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I understand that China is extremely powerful both militarily and economically, but it just makes me so sad that such atrocities against humanity are occurring

I understand that China is extremely powerful both militarily and economically, but it just makes me so sad that such atrocities against humanity are occurring at the hands of a superpower, deep into the 21st century. Forgive my naiveté, but aren't we supposed to be past this type of thing as a species already? Wasn't that the whole point of the 20th century - to show us all the things we shouldn't be doing?

baskire 6y ago
Surprised trump doesn’t use this to place sanctions on China and up his base’s support.
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  You think Trump or his base is concerned about genocide of Muslims? That’s giving them an awful lot of credit.
  - iamstupidsimple 6y ago
    I definitely do. At least Trump and his supporters have the had guts to stand up to China. Nobody else seems to be doing this.
    - belltaco 6y ago
      You mean by repeatedly praising Xi? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises-chinese-president-extending-tenure-for-life-idUSKCN1GG015 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises... Or by getting the US out of the TPP, which was meant to reduce China's influence on that part of the world? Or by asking him to help him get re-elected?
    - mcintyre1994 6y ago
      Obvious counter example would be Yemen, where he’s been fully behind Saudi Arabia continuing their genocide of a Muslim population.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > I definitely do. At least Trump and his supporters have the had guts to stand up to China. Nobody else seems to be doing this. The problem is that they seem really only willing stand up (incompetently) over trade issues. Trump, himself at least, has never seemed to care at all about human rights issues (foreign or domestic).
- oliwarner 6y ago
  Depending on how he played it, he might get support from everybody. Stopping genocide is pretty hot right now, as is sticking it to China. But he's not a very subtle chap. I doubt he could restrain himself to stick to a line.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
  He's been pretty tough on them compared to past presidents with the 25% tariff, plus he has a sanction bill coming to his desk to sign. > The Senate just passed a bill that further sanctions China by authorizing the Treasury Department to identify Chinese banks and financial firms which enable the Communist Party regime, and punish them by restricting their access to the US dollar and visas for their executives. > Unlike past Chinese sanction bills, the restrictions will apply not just to individuals, but the banks that employ them. And it will apply not just to Chinese-owned banks, but subsidiaries of American companies operating in the country.
- hkai 6y ago
  Well, John Bolton in his new book alleges that Trump told Xi to keep locking up Uyghurs. > “According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do,” Mr. Bolton wrote. On the other hand, he also signed the Uyghur Human Rights Act.
  - chongli 6y ago
    I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Trump says a lot of different things and constantly contradicts himself. The running theme is that he tries to say what he thinks is the best thing to say at that time but with all the savvy and nuance of a used car salesman.
  - danenania 6y ago
    Though it's for different reasons, Trump is putting large numbers of people in camps himself, and we've seen plenty of evidence of systematic abuse, neglect, and dehumanization. It isn't surprising that he would be sympathetic to another leader who uses similar tactics (even if his advisors make him condemn it to keep up appearances). There's little reason to think he'd do anything different in Xi's position. Edit: For the downvoters, I am not 'whatabout-ing' or trying to diminish these terrible crimes committed by China's government. But I think it's naive to expect any credible US-led action against it while the leader of the US is committing similar crimes on a lesser (but still massive) scale.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Trump was putting people in camps? You mean the throngs of asylum seekers? Slightly different scenario, no?
      - danenania 6y ago
        Different scenario, similar disregard for basic human rights.
        6y ago
- im3w1l 6y ago
  The genocide against the Uighurs have been going on for a while, and Trump has already put sanctions on China.
okasaki 6y ago
Are we? A survery in The Lancet estimated that the Iraq invasion caused an excess of 650k deaths by October 2006. A simple extrapolation would surely put the excess deaths in the middle east into millions. It's different though. We're the good guys.
- 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
  All the Muslim majority nations are silent on this matter. It shows how hypocritical they are.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    Yes. The corrupt selfish elite regimes of countries like Pakistan with the majority of actual citizens struggling to live day by day..wait.. Which ones should be talking? The regimes that clearly don’t care or the struggling people, many of whom barely have adequate internet.
- azinman2 6y ago
  I’m not saying the Iraq war should have happened, but war as a concept has been around since civilization started. What’s described here isn’t the same thing... there was no formal declaration or ability for them to fight back, and it’s happening largely in secret with denial to erase an entire culture from the earth.
