Doram's Hyper-Intelligent Discussion Corner

[~MP3 Amplifier~]

It might be like that now, my friend is 20 so this was 8 years ago. And yeah she's from Moscow which is West Russia.

[Harmless]

Oh. I think the change was more recent then, but I dunno. It seems like every country nowadays has some sort of ♥♥♥♥ problem.

[darthbrowser]

The problem is that society is broken

the underlying problems with society

I fear I am the only one deranged, misanthropic and self-loathing enough to challenge this central idea - to confine the dreams I once espoused to darkness.

And so I leap.

I bring this point up not to derail any particular argument, but to highlight an assumption made in every one - that our current society is not ideal.

Many have mourned the impossibility of Utopia. Their reasons are simple, and have made so many times in the capitalist-dominated Western world that they undoubtedly come as intuitive to most in it, but I shall reiterate for clarity.

The great assault on communism, in terms of philosophy, is that the assumption of innate human altruism - an altruism only hidden by the machinations of the world combining with the ability of humans to quickly adapt to such conditions - is not present. Opponents counter that the main evidence such a statement has is in the form of the numerous communist communes and states - and the fact that all share the trait of total failure. They say such examples cannot be used to discount innate altruism because they all started out with a small taint of corruption - a taint which, no matter how small, always banishes the ideal. In turn, the argument against that says that If altruism had evolved to be so inherent, to be so deeply embedded in humanity, we had have achieved communism by now. We would have evolved in a communist society from the start.

Ergo, goes the argument, humans must be competitive instead. From there, justifications for capitalism in whatever form the debater supports will follow.

Now, this is a not dissertation of economic systems. Rather, the proof above was given because it is a textbook example of a philosophically and morally sound idea being discounted because it fails to take into account what humanity is, as it is too busy concerning itself with what the author thinks humanity should be.

Again, this is a point already known - Doram even hinted at it earlier in the thread.

However, the implications of the reasoning used in that and similar ideas are easily ignored.

---

First, a short backstory.

Communism was such a perfect target for the kind of evolutionary reasoning used above because it made it assumptions about the nature of humanity with nothing but the ideals and dreams of the time. Without any true empirical support, Marx was forced to assume the Freudian concept that people's hopes and dreams reflected and revealed truths about their nature not otherwise apparent.

Thus, he took concepts like equality, valued and hoped for by so many, and concluded that their collective allegiance to these ideals indicated that they were inherent desires, systemic to the human species.

At the time, Darwin was still working on his theory and any sort of overview of the human species further than the span of ~6000 years was impossible. No one could make any scientific conclusions about humanity, because they only had a tiny fragment of human history to look at. Humans have been evolving for about two million years, so the ~6000 year hard cap on recorded history was completely debilitating. Thus, for all intensive purposes, philosophies from this time and before were left to deal with their present and immediate past for evidence, and make blind assumptions regarding everything not included in that evidence.

That is no longer the case.

---

Over the two million year span of human evolution, only two things have significantly changed about the species: We have gotten very intelligent, and we have lost quite a bit of strength and body mass from our simian ancestors. Socially, we have remained somewhat unchanged - though it would not appear so, because of the rise of civilization. A common point among evolutionary anthropologists is that much of our problems in society are due to maladaptation - we spent two million years evolving for a migratory, hunter-gather lifestyle, a lifestyle which the adoption of farming made obsolete. Many say that only our intelligence - and the adaptational ability which comes with it - has prevented us from being in an even worse condition.

Surely, the most logical way to determine what constitutes "good" - and thus, what our society should be - is to define what humanity is. What we want, why we want it, and how we prefer to ascertain it. In turn, the best way to define what is human is to look at what exactly humans are best adapted for.

Up until the dawn of civilization, human society was composed of small, migrating tribes. The tribes occasionally fought, but mainly avoided each other. Each tribe was thus a generally isolated mini-community, and it is here that human intelligence was truly progressed. Unlike cephalopods, and similar animals which can utilize basic tools, the mini-communities ensured humans were in a close-knit group, with constant social interaction. As humans evolved from primates with a small, initial streak of intelligence which was ripe to be expanded upon, the first part of this increase was driven solely by the use of tools - fashioning even basic tools, or grasping how to use objects from the environment to assist and expand the capabilities of one's own limbs, is no small feat of spatial reasoning.

But there was no reason for humans to evolve anything like the intelligence we embody now. This leap was driven by society - it is why humans are so incredibly interconnected, and why we are so fundamentally affected by the gestures of others.

