Are we advancng or degrading?

[ultimaodin]

I actually think you guys are selling the question short for lack of good presentation. I don't argue at all that we've progressed socially and technologically, but Idocracy, horrible a movie as it was, was trying to present the point that perhaps the ease of our lives, the benefits of technology and the structure of our society tends toward reversing the process of natural selection.

The people who tend to breed most, and pass on their genes and their belief systems, are the people who function most successfully in their environment. In our environment, that means riding the middle road, taking the easy job, bleating in tune with the flock. That's what tends to lead to a life where you reproduce the most, and where your young are most likely to survive to breed in turn, which is basically nature's only definition of success. Our medicine tends to enable people with bad genes and bad coping mechanisms to live longer than even the most ambitious, intelligent, or strong, and sort of like pandas we may be evolving into a niche that will eventually be detrimental to our survival. While on a global scale our level of education and lifespans are increasing, there are two things to note: one, that those traits are phenotypal - it's quite possible that our predecessors were more intelligent and healthy than us on average but had less opportunity. Second, that there is a correspondence between increase in education and decrease in reproduction.

I'm not saying all that stuff is true, but I think it's compelling enough to discuss without dismissing entirely.

See now if I could post like that I would have. I was trying to get to a similar point just in a shitty way. I'm a shit poster I admit it.
The fact is I ain't super inteligent myself, however when I got my first television and computer (I have a new on now after the old one died) when I was 13 I was overly fascinated by how the technology of computers may be capable of helping people in he same financial circumstances as I was and partially still am.
True I am on the forums and that I cannot deny that but I found the underlying messages and concepts of Idiocracy to be very real to me. (does thateven make sense?)
True maybe the lack of entertainment doesn't make me see Idiocracy as a totally crap movie because I watch it and thought it was pretty good. it stated an interesting argument.
Also it is possibly true I am narrow-minded, probably spot on even but all through my life yes I had been through utter crap everyone of our friends had strong family values and senses of what a good thing is and what a bad thing is but as of late (the last 4 years or so) I've watched friends fall to drugs, people fighting over stupid things, others sellng themselves short, and generally taking greed over any other quality and it just kind of sickens me.
Fuck I probably am diluted and I lived in too sucluded of an environment or soething but things just don't feel "right."

Oh and Venetia I didn't know your job actually let you do that, If I went on the net to go on forums at work I would be fired in a heart beat. The fact you go on it with no idol care that there could be something more important that needs to be done at work just seemed kind of selfish. Maybe it's jelousy or something but going on the computer for forums when you first start work  just seems rather yeah I don't know how to explain.

Now true I be on the forums right now but I didn't see it as harmful because I'm not at work and while posting and typing I'm also making my music, listening to it and very very slowly perfecting it as well as messing with other things. I obviously misjudged your circumstances and I apologise.

Anyway back onto topic Jolnir has pretty much made what I was trying to say clearer than I could.
Thankyou for making the question far more obvious and I will take down this thread as notes on how to presentate things more appropriately.
What I have to learn from somewhere what I couldn't learn at my school.

PS I actually kind of do see myself as a selfish asshole, always have pretty much. Maybe I am too hard on the whole human race to begine with including myself, I don't know. So forgive me if I do come off as a nieve (that right?) teenager.

Off to google a lot of news! Might help me out.

 

[___]

Haha the point isn't to self-depreciate here, you don't have to go on a rant about how much you think you suck just because you got corrected. Just take it gracefully and get back on topic

 

[koon no kami]

this discussion ( although it's only 1 page so far ) is already very specific and advanced content wise.
so i can just speak for myself, after reading the first post and then sixty 's post -
i can understand the thread creator's point of view but basically sixty's right.
it's all human nature - human being isn't as perfect as it wants to be / calls itself. not really.
and mentally it can advance only very very slowly...
sometimes i think mankind develops new science faster than it grows responsibility to handle it.

humans in general are pretty narrow minded, selfish and make a lot of wrong desicions.

 

[Phoenixia]

I, personally, doubt that modern convience is causing a gradual decline in man's intellect. The human brain retains a level of plasticity until about age five, so upbringing plays a large role in cognitive devlopment. Also, the education level of a persons parents in no way influences the intelligence level of their children; though it does perhaps influence the availibility of education that they will have. Also, given the ammount of pardigm shifts that have taken place in science throughout the years, and will take place in the future, it's hard to imagine that people are getting stupider. Consider that Lorentz had worked out most of the math for relativity but couldn't commit to the idea, Einstein was rare in that he wasn't close minded. However, now a days things like accepting things like string theory as possible is second nature; and string theory is way beyond relativity in terms of weird. This indicates that not only are we more knowledgable, but that we also lack the intellectual inhibitions we used to have as a society. Also, information is far more availible, this has the effects of expanding minds. Not only this, but this is one of the only times in history that you could find watered down pop-intros to just about any subject (heck, borders has pop-sci books on quantum chromodynamics

As for morally, we definitely aren't degrading; we're shifting. For a long time society has been enslaved to absurd moral codes and absurd religous practices, these were accepted without question. Nowadays people are beggining to question these assumptions; this evidenced by the fact that we're aware of all the absurd things that people do in the name of ethics and religion (creationists, abortion clinic terrorists, holy war) These things, and intolerance in general, are prominent not because they just started happening, but because we only now is a large chunk of society wiling to disavow them. Finally, I think a part of the reason that people may seem somewhat chaotic, lacking in values of any kind, is because though we've partly thrown of the shackles of the old system, we've nothing with which to replace it; but that's only a matter of time. Inevitably, man will adopt some new system, many will become dogmatic to it's principles; the difference will be that the system will be better, people will remain people (if it weren't for this phrase I'd call myself an optimist

 

[Despain]

neither we;re just GOING

 

[Wolfgang]

The human race is simply laughable. Anything that states our death or mortality has to be ignored or disproven by faulty logic.