Does the arc of the moral universe bend towards justice? CAN we all just get along?

Great Debates
1

Maybe I’ve let Trump get to me, but I’ve recently been spending a bit of thought into whether humans and human society are basically good or evil. Feel free to tell me if I’m being sophomoric or identify any excluded middle.

I recently read a bit of history preparing for a trip to France - and that area’s entire history going back 200 years was one tribe/country/prince fighting another, trying to seize their land and resources. Really difficult to identify any single consistent “good actors” or positive trend - at least up until well after their revolution. Other books, like Guns, Germs, and Steel, do not really portray an image of a progressively enlightened culture worldwide.

When in France, I had a difficult time appreciating so many of the palaces/chateaus/cathedrals when they obviously represented the control and exploitation of the masses. Kinda made me think of the debate as to whether you can appreciate the art of a bad person…

The US was fortunate to enjoy vast areas to exploit as we exterminated the indigenous people. Even with that, we had a civil war less than 100 years after our founding, and it took far longer to codify anything approaching equality for people of color, women, gays… And these past few months question how permanent THOSE achievements will prove. At 250 years young, it can be argued that American style democracy is still an unproved experiment.

Maybe it is just the people who are in charge who are largely assholes, and the people in general would be kind and decent if left to their own devices? What are the longest lasting examples of cultures that exhibited the greatest parity among citizens, and engaged in the least aggression towards others?

I’ve heard some folk say, “Look at the fantastic art/science/music/philosophy that humans have created.” But seriously - what percentage of humans were responsible for that? Maybe 1%. And what percentage can truly appreciate it? Maybe another 10%?

Apologies for not setting forth a really tight proposition, but I used to firmly believe that the arc WAS bending towards justice, and to look at accomplishments over my lifetime as proof of that. But looking a little further back over history, I really wonder if what I’ve experienced so far is essentially a positive blip, and that we here in the US are due for a correction.

It is all fine to say, “Can’t we all just get along?” I’m not sure history suggests that we CAN.

2

Using an imaginary “arc” that is outside of our control to both praise and blame what humans do?
I think the word for that is “excuse”.

3

I really think the fundamental problem is that humans are social predators, and the need to dominate expresses itself in many different aspects of life. Economics, military might, sports, physical beauty, etc all examples of the battle for dominance that humans constantly wage with one another as individuals and as groups. The arc inevitably bends in the direction that our nature dictates, and it isn’t bending particularly well because of our basic nature.

4

I’d like to think that it does, but what I want to believe and what is actually true in the real world aren’t necessarily the same thing. I see three particular episodes in our history that argue against what I would like to believe (that the human species will make steady progress to a Star Trek like utopia).

  1. The fall of the Roman Empire. When I took world history, the way things were presented went something like this. Starting in the days of ancient Egypt, one empire was replaced by another empire, each one being more advanced than the one they replaced, with that being the reason they were replaced. Egyptians were replaced by Assyrians, then Babylonians, then Persians, then Greeks, and finally the Romans. Each of those empires represented progress compared to the one they replaced. Then Rome fell, not to a stronger empire, but to a bunch of barbarians, and we entered the Dark Ages. This is why, at least for me, the fall of the Roman Empire is such a fascinating subject. What happened to break this cycle of a more advanced empire replacing a less advanced one? I don’t know, but it’s exhibit one against the hypothesis that steady progress is the rule for human civilization.

  2. The treatment of non-European populations starting in 1492 during the age of colonization. During the 1,000 years following the fall of Rome, European civilization gradually recovered. Then the Age of Exploration started, and rather than spreading that progress across the globe, European nations (and descendants of Europeans like Andrew Jackson) decided to embark on a course of things like genocide and the overall mistreatment of non-European peoples.

  3. The current ongoing events that started with Brexit and Trump’s election in 2015/2016. Eventually, we (the western world) overcame the colonial mindset that took hold in 1492. It took two World Wars, but 1945 was here, and the future looked bright. We now included nations like Japan and South Korea as among the community of developed nations, even though they were non-European. The same was eventually going to happen around the rest of the world if we only kept at it on the course we were following. Only we went crazy around 2015 or 2016, and things went into the shitter. Now here we are.

5

So this is what I’ve seen, but I don’t have science to validate it.

Hurt people hurt people, and healed people heal people. Thats a good general rule of thumb.

