Is the world fundamentally fair or fundamentally scary?

[hfojvt]

It probably seems silly to ask such a basic question and to have such simplistic answers. However, reading Thom Hartmann's book "Cracking the code: How to win hearts, change minds, and restore America's Original Vision", he distinguishes between two basic worldviews. According to Hartmann, the liberal worldview is that "the world is a fundamentally fair and good place" whereas the conservative worldview is that "the world is a fundamentally scary and dangerous place". He traces the one back in the history of philosophy to Hobbes and the other one back to Locke.

Reading that, I was kinda struck by how many on DU share what Hartmann calls the conservative worldview. DUers are scared, or filled with rage, at a world that is seemingly loaded with racists, and homophobes, and pigs, and capitalist bloodsuckers and all manner of dark and mysterious cabals like "The Family" and the BFEE (not that I want to dismiss this, because they clearly had a propaganda effort to whip up the Iraq war and also to profit tremendously from it, but I don't wanna over-estimate their reach either). We seem determined sometimes, to see only the dark side of life.

"It went on yesterday, and it's going on tonight. Somewhere there's somebody ain't treating somebody right." and the story of that somebody will be found, and shared and discussed on DU. We focus on the empty parts of the glass so much, it seems like we are expected to believe that there is nothing of value in the world. No love. No truth. No beauty. No kindness. Only hatred and lies and ugliness and meanness and we don't just want to band together to stop those things. We want to look at it and poke at it and sift at it, and most importantly, spit at it.

It's a group dynamic though. Those involved in the stupidity and cruelty, you see, are not like us. They are one of "the others", a member of the Sharks without the integrity and purity of one of the Jets. (not to mention our glorious leader Bennie. "B-b-b-bennie and the Jets" (Elton John for you young 'uns). That is a classic form of group unity - demonize the other. It makes the world seem a scarier place though, especially in a red state where we gotta live with 'the others'.

[WeDidIt]

1. Homo Sapiens is, at its core...

a fearful and violent creature that will lash out at the least provocation.

History proves that.

Observation proves that.

Amongst the first tools created in the Genus of Homonids were weapons. The archeological and anthropological record demonstrates a preponderance of capaibility to use such tools on each other.

[BlooInBloo]

2. It's *people* who are either fair or scary. And we're not *fundamentally* much of anything...

We are what we make ourselves.

[hfojvt]

5. the world has power though

"people can be so cold
they'll hurt you
and desert you
they'll take your soul if you let them"

or

"born down in a dead man's town
the first kick I took was when I hit the ground'
end up like a dog that's been beat too much
'til you spend half your life just a covering up"

or

"whether 'tis nobler in the mind
to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
or to take arms against a sea of troubles
and by opposing
end them."

Are we not often given a Hobson's choice, between a rock and a hard place? Hand over your lunch money or have a knuckle sandwich.

The question is about the world we have made.

[omega minimo]

12. You skewed your question

with the presentation of certain topics being to "see only the dark side" and associating being AWARE of what's going on with a negative worldview.

:shrug:


"Reading that, I was kinda struck by how many on DU share what Hartmann calls the conservative worldview. DUers are scared, or filled with rage, at a world that is seemingly loaded with racists, and homophobes, and pigs, and capitalist bloodsuckers and all manner of dark and mysterious cabals like "The Family" and the BFEE (not that I want to dismiss this, because they clearly had a propaganda effort to whip up the Iraq war and also to profit tremendously from it, but I don't wanna over-estimate their reach either). We seem determined sometimes, to see only the dark side of life."

[hfojvt]

20. What is being aware though?

If somebody gets tazed by the cops, for example, we are made aware of it here. If somebody gets rescued by the cops or helped by the cops, we are not made aware of it here. Which happens more often? Which is more typical of life in these United States?

But yes, you remind me of a journal entry.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/30

but I am a flip-flopper.

[Quantess]

3. I read the title and I instantly thought...

Fundamentally backward, ignorant and short-sightedly selfish, all over the world.

But now I will read your OP.

[Juche]

4. Fundamentally good

However because we evolved to avoid dying, bad things affect us more strongly and take up a bigger part of our attention.

For the most part, humans are decent. Give us money, education and science and by and large we will use it for healthcare, democracy, personal freedoms, etc. The world as a whole has gotten more democratic, more free, healthier and better educated over the last few decades. Around 1980 about 41% of the world was malnourished, now it is 18-20%. Still a big number, but there is progress. Literacy rates are up. HIV is now a controllable disease for many. Smallpox is gone.

Anyway, I'd say the good of humans outweighs the bad, but we are designed to focus on the bad instead of the good.

That isn't to say there isn't evil. When humans organize into groups and label those groups with religion, geography, race, ethnicity and then feel that a different religion, geography, etc. is threatening them, we become insanely evil. Identifying with a group that has a certain trait, then dehumanizing those who are in different groups with different traits is the psychology behind much of the large scale evil in the world.

Just that the good outweighs the evil in its scope and scale.

[hfojvt]

7. I am not sure about the attention part

Happy stories will sell too. Consider the popularity of sitcoms. Even the most popular shows like NCIS and CSI have the usual comic book ending - the bad guy gets caught.

That may be two more related questions
1. Are things getting better or worse?
2. Is there hope for the future, or not?

