Materialism (A mad world)

by dhw, Monday, June 25, 2012, 18:52 (4533 days ago) @ BBella

BBELLA: The world (our world) does appear to the human eye to be in an unbalanced mess.-I must confess that I am indeed making my comment as a human, and alas I have no qualifications to do otherwise! Bearing in mind the distinct possibility that this human life is the only one I and others will have, the mess that I perceive is not untangled by the belief that the universal flux and flow will eventually result in...what? One person's tragedy being balanced out by another's triumph? How does that unravel the mess for the victim? Nor is it any consolation to claim that time is not what we think it is, and the records will show a balance. MY time as a human is measured out in hours, weeks, years ... and then it may cease. -ROMANSH: I will post a link to Hans Rosling's data (as well as his opinion). What do you think of it?-http://agnosticsinternational.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=1256-Thank you for posting additional links, which did eventually enable me to view the clip. A great character, Mr Rosling! But quite apart from wondering how on earth anyone can verify such statistics (were all those countries so scrupulous in record-keeping for all that time?), I can't see how you want to apply them to the current discussion. There can be no doubt that vast areas of our lives have improved immeasurably, but a "mess" is not a comparative. The fact that we have longer life expectation doesn't eliminate the wars and violence we have now on a colossal scale, just as we have disease, starvation and poverty on a colossal scale, plus brutal dictatorships and environmental disasters and an economic system in danger of falling apart. Vast swathes of this mess are caused by human greed, lust for power, and sheer incompetence, and juggling figures doesn't change the present. Humanist principles, stripped of all religious trappings, would solve most of our man-made problems, but human nature has never yet been purged by the preaching of principles, and in my view human nature lies at the heart of the mess.
 
But of course this doesn't stop lucky folk like me from enjoying life to the full, and it doesn't alter the fact that there are so many things for us to enjoy. The starting point of this discussion was, I believe, Tony's claim that the mess was caused by philosophical materialism. I totally oppose this claim, but I made the mistake of assuming we would all agree that there IS a mess. And so we are now having two discussions: 1) Is there a mess? 2) If there is, can we blame philosophical materialism? My answer to 1) is an emphatic yes, and my answer to 2) is an emphatic no!