(no subject)

[aroraborealis]

This question came out of an irc discussion:

What do you think is wrong with the world?

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Too little compassion.

[pir.livejournal.com]

It's full of people.

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

Ditto

Choose one or more (or fewer)

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

1) Nothing. Everything is exactly as it should be. Incarnation = school, and we all get the experience we need.

1a) Nothing. Everything is exactly as it should be. The universe is an illusion given animation for the entertainment of "your" awareness, which is All That Is.

2) Humanity's overreliance on reason. (This is sort of what I was getting at on channel. No, I haven't developed the support for it fully yet.)

3) Organized religion, and the beliefs and superstitions that have arisen from them, particularly Christianity and Islam.

4) Human insecurities, and the social structures that tend to bring them to the fore, as insecurities are at the root of why institutions behave badly (and probably at the root of (2) and (3), for that matter.)

How would YOU answer?

Re: Choose one or more (or fewer)

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

I agree with caitalainn, dancingwolfgrrl, and I would phrase it, imperfectly, this way:

The problem is lack of equity and equality, rooted in greed and lack of compassion/empathy for our fellows.

Re: Choose one or more (or fewer)

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Hm. What is the root of the greed and the "lack of compassion/empathy"? Is it anything that can be ameliorated (and if so, how), or is it just human nature?

Re: Choose one or more (or fewer)

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I do think that greed may be an evolved thing, an overdeveloped sense of need or an underdeveloped sense of proportion when it comes to resources, but I am not a scientist, and I haven't studied greed or the evolution of human emotions/responses enough to say that for sure. As for lack of compassion, I think we, societally, encourage that, especially in cultures where the individual is the be-all and end-all.

I think the thing to do to ameliorate it is to help people SEE the harm their greed does (in those cases where they can come to see it), and I suspect that feelings of guilt could play a real part in that (it does for me).

It does feel like something that's "human nature", but I'm not sold on the root of human nature. No one has yet presented a convincing argument of "this is due to nurture, that to nature," regarding human traits, so I suspect we're all complicit in the problem.

A place that you and I probably differ is that I don't think it's some externally provided opportunity to be better, in a theistic sense. As a humanist, I think we're both the root of our own problems and the potential source for solutions.

Re: Choose one or more (or fewer)

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

There's much about modern culture that encourages self-involvement, especially during our teenage years. We have all of these young people, battered by their own hormones, trying to figure out social dynamics, who have a modicum of freedom and money and essentially nothing to do.

I think we should make the little bastards work. ;)

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

I've lately started to think that farm life may be underrated.

Re: Choose one or more (or fewer)

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

I think this is what I was trying to get at with the perhaps oversimplistic bit about "human insecurities", above. Re greed, for example, people crave stuff to fill an emotional void, in IMO the same way that some crave alcohol or sugar or the emotional rush of gambling or drugs or whatever. Where that emotional void comes from and what can be done about it are trickier questions, of course, and "insecurities" is clearly a generalization.

A place that you and I probably differ is that I don't think it's some externally provided opportunity to be better, in a theistic sense. As a humanist, I think we're both the root of our own problems and the potential source for solutions.

Well, we do differ, in that I'm neither a theist nor a humanist. I try to avoid -isms of all kinds these days. I do think it more likely than not that physical human existence is but one plane of existence, that human consciousness is but one part of our full being, and that we move to something else after death, but I also think it's completely possible that there's no Overseer (or "God"), no grand design, and indeed no point to the universe at all. We shall see (or not).

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I have *no idea* :)

That said, one of the things that feels like it might be beneath a bunch of problems is an apparently-widespread focus on individual and short-term gains rather than community and long-term ones. Whether that's human nature or cultural conditioning or what, I have even less idea!

[penk.livejournal.com]

Not enough time to really explore it.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

Nothing.

Humans are probably scrod, but the world is kind of a pretty place, really, even with all that law-of-the-jungle stuff.

[catya.livejournal.com]

top on my list is the idea and practice of killing people as a way to solve problems

what leads into that, i don't know.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I do think there are some problems that you are never going to eliminate, but which can be ameliorated. I don't think it will be possible to take away violence from the world entirely, ever. But I think you're talking about the world situation as it is.

On the one hand, I look at things from what they looked like in the early 1980s, and the world does not look so badly off.

On the other hand, I do see trends that indicate to me that we're going to head backwards if we aren't careful.

I think the biggest problem right now is the emergence of competing theories of globalization that are all hostile to one another and which all intend to become the only way to run things on a global scale. Al-Qaida is the most extreme example of this, but I think it's become a problem with pretty much every other movement of globalization (and I think the "anti-globalization" forces aren't against globalization per se, but are instead pushing an alternate theory of globalization).

[mr-privacy.livejournal.com]

People who think they can fix it, and don't see that that road is already well paved.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

It's too easy to think of other people as objects or tools rather than human beings. I'm pretty sure that this is what leads to shitty self-centered driving, for example.

On a more close interpersonal level, it's too easy to not give other people (friends, family, partners, acquaintances) the benefit of the doubt.

[txbelladonna.livejournal.com]

My inclination is to say that we have lost the true respect for life and humanity.
Or I just need coffee

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Did "we" ever have it?

♥η

[(Anonymous)]

I think it is the nature of all life forms to compete. Maybe it will be a better world when the machines take over.