  - baron_harkonnen 6y ago
    > war as a concept has been around since civilization started So has genocide... > there was no formal declaration or ability for them to fight back The last formally declared war by the US was WWII, and the second Iraq war was absurdly asymmetrical, they effectively had no "ability for them to fight back", we murdered countless civilians. And go ahead and try to find actual numbers regarding those deaths. There are wide discrepancies between US official numbers, US approved media numbers and numbers from other watch groups. If you think our use of force in the middle east is anything like 'officially declared war between nations' you need to spend more time researching. That's just Iraq, there's a plenty of campaigns right now all through out the middle east. And let's not forget the massive funding of Israel and their perpetual work to drive the Palestinians from their homes. Read up on that and tell me that's not genocide. But if you critique that publicly you'll face immense political backlash. And don't get me started on the way our governments still actively work to destabilize first nations communities and cultures in the US. We unquestionably committed genocide against native populations in our history as a country but you're naive if you think we still aren't working to actively destroy what culture remains (Canada is equally if not no more so guilty of this). > and it’s happening largely in secret The US and China have very different forms of propaganda, but the fact that you think that the US is largely innocent of crimes like these should give anyone reading a sense of how powerful US propaganda and media control really is.
nabla9 6y ago
> we supposed to be past this type of thing as a species already? There is no indication of that. Just decade after WWII British government did yet another genocide in Kenya. Concentration camps, floggings, torture and rapes. After that there has been many others.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
If USA, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, SK and a few other countries agree, they can make China pay. But they are too fractured and each country might be looking to get a better deal out of China.
ironman1478 6y ago
As I've gotten older, I've come to really feel like humans just haven't been around that long and we really haven't progressed that much outside of technology. WW2 wasn't really that long ago and neither was the the American civil war, both wars based on race and atrocities. I think it's a bit of a fallacy to think that just because some country is technology and economically advanced it will have correct moral values. Germany in WW2 is an example of that and so is America now imo, it's just that in America we aren't as far gone (but there are people in America who probably wouldn't mind killing other groups).
- zadler 6y ago
  > we really haven't progressed that much outside of technology This would imply that the measure of progression / advancement is civility, and that we are going to progress and become more civil given more time. That seems to be a fallacy also, it may be that evolution does not optimise for civility at all, after all being civil is not going to help you to crush your enemies or attract a mate in this environment.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    Evolution might promote civility in a similar way to peacock feathers through sexual selection. Civility implies that you have enough wealth and power to spare on luxuries even in a world of brutal competition. This allows you to attract more mates/immigrants which ultimately offsets the additional cost.
    - Lio 6y ago
      Evolution is very slow: you.class == caveman.class
      - magicsmoke 6y ago
        Genetic evolution is very slow. Societal evolution can be very rapid at times. But similar models regarding reproduction, mutation, and natural selection apply in both cases.
GoodJokes 6y ago
Just replace China with the US in this comment and you’ll understandz
TriNetra 6y ago
Just for a moment reflect on this fact: for almost all human beings on this planet, the goal of life continues to revolve around gaining wealth, recognition and power. By the time one realizes the worthlessness of these goals, it's time for him to leave. But as long as these remain the primary goals of our lives, we can't truly be compassionate toward the needs/plight of others and at every opportune moment, we'll try to take advantage of others if it helps us in achieving our primary objectives. The greater the benefit, the more the ruthless/selfish one can become when it comes to fulfilling one's desires. No matter of education/technology advancement can help unless what is important for our lives as a society is rebooted fundamentally.
- maybemaybenots 6y ago
  "for almost all human beings on this planet, the goal of life continues to revolve around gaining wealth, recognition and power." This is a really broad and very specific statement. Genuinely curious what you base this on.
  - ta17711771 6y ago
    The actions of literally almost every group of elites and high-level government officials in the last 100 years? Are you not exposed to this behavior/news somehow?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The original comment said this was true of "almost all human beings", the vast majority of whom are neither elites nor high-level government officials.
