# What prompts our behaviour?



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Science :tiphat: has raised the question in another thread that he is a cynic who believes that conscious awareness almost never prompts what we do or say - that instead it is down to status seeking, ulterior motives & the like.

I think he is unduly Machiavellian here, and that there are many of us who are self-aware enough to know what we are doing and recognise our baser motives. 

But what do you think? It is a pretty fundamental question which would be better answered on a subjective & epistemological basis. Best to keep ideology out of it, if we want a fruitful discussion and the thread left open. 

That's why I'm making it a poll - to prompt discussion. I have allowed multiple choice because it really isn't a simple question, and your answer may be that on different occasions or for different people, different rules prevail. 

Examples and anecdotes from your own experience would be fab, but please don't attack other people or make nasty digs at their beliefs. 

With some trepidation then...


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I think that conscious awareness does prompt my behaviour chiefly, but then I am a self-conscious person always introspecting and fishing out unsavoury motives for examination, before tossing them back in the pond with disgust.

I have more than a touch of the Eleanor Bron about me in this classic sketch - included for the psychology, not the religion.






In fact, if nobody posts on this thread, the chance to post this clip was still worth it!


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Combination of several of those. I'd certainly like to say it's all conscious awareness, but I think I'd be deluding myself. Of course, even if you feel you are making a conscious decision, you may have stuff simmering underneath, tilting the scales, so to speak. 

Self-awareness sometimes comes too late. We don't realize why we really did something until after the fact.


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## mirepoix (Feb 1, 2014)

Ingélou said:


> Science :tiphat: has raised the question in another thread that he is a cynic who believes that conscious awareness almost never prompts what we do or say - that instead it is down to status seeking, ulterior motives & the like.
> 
> I think he is unduly Machiavellian here, and that there are many of us who are self-aware enough to know what we are doing and recognise our baser motives.


I agree wholeheartedly with the status seeking/ulterior motives comment. There seems to be an increasing number of latent narcissists and a culture of seeking external validation.
However, I also believe the view of "many of us who are self-aware..." is perfectly valid, because in this context all of us don't think and behave the same, despite the need of society to apply labels to everything - including people; we don't all fit neatly on the same shelf. Or at least, not at the same time.

Anecdotes? I learned how important self honesty is and how it must be 100% across the board or it's worthless. Painful introspection? Yes. But afterwards, peace and perhaps even a kind of freedom is the reward.


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## Guest (May 8, 2014)

I voted for all of them because I think it has to be a mix of the subconscious, the conscious, hormones and so on. As Kurt Vonnegut put it, we're all the result of good and bad chemicals in our brains. Long live Kilgore Trout !!


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I'm sure I'm motivated by depraved instincts, but I believe that everyone else is motivated by the conscious pursuit of the good. 

These are useful beliefs to have when participating in obvious troll threads, perhaps.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> I'm sure I'm motivated by depraved instincts, but I believe that everyone else is motivated by the conscious pursuit of the good.
> 
> These are useful beliefs to have when participating in obvious troll threads, perhaps.


:tiphat: Brilliant, Blancrocher - and such a change to the 'you're worth it', and 'don't let the other guy do you down' mentality!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm biased. I grew up hearing, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

Well, "wicked" is a matter of opinion, but "selfish with some allowances for close relatives" would do it for me.

What I have in mind are phenomena such as cognitive dissonance. No one (I think) is aware of using cognitive dissonance to form beliefs or explain courses of action, but it's apparent that we all do. (Well, _maybe_ someone doesn't, but that would probably be a disorder of some kind.)

Perhaps most important to me is confirmation bias. This is one that really sticks in me. I actively try to fight against that, but I'm sure I still do it because no matter what I consciously desire, my brain remains as dishonest an organ as anyone else's, and I can't see it happening.

In-group bias is another one. It is a part of us, we can try to counteract it consciously but we cannot stop it from happening. It will always be going on in our head without our awareness of it happening. In a world of foragers making war on each other that would be absolutely essential for survival; but IMO in our contemporary world it is fundamentally evil. It's just a little piece of racism and fascism inside all of us that we can never get rid of.

Where I think things get really interesting is when we think about subconscious communication, such as blushing and other body language. Why do we blush? It's interesting that it is basically outside our conscious control and we sometimes wish we could stop it from happening. What's evidently going on in such a case is that our subconscious mind wants something (such as embarrassment) communicated to other humans that our conscious mind does not want communicated - and our subconscious mind is neither letting our conscious mind make the decision NOR letting our conscious mind understand and agree with its strategy. There's a lot of things like that - hands shaking or voice breaking when you're nervous, mirroring. We're usually unconscious of our body language. I doubt most of us have ever thought something like, "Well, that guy just flashed his eyebrows at me, I guess he's happy to see me!"

In fact, we're usually unconscious of other people's body language, but the communication happens anyway. In that case the brains of both the sender and the receiver of the information are willing to bypass consciousness. Basically, our brains evidently keep our consciousness on a "need to know" basis. (A really interesting case is eyes dilating when you see someone you're attracted to.)

So our brains evidently have social strategies that they choose not to communicate to our consciousnesses.

These kinds of things probably serve us very well as social animals making decisions as part of a pack, jockeying for position within the pack, in the worst case trying to become part of a pack, and so on.

One other really important (to me) idea in this line is that most of underestimate our ability to be evil. It is important to me for us all to really internalize the fact that pretty much everyone in the history of humanity thought they were a good person - and that history is filled with slavery, serfdom, oppression of peasants, oppression of women, rape and war rape, genocide, child abuse, etc. etc. etc. The people who did those things had minds more or less the same as yours and mine. Of course there have probably always been psychopaths, but I'm not talking about exceptionally individuals here but about evil social systems that were constructed and sustained for the most part by normal people.

For example, inside the US it's popular to demonize Nazis as evil. Really, it's to the point that "Satanic" is arguably a weaker insult than "Nazi." And I don't know about Hitler and Goebbels and so on - maybe a lot of those guys at the top were psychopaths. But the German people as a whole weren't. They were normal people like you and me, and _if you and I were in their situation we would probably do the same thing they did_. If they were moral monsters, so are you and I. (Well, someone here might turn out to be a moral saint along the lines of Bonhoeffer or Sophie Scholl. The Milgram experiments or the Stanford prison experiment are really famous demonstrations of this.

The Nazis are a good example because of the role they play in American culture, but closer to home examples would be slavery or our treatment of Native Americans, or perhaps the kinds of things we've done in recent wars. "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" is a very common expression where I'm from, and it's generally considered a respectable, even impressive one.

