Tires and human history

[tenketsu]

In the space of 4 days I went from having never changed a tire to having changed two. Well, kind've. First on the way back from picking up Beth from the airport I discovered that my two front tires needed replacing--badly. So I changed the worst of them with my emergency spare and came home slowly. Had to call my dad and ask about how to change

Comments

[eternalhachi]

By your definition of how evolution works, there is no 'right choice' to make, in your claim of "we've had so many opportunities to do things right over the course of human history." If we follow your definition of evolution, we're already doing the right thing by being the most efficient. And by that same base definition neither you nor I would ever know what the right thing to do would be. Evolution would be reduced to inevitability. We wouldn't have fulfilled the goal of natural selection, but how could we

[tenketsu]

I guess I didn't make myself clear enough, not surprising given how tired I was last night.

The right thing, the ethical thing, has no connection to evolution. Evolution will never lead to it, most likely cannot lead to it, biological or social. It has to come from something else, a conscious will (as opposed to the unconscious shaping force of evolution). And history shows the continual failure of that conscious will to triumph over evolution in any meaningful way.

Well, I don't make that assumption--I don't know. But, if we aren't, maybe we should be. And if we are, it's just more proof that we should be.

And, when you get enough capable individuals or small groups together, they cease to be small groups and become large groups. And then, best intentions or not, it basically goes to hell in a handbasket.

The problem is that, more are born all the time. Granted, it's less than it's ever been. But I don't know if we've really made much more progress since the 80s.