Tuesday, June 28, 2005
The ends of humanity... and the means
The question that I want to pose today: Is humanity making progress? Technologically, the answer is clearly yes. Intellectually, it would be hard to say anything but yes either. Philosophically, the answer is a little murkier. While humanity on a whole is very different than it was 5,000 years ago, individually, humans have not changed as much as we would (or at least I would) have hoped. Intellectually, our understanding of the world is more complete than ever; but this is basically a tautology- you could probably say that any time in the history of the world. Just from sheer population growth, the amount of humans that understand things like physics, math, history, and science has exploded. From that perspective- the perspective of humanity as a giant hive mind, we are indeed making progress. But is any single human more rational because of his/her education? Not really. At an individual level, humans still make decisions in basically the same way that they did hundreds of years ago- if they're hungry, they eat- if they're poor, they try to get money. On an individual I would say that humans today act just as rationally (or irrationally) as almost all humans in the course of history.
But that's not to say we haven't made progress anyway- More and more individuals respect things like human rights, animal rights, the environment, and in general, their roles as pieces of humanity. These things have mainly been learned as a sort of societal pressure. I grew up thinking that slavery and racism were wrong, that eating meat and wasting water and energy were OK. In the future, society will probably change its views and future generations will have made progress in that regard. On the other hand, in the last 100 years, humanity has witnessed some of the worst that humanity can possibly offer. How can we reconcile the fact that we are ostensibly making progress with our recent history?
This may be a tangent of sorts, but I believe that the problem is one of ends and means. From the start of the United States, they said that it was a country dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But throughout its history, they've contradicted that dedication by sending many of its citizens to die in wars that they've deemed are for the greater good- basically, that the goal of greater security and safety for the rest of its citizens was worth sending thousands of people to their deaths, taking away life, forcibly serving many more to work as soldiers (taking away liberty) and affecting many more non-soldiers, such as families of fallen soldiers- or just people with jobs who lost them, or more simply businesses that had to close, which at the very least, put on hold their pursuit of happiness. And those in charge of our country thought it these drafts were necessary in the WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam, to fight fascism and communism.
I'm not saying that the draft wasn't necessary in World War II, although I certainly believe it wasn't necessary in Vietnam. All I am trying to point out is that there is a contradiction here- that those in power believe that to ensure the spread of freedom, they have to take it away from a good many people. And those in power have always believed that since they know what is best, their goals are what matter, not how they get there.
I won't attempt to resolve this contradiction. I do believe that we had to fight fascism because its goals were incompatible with ours- but at the same time, what good are those goals if you simply throw them away anytime they are threatened? Because the chain of humans is unbroken, how can you define what is the end goal and what is the path towards it? When peoples live end en route to the goal, they end on the path. And when history looks back and sees that the path ran through injustice, tyranny, and deception, can you really say that it's ok, because it ended well? Not for that person, right?
There's the school of thought that humanity is simply a reactionary mass, trying to resolve the mistakes of the previous generation. If that's true, then perhaps the mistake we will correct is this one. If it's not, then society will proceed like it always has, taking two steps forward and one step back. At least it's still some sort of progress.
But that's not to say we haven't made progress anyway- More and more individuals respect things like human rights, animal rights, the environment, and in general, their roles as pieces of humanity. These things have mainly been learned as a sort of societal pressure. I grew up thinking that slavery and racism were wrong, that eating meat and wasting water and energy were OK. In the future, society will probably change its views and future generations will have made progress in that regard. On the other hand, in the last 100 years, humanity has witnessed some of the worst that humanity can possibly offer. How can we reconcile the fact that we are ostensibly making progress with our recent history?
This may be a tangent of sorts, but I believe that the problem is one of ends and means. From the start of the United States, they said that it was a country dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But throughout its history, they've contradicted that dedication by sending many of its citizens to die in wars that they've deemed are for the greater good- basically, that the goal of greater security and safety for the rest of its citizens was worth sending thousands of people to their deaths, taking away life, forcibly serving many more to work as soldiers (taking away liberty) and affecting many more non-soldiers, such as families of fallen soldiers- or just people with jobs who lost them, or more simply businesses that had to close, which at the very least, put on hold their pursuit of happiness. And those in charge of our country thought it these drafts were necessary in the WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam, to fight fascism and communism.
I'm not saying that the draft wasn't necessary in World War II, although I certainly believe it wasn't necessary in Vietnam. All I am trying to point out is that there is a contradiction here- that those in power believe that to ensure the spread of freedom, they have to take it away from a good many people. And those in power have always believed that since they know what is best, their goals are what matter, not how they get there.
I won't attempt to resolve this contradiction. I do believe that we had to fight fascism because its goals were incompatible with ours- but at the same time, what good are those goals if you simply throw them away anytime they are threatened? Because the chain of humans is unbroken, how can you define what is the end goal and what is the path towards it? When peoples live end en route to the goal, they end on the path. And when history looks back and sees that the path ran through injustice, tyranny, and deception, can you really say that it's ok, because it ended well? Not for that person, right?
There's the school of thought that humanity is simply a reactionary mass, trying to resolve the mistakes of the previous generation. If that's true, then perhaps the mistake we will correct is this one. If it's not, then society will proceed like it always has, taking two steps forward and one step back. At least it's still some sort of progress.
# posted by Stuart @ 7:03 AM 
