a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by mk
mk  ·  2906 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 4 Men with 4 Very Different Incomes Open Up About the Lives They Can Afford

Yes. It's also interesting that they all feel they need more than they have.





reguile  ·  2906 days ago  ·  link  ·  

We exist to produce and be slightly unhappy, and the ideals we are given of achievement are always based on where we stand today.

I like to think about human beings nowadays as a species evolved to function in a society, and when you look at our traits and actions things start making a lot more sense.

Consider eyesight, you'd figure having bad eyes would have killed off humanity, but we tend to be either long-distance deficient, short-distance deficient, or old. In a group where all three types exist you work together to get optimal results.

Same goes for people being gay. Can't have kids, but can still contribute to society and is an extra set of hands to help their group handle kids. Alternatively they are good candidates for things like war, as they will have no attachments, or not as many as a normal group.

Our various quirks and ideals, the weird kid standing in the corner looking around the room, the talkative bunch who are super friendly, the quiet sort who keep to themselves, each of these people, I believe, are driven into specialized roles in society by their genetics, despite the fact it is all human genetics. One watches out for danger, one remains isolated and forms new ideas outside of the thoughts of the group. One binds the group together and serves as a leader.

It's amazing how incredibly diverse and functional human society is when you think about it. So many things just work so perfectly when all the gears fit together, and all these people who don't know what the heck they are doing outside of natural tendencies serve to create systems that end up launching rockets to the moon or dominating our entire planet.

It's why eugenics was so horribly wrong. To get rid of disease, to get rid of issues in the human genome is to rid ourselves of the diversities those things bring. Autistic people may be dysfunctional, but I'll guarantee you that gene serves very important function in hundreds of people who are functional, serve very important roles in society, and likely show some of the same traits that those with various mental diseases have. Schizophrenics may be crazy and delusional, but I'll bet it takes a bit of that disconnect and paranoia to make art or analyze systems to strong degrees.

I don't know, I think there are a lot of people who see mankind as this bleak, dull, thing that is headed on a crash course with destruction while we all yell, scream, and fight. In reality I think there is order to the chaos, and I tend to feel a sense of pride when I see a market crash or riots break out.

The bad isn't necessarily bad. Riots destroy property, but I think they serve much more important function than that in sending information and/or making a point. A market crashing is a correction of ideas, a learning process on a grand scale. The system we live in is smarter than it looks, I think, even when it looks stupid and broken.

It's why we can't let people dictate our actions and clean the world of all that is bad. The black goo over the machine isn't bad, it's oil.

elizabeth  ·  2906 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's interesting that they all want to be the guy directly above!