      - ta17711771 6y ago
        Right, but....if we "all" didn't value these things, how did these people gain their power and status over us?
BurningFrog 6y ago
We mostly are past it. Wars, mass murder and oppression is much rarer than in the 20th century. Even China itself, as bad as it is, is enormously improved from the genocidal days of Mao.
text70 6y ago
Believe it or not we as a species are still stuck in a oral history despite the advent of the written word. What global communication has done, is kind of open the window of oral history to everyone. This kind of communication is based on narrative. The ultimate problem is that when you have a conflict of evidence and narrative, you have people that want to keep theirs. So instead of changing the narrative, they change the evidence. Find a way to be able to change your own narrative, and survive, given conflicting evidence, and you may be able to help change the world.
Foober223 6y ago
Yes you are naive. This is the exact line of thinking Europeans had before WW1 broke out.
- refurb 6y ago
  Exactly. Don’t forget only 75 years ago, we had a highly developed nation turn to authoritarianism with the support of a majority of the population. And when Germany invaded West and East, they found plenty of locals will to help them. We like to think things are different now, but big picture, they really aren’t.
cercatrova 6y ago
The fallacy is assuming the nature of civilizations has changed or will continue to get better over time. Human nature is fundamentally warlike, with the subjugation of those tribes deemed lesser, or just in the way of some natural resource. While there is cooperation within individuals in the tribe, history has shown that tribes will conquer rather than cooperate with other tribes given the chance. This is just the present manifestation of human nature. I assume, just as genocides and war has occurred in the past, they will continue to occur in the present and future, and we will never achieve world peace until human nature itself is changed, perhaps through some future genetic engineering that would make everyone exceedingly docile.
- pasquinelli 6y ago
  you're attributing to individuals traits that belong to groups. americans are docile, but america is very violent and easily provoked. so why do you think genetically engineering people to be more docile would help? what could be more docile than an ant? but an ant nest is a psycho. i think you might have the whole thing flipped on its head, at least. mass violence requires mass discipline, and you can only discipline a subject that's docile.
zackees 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention From the Wiki article, the UN definition of Genocide is met if... ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2[5] I'm not a fan of China, but the UN bar for genocide is so low that it's essentially meaningless. The word itself means gene-killing. Whether china is actually trying to wipe out or is being oppressive isn't clear when the UN definition is used.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  Which part of this is a low bar, exactly? Like, I don't see any country doing any of that to a well-defined group by accident.
  - Udik 6y ago
    Hm hm. Israel. With the generous protection and help of the US of A.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The word itself means gene-killing. No, it means (in the etymological sense rather than the denotative sense, since the UN definition is the primary denotative use in the modern world) race-killing. The “geno” is from the Greek “genos” meaning “race”, not from the English “gene” (the English “gene" ultimately is descended from “genos” also, through the German “pangen" a hypothesized ultimate unit of heredity, which etymologically is “all-race”.) > Whether china is actually trying to wipe out or is being oppressive isn't clear when the UN definition is used. The convention for the prevention and punishment of genocide includes certain forms of group oppression as well as direct killing because historically those kinds of group oppression usually precedes and paves the way for direct killing, and are also themselves an indirect means of killing (by reducing ability to survive and thrive.).
saeranv 6y ago
I had a professor (a historian who studied Auschwitz) who used to argue the opposite. Germany was a modern, industrialized nation, with an educated population - and yet the majority of the population either actively committed genocide, or were complicit in some fashion. My professor thus argued that the conditions for the Holocaust are not unique, and there could easily be another one.
- throwaway6274 6y ago
  ~50% of the population continues to support abortion, so I’d say we have a very long way to go.
  - wildfire 6y ago
    Yes. How long until we can get to 100%? Hopefully valuing life and allowing people to choose will become just the default.
    - throwaway6274 6y ago
      I don’t understand how you can say something like that with a clear conscience. But then again I don’t understand how China can treat the Uighurs the way they are and sleep at night either. I suppose people just rationalize other people in collective societal delusion as “sub-human” to the point where it’s easy to ignore.
      - Udik 6y ago
