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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stsimon who wrote (301998)	6/14/2016 6:46:02 PM
From: koan	Respond to of 541922

I think the human species by large is much more compassionate, empathetic and sensitive year-by-year. The problem the human species has, is wrapping their mind around abstract problems. And the abstract problems are our largest problems. E.g. look at all of the hullabaloo over this recent massacre, admittedly a terrible event. But the real problems are literally the survival of the human species intact. Global warming, nuclear proliferation, plutocratic hegemony, uncontrolled human singularity, worldwide pollution and your favorite over population. You see almost no emotional reaction to any of the above. And no one can argue that killing 50 people by some ignorant crazy person is worse than the threat the entire human species faces by the above real problems. But even using mass killings, we're not good at prioritizing them so they make sense. I would be willing to bet that 50 people a month are killed in Chicago alone. When do we ever hear about that or have large demonstrations? Not often. The killing of the 50 people is a concrete event. The human species is most comfortable and naturally programmed to respond to concrete events. Responding emotionally to abstract events is not something we do very well and is something we're learning to do, but far too slowly. In my opinion, the educated kids do this far better than the older folks because they have had more practice at learning how to think abstractly. Every major problem in the world boils down, by and large, to the inability of the people to figure out solutions. When you look at the massive poverty in Third World countries, it is a simple matter of them being far too uneducated to know how organize their lives for maximum health and welfare and set up their societies with the best political and social systems e.g. setting up democracies, and the rule of law. The best example I can think of is the Philippines. They got rid of that criminal Marcos, put in Corazon Aquino, who did everything in her power to lead them to a modern democratic country, and now they just elected a guy worse than Trump. He is like Trump but even worse. And the Philippines is dominated by the Catholic Church. Which has done them no good at all. It has not controlled the criminal behavior in the least. That is a fact The countries that are doing worst in the world are those that have been unable to shed their religious dogma. No religious dogma on earth proselytizes democracy where the rule of law or liberal thinking, or even sophisticated ethics is taught. Only primitive dogma. So religion sort of has to be neutralized in order for sophisticated abstract thought to manifest itself in the human species. That is not even a subject most people are willing to talk about. But all the evidence I've ever seen shows it is absolutely correct. Every single highly educated country in the world is a democracy, or strives for one.. That is not an accident and the highly educated folks like in the Nordic countries have the most humane and wonderful countries to live in. And everybody that is honest pretty much knows this. Obama himself recently said we need to become like the Nordic countries.