The balance of this is that in the right situations we are sometimes capable of moral heroism; and that we can sometimes manage to organize social structures in ways that incentivize good behavior (right now we live in a world in which most of the most powerful people would not benefit from war, and so they're incentivized to find nonviolent solutions to their problems, and so that usually works out pretty well for us), or in ways that enable us as groups to overcome our individual biases and failures to produce more reliable results (science and analogous projects).

Perhaps that's not balanced enough - although I have tried to be fair to more optimistic views of humanity, perhaps all I've done is make some token concessions as part of a subconscious strategy to appear more reasonable - perhaps all I've done is summarized years of confirmation bias operating on the teaching, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Perhaps I'm even arguing all this because (cognitive dissonance) I need to explain away my own evil behavior!

Anyway, I enjoy the topic and I hope we can learn from each other here!

By the way, a related issue (for me) to this is the nature of religion (experience and belief and behavior), and why it evolved. I need to go to bed now, but if I can tomorrow I'll start a discussion on that in the "religion" discussion group. (You can get to the "groups" up there at the top of the page right under the talkclassical header under the "community" option.)


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

All that said, I cannot say what chiefly prompts our behavior. I guess it's something like "subconscious assumptions/estimations about what would maximize the likelihood of our genes getting into future generations if they were in an individual in a foraging community" - 

- and that mouthful will translate in a lot of ordinary situations into "subconscious assumptions/estimations about what would maximize our status (where "status" means "how well we're liked, respected, loved, etc.") in a foraging community."


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

One more: thanks for starting this thread! These are some very important ideas to me and I find myself coming back to them in a wide variety of conversations that ought to be about other things.


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## Guest (May 8, 2014)

Science, are you thinking along the lines of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins?


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

It probably depends what stage of your life you're in, plus of course your upbringing and peer pressure. 

I voted CA. I react accordingly to people who are friendly or unfriendly. Yep, it's that simple these days. 

Ulterior motives are usually way too complicated. It's like trying to coverup a white lie, that then snowballs. Or, from one's unmarried younger days, keeping two lovers without them knowing about the other. It can deteriorate sometimes to slapstick comedy, such as hiding one in the closet or under the bed, while the other searches the apartment. Just sayin'.

Deceit breeds bad energy. I digressed, I know.


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## Guest (May 8, 2014)

My dear Vaneyes : I never inhaled.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

mirepoix said:


> I agree wholeheartedly with the status seeking/ulterior motives comment. There seems to be an increasing number of latent narcissists and a culture of seeking external validation.
> However, I also believe the view of "many of us who are self-aware..." is perfectly valid, because in this context all of us don't think and behave the same, despite the need of society to apply labels to everything - including people; we don't all fit neatly on the same shelf. Or at least, not at the same time.
> 
> Anecdotes? I learned how important self honesty is and how it must be 100% across the board or it's worthless. Painful introspection? Yes. But afterwards, peace and perhaps even a kind of freedom is the reward.


This is a post I can really relate to. I think our individual ways of thinking are moulded early by our particular environments. A story from my life illustrates this. I am a self-conscious person, always aware of how people may be thinking of me, and unwilling to risk being scorned. Curiously, this awareness of how I may appear to others has trained me in what I may really be up to, so I am introspective. I am an honest person, yet I am also quite a good actor in casting the best light on myself. All these points about what prompts my behaviour can be seen in the following story:

I was in the second class of infant school, aged five and a half. We were asked to write a story and I wrote about how a fery (fairy) was able to outwit a giant who flooded the world because she could fly. The teacher was pleased, gave me a gold star, and read out my story to the class. But I lived in a home dominated by my father, his henchmen myself & my five siblings. We were brought up to ridicule each other as soon as we showed any pretensions or any pride in our achievements. So while the teacher was reading, I walked round the room with my hands in my ears pretending that I was disgusted by my story, because it would have been unacceptable (I thought) to show the secret pride & pleasure I felt.

On the teacher's instructions, I took the book home to show to my parents. My father read the story aloud & I again enacted my fingers-in-ears routine. My father asked me if I didn't like my story, and to be consistent I was forced to say yes. So he put it straight outside in the dustbin. I was anguished, but felt I couldn't lose face or change my answer.

So from the age of five I have been aware of how to project myself to others, and how to acknowledge my secret feelings.

Everyone is human, but everyone has a different character & a different family to grow up in. We all of us must have unacknowledged motives & base or animal instincts; but with cultivation, we can reach a stage where we are very conscious of what we are doing, or at the least, as people have said, we know why we did it afterwards.

The idea of being in a wicked mob & taking part in evil terrifies me. It is shocking how even 'good' people can be fooled into thinking abominations are justified. But there are always some who stand out or who would rather die than commit atrocities. Sometimes it is a natural good instinct - and sometimes a developed conscience. But I do not share your pessimistic view of humanity, Science - recent experiments have shown that young children, and even chimps can be altruistic!

http://www.exploratorium.edu/tv/index.php?project=22&program=00000768


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

TalkingHead said:


> Science, are you thinking along the lines of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins?


A little bit.

Dawkins isn't primarily talking much about consciousness or the mind - it's important to realize that his idea is that genes are selfish, not that there is a gene for selfishness or that our genes make us selfish. His point is that genes build bodies for their own purposes, and when what we (naively perhaps) take to be the well-being of the body conflicts with the well-being of the genes, the genes will sacrifice the body.

We can see this in a sense if you think about your somatic cells aging. Your feet, arms, brain, etc. are all filled up with cells destined to die, even if everything works exactly the way your genes want it to. The genes built those cells intending for them to die. The only cells in your body with a chance to be alive two hundred years from now (barring amazing medical advances or something odd like some of your cells getting used to study cancer) - well, alive in some sense, are in your gonads (ovaries or testes), some cells of which become gametes which with luck (for them) will build a body - a body whose cells are all intended to die except for some of the cells that happen to become gametes, and so on. Once your genes have gotten themselves into another body, you're less important to them. When you can no longer help them get into other bodies, you're completely unimportant to them - they'll probably even kill you! Essentially we age because our genes don't need us to be healthy when we're 70 as much as they need us to be healthy when we're 20. They will discard us. In that sense, they are "selfish." Our genes don't care very much about us.

This is as true for jellyfish and plants and mushrooms as it is for people.