        > I don’t understand how you can say something like that with a clear conscience Not the gp, but my position is that equating a fetus to a person is a fallacy based in the idea that it's a potential person. Which however means it's actually not one. Human beings have language, thought, self-awareness, memories, knowledge, experience, friends, family, hopes and fears. A fetus, wild speculations aside, has none of these. A dna is just a long molecule, not necessary and not enough to attribute humanity. A developed brain and a sense of self instead are both necessary and sufficient. A fetus has neither.
api 6y ago
I don't think we really learned any lessons. Stalin and Mao were at least as bad as Hitler in terms of body count. Hitler just lost the war, while the other two were able to continue to invest in propaganda to whitewash their histories. If Nazi Germany had emerged from the war intact, they too would have been able to whitewash their history for decades after. I'm sure in time they would have "moderated" a bit, and that little episode would be a regrettable footnote the way the Cultural Revolution is for the Chinese or Stalin's purges were/are for the USSR/Russia. We have also never fully acknowledged what the Spanish, British, and later USA did to the native populations of North and South America in the preceding centuries. Yes it's true that disease did much of the work without anyone lifting a finger, but that's only true in the early days. Later on there was plenty of intentional slaughter including bounties to encourage it. When I look at the way Twitter erupts into ideological witch hunts or things like the Qanon cult, I realize that we have not changed. If any of those mobs got actual power we'd see the same things repeated against whatever groups (real or imaginary) they hate. Civilization is a thin veneer.
- 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
  Fundamentally, civilization is about control. The control is codified and accepted only because there is a certain amount of inhumanity that is required for it. I would argue that killing comes naturally to humans, and other acts of similar cruelty. Morality and ethics are learned behaviors that are distilled from societal mores. If "thou shall not kill" or some equivalent in another religion didn't exist, for example, I'd argue killing would be natural in society, and nobody would question it. That is why certain tribal and indigenous peoples performed human sacrifices and had various rituals involving bloodsport. To those tribesmen, killing is not something abnormal within the tribe. Why would killing someone from another tribe matter to them?
  - api 6y ago
    Is/ought... I agree that humans are entirely capable of it. Is it the best thing for us to do? My biggest problem with secular thought and especially the "pop atheist" variety is that it seems to often lead to is=ought. Regardless of the reality behind any form of theism, theistic thought never accepted that equality. It's always posited that there must be a "better than the way things are now." Some secularists dismiss that as wishful thinking and a coping mechanism, but if so why bother building or doing much of anything beyond the simple core of eat, shit, fight, and fuck?
Lio 6y ago
Biologically speaking you realise that we as a species haven’t evolved perceptibly in all recorded human history? If you were to somehow take a caveman’s baby, bring it back to the current time and raise it to full adulthood you would not be able to tell the difference it and “us”. Any progress we’ve made with regard to human rights is purely cultural and not innate ...and it can disappear in the blink of an eye. You can bet that any horrible thing you can imagine happening some vile cnut somewhere has done to some other poor sap.
rootsudo 6y ago
I don't understand why people think other countries should follow the Western idea of morality or what is atrocities. Sino China was involved in WW2, yet look at this.
- wildfire 6y ago
  Given that this is the United Nation definition of Genocide, why do you think this is Western in any way? Remember China had a hand in crafting this definition.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    The ROC took part in the UN. The PRC was barred until 1971.
m12k 6y ago
The sad truth is that the world would most likely not have done anything about the holocaust if Nazi Germany hadn't also invaded their neighboring countries. Killing people at home is just frowned upon, but killing people next door is where you get in trouble. The world is a quite a ways from actually being the civilized place that we like to pretend it is.
- refurb 6y ago
  What could the West have done beyond doing what they were already doing - fighting a war with Germany? Blown up rail lines leading to the camps? Would the Germans have said “oh, well let them go then.” No, they would have found other ways to murder them. It’s not that different than China. You want to stop the genocide? Well, prepare for a major war with millions of deaths on both sides.
  - m12k 6y ago
    You seem to misunderstand my comment. My point was that the West only fought a war with Germany because they invaded Poland and other neighboring countries. Had the Nazis not done that, the West would most likely not have fought them, even if the concentration camps had come to light.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Ahhh...I misinterpreted your post. That’s a fair point.
refurb 6y ago
Until you change the fundamental nature of humans, these things will always be with us.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Yes, you are naive. We just love the idea of the perfectability of human nature, but the empirical evidence seems to be somewhat lacking.

