I'm not going to ask you to be more realistic, but I will always (gently) jab and jab because I feel strongly that if there is anything about us that qualifies as a 'we have a duty to...', it's 'we few who have trained ourselves to think critically have a duty to ourselves and our society to keep up that critical thinking'. This is why I said ...the tone of the neighbourhood will go up when we're gone. And no, I do not find this prospect in the least disturbing above. I used to get upset about our species' inbuilt tendencies to court fuckups and fails. Now I accept that getting upset about species!fail! won't change the way we evolved, so I mostly just accept it as The Way We Are.
No, we're not 'born monsters', but as a species we are born with a number of behavioural proclivities that, if expressed, can lead to monsterhood (note that I said can, not will). The sad and often heartbreaking part is that it takes only a small number of monsters to foul up systems, sometimes beyond repair. And so it goes. The best way to ameliorate that, to some degree at least, is to encourage every new generation to think - to think wide], to think realistically, and, yes, to think hopefully. Teach yer children well, y'know... :-)
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branchandroot
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Date: Sunday, 24 November 2013 06:51 am (UTC)No, we're not 'born monsters', but as a species we are born with a number of behavioural proclivities that, if expressed, can lead to monsterhood (note that I said can, not will). The sad and often heartbreaking part is that it takes only a small number of monsters to foul up systems, sometimes beyond repair. And so it goes. The best way to ameliorate that, to some degree at least, is to encourage every new generation to think - to think wide], to think realistically, and, yes, to think hopefully. Teach yer children well, y'know... :-)