[Juche]

13. Negative events affect us more

It has been found that it takes 5 good comments to neutralize 1 bad comment. Too high a ratio (20:1 of good) makes everything saccarine and phony. Too few good comments (2:1) makes people stressed. Suffice it to say, at least with verbal reinforcement, it takes 5 good comments to equal one bad one. Everyone knows about horrors like genocide (which they should) but few people know that malnutrition levels as a % of the population are half what they were a few decades ago.

http://www.stayhitched.com/ratio.htm

I think our attention is more drawn to threats since threats are more immediate.

The fact that we are even a species that laments evil shows we have hope. A truly evil species would look at the evil and pain and say 'how can I profit from this'. Humans, to a reasonable degree, look at the pain and suffering and feel bad while trying to alleviate it.

[htuttle]

6. Fundamentally, people are primates, and act as such

Everything else is learned.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Neither. It just 'is'. nt

[LanternWaste]

9. I think humanity is more humane than not...

I think humanity is more humane than not. For every horrible deed we see on the nightly news, I would hazard that there are a thousand good deeds, quiet deeds, deeds that receive no mention that also happen. Those quietly done good deeds and sacrifices are neither dramatic nor newsworthy, but they happen all around us.

However, I think many of us have been suckered in by Madison Avenue's Trendy Cynicism, and simply do not see those quiet deeds, any more than a spoiled child sees a refrigerator full of food and indignantly proclaims, "there's never anything to eat in here..."

I think there are a lot more quiet people (we call them sheep many times to better validate our own fears, I imagine...) in the world than there are loud, obnoxious and fearful people.

ed: sp

[hfojvt]

11. if we don't see them though

and can hardly believe they even exist, then how will we be inspired to emulate them? And how can we help people if we are scared of them? I had a guy ask me for cab fare when I had a rental car, and I didn't help him because of my fear of being car-jacked. Without that fear I would have been happy to drive him to where he needed to go. (and I might easily end up a statistic).

We seem to echo the cynicism here though, and even magnify it. Were there very many threads here about the rescue in Milwaukee? I don't remember seeing one.

[LanternWaste]

18. I don';t think good deeds are done to emulate...

I don't think good deeds are done to emulate, or even to inspire, or done as part of a larger trend. I think good deeds are done simply because we know fundamentally more about our collective human nature than we think we do.

Many times prudence dictates that we refuse to make the sacrifice. Other times, finances compels us to refuse. And other times, we simply do no want to make the sacrifice to help others. More often than not, I think we make a quick Cost-Benefit analysis prior to coming to someone's aid. However (and without being snarky at all), I imagine the negative consequences that may arise from your above scenario are in fact part and parcel of what sacrifice and good deeds are all about.

General Omar Bradley was reputed to have said during WWII, "The only difference between a hero and a corpse is a well placed bullet." I imagine the same can be said for those who quietly go about their lives helping other people...

[Posteritatis]

10. It's fair and scary and good and dangerous. (nt)

[anigbrowl]

14. I think Thom's thesis is a bit simplistic...

...on the other hand he's not positioning it as the definitive work of human philosophy :-)

anyway, I vote for fundamentally fair, applied to both the environment and people. By fair I mean it a bit like the Rolling Stones - you can't always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you'll get what you need. Usually.

[Bluerthanblue]

15. I really enjoy Thom Hartman, but this is an impossible poll to

answer fairly.

I think that the POTENTIAL for the world to be a much ..."fairer" and "good-er" place exists, but it is very true that there is much about life on earth that is NOT "fair".
There are things in the world that happen that are completely outside our ability to control- (where, and to whom we are born is a biggie) and it would be silly to deny that there is some healthy ..."fear" that goes along with a healthy perspective of life.
I agree with you in that there are people of all political persuasions who live life overly suspicious of those outside their circle, and who do not believe in the possibility we can learn to co-exist together, as a society or a world in a much less violent dysfunctional way.

I can't live life believing that the hope that humanity can some day learn to live together in a more peaceful, supportive way is an impossibility. It's all simply a sick exercises in futility if that's true.

I'd suggest a third poll option-

something like, the world is scary and volatile, but it doesn't have to stay stuck in that cycle.


:hi:

[hfojvt]

19. I avoided third or fourth options

because I figured that "some combination of both" would just win in a landslide and wanted to force a choice. Neither answer is perfect, but is one better than the other. Sure, our answers would have been different in June of 2000 before the Bush administration spewed excrement all over the world.

Perhaps there is a difference between people who grew up before Reagan and those who grew up after. As a friend of mine said "hippies ruled in the 1970s". Some of our hit songs were "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius" and "Joy to the World". Although "Eve of Destruction" and "Four dead in Ohio" got airplay too, there was a certain amount of hope in the zeitgeist. Something that got chewed up in the greed decade of the 1980s.

[Bluerthanblue]

21. that makes sense, but still makes the

choice of an answer impossible for me. I choose to choose hope over fear- but life will still be unfair- to a degree-
And unless we choose to reject fear, we will be condemned to live by it-

:shrug:

Greed really isn't anything new- it just became "chic" under the republican rule of the last 25+ years. (including BC's presidency, with congress being repub.) IMO

[Arugula Latte]

16. We're all just mortal organisms hurtling through space on a small planet in a

galaxy among billions. Dust in the wind, baby.

[Speck Tater]

17. By "world" do you mean the natural world or human society? Human society at what scale?

The natural world is indifferent to our existence, and is, therefore, amoral.

Small, cohesive groups of humans (small enough to have mutual accountability i.e. a few dozen to a few thousand at most) are most often fair and supportive of all their members and tend toward what anyone would consider to be moral behavior toward their own members.

Human society as an aggregate whole is a mob and has mob mentality, i.e. is amoral.

[RagAss]

22. Neither...it's an illusion.