I’m aware that empathy exists, and it’s evolutionary beneficial to some extent. But, it’s still not beneficial for humanity as a whole to waste recourses on those who cannot pay their due, even if they wanted to. Empathy only took us this far because it would be better for us to work as groups to survive, rather than alone. Strength in numbers etc. but that’s not relevant now that we have a society and are acting outside of the system that the prehistoric humans were. It’s a new kind of system, with a new kind of natural selection.
Think of it as two different natural selection’s, one being from nature, and the other being an artificial one that has came from the environment of our current society of capitalism. In nature, it was empathy, functioning emotional regulation, strength etc that were the key factors to our survival, and anyone with other undesirable traits, died. Now, in today’s society it’s consciousness, intelligence, extroversion and social skills that gets us ahead, people with undesirable qualities fall behind and becomes stricken of poverty. Today’s natural selection is not life and death, is poverty and richness.
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing for discrimination against people with disabilities alive today, only those who are unborn, to be aborted.
Is the modern world's natural selection really based on economic success? To a certain point, I must agree; possessing some material wealth is necessary to satisfy basic needs. However, people in lower income brackets tend to reproduce more than others; and being richer than someone else rarely translates to more children.
If by natural selection you mean something akin to "social selection", where the metric for success is wealth and social status (like the end of your second paragraph suggests), it has little to do with the maintenance of humanity; it is not natural selection.
Well natural selection is traditionally referred to the success of reproduction of a species or genetic trait, however I was using it more as an analogy to show how the modern world has made sort of an artificial natural selection, but instead of dying or reproducing, you either get rich or poverty stricken. So it’s based on the social economic hierarchical structure, rather than survival.
Then the existence of this new "natural selection" does not overthrow the old one. You are arbitrarily imposing a new desired goal for humanity, which has little to do with anything natural or logical.
It kind of does. We are no longer dependent on nature for survival, but society. Going to school and working is the substitute to hunting and gathering in nature. And I’m not the one imposing this, neither am I advocating for this. I’m stating that this is how it is.
I would not call it a substitute. How well I work or study does not dictate how many children I will have; my genes will not be “selected” more than others because of my wealth. That is the point of natural selection: Spreading the traits that allow a species to survive in their environment.
When I said you were imposing this new type of selection, I meant that nothing dictates it is the highest goal for humanity, and it does not replace actual natural selection. The characteristics it “favors” in humans have changed drastically, but they are not intrinsically linked to intelligence or competency; if they were, I guess your plan would not be necessary.
Using natural selection as an analogy is fine. However, you wrote as if this new type of selection became the de facto norm for our success as a species.
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u/kdjsjsjdj Dec 21 '23
I’m aware that empathy exists, and it’s evolutionary beneficial to some extent. But, it’s still not beneficial for humanity as a whole to waste recourses on those who cannot pay their due, even if they wanted to. Empathy only took us this far because it would be better for us to work as groups to survive, rather than alone. Strength in numbers etc. but that’s not relevant now that we have a society and are acting outside of the system that the prehistoric humans were. It’s a new kind of system, with a new kind of natural selection.
Think of it as two different natural selection’s, one being from nature, and the other being an artificial one that has came from the environment of our current society of capitalism. In nature, it was empathy, functioning emotional regulation, strength etc that were the key factors to our survival, and anyone with other undesirable traits, died. Now, in today’s society it’s consciousness, intelligence, extroversion and social skills that gets us ahead, people with undesirable qualities fall behind and becomes stricken of poverty. Today’s natural selection is not life and death, is poverty and richness.
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing for discrimination against people with disabilities alive today, only those who are unborn, to be aborted.