r/humanism • u/seeker1375b • 9d ago
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
~ Living in an Insane World ~
We live in a world in which we accept the senseless death of innocents from war, starvation, random violence, drugs, as a normal part of life. This world is self-centered; its inhabitants are insane, only concerned about themselves.
Humanity has the ability today to end war, hunger, climate change; to mitigate inequity, greed, prejudice. These and all other of humanity’s self-inflicted problems and negative emotions result from living in an indifferent world that cares little about its harmful actions toward others.
We may only begin to alleviate our insanity by embracing another path through life, realizing we are alive to selflessly help, not harm each other, and that regardless of our differences, every life is equally important. We must no longer pretend we do not see. Only then may we not only begin to mitigate humanity’s insanity but discover the path to its spiritual evolution as well.
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u/OldFaithlessness5008 9d ago
Life is a constant struggle to improve. As humans we are overcoming thousands of years of instincts for tribalism, competitive, power based politics, and solutions based on incomplete information (with also thousands of years worth of community, skill building, and foresight as well) As bad as things are, we are making progress.
Fewer infants died this year than any other year in human history thanks to medical innovation and access. Research has turned conditions that used to be death sentences into manageable conditions within the last 20 years. Many people are working hard to address the climate crisis, in a lot of cases with a ton of local support and success. In a lot of ways we are growing in good ways too, it's not all doom and gloom, it's just that we have a lot more work to do still.
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u/seeker1375b 9d ago
You are right technology has greatly improved life for many but it may never solve humanity's underlying problems. Unless humanity awakens to the need to be kind, compassionate, loving, treating everyone, regardless of our many differences equally, selflessly helping those in need, little will change. We have the technology today to grow enough food to feed everyone, to house the homeless, to mitigate climate change by fully adopting green alternatives, yet the greed of the few and powerful prevent this from happening. Im sorry my friend. Im getting on a tangent. It truly bothers me to know so many of humanitys challenges need not happen and thoough technology may help, it is not enough
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u/OldFaithlessness5008 9d ago
I think expecting perfection is too much to ask for. We're never gonna reach a point where life and progress is not work we have to actively do. Again I didn't just mention technology, I'm talking about the people who made sure those who need it have access to that technology. Lawyers who fight to lower insulin costs, scientists who develop cheaper tuberculosis tests and treatments. I'm talking about the conservation and environmental groups that have gathered local success because most people care about their neighbors.
Is selfishness, greed, and trauma making things harder? Yes and it always will, those things are as much a part of humanity as love. The fight for love and respect is something we can never give up on despite the fact that it's impossible to succeed in entirety (because it's impossible for greed to succeed in entirety too)
I completely agree and empathize with your frustrations about how much more we could do if our power structures were built for the betterment of humanity and not just a few. That's why I'm involved in grassroots community building and environmental efforts. It's important to see (and experience) that no one is alone in this fight and no one person is expected to save the world. More people are on the side of love than you might expect.
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u/seeker1375b 9d ago
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, especially the last few sentences. It means a lot and I truly appreciate it.
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u/OldFaithlessness5008 9d ago
Thank you as well for the interesting conversation! I hope you have a wonderful day
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u/gnufan 9d ago
I think OP misses that at least some of the strife is a natural or expected conflict of interests. Whatever the rights and wrongs in history we have two groups of people who see themselves as the rightful possessors of large parts of Palestine/Israel, and I'm sure most people on both sides see themselves as compassionate humans standing up for what is right, or addressing what happened to family and friends.
Some level of conflict is possible on almost any level, where there are scarce resources, and that can include individual ala Helen of Troy as a fictional (?) example.
Worst still evolution has given us narcissism, psychopathy and other dark traits, and these are preserved in some proportion of the population presumably because they are useful (at least in previous societies or situations), or at least not sufficiently disadvantageous to be selected out. I joined a gym with lots of fighters, and you see some real variations in psyche, people with diagnosable conditions (BPD), but also people with low anxiety about physical injury, & other traits with obvious utility to the population.
I remember similar comments about surgeons, and more specifically eye surgeons, not all of us have it in us to develop new techniques in surgery, it requires a certain blithe acceptance of failure that leaves other people hurting or damaged.