You see, the intelligence to use tools became the inadvertent foundation of much greater creation. Equipped with this initial intelligence, early humans began to put it to use for a new purpose - social interactions. After all, in the close knit mini-communities, social interaction was a constant occurrence. Driven by actions such as communal tool making or usage - in which humans would be encouraged or "nudged" to use their new found intelligence in a social manner, social intelligence snowballed. Soon, humans were using their intelligence mainly for producing and living in increasingly complex societies, as opposed to simply making tools.

In a positive feedback loop, society got more complex, and intelligence grew ever greater - far beyond any practical use. And so, we find ourselves in the current day.

Our sense of collectivism and purpose is magnified because we alone are best defined, as a species, not by any physical trait but by our societies and our prerequisite intelligence. Every other species has remained somewhat reactionary, their traits defined by their environments, but humans have evolved according to an environment of their own making - an amazing anomaly, even a justification for our self-proclaimed godhood over all other species.

Since we have essentially been directing our own evolution at the Olympian level, surely any traits inherent in our souls would have been expressed in our creation.

Ergo, everything we want is already present. But, exactly, where? Lets return to our look at humans in a less corrupted form - before the advent of farming.

---

It is just before the dawn of civilization. Humans remain in the same social pattern they have been in for two million years. The population is about 25,000, and homo sapiens are spread across the planet. Direct competitors, such as Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Erectus, have already fallen before us. Humans are at the peak of their evolution insofar as intelligence so far - after all, most of the selective pressures are about to disappear.

Surely this is when we can determine the most about humanity, and what it means to be human. So, what exactly is the society like?

Humans remain in the mini-communities, but now there is much more interaction between them. Tools are so advanced that many predators, such as tigers, can be slain or at least scared off with a wall of pointy things, and so humans may traverse the land freely. Due to this lack of external threats, humans fight amongst themselves, and between their tribes. There are spoken alliances and known rivalries, war and trading. Violence is brief, and sparse, as human existence is still somewhat survivalist. "Wars" between tribes usually take the form of theft or single combat. Deaths due to this are rare.

More important are the individual interactions, however. In the small communities, humans developed high levels of individuality, to facilitate complex interaction in a very small group. As egalitarian as some aspects may have been, humans remained in a strict hierarchy, pandering to sexual biology and strength - similar to other primates. A key difference to be found here is that the leader and alpha male of these groups could be just as easily appointed by merit of intelligence as opposed to strength - for strength could only reach so far, but being able to navigate the complex social sphere could bring rewards from people far and wide.

But the thing is, as maladapted as some sociologists may claim we are for the society we created with the invention of farming, all of our basic traits have been preserved. The original tribal hierarchies swiftly transited into the absolute monarchies in the first city-states. And as human settlements grew larger, we maintained our tribal behavior by means of limited social connections - each of us has a sphere of close family and friends, with few others so well acquainted with us, despite the masses of people around us.

And in these neo-tribes, these small social groups, the same basic facets which characterized the ancient tribes continue unabated. And what facets are these? What emotions and feelings from before persist?

Every social action leads to an emotion, and all of them remain with us. Love, fear, hate, longing, sadness, rejection, power lust, ambition, failure, success.

Each emotion borne of evolution - created by our evermore complex societies for purposes unfathomable to those generations who saw them slowly evolve.

We have we want. What we are defined by. What what we are.

---

So what then, of ideals? Of dreams of paradise, free of sadness and fear and want?

Doram's first reply in this thread stated that we should evolve there.

That we should become beings who can experience such a world, beings unplagued by the argument against communism - beings unplagued by the fact that paradise just isn't what they evolved for.

But to change ourselves to fit our ideals is a fundamental fallacy.

For our ideals are products are what we are now - and if we changed ourselves to embody our ideals, we would not find ourselves satisfied, for our new forms would have new products. Our evolved selves will have new ideals - and their world, Utopia by our standards, will be a depressing dystopia by theirs.

---

Society isn't broken at all - but we are doomed.

Cursed to have dreams we can never fulfill - their purpose only to distract from the temporal pains of what we have.

All the cruelty and the inequality and the madness. What we have is paradise, we just can't see it.

We can feel and experience the entire range of human emotions with what we have - we can do everything we evolved to do, and feel everything we evolved to feel right now.

We are over-evolved - our intelligence has placed us beyond our world, but this does not bring enlightenment or any profound new perspective. It only brings...realization. Perhaps our transition to stationary living and the hygiene that came with it got rid of too many mentally debilitating parasites, or freed up too much of our time to think. Because the distractions just aren't working. The dreams, though not designed to be fulfilled, are too real.

We are doomed.

[1018peter]

"The dreams, though not designed to be fulfilled,are too real."

That is,another thing called: Hope.

No matter how terrible things looks,there will always be a bit of hope within our mind.

