- cross-posted to:
- lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world
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Capitalism wants us to believe that it’s the only stable solution, because it comes close to the natural order, and that in nature there is only selfish behaviour, eat or get eaten, homo homini lupus and so on. The truth is, this supposed natural state is completely made up and animals and human beings naturally behave much more selflessly than what is expected from us under capitalism.
Thing is, even the phrase homo homini lupus predates capitalism significantly, and the sentiment dates back to before even the phrase. ‘Naturally behave’ is a very questionable phrase.
We have the ability to be better and build better societies than we currently have under capitalism. I just don’t think an appeal to a state of nature is useful or accurate.
I think there is definitely a line from early modern natural state theory to today’s justification of capitalism, although the argument has somehow reversed itself.
Actual natural behaviour is not even important, since we abandoned that some time ago, and it probably isn’t desirable to go back. Its just easier to sell an ideology when you disguise it as natural order.
I’d say it’s more of an easy to make justification than a real argument. History is incredibly long and full of varied situations in which creatures have survived in many different ways, so it can be mined for examples to support almost anything and claim it to be “natural”.
People didn’t wait for formal capitalism to be assholes.
i did
The owners use their captured public education and for profit media to turn us on one another and make us monsters.
They tell us avarice/greed, a well known character deficit and social blight for thousands of years is instead virtuous rational self-interest.
They force us to compete against one another rather than cooperate with one another as the basis of our economy, when an economy is meant to be a lowly tool of society for the explicit use of maximizing the efficient, equitable distribution of goods and services for the benefit of the citizens of the society. Our tail wags the dog. We are slaves to economic growth/metastasis we as a society do not benefit from.
The problem is that the sociopaths, mentally ill people literally incapable of empathy, something most humans have a strong need to exercise, that are among us quickly game society using their mental deficit as an advantage to take more than they need and manipulate others into elevating them, then manipulate those below them into fighting one another perpetually to stay on top.
Humans are social creatures. We’ve been conditioned to act as monsters, condemning our fellow humans literally dying in our streets of exposure and capital defense force brutality as “lowering our property values.”
This isn’t natural. It’s why our nation’s mental health is basically its own apocalypse of mass depression, anxiety, and never ending trauma. We are strongly discouraged from supporting one another, as we’re supposed to do the impossible, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, then claim we did it alone. That’s the American delusion. 🇺🇸
This really resonates with me. You are an excellent writer.
The part about empathy is so real. A lack of empathy is a real advantage in today’s world, unfortunately. I think empathy should be one of the most important values a society should strive for, and we decided to make a society that rewards sociopathy instead.
Thank you, sincerely.
I know my comment history is basically the same points rehashed over and over as applied to the symptoms of the day we’re experiencing, but it helps me feel like I’m holding onto sanity in an insane society to describe the core rot as I see it, and I appreciate your kind words.
After observing all of the animals I’ve ever lived with, I’ve come to the opinion (unsupported, I suppose, by any real evidence) that empathy is an important part of being alive. I think every living being has empathy, and humans just got quite good at beating it out of other humans to the point where displaying psychopathic traits became something culturally celebrated.
We’ve been trained to be this way, and we need to reverse that trend.
Altrusim is a good trait to ensure the survival of a species, while being a selfish bastard is a good trait to ensure the survival of the individual. It all depends on the situation.
I’d say this is the case for mammals and birds, but I think other branches of the tree of life are more hit or miss since they’re less social animals.
I’d be curious to see a study of empathy on octopi, the smartest non-social animal.
But don’t you see all the wealth we are creating by doing things this way?!
Meanwhile humans, when put thru the same experiment, realize they can make the human in the unpleasant box pay $ if it wants out. They then learn to create more boxes for more profit.
I dont believe this is inherent. It’s not human nature. Its social conditioning as a result of living in a capitalist society.
In a capitalist society, yes. Absolutely a lot of people would do this. But even then, its not everyone.
I live in capitalism but i would certainly not force someone to pay me to let them out of a trap. Especially if they were suffering. And i would never befriend someone that would.
I would think they were a cunt.
you must suck at capitalism then and would literally never be able to chair a publicly traded company maximizing profits, no matter the cost, for shareholders then. (i say lovingly)
If I’m ever told that I belong on a board of directors at a company, I’m going to Luigi myself. I would have deserved it
I really dont mind sucking at capitalism.
