[nawgszy]

It seems to me it's the mere fact that humanity's rise was borne on the back of its ruthless drive and selfish greed, and the same things that made us the best hunters also influence society in myriad ways.

In my eyes, greed, hierarchy, and limited compassion / an inability to share are the filter, and all society's diseases are the symptoms.

[thaumaturgy]

I'm really disappointed when I hear this kind of thing. It's a sentiment that so many people believe, and want to believe, and choose to believe even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

It's almost like a pernicious, psychological cancer, except it can also spread virulently to other susceptible hosts.

Humanity's rise is due to lots of factors, especially the countless individuals who have worked to improve the health, well-being, safety, and wealth of the people around them. Greed is but one aspect of humanity, and unbounded greed destroys societies.

Yeah, there are problems in 2018, but to sit here today, in the relative comfort of modern society, and say "we only have all this because we're terrible animals" is hugely disrespectful to the work of a lot of people.

[nawgszy]

I'm certainly not saying that we have no redeeming factors. As you say, that would be an absurd mindset in this world we live in.

However, I don't know how you can deny that we are greedy and have limited ability for compassion. Do you deny Dunbar's number? If not the specific selection, the concept?

Do you deny that some men have 10 figures of wealth while others have nothing to their name?

Do you deny that we have, as a society, enacted a plague upon the planet, and are causing extinction of other species at a rate only witnessed within other extinction events?

Just because one has virtue does not mean one doesn't have vice, and certainly the same applies to the "one" that is human society. While we certainly have accomplished great feats and have seen great individuals, as a collective, we do not know how to relinquish the individual pleasures in order to facilitate comfort and health for all.

As the article I saw here recently that said something along the lines of "people are not stupid; life is just hard", your energies are limited, and there are those who take advantage of the splintered and uncoordinated thoughts of society to gain great wealth and power, and those who use their great wealth and power to splinter and confuse the thoughts of society.

That is the cancer, not my thought that these people exist; do not ignore that their existence is all but guaranteed by the very nature of the creature we must have been to find ourselves the dominant force of this planet.

[ccvannorman]

Hear, hear.

Yes, you can look back at our animal past and at Chimpanzees and say we're a brutal, greedy, what-ever. But that is only a tiny sliver of conscious existence. What makes us human is the constant progression towards humanity - compassion, love, and society-wide safety and abundance.

See Hans Rosling for some promising trends rooted in global facts over the past 100 years. Yes, there are still bad things "left over" from being animals, but these are declining over the decades ::across the board::

[meowface]

You're right, but the problem is it it only takes a very small number of excessively greedy and power-hungry people to make the world worse for everyone.

[bpyne]

If you don't take into account cooperation, complex communication, and the ability to abstract (e.g. a rock isn't just something to step over, it's also a potential weapon and when many are combined a dwelling, bridge, etc.), then your observation has merit.

We're a relatively weak, slow animal. We don't see well at night. Our teeth and nails are fairly useless from a hunting or even defensive perspective. We don't procreate quickly and our young mature slowly. Our survival advantage is working in coordinated teams and having flexible minds with respect to the world around us. Cats are closer to what you described.