In simple cases - like bugs - nervous systems are obviously really helpful to the genes (at least until reproduction has happened), because they help the body get food or not get eaten or find mates or whatever. All that fits with Dawkins' idea easily, and probably we don't need his idea for most of it.

So then we can think of the consciousness as something the brain does, and the brain as something genes do basically for their own benefit, so that indirectly your genes (interacting of course with the environment in bajillions of ways) have a pretty strong influence on how your consciousness works, and they're in it for themselves. One way or another our consciousness must be meant to serve our genes.

That's all good and interesting but it doesn't manage to explain much about human social behavior. At that point we're almost beyond Dawkins' relevance. The reason: we could imagine an organism in which the genes built a mind that made a consciousness that was as straightforward and ethical as we usually assume ourselves to be; as long as that was the kind of mind that would maximize its genes' fitness there would be no contradiction (afaik) with the idea that genes are selfish.

But it happens that we are not such an organism, and so the reasons we are like us and not like that must be more specific than our genes being selfish. Dawkins' ideas can't help us much here.

So Dawkins influenced some part of my guess as to "what chiefly prompts our behavior," but on the whole he doesn't tell us much about psychology or neuroscience. He's almost doing philosophy. Aside from the mention of "genes," probably a bigger influence, even on what I wrote here, was E. O. Wilson. I recommend with fervent enthusiasm "On Human Nature" which I regard as one of the greatest books I've ever read!

More influential on my thoughts throughout this thread are more "down to earth" neuroscience and psychology. I mentioned a few experiments, but just a general main thing to be aware of is that psychology tends to be surprising. When we get into what is going on in our brains, it is almost always surprising. For good examples of that, people like Oliver Sacks or V. S. Ramachandran do really interesting work.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Usually it's social condition mixed with primal instincts, but without consciousness then none of those conditionings would be able to play out… Although, most are hypnotized by solely trying to please the body-mind level of existence, so they completely overlook the more subtle layers of their being. 

All that needs to be done is a little self-inquiry to see what's really inside. The mind has never fully satisfied anyone, it's job is to be restless… and the entire world is the mind.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Vesuvius, your point about consciousness I *so* agree with!
But generally - World, please understand that as I started the thread, I 'like' posts if I think they are thoughtful or funny or add something to the discussion. 
I have read Oliver Sacks, though, and find him very insightful,.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

People are basically social conformists. They do not want to stand out in a crowd and wish to be accepted by a larger group, whether that be their circle of friends, community or "society". Following the expected norms is therefore important to many folks. People simply wish to "belong". So "conscious awareness" is the way I voted.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

TalkingHead said:


> To Science and Ingélou:
> 
> I think the term "status seeker" may come from Maslow's Triangle. Here's a Wiki link for an explanation:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
> ...


So I came here instead of going to bed to respond to this, and then I saw TalkingHead's post, and the net result is that 20 minutes from now when I do go to bed my wife is gonna cast me some serious shade.

If you're unfamiliar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you shouldn't be! Follow the link and find out.

Ok, and now I'm gonna be a bit inflammatory. I think most of what I've posted in this thread, with regard to psychology, is pretty mainstream stuff within psychology. If I'm wrong about that, I'd like to know!

But now I'm going to be a bit rebellious and put myself out on what I consider to be a bit of a thinner limb: I think Maslow has put social needs in the wrong place on his hierarchy.

Perhaps in a situation where you're starving to death you might do everything you have to do to get food, regardless of how people perceive it - but I doubt it! I think even in such an extreme situation our decisions will be more affected by concern for our status than about our survival.

Think about it. Imagine a situation: you've got a small roll of bread in your hand, you believe you need to eat it or you will probably die today, and there's a child (not your own child, just some child) next to you who will probably also die without that bread, but the child has no bread, and there is no other bread or any other way out of this dilemma, and a bunch of people - people whose opinions of you are important to you - are watching you to to see what you will do. What would you do? I'm gonna bet almost all of us would give the roll to the child. _Most of us would even feel good doing it._ Some of us would even do that in the absence of witnesses.

How about safety? Put yourself in the place of a young man who has been drafted to fight a war you don't believe in. You can run away to Canada or whatever, but you believe your family and friends will consider you a coward. Or you can go to fight, risk your life in the worst way. What are you gonna do? Experience shows, a whole lot of people in that situation put social status over safety.

Imagine you have grown up in a community with a really painful and somewhat dangerous coming of age ceremony. Let's say... you have to endure ants stinging you... or lash yourself on the back until you bleed... or something like that. Let's say this is the kind of thing that every now and then someone in your community even dies from. You don't have to go through this ceremony, your people will let you out of it, but if you don't go through it, you will be a pariah, the lowest member of your society, despised by everyone you know, without rights. I'll bet you do it.

At an extreme, the famous "dive on a hand grenade" situation - near certainty that you'll be a dead hero if you do, near certainty that you'll be a living coward if you don't. What would you do? Even to save a group of strangers, I'll bet maybe not the majority but a lot of us would jump on the grenade. And, most of the rest of us would have trouble living with our decision.

My point is, for humans (unlike perhaps most or maybe even any other species), social acceptance is more important than food, safety, pretty much anything. Most of us would rather go without food for a week that suffer a week of hardcore scorn from our friends and family; most of us would rather risk our lives or endure great pain or all kinds of stuff. And of course, solitary confinement is torture; people who suffer it lose their minds. If you're unfamiliar with the results of solitary confinement, look it up! It's amazing.

So I believe Maslow's got us wrong. The base of the pyramid should be social acceptance.

How did we turn out this way? The answer is that we're not tigers. Our ancestors, at least for the past few million years until the development of cities, had zero, absolutely zero chance of surviving on their own. They might manage to find an unexpected scrap of food under the next rock or recover from a poisonous insect bite, but they were _certain_ to die if their group rejected them. So _nothing_ was more important to them than being securely members of a group. (In fact, when most of us think of "security" we first think, rather than of shelter or of money, of family and friends.)

And we have inherited the genes that built their brains.

That's a pretty key insight, IMO. If I've got you this far, I think we're ready to start wondering about why our brain might want to deceive its own consciousness, or why behaviors involving religion and music and art and clothing evolved.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

First and foremost, I believe that each person is different. We are each one of us an oddity and unique piece of work. Our lives have been different, we think we know a lot of things, or we know most of what could have been known, or we know 'enough' - but there is a lot of unconscious/unknown material in both our minds and our surroundings that dictates what happens to us.