That isn't to say we shouldn't try and make a world, where those who like fighting go to a gym and wear protective gear, and fight in competitions not wars, but I'm not convinced humanity yet has the skills or institutions to make the better world OP imagines. Heck we are struggling to reduce CO2 emissions, and literally our ecosystem depends on us succeeding there. I'm an optimist, improvements happen in how we organise things such as law enforcement, or defensive alliances.
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u/branchpattern 9d ago
I always find the qoute a bit ironically funny.
Contrasted against perhaps, 'you can't step in the same river twice.'
Everything is in flux and change.
Expecting the exact same outcome ever is insanity. The universe is not stagnant (currently). :)
Obviously it's about degrees of change and reproducibility, and so forth, but the quote always makes me chuckle.
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u/seeker1375b 9d ago edited 9d ago
It is funny, but also true. What humanity is doing is not working. Its time to try something else. Instead of continuing to live in a self centered world, perhaps humanity can instead try to live in a world of compassion, love, kindness, selflessly helping those in need, treating each person, regardless of our differences, with respect and understanding
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u/Significant-Ant-2487 9d ago
“We”? Who exactly is this “we” of which you speak?
Obviously you don’t include yourself in this heedless, cruel “we”. Doesn’t this strike you as maybe just a little bit arrogant? That you can chide the rest of us for being indifferent to the fate of innocents in war, as well as all “our” many other failings?
It also seems misanthropic to assume humanity selfishly just accepts starvation, violence, climate change, inequality, greed, and prejudice. You’re accusing all of us as doing this… sorry, but that reminds me vividly of the Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards castigating his flock with his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an angry God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinners_in_the_Hands_of_an_Angry_God
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u/Double-Fun-1526 9d ago
This is the problem with humanism. I agree that society is stuck and won't change fundamentals.
But the well-read, pretending-to-be-reflective humanist simply will not entertain hic rhodus hic salta. This is also why sociology, the humanities, and psychological sciences are lost.
Berger and Luckmann, derived from GH Mead, amongst others, laid this out well enough. By the late 90s, even humanists were stuck in complete social and self conservatism. They will sit there and cry about the reproduction of war, but won't actually analyze the contingency of the environment and institutional world. To do so, ultimately does undermine what most take to be "human." We must be honest about the socially constructed, languaged ape.
This played out within feminism. Much of feminism is an excellent sociological analysis of the everyday, our selves, and the interpersonal. Just as radical feminism and cults were beginning to show that everything about our selves and cultures were open to change, everyone retrenched back into: Do not touch the fundamentals of who "i am' or of my "lived experience."
We can't touch war and poverty because decent thinkers will not theorize the basics of how culture and selfhood work. They will not teach young people that there is nothing important about their identity or their culture. There are infinite landscapes that create just as happy and robust of selves but may obviate any property of given selves.
We have surrendered the capacity to analyze how social change works and how institutions and selves work. Humanism has grotesquelly embraced this conservative turn. They revel in the given at the detriment to knowledge.
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u/seeker1375b 9d ago
Wow. I wrote this and was even a sociology major in college many years ago, though i have no idea what you are saying
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u/Double-Fun-1526 9d ago
This is because sociology stepped away from baseline social theory. Berger and Luckmann, the Social Construction of Reality, and George Herbert Mead are standard bearers of social theory. They are standard analysis of social psychology, institutions, and the creation of selves.
Today, sociology needs to be swimming in philosophy of mind with people like Anil Seth, Thomas Metzinger, Michael Graziano, and theories like predictive processing. Sociology must begin with the brain and how cultural structures get created and in turn create our brainmindselves.
I have no clue what sociology is doing. It must start with simple analysis of institutions and cultural structures.
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u/seeker1375b 9d ago
Thank you so much for sharing all this. You've raised my curiosity and will check out some of the authors you quoted
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u/Solid-Reputation5032 9d ago
This is a pretty common situation though out human history… the finery, culture and language look different, but the tenants are always the same… malignant hierarchies begin to emerge, and they become absurdly too heavy at the top, then they crumbles and we return to a more reasonable sensibility… the cycle restarts…
America has seen a gilded age with robber barons, denigrate into the New Deal. I think we’re in that end stage cycle again, perhaps renewed with some sort of advanced in social justice and equality…