could and would collapse as a species. Only now do some of us realize the holistic predicament humanity is in without any satisfactory solution except bracing for the consequences of our actions and decisions. I feel sadness and that is how I know I care.