So, my answer to your question is - All of the above. Our behaviour is a dense matrix of all the listed factors and many more beside them.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

First of all, Ingelou, let me join with science--my esteemed and far more erudite colleague-in thanking you for broaching such an interesting topic in such a well reasoned and temperate manner. We should indeed be able to engage in intelligent discourse amongst each other--on any topic or issue-without devolving into or resorting to ad hominems/questioning each other's motives or honor. Yes, I humbly appreciate and thank you for having enough "faith" and trust in your fellow members that we will in fact be able to do so.
I--for one--shall endeavor to do my utmost to prove that you're right, and that neither is misplaced on your part. :cheers:


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Oh, and I'll leave with a provocative thing. 

When someone says, "I don't care what anyone thinks, I just like the music I like," I consider it charitable NOT to believe that person. Of course that person probably believes that statement genuinely, but hopefully he's wrong about himself! 

If he's right, if he really doesn't care what other people think, even subconsciously, then he's the kind of person who I hope would not have the last roll when my kid was hungry!


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

@ science, Better get to bed soon.
Good luck with your Frau!


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I guess I'd say that the way our subconscious - which is the bit that does the actual thinking - acts is determined by a complicated mix of genes and environment. And the way we deal consciously with what our subconscious has planned for us is also determined by genes and environment. So we all have different innate responses, and how we project those responses is also different. So with, say, social acceptance, some of us are inherently more desirous of social acceptance, and some are inherently less so, but how we go about dealing with that will also vary (eg, we want to be popular and so do our best to fit in, or we want to be popular and so try to be the one who decides who gets to be popular).


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Email notifications/alerts :devil:


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Lots of stuff goes on in the brain. There may even be more than one outlook (or personality looking out).

I suppose you'll think I am changing the subject... Read "What It Is Like To Go To War" by Karl Marlantes - and don't put it down after 60 pages because you think you know what he is saying.

Pogo Possum said once: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

There's a multitude of places "where the sun don't shine".


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## JCarmel (Feb 3, 2013)

"Think about it. Imagine a situation: you've got a small roll of bread in your hand, you believe you need to eat it or you will probably die today, and there's a child (not your own child, just some child) next to you who will probably also die without that bread, but the child has no bread, and there is no other bread or any other way out of this dilemma, and a bunch of people - people whose opinions of you are important to you - are watching you to to see what you will do. What would you do? I'm gonna bet almost all of us would give the roll to the child. Most of us would even feel good doing it. Some of us would even do that in the absence of witnesses"

I would divide the roll carefully into two equal shares, as we both have the right to live if we can & the most important thing to do in such a dreadful situation is to share the burden of it with another living soul....be they a child or whoever and to comfort each other. In as many situations in life as possible one should be loving...to oneself and to others...it really is our best option.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

JCarmel said:


> "Think about it. Imagine a situation: you've got a small roll of bread in your hand, you believe you need to eat it or you will probably die today, and there's a child (not your own child, just some child) next to you who will probably also die without that bread, but the child has no bread, and there is no other bread or any other way out of this dilemma, and a bunch of people - people whose opinions of you are important to you - are watching you to to see what you will do. What would you do? I'm gonna bet almost all of us would give the roll to the child. Most of us would even feel good doing it. Some of us would even do that in the absence of witnesses"
> 
> I would divide the roll carefully into two equal shares, as we both have the right to live if we can & the most important thing to do in such a dreadful situation is to share the burden of it with another living soul....be they a child or whoever and to comfort each other. In as many situations in life as possible one should be loving...to oneself and to others...it really is our best option.


I intended to make division impractical by making the roll small, but it doesn't matter - it's a thought experiment, and the conclusion I had in mind is a version of the view you've argued for here. I meant to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and I was trying to illustrate a point about Maslow's hierarchy rather than jump all the way to the conclusion, but in different ways we both reach some version of "social is the answer."


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

science said:


> Oh, and I'll leave with a provocative thing.
> 
> When someone says, "I don't care what anyone thinks, I just like the music I like," I consider it charitable NOT to believe that person. Of course that person probably believes that statement genuinely, but hopefully he's wrong about himself!
> 
> If he's right, if he really doesn't care what other people think, even subconsciously, then he's the kind of person who I hope would not have the last roll when my kid was hungry!


You may be right in hoping so. Personally, I care what other people think, but I care much more about what my conscience thinks. If I don't divvy up that roll, my conscience is going to beat me up. One of the several drawbacks to 'honest introspection' is that it can hinder survival.

[I should make the important observation that, being a geezer, I have had a life already. makes the options easier to handle.]


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

It is going in a totally different direction but my "roll" example is a version of the trolley problem, and I realize I should've put the roll in the child's hand.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

science said:


> It is going in a totally different direction but my "roll" example is a version of the trolley problem, and I realize I should've put the roll in the child's hand.


But that removes the problem. The child decides what to do with the roll. (I can see his hand, and it is _really_ dirty.)


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Ukko said:


> But that removes the problem. The child decides what to do with the roll. (I can see his hand, and it is _really_ dirty.)


Assume he's not going to share and the question is, do you take it from him?

Maybe we would get even less roll seizing if we made the child a girl.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

mirepoix said:


> I agree wholeheartedly with the status seeking/ulterior motives comment. There seems to be an increasing number of latent narcissists and a culture of seeking external validation.
> However, I also believe the view of "many of us who are self-aware..." is perfectly valid, because in this context all of us don't think and behave the same, despite the need of society to apply labels to everything - including people; we don't all fit neatly on the same shelf. Or at least, not at the same time.
> 
> Anecdotes? I learned how important self honesty is and how it must be 100% across the board or it's worthless. *Painful introspection? Yes. But afterwards, peace and perhaps even a kind of freedom is the reward.*


Also, I believe, a kind of dignity.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

science said:


> Assume he's not going to share and the question is, do you take it from him?
> 
> Maybe we would get even less roll seizing if we made the child a girl.


Consider the situation - both of us are within one day of dying of starvation. That means that the only justification (I can think of) for seizing the roll is because he/she needs me for protection. At one day away, I am in no shape to protect anything.


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## mirepoix (Feb 1, 2014)

Novelette said:


> Also, I believe, a kind of dignity.


