MikeyC
Well-known member
Yes, well, without rules and laws they'd be capable of so much more. I think I would be scared to death of life without them.I'm terrified of people because I know what they are capable of
Yes, well, without rules and laws they'd be capable of so much more. I think I would be scared to death of life without them.I'm terrified of people because I know what they are capable of
Yes, well, without rules and laws they'd be capable of so much more. I think I would be scared to death of life without them.
What habits are you thinking of? Because are weren't savage beats. Chimpanzees are not savage beasts. They have no rules or laws and they aren't maniacs, same with the rest of the animal kingdom. If there were no consequences, why would we be raping, murdering maniacs? I don't think much would change, people just would be more open about their "wrong" doings.
I wonder about the differences between never having consequences or suddenly having them taken away. If there were no more consequences for stealing (well law consequences) people would go nuts and steal a bunch of expensive stuff. But then no one would buy anything again, people wouldn't get paid at their jobs... nothing would have real value, money would have no value. So in a way, no matter what you do there are still going to be consequences. I would imagine that there would be some kind of order of things to keep people civil, other than just the law.
The idea of ownership and having things is what created a lot of problems I think, as far as stealing and crime is concerned.
A pretty interesting topic to consider.
...A pretty interesting topic to consider.
most interesting to me is the correlation i see demonstrated in this thread between a) diagnosed or self-admitted "social phobics" or sufferers of social anxiety and b) the assumption that human beings are inherently evil
makes perfect sense really
Yes, well, without rules and laws they'd be capable of so much more. I think I would be scared to death of life without them.
The animal kingdom knows quite a bit of savage cruelty that often leads to death. Perhaps not on a mass scale, but it happens. It's by no means a paradise. Compared to the average animal's struggle our lives are a pretty much paradise. The fact that that obesity is a general problem is testimony of that. We have too much food, that's unheard off for the fast majority of wild species.
The thing is, the modern way of (human) life is all based on a system that is largely kept together by itself (us and our jobs). If a enormous change were to happen like disappearance of law the structure of the system would fall apart. Slowly but surely all the necessary thing we take for granted would fall apart. Hospitals, police stations, fire department, those are instances that require some kind of regulation. And while I have no doubt there are noble people that would stay regardless in their jobs regardless, not everyone would, realistically.
If you look at gangs, hateful groups (of which there are many) and otherwise organized crime it isn't difficult to imagine what the average human is capable of given the right circumstances. Those people weren't born evil they grew into it. No regulations would also allow exactly those groups to do what they do uninhibited.
Morality seems to me to come from evolution. Survival of the species. We wouldn't be here if we made life impossible for one another. Those who don't conform to a productive role in human society are eliminated from it in one way or the other.
Hunter gatherer bands function without any codified rules or laws (although admittedly they have their own behaviour modifying cultural mores).
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Yes, well, without rules and laws they'd be capable of so much more. I think I would be scared to death of life without them.
You don't even need to remove rules and laws to see this. Look at what the nazis did in WWII, or the even more recent events in places like the Balkans, or the mass rapes that take place in some African countries today. The thing is, there's nothing intrinsically evil about Germans, or Serbs or Africans. They're just like anyone else, which means that under the right circumstances that nice guy who lives next door to you could be pushing Jews into a gas chamber or raping the wives and daughters of his enemy into submission.
The veneer of society is perilously thin, and what lurks underneath can be far more unpleasant than we'd like to think.
This reminds me of a case we studied in Psychology class. It's called the Stanford Prision Experiment. They studied the effects of having students play the roles of prison guard and prisoner. It had some very unexpected consequences which caused the study to end early!They're just like anyone else, which means that under the right circumstances that nice guy who lives next door to you could be pushing Jews into a gas chamber or raping the wives and daughters of his enemy into submission.
The veneer of society is perilously thin, and what lurks underneath can be far more unpleasant than we'd like to think.
You make an excellent point, Aletheia. However, this is 2012, and if there were suddenly no order, there would be total chaos. There are enough bombs to destroy the planet, so imagine if that wasn't regulated. I know that's a far-fetched scenario, but just imagine. Weapons of that magnitude were not around in prehistoric times.Really?
Hunter gatherer bands function without any codified rules or laws (although admittedly they have their own behaviour modifying cultural mores).
The fact that societies always gravitate towards cohesion indicates that altruism is built into our genes. We'd have died out in the palaeolithic if it wasn't.