That’s like saying “you suck at giving people cancer” or saying “you are terrible at being a complete dildo”
Yeah. I am fine with that.
And i would never befriend someone that would.
My problem here: many of us are friends with one of the other person that thinks investing money in the stock market is a good idea and taxes for the rich is bad. Those people are already forcing others to pay to get out of a trap, they just have a few middle men.
I mean, we still live in this mess, so investing your money in the stock market is in fact a good idea. We should obviously tax the rich.
No, investing in stocks is a mix of lottery (fair but zero sum) and theft by exploitation of workers, resources & environment.
No, the entire system is built on exploitation of workers. As a worker in the system, I’m talking about how to scrape a life out the best you can.
It’s objectively better to put your money that you want you save and possibly grow in an index fund, if you live in the us.
It is impossible for money to create added value. Inflation adjusted gains in investments are entirely made up by losses of other people and/or wage theft. The oligarchies around the world have lobbied their way into politically mandated investment funds for private pension insurance, thereby ensuring us workers as accomplices in this scam, while they hope we don’t notice that for the breadcrumbs we may earn, we protect their interests - e.g. opposing capital gains taxes.
Investments are theft. And stock traders / investment bankers are thieves who steal from the poor and give to the rich, taking a good margin for themselves. Parasites to mankind.
That’s just not logical man, because first of all it’s the entire basis of the banking system. Money creates money, and your investment in the stock market is essentially similar to a loan offered by a bank. The money you spent buying the stock allows the company to invest more in the business, and you get increased stock value for your trouble.
Maybe you want to be more specific about what you mean by “value”, but it was valuable for me to be able to buy a house without having to pay for it all up front, for example.
You even acknowledge that we workers are forced to be accomplices in this scam, chasing our breadcrumbs. Why would you denigrate those who participate in the system because we have literally no other choice? What is your point? Should I boycott the stock market in the hopes that some oligarch notices?
Meanwhile, humans are stuffing other animals into cages to see what happens.
and then murdering them. good point.
ironic that experiment on empathy done by scientists doing mouse experiments.
This comes to my mind:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFCgz959ARY
The Washington Post still has the article up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.html
And here’s the science article that prompted it:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1210789and here’s an old archive.org copy of it before the Washington Post started blocking the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140114012833/http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.htmlnow make the rats comprehend fascism.
Would be an interesting study if that was possible.
Another run of this experiment found rats free those with the same fur color faster or more readily
huh, that’s definitely an interesting paper to write.
I like the one where they gave rats a lot of food and space (rat paradise) and let them breed till they were crawling over eachother till there wasnt enough food for them all. When most of them died and food was available once more, the remainders stopped eating and all the rats died.
Rats are interesting but I think the guy that programmed them left in some bugs.
Even the creator of that experiment said it was deeply flawed, and that their colony broke down because there was literally nothing to enrich their lives in the habitat. They were essentially going crazy from boredom.
He then went on to design rat experiments that were designed to actually facilitate a fulfilling and engaging life for the rats, and they thrived, from what I recall.
Yeah idk if I just watched most of my friends and family drop dead from starvation, I don’t think I’d want to go on living either.
rats are strange little critters. incredibly clever, but you’ll never know what they’ll use their smarts for
Is this going to be a model for the history of mankind?
A lot of animals are better at solving “prisoners dilemma” situations than us. Most animals would rather work together for the greater good but I guess they haven’t heard of capitalism.
heathens!
I wonder if there is a more mutualist economic system. Oh wait!
I think we shouldn’t underestimate human empathy. The problem is just that we build structures to avoid it. Rich people choose to not see poor people too much or they would feel empathy and be inclined to help them. If the poor are far away, merely an abstraction that is said to exist, then their existence is not felt strongly enough to trigger an empathy response. Surely there are exceptions to some degree, but I think humans are very empathetic and that’s one of our great powers.
We have places like San Fransisco and New York, with some of the richest people in the whole world regularly walking past homeless encampments. I don’t think the structure is the problem. I think it has much more to do with the culture and family they are raised in.