I would hope so.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I am interested in your posed dilemma, science, but I differ in the way you explain the most probable outcome. I agree with Ukko - the person giving the roll to the child may be doing it for social acceptance but may just as well be doing it for conscience's sake, because they know it is the right thing to do. Or from a simple feeling of love. There are many cases of people sacrificing themselves to save others, especially children - teachers in Aberfan, for example, who died trying to shelter children from the sludge with their bodies. People who have taken the bullet for someone else. The mothers that went into the gas chambers with their children, when they weren't on the list - but they wanted the child to be reassured to the last. None of this, in my view, is about 'social acceptance'. 

The link to the child/chimps experiment I posted earlier shows that there is an inborn wish to help in both child & chimp. You could argue that's useful in the evolutionary struggle, or you could believe that Love has a much more important role than Dawkins credits.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Ingélou said:


> [...]
> The link to the child/chimps experiment I posted earlier shows that there is an inborn wish to help in both child & chimp. You could argue that's useful in the evolutionary struggle, or you could believe that Love has a much more important role than Dawkins credits.


The 'help the child' thing has been documented in many 'pack animal' environments - within the pack. Humans are capable of expanding the concept - or ignoring it. My responses to Science's examples are personal, not intended to suggest any general knowledge on my part.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Ukko said:


> The 'help the child' thing has been documented in many 'pack animal' environments - within the pack. Humans are capable of expanding the concept - or ignoring it. My responses to Science's examples are personal, not intended to suggest any general knowledge on my part.


My replies are personal too. I was agreeing that in the case of the child and roll, my conscience would beat me up too unless I parted with the bread.  
I am interested in what other people make of this world and our own minds and motives. So thank you for your personal view, Ukko, and everyone else who has posted - thank you, all :tiphat: - it's lovely how this thread is developing.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I think these roll questions are really quite unanswerable unless we're actually presented with the situation. Of course, now that everyone is sitting comfy at home with their bellies full and peace of mind the 'good' answer spills out naturally. But, get into an armageddon situation where you haven't eaten in days, your mind is becoming dark and primal, your whole body is screaming in pain from malnutrition, you begin to question your faith in an afterlife or purpose (if you have one), and you don't know if you'll ever see the sun again. 

I think the answers might vary a little more... but I'd like to think that I'm ready to die for someone else who I feel is more deserving. But like I said, I'm cozy in my own house right now, and I just finished a great meal while jamming to some great tunes. What the hell do I know about struggle right now?


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

*Total Depravity.*

Oh yes, I went there. :devil:


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> I think these roll questions are really quite unanswerable unless we're actually presented with the situation. Of course, now that everyone is sitting comfy at home with their bellies full and peace of mind the 'good' answer spills out naturally.


I'm with you. Most of us want to be perceived as good people but how many times have we made the morally wrong decision and have then fed our conscience with what feels like solid arguments?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> *Total Depravity.*
> 
> Oh yes, I went there. :devil:


I came from there.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Vesuvius said:


> I think these roll questions are really quite unanswerable unless we're actually presented with the situation. Of course, now that everyone is sitting comfy at home with their bellies full and peace of mind the 'good' answer spills out naturally. But, get into an armageddon situation where you haven't eaten in days, your mind is becoming dark and primal, your whole body is screaming in pain from malnutrition, you begin to question your faith in an afterlife or purpose (if you have one), and you don't know if you'll ever see the sun again.
> 
> I think the answers might vary a little more... but I'd like to think that I'm ready to die for someone else who I feel is more deserving. But like I said, I'm cozy in my own house right now, and I just finished a great meal while jamming to some great tunes. What the hell do I know about struggle right now?


It's a good point; but even if some of us or most of us would take the roll from the kid and endure the scorn of our community, hopefully the other thought experiments there make the point.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

science said:


> It's a good point; but even if some of us or most of us would take the roll from the kid and endure the scorn of our community, hopefully the other thought experiments there make the point.


For sure. I think it's good to contemplate our fears and instincts so they don't come creeping up on us and moving us around like unconscious puppets.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Ingélou said:


> I am interested in your posed dilemma, science, but I differ in the way you explain the most probable outcome. I agree with Ukko - the person giving the roll to the child may be doing it for social acceptance but may just as well be doing it for conscience's sake, because they know it is the right thing to do. Or from a simple feeling of love. There are many cases of people sacrificing themselves to save others, especially children - teachers in Aberfan, for example, who died trying to shelter children from the sludge with their bodies. People who have taken the bullet for someone else. The mothers that went into the gas chambers with their children, when they weren't on the list - but they wanted the child to be reassured to the last. None of this, in my view, is about 'social acceptance'.
> 
> The link to the child/chimps experiment I posted earlier shows that there is an inborn wish to help in both child & chimp. You could argue that's useful in the evolutionary struggle, or you could believe that Love has a much more important role than Dawkins credits.





Ingélou said:


> My replies are personal too. I was agreeing that in the case of the child and roll, my conscience would beat me up too unless I parted with the bread.
> I am interested in what other people make of this world and our own minds and motives. So thank you for your personal view, Ukko, and everyone else who has posted - thank you, all :tiphat: - it's lovely how this thread is developing.


I don't think Dawkins or I intend to say that love and conscience aren't among the reasons we would part with the bread, or do any of the other pro-social actions I used as examples.

What I (we'd better leave Dawkins out of this) intend, however, is to get "behind" our conscious experiences of love and conscience, and figure out what is going on. You can think of the question as, why did love and conscience evolve? Why isn't psychopathy normal?

(It's a diversion, but I think we should be fair to psychopaths: I'm doubt they have a conscience as normal people do, but they do experience love. It's just that they very casually and cruelly manipulate and harm the people they love.)

Of course kin selection (if three of my siblings or five of my nieces flourish because of my sacrifices, my genes will be very happy) explains why something like love and morality evolved in lots of animals, but humans are unique in that our societies are too large for kin selection to work as an explanation for all of our behavior - i.e. we don't love our neighbor because of kin selection.

So I'd say the explanation is that, because our ancestors (or their genes if we want to be technical) needed to live in large and coherent groups, we evolved a whole lot of behaviors that usually enable us to live in group, to be sure that our fellows are committed so that we aren't sacrificing ourselves in a way that would be irrational (from our genes' POV).

This doesn't mean that love and conscience and personal preference for different music and religious experience and grief and guilt and embarrassment and shame and loneliness and pride all that aren't real - of course they're real, and I feel those things about as viscerally as everyone else.

They're real in the same sense that my experience of seeing the color green when I look at my lamp shade is real. I really do experience seeing the color green; at conscious level my experience is just "that lampshade is green." But I also know that what is really happening is that the material of the lampshade is interacting with electromagnetic radiation, absorbing and reflecting various wavelengths, some of which strikes cone cells in my eyes, interacting with a chemical there, leading to a chain of chemical and physical events that constitute the actual physical basis of my experience of the color green.