baskire 6y ago

Surprised trump doesn’t use this to place sanctions on China and up his base’s support.

Analemma_ 6y ago
You think Trump or his base is concerned about genocide of Muslims? That’s giving them an awful lot of credit.
- iamstupidsimple 6y ago
  I definitely do. At least Trump and his supporters have the had guts to stand up to China. Nobody else seems to be doing this.
  - belltaco 6y ago
    You mean by repeatedly praising Xi? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises-chinese-president-extending-tenure-for-life-idUSKCN1GG015 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises... Or by getting the US out of the TPP, which was meant to reduce China's influence on that part of the world? Or by asking him to help him get re-elected?
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    Obvious counter example would be Yemen, where he’s been fully behind Saudi Arabia continuing their genocide of a Muslim population.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > I definitely do. At least Trump and his supporters have the had guts to stand up to China. Nobody else seems to be doing this. The problem is that they seem really only willing stand up (incompetently) over trade issues. Trump, himself at least, has never seemed to care at all about human rights issues (foreign or domestic).
oliwarner 6y ago
Depending on how he played it, he might get support from everybody. Stopping genocide is pretty hot right now, as is sticking it to China. But he's not a very subtle chap. I doubt he could restrain himself to stick to a line.
s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
He's been pretty tough on them compared to past presidents with the 25% tariff, plus he has a sanction bill coming to his desk to sign. > The Senate just passed a bill that further sanctions China by authorizing the Treasury Department to identify Chinese banks and financial firms which enable the Communist Party regime, and punish them by restricting their access to the US dollar and visas for their executives. > Unlike past Chinese sanction bills, the restrictions will apply not just to individuals, but the banks that employ them. And it will apply not just to Chinese-owned banks, but subsidiaries of American companies operating in the country.
hkai 6y ago
Well, John Bolton in his new book alleges that Trump told Xi to keep locking up Uyghurs. > “According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do,” Mr. Bolton wrote. On the other hand, he also signed the Uyghur Human Rights Act.
- chongli 6y ago
  I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Trump says a lot of different things and constantly contradicts himself. The running theme is that he tries to say what he thinks is the best thing to say at that time but with all the savvy and nuance of a used car salesman.
- danenania 6y ago
  Though it's for different reasons, Trump is putting large numbers of people in camps himself, and we've seen plenty of evidence of systematic abuse, neglect, and dehumanization. It isn't surprising that he would be sympathetic to another leader who uses similar tactics (even if his advisors make him condemn it to keep up appearances). There's little reason to think he'd do anything different in Xi's position. Edit: For the downvoters, I am not 'whatabout-ing' or trying to diminish these terrible crimes committed by China's government. But I think it's naive to expect any credible US-led action against it while the leader of the US is committing similar crimes on a lesser (but still massive) scale.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Trump was putting people in camps? You mean the throngs of asylum seekers? Slightly different scenario, no?
    - danenania 6y ago
      Different scenario, similar disregard for basic human rights.
      - 6y ago
im3w1l 6y ago
The genocide against the Uighurs have been going on for a while, and Trump has already put sanctions on China.

okasaki 6y ago

Are we? A survery in The Lancet estimated that the Iraq invasion caused an excess of 650k deaths by October 2006. A simple extrapolation would surely put the excess deaths in the middle east into millions. It's different though. We're the good guys.

