Quote:
Originally Posted by jwb
I mean.. what is the alternative that supposedly works better than pragmatism? To the extent that every society runs into problems based on pragmatic decisions, that's probably mostly true only because pragmatic decisions are necessary and thus ubiquitous in all civilizations. It's not like idealism has a much better success rate.
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Alright I've had this tab open since I passed out two days ago but then I had a hangover yesterday and didn't feel like discussing anything in any depth at all and now it's been two days and ehhhh but I can't just leave this hanging so here's my halfassed response:
Yeah I'm not a utopian who thinks that if we just do this one really awesome thing or enact this one really great system of government that we can enact meaningful change. Really we're talking about an empathy problem with the human race. It's hard to feel empathy for people we're doing things to or other people are doing things to half a world away and that's not going to change without taking a lot of time (centuries probably at least) training human instinct to process far away problems differently than we currently do. But while we're not doing that there are a lot of people dying simply because it's hard to care about Syria or the Congo or where ever from all the way here in American comfy chairs. That's not good and should change.
The only step in the right direction I can honestly think of is a total revamp of the UN so that it's not a few powerful countries stonewalling anything that doesn't benefit them while all the smaller countries just deal with issues that don't step on Security Council toes. Aside from that I'd say just on a personal level don't internalize cutthroat pragmatism. You can accept that it's inevitable and that the world is a nasty place but that doesn't mean you have to accept that your own thought processes have to follow that model. You can give that **** the finger even while accepting that there is currently no workable alternative. Maybe a few centuries of people doing that will be part of an honest change in how people deal with the world at large. I agree that morality is probably largely instinctual but instinct isn't written in stone, it's formed by generations doing things over and over.