On a conscious level, none of us are ever aware of our cone cells. In a subjective sense, the physical reality is "unreal." Knowing about the physical reality of the experience does not mean the experience isn't real.

I think we can - rather, we must! - take a POV like that with regard to our emotions and other mental processes.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Vesuvius said:


> For sure. I think it's good to contemplate our fears and instincts so they don't come creeping up on us and moving us around like unconscious puppets.


I agree of course; greater self-awareness is usually better and often much better for us, but I suspect it's a matter of degrees of success rather than of total success in a project like that.

Even more important to me is trying to be aware of various biases that lead to me having misinformed or factually incorrect ideas about the world - and to counteract them when I can. This is also not something I can succeed at entirely, maybe I can only have a tiny bit of success at it, but a little success is better than none.


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

Vesuvius said:


> I think these roll questions are really quite unanswerable unless we're actually presented with the situation. Of course, now that everyone is sitting comfy at home with their bellies full and peace of mind the 'good' answer spills out naturally. But, get into an armageddon situation where you haven't eaten in days, your mind is becoming dark and primal, your whole body is screaming in pain from malnutrition, you begin to question your faith in an afterlife or purpose (if you have one), and you don't know if you'll ever see the sun again.
> 
> I think the answers might vary a little more... but I'd like to think that I'm ready to die for someone else who I feel is more deserving. But like I said, I'm cozy in my own house right now, and I just finished a great meal while jamming to some great tunes. What the hell do I know about struggle right now?


I feel that this post deserves more credit

All we are doing here is discussing a "theorectical" response
Unless YOU are in the situation, you do NOT know how you would react
It is very easy to sit, in our nice warm homes, having a glass/cup of whatever takes our fancy
Having had a pleasant meal, to theorise on how the reaction would be?
BUT unless you are in that position (hopefully, none of us will be) you do not know how you would react
I know I've mentioned this in the past, but, my father was one of the "untermensch"
He did live through these situations
His stories still haunt me now 40 years after he told them to me


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I agree that we cannot know; we hope we will do the right thing; we fear that we may not. 
Some people will be self-sacrificing; some will not - and for that, some will feel guilty; and some not.

Which seems to indicate that different people can be driven by the survival impulse or by conscience - or that the same people can be driven by baser instincts or by conscience in different contexts. 

Which is why I voted for about three different items - can't remember what I voted for now, though!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Here's a new thing I came across today that has some relevance to the ideas here: The Science of Your Racist Brain.


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## Majed Al Shamsi (Feb 4, 2014)

An anecdote on status chasing:

Where I live (Dubai), license plates are considered a good way of showing off your status. 5 digit license plates are the least important. 1 digit license plates can only be owned by a Sheikh.
A 2 digit license plate with a number between 50 and 99 costs about $410,000. A 2 digit license plate with a number between 10 and 49 costs a lot more, and the smaller the number, the more expensive it is.
There are also exotic plate codes (letters), such as A, S, T, V, W and more.

It initially seemed retarded to me, but I'm beginning to appreciate it. Curiously, people with 5 digit license plates may get tailgated on the road frequently, but you never see anyone bothering a person with a 2 or 3 digit license plate.

The fact that many people would base their respect for others on how fat their pockets are, though they would never admit it, may be sad, but this happens all over the world. I've come to realise that it is almost impossible to change in people what they're not willing to admit, so it might be smarter to play their little game, gain a respectable status by any means necessary, and get them to stop bothering you.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Why, what we want, or de facto, what we don't want, of course


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Majed Al Shamsi said:


> An anecdote on status chasing:
> 
> Where I live (Dubai), license plates are considered a good way of showing off your status. 5 digit license plates are the least important. 1 digit license plates can only be owned by a Sheikh.
> A 2 digit license plate with a number between 50 and 99 costs about $410,000. A 2 digit license plate with a number between 10 and 49 costs a lot more, and the smaller the number, the more expensive it is.
> ...


I don't blame you for that ambition; we all have to do what we have to do. When I first came to Korea it was a shock to me that I wasn't respected - I didn't get the fundamental level of respect that I was accustomed to receiving in the US - because I didn't make enough money. It made me angry, and it made me ambitious.

When I attended a friend's wedding in China, and saw how proud the families were of his accomplishments and his wife's accomplishments, in that case I wasn't being judged, but I could see a culture where material prosperity and status were unapologetically valued, without any quasi-democratic hedging. I saw that it could be a good thing.

Perhaps I'm calmer now because "I've got mine." I don't mean that I'm secure - the big banks will probably find a way to re-enslave me at at some point - but there aren't a lot of people who have more money in the bank account than I do, and when they look down on me for seeming poor (I am a saver, not a shower) I can take it with confidence and irony.

Maybe that's what did it for me. Probably. I don't know.

But another side of things is that we've really got to learn to be happy with who we are, and to work on becoming who we want to be (at least to the degree that it's under our control) rather than who others want us to be or even who we want others to see us as. The kind of people who will scorn you for X will scorn you for Y if you take X from them. Screw those guys. Be who you want to be and take comfort in the knowledge that those guys are going to have heart attacks or car crashes or whatever someday, same as you, and in death at least we are all equal. In the meantime, do what you want, be who you want. If that means working like the devil to get a two-digit plate, do it; if it means tuning in, turning on, and dropping out, do it.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but I guess I think that we are largely driven by our unconscious, and we support our decisions largely with conscious rationalisations. Of course, it is sometimes possible to reflect, that is, think, about our internal experience. (Directed, rational) thinking is an activity which I think of as more conscious.


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## Guest (May 10, 2014)

I think the most interesting question is not to do with whether we make conscious decisions to do things - the "why do I do this?" self-awareness question - but whether "Man" has yet evolved sufficient self-awareness that what we refer to as animal instincts have weakened their hold on us.

For example, there's plenty of evidence that despite the creation of societal expectations about behaviour towards women, it's the baser instincts that still dominate. I don't mean necessarily in crude terms, such as animal desire driving men to commit criminal acts, but in the way that Jane Austen would have recognised: that the trappings of social conduct are, despite our attempts at sophistication, nothing more than elaborate courting rituals aimed at a single purpose. And yet, we have not yet descended into chaos! At some point, the more settled societies (a relative term of course; whatever the problems of the US and UK, France and Australia, they are more settled and have been so for some considerable time) created conditions where life is reasonably safe and sociable, and there is time to control our animal instincts. Where daily life is more turbulent and people feel threatened, there is less time to rationalise and self-justify. Survival might only be secured by the instinctive response.