0x8BADF00D 6y ago
All the Muslim majority nations are silent on this matter. It shows how hypocritical they are.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Yes. The corrupt selfish elite regimes of countries like Pakistan with the majority of actual citizens struggling to live day by day..wait.. Which ones should be talking? The regimes that clearly don’t care or the struggling people, many of whom barely have adequate internet.
azinman2 6y ago
I’m not saying the Iraq war should have happened, but war as a concept has been around since civilization started. What’s described here isn’t the same thing... there was no formal declaration or ability for them to fight back, and it’s happening largely in secret with denial to erase an entire culture from the earth.
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  > war as a concept has been around since civilization started So has genocide... > there was no formal declaration or ability for them to fight back The last formally declared war by the US was WWII, and the second Iraq war was absurdly asymmetrical, they effectively had no "ability for them to fight back", we murdered countless civilians. And go ahead and try to find actual numbers regarding those deaths. There are wide discrepancies between US official numbers, US approved media numbers and numbers from other watch groups. If you think our use of force in the middle east is anything like 'officially declared war between nations' you need to spend more time researching. That's just Iraq, there's a plenty of campaigns right now all through out the middle east. And let's not forget the massive funding of Israel and their perpetual work to drive the Palestinians from their homes. Read up on that and tell me that's not genocide. But if you critique that publicly you'll face immense political backlash. And don't get me started on the way our governments still actively work to destabilize first nations communities and cultures in the US. We unquestionably committed genocide against native populations in our history as a country but you're naive if you think we still aren't working to actively destroy what culture remains (Canada is equally if not no more so guilty of this). > and it’s happening largely in secret The US and China have very different forms of propaganda, but the fact that you think that the US is largely innocent of crimes like these should give anyone reading a sense of how powerful US propaganda and media control really is.

nabla9 6y ago

> we supposed to be past this type of thing as a species already? There is no indication of that. Just decade after WWII British government did yet another genocide in Kenya. Concentration camps, floggings, torture and rapes. After that there has been many others.

onetimemanytime 6y ago

If USA, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, SK and a few other countries agree, they can make China pay. But they are too fractured and each country might be looking to get a better deal out of China.

ironman1478 6y ago

As I've gotten older, I've come to really feel like humans just haven't been around that long and we really haven't progressed that much outside of technology. WW2 wasn't really that long ago and neither was the the American civil war, both wars based on race and atrocities. I think it's a bit of a fallacy to think that just because some country is technology and economically advanced it will have correct moral values. Germany in WW2 is an example of that and so is America now imo, it's just that in America we aren't as far gone (but there are people in America who probably wouldn't mind killing other groups).

zadler 6y ago
> we really haven't progressed that much outside of technology This would imply that the measure of progression / advancement is civility, and that we are going to progress and become more civil given more time. That seems to be a fallacy also, it may be that evolution does not optimise for civility at all, after all being civil is not going to help you to crush your enemies or attract a mate in this environment.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  Evolution might promote civility in a similar way to peacock feathers through sexual selection. Civility implies that you have enough wealth and power to spare on luxuries even in a world of brutal competition. This allows you to attract more mates/immigrants which ultimately offsets the additional cost.
  - Lio 6y ago
    Evolution is very slow: you.class == caveman.class
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      Genetic evolution is very slow. Societal evolution can be very rapid at times. But similar models regarding reproduction, mutation, and natural selection apply in both cases.

GoodJokes 6y ago

Just replace China with the US in this comment and you’ll understandz

TriNetra 6y ago

Just for a moment reflect on this fact: for almost all human beings on this planet, the goal of life continues to revolve around gaining wealth, recognition and power. By the time one realizes the worthlessness of these goals, it's time for him to leave. But as long as these remain the primary goals of our lives, we can't truly be compassionate toward the needs/plight of others and at every opportune moment, we'll try to take advantage of others if it helps us in achieving our primary objectives. The greater the benefit, the more the ruthless/selfish one can become when it comes to fulfilling one's desires. No matter of education/technology advancement can help unless what is important for our lives as a society is rebooted fundamentally.

maybemaybenots 6y ago
"for almost all human beings on this planet, the goal of life continues to revolve around gaining wealth, recognition and power." This is a really broad and very specific statement. Genuinely curious what you base this on.
- ta17711771 6y ago
  The actions of literally almost every group of elites and high-level government officials in the last 100 years? Are you not exposed to this behavior/news somehow?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The original comment said this was true of "almost all human beings", the vast majority of whom are neither elites nor high-level government officials.
    - ta17711771 6y ago
      Right, but....if we "all" didn't value these things, how did these people gain their power and status over us?

