Unintelligent design (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, November 06, 2011, 17:12 (4744 days ago) @ Abel

Abel has delivered a strong sermon on the subject of human stupidity.

I doubt if you’ll find many of us disagreeing with this splendidly compiled catalogue of human follies. My wife and I discuss them frequently as we read the papers over breakfast or watch the news on TV, and I can honestly say that I don’t know of anyone in my personal circle who is not aware of the appalling things humans do to other humans and to the rest of the world. I’ve even used the same subject as a conclusion to the brief guide with which I opened this website – the section called “A mad world”. David Turell (the retired MD whom you wished the best of luck in his intended pursuit of a medical career) has actually written a well researched and convincingly argued book entitled Government and Political Spin, exposing certain aspects of our collective insanity. So rest assured, Abel, that you are far from being alone in your awareness and condemnation of human stupidity.

Unfortunately, not many of us are in a position to set the world to rights. Short of entering into politics or the military, or acquiring the divine weaponry you claim to have at your disposal, we can do little to gain even a moderate amount of power. However, since you “have some hopes” for my writing skills (thank you), let me see if I can persuade you to use your influence with the gods in a slightly less misanthropic manner.

Firstly, I see vast numbers of humans as victims rather than perpetrators. The follies you’ve catalogued, from economic mismanagement to the potential destruction of the planet, are the direct result of the ignorance and greed endemic in our political, social, commercial and financial institutions. Crime, social injustice and all the other ills you mention have always been present in human society, but what is different now is the sheer scale. Perhaps it’s all gone too far to be stopped, but some victims are fighting back. Your misanthropy pays no attention to the Arab Spring, in which ordinary people have risen up and even sacrificed their lives in order to topple a vicious, self-serving establishment. (Perhaps it will all end in tears, but I’m extolling the human spirit here.) You ignore the worldwide protests of the “Occupy” movement and, going back in time, the mass protests against wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and against nuclear weapons. You ignore the ongoing quest for truth and beauty that I mentioned earlier. You ignore the immense strides that even our flawed social systems have made in caring for the poor, the sick, the old. And you ignore the charities and countless individual acts of philanthropy that demonstrate the caring side of human nature. None of these invalidate your account of human stupidity, but your picture seems to me lop-sided. Of course we must be wary, but I don’t believe that all strangers are evil, stupid or uncaring, and I suspect (naively?) that there is just as much good in the human world as there is bad.

There’s another slant that I would ask you to consider in the light of your beliefs. You said that your gods deliberately chose this high-entropy planet for what I assume was some kind of experiment (you haven’t told us their motive for starting life here). It was therefore they who deliberately engineered the concept of predator and prey, whereby self-interest became the key to survival. And you’ve told us that “men are primarily beasts of nature not logic”. The pattern of natural self-interest was thus established long, long before humans walked the planet, and that is the principle that underlies virtually every instance of human “stupidity” on your list. If your gods had not wanted it this way, why did they create the kill-or-die code in the first place, and why choose a planet where the need to kill was even more urgent than on their own? As an agnostic, I recognize these inherited traits and marvel all the more at the human ability to overcome them. If I had your beliefs, though, I’d wonder why the gods, who were so upset that they sent three lots of aliens to correct the situation they’d created in the first place, didn’t take steps to correct it themselves (they obviously have no transport or communication problems), and have left it to you to fight off the aliens who want to kill us all.

Finally, there is no need to decry your own writing skills! You have expressed yourself with admirable clarity, and in this case I would also say with admirable logic. I just wish there was more balance in your picture of humankind, and I wish there was more coherence and credibility in your account of divine and human history, which I attempted to summarize in my last post. But such differences of opinion are the basis of all our discussions on this forum.