# How do we get humanity to sacrifice for the greater good? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 1, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736 "2025-02-01T23:23:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/121 "2025-03-05T11:51:33Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > > [@Gozu](#): > > > > “every” technological advance? Surely vaccines did not destroy something beautiful and irreplaceable? Let’s assume you meant “most”. > > You know what those seemingly unmitigated health advances did? They covered the world with human beings. Hasn’t the birth rate declined in areas where vaccines and other advances in standards of living have made it vastly more likely that the offspring they do have will survive to adulthood? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/122 "2025-03-05T11:57:16Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Hasn’t the birth rate declined in areas where vaccines and other advances in standards of living have made it vastly more likely that the offspring they do have will survive to adulthood? Yes, but that was a cultural change that took time; the _initial_ result was a huge boom in population. and it also depends on the local status of women’s rights; the birth rate doesn’t really drop in places where women are effectively not allowed to say “no” or access birth control. Of course, places like that also tend to have slews of neglected and abandoned children. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/123 "2025-03-05T12:04:31Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Yes, but that was a cultural change that took time > [@Ulfreida](#): > > Technology won’t save us, if hearts do not change. I’ve been wondering whether @Ulfreida’s “if hearts do not change” refers to cultural changes or changes to fundamental human nature. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/124 "2025-03-05T12:08:35Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I’ve been wondering whether @Ulfreida’s “if hearts do not change” refers to cultural changes or changes to fundamental human nature. We can’t change our nature, but we _can_ change our culture; unfortunately our culture seems to be rapidly getting worse, not better. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/125 "2025-03-05T13:50:51Z")
True. But there seems to be an upper limit to how different a culture can be from raw feral human nature. I doubt we could successfully adopt Vulcan culture no matter how much we wanted to. And there’s definitely a maximum rate a culture can change. And the most conservative slowest most ignorant members of a society have a large role in setting that speed limit. The pace of technological change, governmental change, population change, and climate change can evidently greatly exceed the pace that culture can adapt. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/126 "2025-03-05T16:58:44Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But technology has always rescued the human race from starvation. So far. We’ve only been around a million years or so; arguably a whole lot less than that in our current state of / capability of mind. Just because we’re still capable of talking right now doesn’t make the species immortal. (Plus of course what @2_More_Bits said.) > [@Alessan](#): > > At least if we do it it’ll be homegrown, and not caused by some alien rock. > > At some point, hopefully in the distant future, humanity will go extinct, and then, in a blink of the eye - 20 or 30 million years, no more - life will evolve into new and beautiful forms and repopulate the Earth. So it’ll all turn out OK in the end I also do not find either part of this comforting. Nor, I suspect, will any of the members of other species who we’ll be taking with us. And it seems an odd sort of objection to somebody saying that suicide might be useful to say that it doesn’t matter if the whole species commits suicide. I don’t think that either individuals or the species should; but to say that it’s not a problem if the species does but it is a problem if an individual does doesn’t make any sense at all to me. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > [@Ulfreida](#): > > > > You know what those seemingly unmitigated health advances did? They covered the world with human beings. > > Hasn’t the birth rate declined in areas where vaccines and other advances in standards of living have made it vastly more likely that the offspring they do have will survive to adulthood? Yeah. The question is whether the population drop will come too late. Especially when abetted by fools trying to remove access to birth control methods. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/127 "2025-03-05T17:13:16Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I don’t think that either individuals or the species should; but to say that it’s not a problem if the species does but it is a problem if an individual does doesn’t make any sense at all to me. I think the point was that individual suicide was pointless; not that it was undesirable. ---
**Author:** ![Gozu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gozu/32/6615_2.png) [@Gozu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/128 "2025-03-05T17:26:44Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Yeah. The question is whether the population drop will come too late. It is not a question at this point. Barring a miracle, It will come too late. It is my understanding that models predict that If all humans, and their factories were teleported to Mars today (cessation of all human activities), the world would still keep warming for the foreseeable future. 🔥 ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736/129 "2025-03-06T01:57:57Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > True. > > But there seems to be an upper limit to how different a culture can be from raw feral human nature. I doubt we could successfully adopt Vulcan culture no matter how much we wanted to. > > And there’s definitely a maximum rate a culture can change. And the most conservative slowest most ignorant members of a society have a large role in setting that speed limit. > > The pace of technological change, governmental change, population change, and climate change can evidently greatly exceed the pace that culture can adapt. Well look at the number of morons posting stupid shit on the internet compared to the number of Oppenheimers out there. Probably why he built that bomb. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-humanity-to-sacrifice-for-the-greater-good/1013736.md?page=6)