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The idea of an otherised society where some home sapiens are less human than others has deep roots and countless manifestations (war, slavery, gender biases, ot

The idea of an otherised society where some home sapiens are less human than others has deep roots and countless manifestations (war, slavery, gender biases, other forms of exploitation). It is also the primary manifestation of evil. Yet is clearly an unstable (high maintenance) collective mental state. It is predicated on active oppression. The stable ground state is fundamentally egalitarian. Almost by definition. Progress and civilization are not relative concepts. They are counted objectively by the number of brains that can reach full emotional, perceptive, creative etc maturity.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
> Yet is clearly an unstable (high maintenance) collective mental state. It is predicated on active opression. The stable ground state is fundamentally egalitarian. Almost by definition I would not be able to come to this conclusion based on my experiences. Humans are very tribal animals, and it takes a lot of work to work towards egalitarianism. You can even see it in children, where they form “cliques”, and engage in bullying, even amongst siblings. Not that it is inevitable that humans will “otherise” other humans to the level that they are OK with keeping them as slaves, but there is a large spectrum of ordering in probably all of our minds, as opposed to viewing everyone as the same.
- college_physics 4y ago
  there is a lot of clanish behavior that is somehow innate and can be exploited. there is also an enormous cultural ability to rationalize and justify the "naturalness" of a multi-class society. further, people are born with a spectrum of abilities and character traits that facilitates segmentation. without oversimplifying though the complex interplay of these and other factors (e.g. the degree to which technology can diminish the need for subjugated human labor) the point is that no human likes to be considered a subhuman. Hence the construct is predicated on social machinations and its persistence, at least at scale, is always precarious.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

> Yet is clearly an unstable (high maintenance) collective mental state. It is predicated on active opression. The stable ground state is fundamentally egalitarian. Almost by definition I would not be able to come to this conclusion based on my experiences. Humans are very tribal animals, and it takes a lot of work to work towards egalitarianism. You can even see it in children, where they form “cliques”, and engage in bullying, even amongst siblings. Not that it is inevitable that humans will “otherise” other humans to the level that they are OK with keeping them as slaves, but there is a large spectrum of ordering in probably all of our minds, as opposed to viewing everyone as the same.

college_physics 4y ago
there is a lot of clanish behavior that is somehow innate and can be exploited. there is also an enormous cultural ability to rationalize and justify the "naturalness" of a multi-class society. further, people are born with a spectrum of abilities and character traits that facilitates segmentation. without oversimplifying though the complex interplay of these and other factors (e.g. the degree to which technology can diminish the need for subjugated human labor) the point is that no human likes to be considered a subhuman. Hence the construct is predicated on social machinations and its persistence, at least at scale, is always precarious.