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are both due to a mix of genetics but also childhood trauma. Both these disorders cause endless pain for the people around them. Someone who has bad genetics but a loving childhood will develop some symptoms as adults, but nowhere near the symptoms seen by people who have both bad genetics and bad childhood trauma. The neuroscientist James Fallon found out through brain scans that he had a brain that showed a lot of psychopathic traits. His friends and family were all like ‘yeah, that sounds about right’, but Fallon wasn’t really a destructive sociopath. He was law abiding, worked as a neuroscientist, generally helped people. He felt that his loving childhood is why he became a reasonably pro-social sociopath instead of a dangerous one.

So my point is this. When people live lives full of love, safety, care, protection, good health, medical care, wealth and compassion, they tend to become better people and treat others that way. When people’s lives are full of abuse, cruelty, insecurity, starvation, desperation, fear, poverty, etc they tend to become worse people and treat others worse.

As society as a whole improves, so do we.

Rates of child abuse are dropping if that helps. To me thats a sign that we are becoming better as a society.

I think what truly matters is this. Most of us want to live in a world full of safety and cooperation and as knowledge and wealth grows, we use that to build a better world overall. There are destructive people obviously, but even they are becoming less destructive. The modern far right in places like Hungary, Poland and the US are far less destructive than the far right 100 years ago under Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. Still destructive, just less so.

6

Yes, there are indications that we are evolving as a civilized society, but evolution is a slow process, but we only have about a century at the most to straighten our our world situation before it reaches the tipping point of no return. Doesn’t look good to me.

7

Don’t be so gloomy. After all, it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

8

When Trump won the 2024 election it was a reminder that sometimes the bad guy wins. The only comfort I have is Solon’s words that we should, “Count no man happy until he is dead.” But overall I think humans are good rather than evil.

There is currently a harrowing form of pessimism, particularly among younger people, sometimes referred to as doomerism. It’s a belief that everything in the past was shit, everything is shit now, and everything in the future will be shit. I don’t think it’s a particularly healthy to look at the many people who lived in the past thinking they were all miserable. No. Many of them lived full, rich lives. They certainly faced more difficulties than we did, but they didn’t just live in abject misery for the most part.

And while our current situation doesn’t exactly look rosy, I do think things will continue to improve overall. I just don’t know how dark it’s going to get before the dawn.

9

I’m currently pessimistic given how world events have unfolded since around 2015, but if people are really thinking like this, that seems excessively pessimistic. Why would they think that everything in the past was shit? If that was the case, we (humans as a whole) would still be living like we were in the days before we even developed civilization, i.e. the hunter gatherer days.

10

Thank you. I think this expresses what I have been thinking better than I have yet myself.

I’m not being all doom and gloom. Hell - our planet sure beats any other planet I’m aware of in terms of living conditions. :smiley: And sure, there have been significant worldwide improvements in most factors such as income/life expectancy/literacy/access to power and water - especially WRT to the poorest of the poor. I’m not sure how to factor advancements such as these into my equations, compared to apparent ongoing human greed/aggression/intolerance/apathy.

But for whatever reason my recent experiences and readings have had this 64 year old fart rethinking whether I should expect that we actually ARE progressing towards a “better” tomorrow. ISTM that since the turn of this last century we were certainly poised to make great changes in so many respects - increasing multinational cooperation, addressing climate issues, pursuing increased equity… But in the US, at least, I’m not convinced a great majority of people - either the general public or decision makers - really care to do so. At least not if it costs them a PENNY in their perceived self interest, or perceived relative status.

11

Humans can’t just “get along.” Our goals are fundamentally contradictory. It would require some sort of deep resetting of human psychology at the DNA/cell level.

12

It’s true that our goals are in some sense contradictory, in that for most people their goal is to improve their own situation, and sometimes that means someone else won’t. But I don’t think that fair competition is where our problems come from. IMHO the problems arise because some people not only have a goal of improving their own situation, but they also have a goal of worsening the situation of others, even when that doesn’t help them. We can call those people jerks, assholes, or whatever other term you prefer. Those are the people that are holding us back, not the people who are engaging in fair competition to better their own situation.

13

There was a great hijack in the Pit Thread What were you THINKING starting around #905 in January 2024 about the innate nature of humanity. I felt then, as I do now, that primates (including humans) have some degree of innate empathy, which is advantageous for any sort of social animal capable of communication, though with a wide range of expression (probably bell curved) and cultural modification. But I don’t see any evidence for an innate “morality” - which means that I don’t think there’s a moral arc to the species or universe.

What I believe is that comparative social and personal wealth and safety allow empathy to be applied more evenly and consistently, which leads to societies that are considered more moral, and more just, because it’s an easily born social cost. But again, morality and justice are very much based on cultural constructs as well, and as 2016+ has shown, a permissive morality and justice for all (not just an ingroup) is perceived as IMmorality and INjustice by those protected by the prior definitions.