We live in a society that rewards narcissism. Our society tells these rich people that homeless people are only homeless because of bad personal choices.
There is no reward for empathy, besides the positive feeling a healthy person would get from being kind. In fact, being empathetic can be a detriment to being successful, so many upper class families skip that lesson plan on purpose.
Yes I think you’re right. Culture and upbringing are very important factors. What remains is that the potential of human empathy is incredible. I don’t think empathy needs a reward per se, I think the positive feeling you describe is enough reward, again it’s not to be underestimated. I am personally volunteering one day per week at my local homeless shelter, while I work a paid job 4 days per week at a mental hospital as a nurse. I don’t want to be paid for the homeless shelter, I am fine with doing it voluntarily, I specifically wanted to do something voluntarily just to proof to myself that I don’t maximize my income, to be sure I don’t play the money game. But your point about how it is not only unrewarding financially but the reverse: it can even be a detriment to success, that’s very true. Before my nursing school I got a degree in marketing & management (which made me incredibly unhappy). I’m very glad I chose to go do something else, because I feel like my contribution to society is far bigger now than it ever could have been as a marketeer. Despite that I would’ve made a lot more money as a marketeer. Free market capitalism is amoral when it comes what to contributing to
societythe market, if your job is to sell addicting products to people, that destroy their lives, but it makes you a decent profit, then you’ll be rewarded for it. Far more so than most essential workers would ever earn. That combined with money not being just money (power), but also status: we celebrate wealth. Wealthy equals good. We don’t look at how one earned his wealth, we just look at the wealth and are in awe. Obviously we are giving people the wrong incentives.
… which isn’t news to me.
For a time it seemed that everybody wanted to shit on animals as being way inferior to humans in every way, including lacking empathy emotion feelings and stuff.
But that was always wrong. Who has ever worked with animals be it horses dogs or farm animals knows they have a soul. Well, but also a lot of them are just evil bastards.
Rats live like 2 years.
In two years, they learn how to be better to each other than a large part of the human race.
I think of it in another way: What these rats display is the natural behavior.
These rats live two years, so they don’t have time to learn otherwise. Human greed is a learned behavior, and it takes a lot of time to learn that.
Sounds like greed needs to have some cognitive feedback.
Greed is a pattern which is adopted to our current competitive environment, where everything is directed at progress and hard work. Really, humans often work 40 hours a week or more, which is significantly more time than wild animals spend to gather food. (I don’t have a source for this unfortunately, but if i remember correctly it’s maybe 2-3 hours a day.)
Rats can eat chocolate?
Yeah to a degree, maybe it was some kinda low sugar chocolate or something
Yes, sorta like how you’re able to drink mercury, but you really shouldn’t.
They can eat most of the same stuff we can. Part of why they’re frequently used for tests.
If a rat has a better developed sense of empathy than you do, then you’ve probably made some seriously awful life choices somewhere along the line.
the phrase “the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive - which is alot to expect of a rat”…
it clearly isn’t “alot to expect” if it’s automatic normal behavior for their species. It actually implies it’s the normal for a rat. It just isn’t normal for those humans.
I think it means “chocolate chips are precious to rats” by that - ie that it is a big sacrifice.
Empathy over natural selection ftw.
It’s natural selection which has born empathy. There are a lot of species which are successful because they are collaborative.
Same story with us humans. We usually prefer groups and collaboration. And look what we can achieve if we put all of our minds and strengths together.
Yet, this hasn’t been sufficient to overcome some individuals who live and enforce competitiveness.Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene goes into this in greater detail. Many species are hardwired to be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the survival of their kin. Basically, genes that code for protective and social behaviors might result in any given individual more likely to die before reproducing, but makes that individual’s close genetic kin more likely to survive to reproduction such that a particular group/pod/clan/flock is much more likely to persist over generations.
The extreme example is ants and bees, where most of the workers we see biologically cannot reproduce and are dead ends as individuals. But they work for the hive/colony, and the reproducing queen is the center of that reproductive strategy.
You see it with a lot of animals, especially those wired to be social.
Empathy was created by natural selection - of groups, not individuals, of course.
Fear and stress shut down empathy. But narcissists feel constant fear and stress. And we’ve made a hellworld that rewards narcissism