I'm optimistic that man is making some progress, but I'm concerned that it might yet be too slow to secure our longer terms survival.

Speaking about my own drives, I only think I can control myself. My unconscience has other ideas!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> I think the most interesting question is not to do with whether we make conscious decisions to do things - the "why do I do this?" self-awareness question - but whether "Man" has yet evolved sufficient self-awareness that what we refer to as animal instincts have weakened their hold on us.
> 
> For example, there's plenty of evidence that despite the creation of societal expectations about behaviour towards women, it's the baser instincts that still dominate. I don't mean necessarily in crude terms, such as animal desire driving men to commit criminal acts, but in the way that Jane Austen would have recognised: that the trappings of social conduct are, despite our attempts at sophistication, nothing more than elaborate courting rituals aimed at a single purpose. And yet, we have not yet descended into chaos! At some point, the more settled societies (a relative term of course; whatever the problems of the US and UK, France and Australia, they are more settled and have been so for some considerable time) created conditions where life is reasonably safe and sociable, and there is time to control our animal instincts. Where daily life is more turbulent and people feel threatened, there is less time to rationalise and self-justify. Survival might only be secured by the instinctive response.
> 
> ...


One of the ideas that you suggest that I agree with is that it is the nature of our societies rather than our inherent nature that has made us more peaceful in recent times.

It seems to me that the general assumption out there in the world is that we've "grown out of" the things that in the past led us to practice slavery, serfdom, "feudal" oppressions, flamboyantly cruel punishments following rigged trials, genocide, etc. We assume that we (and especially, our elite) are so much better than our ancestors.

That belief seems commonly paired with a belief that we are "good," the people in the past who did those things were "bad."

It's nice to be flattered; I doubt we're going to succeed at getting a lot of people to disagree with such pleasant ideas.

But both of those ideas seem to me to be both wrong and dangerous. We (in the USA) are in the process of surrendering more and more of the control of our government, both direct and indirect, and other forms of power and privilege and wealth, to fewer and fewer people, and it seems to me that our willingness to do so is completely dependent on these dangerous assumptions. I hope we don't discover to our pain that our own elite have the same human nature that our ancestors had.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Currently, there are famous men in the UK being prosecuted for sex crimes against minors. As some are sub judice, I don't name names. But I am shocked. It certainly does seem that, given enough wealth and power, some men feel free not to control their animal impulses but to act on them. So you are right there, MacLeod. And you're right, Science, that human nature doesn't change even when we think we're living in a civilised society.


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## Guest (May 10, 2014)

Ingélou said:


> And you're right, Science, that human nature doesn't change even when we think we're living in a civilised society.


I'm not sure that this is true, but only because whilst we can bring some perspective to bear on, say, Attila the Hun and St Thomas a Beckett, it's more difficult to get sufficient distance from John W Gacy and Mother Theresa to be able to tell whether the good and the bad in society are getting better, worse or staying about the same.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure that this is true, but only because whilst we can bring some perspective to bear on, say, Attila the Hun and St Thomas a Beckett, it's more difficult to get sufficient distance from John W Gacy and *Mother Theresa *to be able to tell whether the good and the bad in society are getting better, worse or staying about the same.


Bizarre choice for someone at the opposite end of the spectrum to Gacy. I would put her on the 'bad' side too.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Yes, MacLeod, I certainly hope human nature has changed for the better, and when we have time to consider, I think it shows signs of improvement - in compassion for disaster victims, and the unacceptability of racism now, for example. But the atrocities & rapes & cruelty of modern wars, even in Europe in the 1990s and so on, show that in extremis those old primitive instincts will emerge. It's scary. 

I admire Mother Theresa but I realise that she is linked by some with right-wing governments. I wonder who is a safer bet for a modern example of human goodness.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> I like her - but oh well, Wood, name your own candidate for modern goodness.


Well that is not so easy, when you scratch the surface of international figures, they often don't smell too rosy. (Excuse the mixed metaphor, if that is what it is).

I've just put on the Messiah. I will try to think of any before it ends, and report back if I do.

If I can't think of any, well perhaps there should be a new thread to discuss this problem.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure that this is true, but only because whilst we can bring some perspective to bear on, say, Attila the Hun and St Thomas a Beckett, it's more difficult to get sufficient distance from John W Gacy and Mother Theresa to be able to tell whether the good and the bad in society are getting better, worse or staying about the same.


If you mean it'd be hard to measure "good" and "evil" in human nature over time, I'd have to agree. As soon as terms like that come in, we're beyond the realm of science.

So just based on what I see in the world around me, I don't see any reason to believe that human nature is improving (in terms of the moral values I hold). The Khmer Rouge did their thing within my lifetime. The Kim dynasty in North Korea continues to do their thing. I could mention quite a few things closer to home that strike me as symptomatic of the same human nature at work (in different circumstances, fortunately for us) but it could get unnecessarily political. Ingélou's examples are good enough.

One thing for sure, though, is that we live (for now at least) in much better circumstances! We have a lot to be thankful for.


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## Guest (May 10, 2014)

Wood said:


> Bizarre choice for someone at the opposite end of the spectrum to Gacy. I would put her on the 'bad' side too.


Hardly 'bizarre'. I just plucked the first symbols of good/bad that came to mind. That's not, of course, a testament to their actually being good/bad. I'm sure Attila was very complex and much misunderstood.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Hardly 'bizarre'. I just plucked the first symbols of good/bad that came to mind. That's not, of course, a testament to their actually being good/bad. I'm sure Attila was very complex and much misunderstood.


Presumably you are unaware of the bad things she did, which has contributed to increase the pain of dying people in her care and the poverty of millions of people, especially women, in the developing world.


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## Guest (May 10, 2014)

Wood said:


> Presumably you are unaware of the bad things she did,


You mean, she isn't revered by many as a symbol of good, whatever the truth of what she actually did?


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Wood said:


> Well that is not so easy, when you scratch the surface of international figures, they often don't smell too rosy. (Excuse the mixed metaphor, if that is what it is).
> 
> I've just put on the Messiah. I will try to think of any before it ends, and report back if I do.
> 
> If I can't think of any, well perhaps there should be a new thread to discuss this problem.