Of course, that is further inflamed by political and economic grabs for power by those who are feeding such claims, not just warring cultural perspectives, but outside the classroom or debating societies nothing is ever quite pure.

14

If I take your meaning correctly, I disagree with that last part. It’s clear that SOME people among those protected by prior definitions perceive immorality and injustice when we expand to a more justice for all type system. At least if we’re talking about things like the loss of white privilege, which is what it sounds like you’re referring to. But clearly that doesn’t apply to all the people that are losing that privilege.

15

Humans certainly have instincts for morality. Here’s a study where they find it in bonobos:

Anyway, I don’t know if there’s an arc bending towards anything. The western world certainly bent in a different direction during the Dark Ages, for example. I agree with the posters above that events since 2015 in the US and in the UK have certainly opened my eyes to an arc bending in other directions than towards justice.

16

Very true, I apologize, I didn’t mean for it to be an absolute statement, which is why I described it in terms of the perceptions of 2016+ specifically, but I didn’t make it clear or explicit that I was describing how a sadly large segment of the ingroup (not just white privilege though) were reacting. That’s all on me.

@RitterSport - I disagree, but not strongly, and I think we’re mostly talking about how we define morality and the cultural aspects thereof. And it’s certainly a Great Debate, and therefore likely unproveable in the absolute sense. It is a part of the Pit sidetrack I mentioned earlier. I see empathy as I mentioned earlier, being instinctive to a degree in primates. Empathy, if applied in a positive manner, easily leads to what I personally would construe as “moral” behavior, and it’s likely evolutionarily advantageous to social animals, because you can sacrifice your immediate, personal advantage to support a greater net advantage to your group.

The problem comes in as how/when/where you define “your group”. In human societies, it’s very common (though not exclusive, back to @FlikTheBlue’s legitimate complaint) to limit your empathy to a narrowly defined group, various flavors on the classic Us vs. Them, and decide that whatever happens to the THEM, is justified even if it would horrify you if it happened to the US. Which to me (again to be clear) means that there’s no way to have an absolute morality, nor a universal bend towards it or justice, at least, not as our presumed mutual species is currently construed.

17

I think there’s pretty strong evidence for moral instincts in humans. For example, there are certain morals that are the same (or, very similar) across time and across cultures, which would be strong evidence for moral instincts. Anyway, it’s a fascinating subject (to me, anyway), but probably not for this thread. I think any built-in morality in humans would apply to the social circle, not to all humans. We were doing a good job trying to widen that social circle to include people from other towns, states, races, cultures, but then we really started backtracking.

18

Do we (at least in the US) truly want “fair” competition? I remember in law school hearing a fellow student describe capitalism as “the right of anyone to take advantage of anyone else to the greatest extent allowed by law.” I’m not sure if that is exactly the same as your “assholes.”

I’m not sure so many folk really want to WORSEN the position of others as they want to maintain - nd possibly increase - their advantage over them. I think that is subtly different, tho the effect may be indistinguishable.

Moreover, I’m not entirely sure which percentage of folk want “fair” competition" and which percentage are “assholes.” I doubt it is any better than 50/50, and I’d wager a majority tend towards assholery. I think a majority of folk wish to get away with whatever they can, and are at least ambivalent towards any externalities they cause other individuals or society in general.

19

I was thinking of the quote by LBJ that “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you”. Which at least implies that these “lowest white men” care more about keeping the colored man down than improving their own situation. I just don’t see, for example, how the “lowest white man” benefits if, say, the police stop racially profiling Black people. But yet some of them do seem to care about such things. To me that makes someone with that mindset a jerk.

As far as fair competition goes, I think as a whole we benefit. Of course the person who was unfairly benefiting comes out with less status or money, but there are more of us that gain. The fact that we can (or at least could) buy products from Europe, Japan, China, or South Korea which are better than American made products benefits anyone who wants a superior product. Sure, it might hurt a few American manufactures, but it’s on them to up their game to compete in the marketplace. The alternative, as we’re now getting ready to face, is that most of us lose out on our options to the benifit of a small few, which IMHO is a lot less fair than the former situation.

20

That’s silly.

In the hunter-gatherer days, I doubt you ever had even a thousand people working on the same thing at the same time.

By the bronze age, you had armies of thousands of men marching and fighting together.

By the world wars, armies were fielding millions of men, many thousands at the same battle.

So in the stone age, no one thousand humans “got along”, but in the modern era, 15,000 Chinese troops can match in unison at a parade.

That didn’t require a deep resetting of anything.