BurningFrog 6y ago

We mostly are past it. Wars, mass murder and oppression is much rarer than in the 20th century. Even China itself, as bad as it is, is enormously improved from the genocidal days of Mao.

text70 6y ago

Believe it or not we as a species are still stuck in a oral history despite the advent of the written word. What global communication has done, is kind of open the window of oral history to everyone. This kind of communication is based on narrative. The ultimate problem is that when you have a conflict of evidence and narrative, you have people that want to keep theirs. So instead of changing the narrative, they change the evidence. Find a way to be able to change your own narrative, and survive, given conflicting evidence, and you may be able to help change the world.

Foober223 6y ago

Yes you are naive. This is the exact line of thinking Europeans had before WW1 broke out.

refurb 6y ago
Exactly. Don’t forget only 75 years ago, we had a highly developed nation turn to authoritarianism with the support of a majority of the population. And when Germany invaded West and East, they found plenty of locals will to help them. We like to think things are different now, but big picture, they really aren’t.

cercatrova 6y ago

The fallacy is assuming the nature of civilizations has changed or will continue to get better over time. Human nature is fundamentally warlike, with the subjugation of those tribes deemed lesser, or just in the way of some natural resource. While there is cooperation within individuals in the tribe, history has shown that tribes will conquer rather than cooperate with other tribes given the chance. This is just the present manifestation of human nature. I assume, just as genocides and war has occurred in the past, they will continue to occur in the present and future, and we will never achieve world peace until human nature itself is changed, perhaps through some future genetic engineering that would make everyone exceedingly docile.

pasquinelli 6y ago
you're attributing to individuals traits that belong to groups. americans are docile, but america is very violent and easily provoked. so why do you think genetically engineering people to be more docile would help? what could be more docile than an ant? but an ant nest is a psycho. i think you might have the whole thing flipped on its head, at least. mass violence requires mass discipline, and you can only discipline a subject that's docile.

zackees 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention From the Wiki article, the UN definition of Genocide is met if... ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2[5] I'm not a fan of China, but the UN bar for genocide is so low that it's essentially meaningless. The word itself means gene-killing. Whether china is actually trying to wipe out or is being oppressive isn't clear when the UN definition is used.

vertex-four 6y ago
Which part of this is a low bar, exactly? Like, I don't see any country doing any of that to a well-defined group by accident.
- Udik 6y ago
  Hm hm. Israel. With the generous protection and help of the US of A.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> The word itself means gene-killing. No, it means (in the etymological sense rather than the denotative sense, since the UN definition is the primary denotative use in the modern world) race-killing. The “geno” is from the Greek “genos” meaning “race”, not from the English “gene” (the English “gene" ultimately is descended from “genos” also, through the German “pangen" a hypothesized ultimate unit of heredity, which etymologically is “all-race”.) > Whether china is actually trying to wipe out or is being oppressive isn't clear when the UN definition is used. The convention for the prevention and punishment of genocide includes certain forms of group oppression as well as direct killing because historically those kinds of group oppression usually precedes and paves the way for direct killing, and are also themselves an indirect means of killing (by reducing ability to survive and thrive.).

saeranv 6y ago

I had a professor (a historian who studied Auschwitz) who used to argue the opposite. Germany was a modern, industrialized nation, with an educated population - and yet the majority of the population either actively committed genocide, or were complicit in some fashion. My professor thus argued that the conditions for the Holocaust are not unique, and there could easily be another one.

throwaway6274 6y ago
~50% of the population continues to support abortion, so I’d say we have a very long way to go.
- wildfire 6y ago
  Yes. How long until we can get to 100%? Hopefully valuing life and allowing people to choose will become just the default.
  - throwaway6274 6y ago
    I don’t understand how you can say something like that with a clear conscience. But then again I don’t understand how China can treat the Uighurs the way they are and sleep at night either. I suppose people just rationalize other people in collective societal delusion as “sub-human” to the point where it’s easy to ignore.
    - Udik 6y ago
      > I don’t understand how you can say something like that with a clear conscience Not the gp, but my position is that equating a fetus to a person is a fallacy based in the idea that it's a potential person. Which however means it's actually not one. Human beings have language, thought, self-awareness, memories, knowledge, experience, friends, family, hopes and fears. A fetus, wild speculations aside, has none of these. A dna is just a long molecule, not necessary and not enough to attribute humanity. A developed brain and a sense of self instead are both necessary and sufficient. A fetus has neither.