I must have had inspiration from the Messiah, because I have thought of one.

With the qualification that there may be terrible things that we don't yet know about him, I offer, as the personification of all that can be good in the human race, Desmond Tutu.

In general, I fear that some of the key qualities that it takes to get to the top, particularly being ruthless and self-serving, will make the default position for a person who is famous enough for us all to know, on the bad side of the human spectrum.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Hardly 'bizarre'. I just plucked the first symbols of good/bad that came to mind. That's not, of course, a testament to their actually being good/bad. I'm sure Attila was very complex and much misunderstood.


Hah. Attila was "a product of his time and place." There is a fair amount of historical data on the guy - all that I've read written by Romans who were not pals or admirers.

BTW there are conflicting databases regarding the goodness of Mother Theresa; much more data there than for Attila.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

People can be good, even heroic in some ways, and sleazy and greedy in others - example, Schindler. 
In the end, we can't know...


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> People can be good, even heroic in some ways, and sleazy and greedy in others - example, Schindler.
> In the end, we can't know...


Yes, that is more to the point. I think we find it hard to accept for example that Gandhi, glorified quite rightfully for his powerful nonviolent civil disobedience against the British could at the same time sleep with underage girls and be an unpleasant racist.

What prompts this conflicting behaviour? Are the prompters of behaviour outlined in the thread title in constant tension for all humans? How much of our animal instincts do we suppress and fail to acknowledge because we do not have the power to follow them?


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Ukko said:


> Hah. Attila was "a product of his time and place." There is a fair amount of historical data on the guy - all that I've read written by Romans who were not pals or admirers.
> 
> BTW there are conflicting databases regarding the goodness of Mother Theresa; much more data there than for Attila.


Its hard to see much evidence for good in Becket either. I understand his language became somewhat coarse and earthy when he came under pressure. And he was a taxman.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> You mean, she isn't revered by many as a symbol of good, whatever the truth of what she actually did?


No. I mean she did bad things.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Personally? Women.


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## Guest (May 10, 2014)

Wood said:


> No. I mean she did bad things.


I think we're talking at cross purposes. The thrust of my earlier post is that we are too close to 'today' to be able to tell whether we are more or less prone to be driven by animal instincts. Since we also can't survey the extent of goodness and badness among ordinary folk, I referred to typical symbols of good and bad (the historical truth is, for the purposes of my argument not relevant) from the distant past and the recent present. They are meant only to stand for the concepts of rising above or succumbing to our animal instincts.

What's interesting in your insistence about the historical accuracy of Mother Theresa is that it shows what we all agree: that people are comprised of the potential to do both good and bad, and it seems more likely that society has changed us than that we ourselves have improved.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Conscious awareness and Animal instincts. So, *roar*!.... E=mc^2.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I think we're talking at cross purposes. The thrust of my earlier post is that we are too close to 'today' to be able to tell whether we are more or less prone to be driven by animal instincts. Since we also can't survey the extent of goodness and badness among ordinary folk, I referred to typical symbols of good and bad (the historical truth is, for the purposes of my argument not relevant) from the distant past and the recent present. They are meant only to stand for the concepts of rising above or succumbing to our animal instincts.
> 
> What's interesting in your insistence about the historical accuracy of Mother Theresa is that it shows what we all agree: that people are comprised of the potential to do both good and bad, and it seems more likely that society has changed us than that we ourselves have improved.


I understood where you were coming from. Though I didn't really agree with it, I wasn't too fussed.

I was more struck by your use of Mother Theresa as an example of a good human being, so that is what I responded to. Of course, that in no way invalidates the point you were making.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> [...]
> What's interesting in your insistence about the historical accuracy of Mother Theresa is that it shows what we all agree: that people are comprised of the potential to do both good and bad, and it seems more likely that society has changed us than that we ourselves have improved.


"Society" has had the opportunity to change us as a species since hunter-gatherer times, and probably with increased intensity since agriculture became widespread. The, ah, enhanced winnowing effect of the latter condition may make up for some of its genetic newness. The Mother T example isn't particularly useful though, since her 'bad things' were probably driven by other than 'base instincts'.


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## Guest (May 10, 2014)

Wood said:


> I was more struck by your use of Mother Theresa as an example of a good human being, so that is what I responded to. Of course, that in no way invalidates the point you were making.


Not an example...a symbol. Not the same thing, in my view, and I picked her precisely because the facts could be deemed to undermine the symbolism.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Not an example...a symbol. Not the same thing, in my view, and I picked her precisely because the facts could be deemed to undermine the symbolism.


Did you really? That is a new slant. Anyway I'm glad you're up to speed on the Holy Mother.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Custom and mimicry. People do things the way they're used to, and/or they copy the deeds of someone else. We are usually too preoccupied with fulfilling our expected function in work/school/family to think deeply about our behavior, so we minimize novelty and just repeat things. 

And that is why we cannot change the world with any "inside change" in man; instead, we must change man from the outside, by changing the framework of what is being copied - the culture itself.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Xaltotun said:


> And that is why we cannot change the world with any "inside change" in man; instead, we must change man from the outside, by changing the framework of what is being copied - the culture itself.


The culture was made from the inner state of man. You don't stop a running hose by covering up the mouth; you go to the tap and turn it off.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

A fascinating and endless topic! Every human being comes with a package of genetically wired predispositions and family upbringing for starters. I've always been preoccupied with man's inhumanity to man and all it encompasses. And the whole racist thing which stems from fear, ignorance, and conditioning. And outright arrogance! I'm currently reading King Leopold's Ghost, the story of the 19th century Belgian King and his conquest of the Congo. An appallingly gruesome chapter in the colonial history of Europe. It's interesting to note that Leopold grew up in a loveless home, and had no visible sense of humor. And while overseeing a gigantic operation of forced labor, terror and genocide in the Congo, painted himself as a great humanitarian and philanthropist.

Although humanity is still deeply troubled and flawed, we've come a long way from the appallingly racist attitudes of the Victorian age. Well, maybe except for certain white males with guns living in Florida! 

Of course civilization poses a huge set of problems and moral dilemmas. Good, respectable people caught up in a system of evils, and going with the flow in order to pay the bills. I'm always despairing over the destruction of the environment, and the endless suffering of humanity as a result of profit seeking, but I don't really see a way out.

I suppose the best we can do on a personal level is to examine our behavior and attitudes, and work to correct our flaws. And to always respect others. And when we fail, be honest about it and admit we've been an a-hole!


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