It's different from dreams,you dream when you are asleep or near-unconscious.

But you hope when you are fully conscious.

What we hope will always be positive...for us.

But what we dream might be a bad dream or a good dream,they are uncontrollable.

However,if we only hope things will be better,nothing's going to happen!

If we only dream to release your pain,that's only for yourself!The problem is still there!

Of course releasing your pain from time to time is good,but don't keep relying on it.

If you want the problem to be solved,then take action,the world isn't built up by dreams,you must change it by your both hands.





Don't kill me for my weird formats...

[WickedOreo]

Ah, I figured that this thread warrants a revival, especially if a new debater enters the ring of intelligence and philosophy. I will try my best to come up with a fair argument on my part and ramble as little as I can.

What exactly is society to the eyes of man? Surely it is some fabricated definition, coming from us. Those who do not conform to the will of "normal" society tend to see a much more conflicting issue at hand, and in turn are shunned by those people for being different, perhaps quirky. The definition of our civilization is based and nondescript, with little to no potential to move onto a much more elevated and perhaps empyrean state of mind.

But first, we must ask ourselves, how do we define ourselves, and how do we compare to society? Those who are afflicted with a mental disorder, particularly an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) feel the hit the most. But why? People resist change; it is within our very psychologies that prevent us from accepting anything varying from average or extraordinary. Even those with ASD resist change in their idiosyncratic routines and behaviors. I believe that there is a distinct difference in the two.

Being personally afflicted with an ASD, I find it impossibly difficult to change my behavioral patterns, yet it's simple to change cognitive patterns that occur in my brain, such as thinking about the ever elusive topic of philosophy and changing my views on the world, or to curb what depression haunts me. In comparison to an average citizen, many people are comfortable with where they stand, not wishing to aspire further and perhaps achieve enlightenment in their thinking. These people are detrimental to the growth and development of our evolution, as advanced as we are. The strides we must take to answer the universe's questions are within grasp, but there is so little support to those who are capable of discerning some part of the true answer, if I am to contradict my own philosophy.

In a conversation DarthBrowser and I had some days ago, we had discussed this very topic, of definitions and such. To my surprise, our views are quite similar to each other, and based off of nihilism. In my mind, there is no answer to anything, despite all we try to do to answer it. Philosophers are constantly adhering themselves to certain philosophies, but lack the ability to ascend further and work upon that in order to further come up with much more than what they started with. Further, we broached the idea of there being no answers, but in reality, only guesses, however ignorant or educated that are either completely wrong or never to be coherently defined.

With this in mind, one must find a solution through all of this, despite the contradictory ideas aforementioned in the last paragraph. Perhaps it is an attempt to become enlightened, with the foreboding feeling that whatever we accomplish in our lifetimes will be adopted by someone else and be refined even more. It is an interesting and somewhat amusing mindset to adopt, when one balances the thoughts of living and death in his or her mind on a daily basis.

Let's compare society to an organism as one, for a moment.

It is but the cells in a human body. Some cells are specialized for certain tasks, but all cells must die eventually. To combat this, we perform mitosis, or procreation, in order to pass on our legacy and to perform the things that basic society needs. These are the majority of people, who accomplish little to nothing of note in their lives. The brain cells are much more important. Capable of thought and rational functioning, these serve to represent the intelligent or elevated members of our human race, who go above and beyond by innovating the way we live, offer reasoning never thought of before. Finally, the stem cells, recently discovered as scientists to be able to have potential to become anything, even just a regular cell, are the people who are the most valuable to society. There should never be a limit to what they become, so it is indeed possible to further the purpose of the already prominent brain cells, which run the rest of the body in sects, or portions of the brain. These stem cells are the 'rarest' and perhaps most hidden aspect of our human race.

If this is the case, how are we able to eliminate this ignorance effectively? The norms we set will eventually become insufficient, so why bother trying to make people smart, who refuse to go outside of the box? Surely it is a lost cause. There is no definite solution to this growing problem, as we've effectively invaded our home planet. That is a issue better left for those who are untethered in their thinking. It is in my hope that I'm able to elevate my thinking and intelligence even further with these debates, both public and private, and to modify those already followed by other people.

Perhaps this is a Utopian thought, or grounded very much to the world. I am prepared to do anything it takes to at least seed my work into the ground before the whim of Death decides to take me as his own. At this time, I believe that the evolution of man is too slow, despite our intentions to become much more innovative than the previous generation.

I apologize for a small response ahead of time, I am writing this in my creative writing class, with only an hour to spare. I wish to spark this thread back into existence while Doram is absent for the time being.

Also, DarthBrowser, I believe your elitism has really brushed off on me. Thanks a lot. :P

Edit: Fixed spelling.