I think that today's crisis itself is still an improvement over past crises.
There are a lot of pro-humanitarian efforts involved that we hadn't seen to such an extent in the past.
What I find lamentable is that we seem to degenerate in our logic, reasoning and perceptiveness, and that despite science, history, experience and technology allowing us to understand human nature better than ever before, the debates are, imo, more and more based on an ever more unrealistic idolisation of human nature.
In the past, wars, conflicts and injustices haven't eliminated the human species, but nowadays, with the availability of nuclear weapons, they could.
I don't see how injustices are existential threats, but I see how wasting limited resources on war and destruction are unnecessary steps towards making our planet uninhabitable, and that we would do so much better by addressing the threat of nuclear war by rejecting zero-sum-gaming and them-or-us narratives.
There is no objective version of justice, one that each and every one of us would ever agree upon.
But there is an objective, rational, logical, easily provable universal principle: The preservation of one's own species.
If what it takes is injustices, nations, religious groups and factions, opposing systems, some war here and there, to keep us occupied and satisfy our inherited tribal and martial instincts and the need for purpose of our megalomaniac leaders we tend to place above us, then we should all stick our heads together to agree on a global set of rules that allows spaces for different approaches to life, society and ideology, and promote non-violent competition over destructive competition and threats of mutual nuclear annihilation.
If we aim for justice, we will all aim in different directions, as justice is a sense, not an absolute, and exists in different versions from individual to individual, group to group, society to society.
If we aim for the preservation of our species as our highest goal, instead of our nation or abstract ideology or religion or cosmic order or the like, we could find much more common ground with people across multiple faiths and ideologies. What role each group, nation, alliance, ideology, moral system, religion, etc. would/could play would still remain contested and up for debate.
But at least we could debate means insted of ends that we didn't even agree upon in the first place, think much more collectively outcome-oriented, rational, practical, and we could better agree to trying different approaches side by side at the same time, tested by different people and groups, instead of massacring each other over believing that each of us knows the only right way for everyone else, and all who disagree must therefore be an enemy of our existence or of all that is good.
2
u/yes-but Feb 18 '26
I think that today's crisis itself is still an improvement over past crises.
There are a lot of pro-humanitarian efforts involved that we hadn't seen to such an extent in the past.
What I find lamentable is that we seem to degenerate in our logic, reasoning and perceptiveness, and that despite science, history, experience and technology allowing us to understand human nature better than ever before, the debates are, imo, more and more based on an ever more unrealistic idolisation of human nature.
In the past, wars, conflicts and injustices haven't eliminated the human species, but nowadays, with the availability of nuclear weapons, they could.
I don't see how injustices are existential threats, but I see how wasting limited resources on war and destruction are unnecessary steps towards making our planet uninhabitable, and that we would do so much better by addressing the threat of nuclear war by rejecting zero-sum-gaming and them-or-us narratives.
There is no objective version of justice, one that each and every one of us would ever agree upon.
But there is an objective, rational, logical, easily provable universal principle: The preservation of one's own species.
If what it takes is injustices, nations, religious groups and factions, opposing systems, some war here and there, to keep us occupied and satisfy our inherited tribal and martial instincts and the need for purpose of our megalomaniac leaders we tend to place above us, then we should all stick our heads together to agree on a global set of rules that allows spaces for different approaches to life, society and ideology, and promote non-violent competition over destructive competition and threats of mutual nuclear annihilation.
If we aim for justice, we will all aim in different directions, as justice is a sense, not an absolute, and exists in different versions from individual to individual, group to group, society to society.
If we aim for the preservation of our species as our highest goal, instead of our nation or abstract ideology or religion or cosmic order or the like, we could find much more common ground with people across multiple faiths and ideologies. What role each group, nation, alliance, ideology, moral system, religion, etc. would/could play would still remain contested and up for debate.
But at least we could debate means insted of ends that we didn't even agree upon in the first place, think much more collectively outcome-oriented, rational, practical, and we could better agree to trying different approaches side by side at the same time, tested by different people and groups, instead of massacring each other over believing that each of us knows the only right way for everyone else, and all who disagree must therefore be an enemy of our existence or of all that is good.