api 6y ago

I don't think we really learned any lessons. Stalin and Mao were at least as bad as Hitler in terms of body count. Hitler just lost the war, while the other two were able to continue to invest in propaganda to whitewash their histories. If Nazi Germany had emerged from the war intact, they too would have been able to whitewash their history for decades after. I'm sure in time they would have "moderated" a bit, and that little episode would be a regrettable footnote the way the Cultural Revolution is for the Chinese or Stalin's purges were/are for the USSR/Russia. We have also never fully acknowledged what the Spanish, British, and later USA did to the native populations of North and South America in the preceding centuries. Yes it's true that disease did much of the work without anyone lifting a finger, but that's only true in the early days. Later on there was plenty of intentional slaughter including bounties to encourage it. When I look at the way Twitter erupts into ideological witch hunts or things like the Qanon cult, I realize that we have not changed. If any of those mobs got actual power we'd see the same things repeated against whatever groups (real or imaginary) they hate. Civilization is a thin veneer.

0x8BADF00D 6y ago
Fundamentally, civilization is about control. The control is codified and accepted only because there is a certain amount of inhumanity that is required for it. I would argue that killing comes naturally to humans, and other acts of similar cruelty. Morality and ethics are learned behaviors that are distilled from societal mores. If "thou shall not kill" or some equivalent in another religion didn't exist, for example, I'd argue killing would be natural in society, and nobody would question it. That is why certain tribal and indigenous peoples performed human sacrifices and had various rituals involving bloodsport. To those tribesmen, killing is not something abnormal within the tribe. Why would killing someone from another tribe matter to them?
- api 6y ago
  Is/ought... I agree that humans are entirely capable of it. Is it the best thing for us to do? My biggest problem with secular thought and especially the "pop atheist" variety is that it seems to often lead to is=ought. Regardless of the reality behind any form of theism, theistic thought never accepted that equality. It's always posited that there must be a "better than the way things are now." Some secularists dismiss that as wishful thinking and a coping mechanism, but if so why bother building or doing much of anything beyond the simple core of eat, shit, fight, and fuck?

Lio 6y ago

Biologically speaking you realise that we as a species haven’t evolved perceptibly in all recorded human history? If you were to somehow take a caveman’s baby, bring it back to the current time and raise it to full adulthood you would not be able to tell the difference it and “us”. Any progress we’ve made with regard to human rights is purely cultural and not innate ...and it can disappear in the blink of an eye. You can bet that any horrible thing you can imagine happening some vile cnut somewhere has done to some other poor sap.

rootsudo 6y ago

I don't understand why people think other countries should follow the Western idea of morality or what is atrocities. Sino China was involved in WW2, yet look at this.

wildfire 6y ago
Given that this is the United Nation definition of Genocide, why do you think this is Western in any way? Remember China had a hand in crafting this definition.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  The ROC took part in the UN. The PRC was barred until 1971.

m12k 6y ago

The sad truth is that the world would most likely not have done anything about the holocaust if Nazi Germany hadn't also invaded their neighboring countries. Killing people at home is just frowned upon, but killing people next door is where you get in trouble. The world is a quite a ways from actually being the civilized place that we like to pretend it is.

refurb 6y ago
What could the West have done beyond doing what they were already doing - fighting a war with Germany? Blown up rail lines leading to the camps? Would the Germans have said “oh, well let them go then.” No, they would have found other ways to murder them. It’s not that different than China. You want to stop the genocide? Well, prepare for a major war with millions of deaths on both sides.
- m12k 6y ago
  You seem to misunderstand my comment. My point was that the West only fought a war with Germany because they invaded Poland and other neighboring countries. Had the Nazis not done that, the West would most likely not have fought them, even if the concentration camps had come to light.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Ahhh...I misinterpreted your post. That’s a fair point.

refurb 6y ago

Until you change the fundamental nature of humans, these things will always be with us.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Yes, you are naive. We just love the idea of the perfectability of human nature, but the empirical evidence seems to be somewhat lacking.