If mankind started out without any negative traits that like greed, ego, anger etc., how would it shape our civilization up to this date? Would we have created the perfect utopia or made ourselves extinct long ago? Are our flaws holding us down or are they the reason our society made it to this point?
A human with no ability to feel unpleasant feelings would die of malnutrition or exposure. A community where everyone has the exact same needs and therefore could only act in ways that were beneficial to everyone would inevitably die out when those needs couldn’t be met.
I think viewing any of these situations or feelings as good or bad ignores the inherent chaos of our existence. And I mean chaos in the sense that slight changes to initial conditions can wildly change a system’s outcome.
I also think viewing “bad” characteristics as inevitable is often used as a way to dismiss change which is clearly a massive net positive. And looking at society’s problems as simply the aggregate of individual people being greedy or angry ignores the nature of systemic problems and suggests individualistic solutions that are doomed to fail
Flaws are just variation. Variation begets adaptation. Adaptation begets survival of the species. Without flaws, evolution wouldn’t exist and life wouldn’t exist.
And if somehow we overcame all these “flaws” everything would be so incredibly boring.
And one of those flaws is thinking that the world needs to be full of shitty people just so it’s not “boring”
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I wasn’t necessarily saying these flaws were or have ever actually been positive traits. Just that they were indicative of variation, which is kind of at the core of life.
Without greed, we don’t have a drive to be better and improve our selves. Without ego, we lack a self to care about in the first place. And without anger, we lose a strong emotional response to the unjust treatment of our peers.
Even though you can come up with a million negative things they also bring, at least in moderation, these flaws are probably just as you say the reason our society made it to this point!
The reality is that it is degrees of flaws that evolved to something sustainable. If there was some evolutionary benefit to going murderous angry if say a person looked at you wrong, then that is how we likely would be.
While certainly there are extreme cases in individuals, as you say, these are emotions needed to survive. And the overall level of greed and ego and anger would maintain some level most beneficial to human survival.
Apologies in advance if the wiki is not 100% working, still in the process of migrating from Fandom.
The New Real is a near-utopian artificial afterlife created by the Descendants of Mankind in my speculative fiction setting, but perfection is boring and complacency is best kept at bay just short of an uncorrupted world.
Please keep in mind a few things…
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Bread backs currency, or rather the energy used to produce one loaf of bread is pegged at 100 Common Objective Inflationless Negotiables.
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The only reason Hitler was even eligible for resurrection is because it was realized 3 million years in advance of his resurrection that denying resurrection to literally anyone is a slippery slope that opens way too many floodgates. Of course, he’s barred from politics outright and barely mentioned (he doesn’t even get a wiki page, because I’m not willing to risk some fucking Neo Nazis trying to use my site to bolster their ideology) in the story.
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Every member of the Homo genus who ever died has been resurrected, every injury can be fixed and every mental issue managed. You are not going to end up in a wheelchair for eternity, you can have your arm back or even have it replaced with a cybernetic limb, Autism can be made managable without being “cured”, psychopathy can be trained out of people via neuromagnetic therapy, and pedophilia can be managed by turning off sex drive or through the legalization of fictional portrayals (the latter is controversial, yes, and even I’m squicked out by it, but I haven’t seen any reports of rises in child molestation or other sexual assault against children in Japan and Colombia where they legalized only fictional portrayals, so facts seem to go against current prevailing views; besides, perma-killing a child in fiction is not illegal yet I think it should be). In short, this wasn’t rushed in-universe; the Gaian Holocenic Preserve in the New Real was meticulously planned in as unbiased a manner as possible.
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While crimes committed in the Old Real are null and void, things like hate crimes are taken seriously in the New Real. Since death only ever results in respawning like a video game character, if Hitler or whatever other nasty individual from history doesn’t smarten up real fast, they can end up not only being charged for repeating history, but the crimes they committed in the Old Real can be reinstated to make it clear just how much that shit will not fly on Gaia. Same goes for anyone who was on death row for murder, especially for murdering a child.
Sorry for self-promoting this, but I honestly am considering abandoning the New Real because everyone seems to think that it’s too optimistic. God, I am so fucking sick of Solarpunk, with its winegrowing robotic farm communes and “being more responsible with the environment” when 75% of the climate crisis is the fault of five oil companies. I don’t WANT to give up my lifestyle, and I don’t own a car so the only change I’m morally-obligated to make only applies if my city would provide my neighborhood with some goddamn bus service, which I would gladly do.
