March 2003 Archives
« February 2003 | Main | April 2003 »

March 27, 2003

Self-interest and drives

A human is a being that wants to survive and reproduce (this tendency is from the self-replicative nature of the genes and cells), hence he works for his survival and reproduction. That gives rise to self-interest. He works for his survival and reproduction. The genes want him to live, and does not care about the others, hence his basic motivation is to make sure that he himself lives. This is the origin of self-interest.

The society is an abstract entity which is formed by a group of people depending on each other for mutual help in surviving and satisfaction of other desires, and hence it likes people to be not too selfish and care for others too.

However, it is interesting to note that societies in general tend to resist selfishness within the society, not between the society as a whole with another society. For example, consider a country, selfishness is resisted within a country, but one country's people may have societally acceptable hatred for people of other countries.

This concept can be easily seen in this example: Egotist tendencies are opposed by a society in general, i.e. if a person favors himself incessantly and strongly, then other people in general will not like it, and this is not viewed as correct by most societies. BUT if we extend our identity (i.e. ego) to a bigger group entity, for example, a country, then its okay if I cheer for my country and very strongly show favor for it against other countries. This behavior is acceptable to all societies, but this is nothing but egotitistic behavior, since we have extended our identity to a group identity and by whatever favor we show to the group entity, we are actually giving ourself egotistic pleasure.


--------

March 22, 2003

War is not wrong

WAR IS NOT WRONG.

"Self-Interest" - this is the key word. Everybody in this world works on the motive of self-interest. US invades Iraq - for its own self-interest. But this will be better for Iraq too in the long run. Since it will have all infrastructure built (after the war) and a democratic government set up which will enable it to become a properous country later on.

The other countries dont like this - because of their own self interest. The weak need protection from the strong - for their survival - in their own self-interest, hence they resort to some sort of "morality" concept, which seeks protection from the strong. When the strongest, the US, starts to use its power, the weak get terrified and resent the strong.

The UN was ironically created by the US and UK, and the power of the UN comes from the fact that US supports it.

I am not justifying the war - I am just saying that it is normal human behavior pattern, and any country that would have been the strongest country in this world would have done the same things that the US is doing.

What is at fault? Not the US. Not Iraq. Its human behavior.

That is, if there is some fault in the first place. What is wrong, what is right? See the previous post on "morality".

--------

Morality - absolute or subjective?

Morality - absolute or subjective?

Learn about the Subjectivist, Cultural Relativist and the Secular Humanist view of Morality
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/schick_18_4.html

A SocioBiologist and Christanity Point of view
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/sociobio.html

And the best of all, learn from this Harvard Prof a "neutral" point of view of morality
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98apr/biomoral.htm

Finally, there is this online book by Henry Hazlitt on morality.
http://www.hazlitt.org/e-texts/morality/

--------

March 10, 2003

Other than Philosophy

Anything other than Philosophy is trivial. Yes, even "life", or whatever you percieve by that word.
--------

display("mt:67"); ?>

Subscribe



Get Blog posts as a feed - Atom, RSS2, or RSS1
Powered by
Movable Type 3.33