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> But how far does that scale? Can we truly care about everybody in a village of 100? What about a territory with 1000 people? What about a small country of 100

by z9znz 4y ago

> But how far does that scale? Can we truly care about everybody in a village of 100? What about a territory with 1000 people? What about a small country of 100,000? What about a nation with 1,000,000 people or 1,000,000,000 people? We now have the benefit of awareness. We can know what is happening to far away people. If anything, the current obvious changes in climate/weather and the associated impacts are evidence that we should have some motivation to care about things that impact those beyond just our own group (even though selfishly speaking it is because we know it ultimately will benefit our local group too). When there is a major disaster, you will see people with very differing opinions drop their "simple" conflicts and work together. There is some recognizable human drive to help those visibly in need. Or maybe it's just an instintive behavior to ensure human survival. Really, most of our political and ideological squabbles are manufactured by "leaders", and adopted by followers because we all have too much time on our hands. If we were collectively operating in survival mode, I think we might be a more cohesive society. Not that I'm asking for that; I like comfort.

JohnBooty 4y ago
Right, but how many far-away people can you care about? There's the distance factor and then there's the quantity factor. When there is a major disaster, you will see people with very differing opinions drop their "simple" conflicts and work together. This is true, and one of the best parts of human nature. But does it scale to tricky, nuanced, thorny questions? A natural disaster is an entirely unambiguous event. We all think, "Earthquake bad. People trapped under rubble bad." and want to help them directly or indirectly. Some of us help more vigorously than others and some do nothing, but we all agree that the earthquake is bad and we would like the poor victims to suffer less. It's harder to scale this cohesion up to tackle issues that are actually thorny and nuanced. Look at how fractured many countries were regarding COVID-19 and the vaccines, for example. Or the eternal Israel/Palestine conflict. Or whatever.

by z9znz 4y ago

JohnBooty 4y ago

Right, but how many far-away people can you care about? There's the distance factor and then there's the quantity factor. When there is a major disaster, you will see people with very differing opinions drop their "simple" conflicts and work together. This is true, and one of the best parts of human nature. But does it scale to tricky, nuanced, thorny questions? A natural disaster is an entirely unambiguous event. We all think, "Earthquake bad. People trapped under rubble bad." and want to help them directly or indirectly. Some of us help more vigorously than others and some do nothing, but we all agree that the earthquake is bad and we would like the poor victims to suffer less. It's harder to scale this cohesion up to tackle issues that are actually thorny and nuanced. Look at how fractured many countries were regarding COVID-19 and the vaccines, for example. Or the eternal Israel/Palestine conflict. Or whatever.