[mythrwy]

So are religious leaders and mothers and Soviet social planners. But they are perpetually disappointed.

Because what is humanity without it's biology?

Instinct doesn't belong to the individual, it belongs to the species. And life doesn't care atoll about abstract moral principal. That's just syntactic sugar to help us manage and grow the hive given biological impulse. When we overcome a natural impulse guess what? It's a natural impulse doing that too. If we overcome all natural impulse (how?) this species is finished and are something else, certainly not "humanity" at that point.

Right now what really drives us around is 10's of thousands of years older than the beginning of writing and cities. At least.

[xor1]

>If we overcome all natural impulse (how?) this species is finished and are something else, certainly not "humanity" at that point.

What's wrong with that?

[mythrwy]

It might be inevitable that we give rise to intelligent machines, become machines and that's it. Nothing wrong with it.

But at present we are behaviorally closer to monkeys even if we dress up in suits and have rules and values. Which don't (unlike what we generally conceive) have any eternal significance beyond being various versions of conventions such as "who gets to pick the lice off the alpha male first".

Point being, what we are is the reality of what we have to work with. Mating included. Puritan scolders will forever fail and life will keep right on going until the machine (if that ever happens).