Just chiming in to say, don’t abandon something you love because of “haters” for lack of a better term. No matter what you do in this life, people will find a reason to complain about it, and if you listen to those people, you’ll never do any of the things you want to do.
Besides, “too optimistic” isn’t even a valid complaint imo. In a fictional setting, it can be a optimistic or as pessimistic as you like. The only thing that matters is internal consistency (and sometimes, not even that). If people really wanted a world that isn’t optimistic, they already have one.
I’m sure people complain that cyberpunk is “too pessimistic” all the time, but it’s a huge genre with a lot of fans. It’s really no different. If anything, I would lean into that aspect, since these people clearly think it sets you apart.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I would hate to see you give up on your project just because some people struggled to see it from your perspective. You’ll find your audience with time (and effort, of course).
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That’s an interesting question that has been been asked a lot in philosophy / theology.
My take is basically is, that the premise is already flawed. Negative traits are not binary. When does industriousness become greed, assertiveness become ego, etc…? Everything lives on a scale. So where is the cut off? Is there an objective cut off? Isn’t rather someones industriousness someone elses greed? Then wouldn’t the absence of all greed also kill all industriousness? In that case @[email protected] would probably be right, civilisation would have a hard time existing.
Islamic theology has a take on it, that I find more logical. Basically angels are like humans but without free will. So they do have all the traits humans do, but cannot act on it, except when deemed acceptable by a perfect being. That way they managed to create a perfect community.
What do you mean by binary in “Negative traits are not binary?” I only know the definition of binary as 1’s and 0’s.
Not binary in this context means, that there isn’t two opposing choices (true or false, black or white, greedy or generous). We’re rather looking at a scale in between opposing concepts.
Ohhh
binary
A scheme in which there are only 2 possible values
Strangely, these stupid religions had a really successful path of delivering some of the most ideal traits possible. Modern, people despise religions, and feel malicious towards good intentions. But, the post-theist world - knock on wood - really knows not to use nuclear weapons. It’s amazing that these religious nuts became such epic scientists, and the recipients of their awesome powers somehow maintained the insanely creditworthy ability to hang onto integrity despite whatever storm.
And weirdly, despite the storm being cult-mania mass-suicide level idiocy they were not even pushed over by a handful of demagogues coming to power in the recent right wing push.
A lot of that stuff is a freakish coincidence in a world that could have delivered it’s own extinction a million times over or more already.
And there are just as many people earnestly working on removing further blights to humanity - including that of itself and the sins of its development past. Most rational people would have already killed a few million more people a year, but the religious nuts really set up a world that cherishes human life. (Probably a shame they weren’t all more interested in wildlife protection)
It’s eroding, obviously, as people leave religion. But they did get it to a level that’s been pretty intense considering we live in a world that’s normally an absolute warpath of idiot animals.
Probably really boring.
I’d be okay with that. All the excitement today gives me anxiety.
Without flaws, we would all have achieved nirvana, and would be freed from the cycle of birth and rebirth. There would be no people and no society, because we would no longer be chained to the flawed and impermanent material world. Simple as.
Think of it dialectically, not in a polar way. So called “good” and “bad” have to come together in one for one to be able to surpass the apparent duality. Any enlightenment, individual or social, should come from the stage after good/bad
This is what the sages will say, on the individual level: it’s not so much good vs bad as useful or not useful (to some end). We need to understand and maybe learn to control what this “end” is. Similar thing with socialism: it’s not class war for the sake of one class winning, but rather abolishing class as a system altogether
This is roughly the premise of The Giver butis probably not a new concept as mentioned by others like @ISOmorph
The interesting thing about character traits is the mix. Some that we think of virtuous or beneficial become toxic at the extrema. It also depends on the context. You want your aircraft pilot to be unrelentingly fastidious and vigilant but that doesn’t work in a relationship.
I think we could make a much improved society by focusing more attention on health and knowledge rather than on business, war and money. It’s becoming increasingly clear that many people, even superficially successful people, are suffering from some kind of mental disorder. It’s well known that psychopathy is often an advantage in business dealings. We allow our cognitive biases to rule us and our behaviour is evolving at a much slower rate than our technology.
Like those cities in the memes that say “If [blank] was the default [blank].”
I’m guessing we would still be hunter-gatherers with very Zen Buddhist attitude towards life.
Have you ever seen the movie Logan’s Run? It’s not a bad representation.
This honestly is a really good question. Though I can’t even begin to fathom an answer knowing that it will likely be riddled with the same human flaws in one way or another.
I think you would need the perspective of an intelligent species who has observed us for a long period of time to get an answer that might be accurate.
