To answer this you need to add in scale. Once the scale and boarder of humans becomes unworkable than there can no longer be a collective well being and thus to preserve the self, people focus into smaller more workable groups for their well being at the sacrifice of larger groups. Think gangs, families, clans, political elites, bankers, etc. Right now our groups have become so large (overpopulation) that it’s become too cumbersome to manage anything with any level of reason. It’s also futile to think on a global scale and this might be part of the problem. We just don’t have a mind capable of seeing depletion of resources. It is well known that mammals introduced to islands will deplete their food stocks selfishly when they could manage it to their benefit. We might be more developed, however, we still have the mind that things are endless. We’ve simply have technology as our escape devise which we employ whenever we reach our newest end. So until our cities reach an end or our population reaches workable levels, then I can’t see anything changing. It’s the futility built into the survival of the individual that can not cope with a collective well being. In other words, there are too many unrelated people to care for anything collective. My thoughts are a bit random, sorry.

@Chris L – I think this argument fits very well into the tool post. We just no longer have a mind that is capable of understanding our increasingly large world, so we only understand a small part of it/the superstructure. Now, it may be due to my academic background, but I think that if I don’t understand something, I can’t control it. Now, “leaders” must necessarily think otherwise since it is my understanding that many leaders don’t understand nearly as much as they’d like to give the impression of (or maybe that’s just me), so I wonder: Is anyone still steering the ship? This concerns me as much as being on the wrong course which we clearly are.

@stephanie – Yes, I have read it and it’s a great book, but it’s been 6-7 years since then. I guess I have to go back and get it again. I think he also wrote about technology, but I only ever read the propaganda book.

Jacob, you could have saved yourself a lot of writing by just writing ‘Humans are a weird bunch and impossible to understand’

You have a terrific day,sir…

@hickchick – It is especially a problem with modern culture given its current size and the prevalence of destructive technology. Somehow the humanities (politics, religion, values, …) has not kept pace with science and technology.

I think perhaps the politics, religion, values, etc. had to be discarded to lead us to this juncture in the first place.

I think a lot of the problem is caused by the world’s religions. I have a secretary who seems reasonably intelligent but it is only possible to have the most superficial discussion on any subject. A discussion can work its way logical step by logical step until it comes to a step that disagrees with a religious precept. Then all logic stops and off she goes into never-never land and no further discussion is possible.

Knowing everything is impossible as everyone has an interest in presenting information that makes themselves appear most favourable. This makes it impossible to actually fix any problem. While there might be conspiracies, they aren’t exactly by design, only of result. That is, the conspiracy comes about because each part in a chain is manipulating their means to their end. In the larger realm, it appears as though it was pre-planned, but in reality, it was a sequence of events where each part benefited. The same sorts of things happen all the time everywhere. Therefore, to break this chain down would require suffering at each level until the chain is reworked. In order to do this you’d need everyone to immediately agree to a new sequence to a new end. Have you ever tried to get 30 people to agree to anything? Impossible on the outset, however this happens all the time, only in life, there are fewer choices because some are eliminated for you. When you have all possibilities facing you, there will be struggles to be in the best position. So to rework all problems requires mutual and equal benefit at each position and as we know, this isn’t possible. Hence the mess we live in…a collection of chains, in sequence to produce some result.

And I do think our “leaders” do decide our results more often then not. There are much fewer leaders than followers and followers are generally happy not to have to think at all. In fact, most people just want to be simple and happy. Thinking makes them worry. Talking about bad things makes them scared.

@ AB – I completely agree about wealth not necessarily following education. I was referring to the prevailing attitude that more education = smarter/more affluent while less education = dumber/poor.

Like everything else, religion is what you make of it. You can investigate your faith and question your leaders, or you can baa faithfully like the other sheep. Religion has just as much to recommend it as detract from it.

“religion is what you make of it.”

Of course…because it’s completely contrived, constructed and fictional. It’s completely “man-made.”

“Religion has just as much to recommend it as detract from it.”

I wholeheartedly disagree. There is only one thing that religion has going for it…credo consolans. And even that is actually a detriment. We will only advance as a species by thinking critically and logically. What’s the point of studying physics, math, biology, geology, history, medicine, etc. if we are going to allow ourselves to have an unproven fanciful belief that actually nullifies everything else we’ve studying and learned? We can’t keep the human race tied down and encumbered because it makes us feel good to think there’s a sky daddy out there who loves us.

I don’t think this is a surprise, especially in harder economic times. A lot of people are just worried about making ends meet and putting food on the table…they don’t care about the “big picture” stuff.

It’s easier to go buy “stuff” at Wal-Mart and forget about your troubles and let the group think for you.

“The Lucifer Principle” covers some of these ideas. Are we individuals or part of a larger organism? As population density increases, maybe we matter as much as a skin cell does to a human? Maybe we put heroes on a pedestal because they are selfless (using the least amount of resources), while giving the most back to the larger organism? I don’t know, but I definitely think we are pushed to increasing specialization much like a body part serves one function to the whole. Is that optimal? Inevitable? Maybe memes compete like thoughts in a brain until one dominant thought results. Our more deviant thoughts are marginalized in our brains (usually) much like society marginalizes deviant memes as it tries to construct a unified view.

Glad to see someone else was reminded of The Lucifer Principle as well. One of my favorite parts of that book is the idea that individuals don’t necessarily have an essence (independent thinker vs conformist), but that they fill roles based on what the group needs. The author Howard Bloom references an anthropology study in which each cabin at a summer camp had a jock, a leader, a bully and a nerd. They put multiple leaders in the same cabin the following camp period, and only one remained a leader, while the others filled the other roles. He compares this to ants because individual ants can even change their body type to become soldiers or workers as needed.

On the subject of technology outpacing our political/social abilities, I like Dialectic of Enlightenment and The Ecology of Freedom. Christopher Lasch also talks articulately about the limits of fellow-feeling in The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. He thinks we can only really love specific people, not Humanity generally. Worth thinking about.

“F*** you, I got mine.” Is a key tenet of the real religion of our culture. By “real religion” I mean what gets preached to us on a daily basis and not what some people do for an hour or so on the weekend. Every commercial on television tells us to only worry about our own desires and to f*** everyone else’s. It is the polar opposite of the communistic ideal of the good of the whole and others having some value to us as individuals.
The tenet “F*** you, I got mine.” is there in every commercial because those with the real power in our society know that when we are divided we are most controllable by them.