View of Human Nature

[DCSaints_fan]

Well if the Prisoner's Diiemma experiment is correct, then we should have evolved to be altruistic. Cooperation is a better survival straegy than betrayal. At least, most of the time.

The problem with looking at history is that you find alot of violence and cruelty. But that may have been because those were the exceptions, and worth recording. I'd venture that in any given day, the good things people do outweigh the evil. But most of what you see on the news is the evil, because thats what we find most interesting.

[joeknows]

Originally Posted by joeknows

more enlightened people realize that we live in a world community

You don't think some folks would consider that insulting or arrogant?

i personally dont care if others find that arrogant. i am not responsible for peoples perceptions. just as it is MY perception that people <at least americans anyway> are caught up in our own world and forget the repercussions of our actions, or they just straight up dont know.

Quote:

and there does seem to be a cosmic flow of karma. so they choose to be right with others. unfortunately they are FEW.

I wouldn't mind hearing some elaboration on why you believe that.

__________________

"...... and walking along with my friend we happened upon a scorpion that had fallen in to a puddle of water and surely would drown. my friend picked it up and the scorpion stung him and was dropped..... my friend went after him to pick him up again to the same result....... finally successful after the 3rd attemp and 3 stings i asked him 'why did you continue to help him after he stung you?' where he replied....."it is my nature to help others...... it is in his nature to sting..."

it mostly depends on what you think about karma..... i believe that helping others just for the sake of helping.... yes it makes me feel good but it is not my only motivation. it is my motivation to do what is right and fair by all. as a result i feel better and as a result of feeling better i affect others perception of me because of my more positive attitude and everything seems to just fall in line. i havent always lived that way and now that i do i can tell when i digress by the response from the world.

i have seen that those that give of themselves in charitable ways not only monetarily but physically and socially are the ones with the MOST CONSISTENT....."good luck"

those that live in regards to their own ego fulfillment are the ones with bad luck and a hard life.

when i say FEW people choose to be right with others i ask you this. how many saints do you know? surely they exist and are among us but how many do you know? you know.... saints.... those that put the needs of others in higher regard than the needs for their own satisfactions?

yup..... they are few.....

[joeknows]

Well if the Prisoner's Diiemma experiment is correct, then we should have evolved to be altruistic. Cooperation is a better survival straegy than betrayal. At least, most of the time.

The problem with looking at history is that you find alot of violence and cruelty. But that may have been because those were the exceptions, and worth recording. I'd venture that in any given day, the good things people do outweigh the evil. But most of what you see on the news is the evil, because thats what we find most interesting.

it isnt about survival...... life will find a way..... it is about gratification which doesnt alwys relate to what is good for others or society as a whole.

lies and deceptions to acheive your own satisfaction isnt always news worthy. mostly because THAT ALONE is the cause of humaln fallabillity. its just too much to report .... however the greatest evils should be exposed.

the christian god says that a sin is a sin and they are all measured equally. so small deeds are equally evil.

[Zguy28]

"...... and walking along with my friend we happened upon a scorpion that had fallen in to a puddle of water and surely would drown. my friend picked it up and the scorpion stung him and was dropped..... my friend went after him to pick him up again to the same result....... finally successful after the 3rd attemp and 3 stings i asked him 'why did you continue to help him after he stung you?' where he replied....."it is my nature to help others...... it is in his nature to sting..."

it mostly depends on what you think about karma..... i believe that helping others just for the sake of helping.... yes it makes me feel good but it is not my only motivation. it is my motivation to do what is right and fair by all. as a result i feel better and as a result of feeling better i affect others perception of me because of my more positive attitude and everything seems to just fall in line. i havent always lived that way and now that i do i can tell when i digress by the response from the world.

i have seen that those that give of themselves in charitable ways not only monetarily but physically and socially are the ones with the MOST CONSISTENT....."good luck"

those that live in regards to their own ego fulfillment are the ones with bad luck and a hard life.

when i say FEW people choose to be right with others i ask you this. how many saints do you know? surely they exist and are among us but how many do you know? you know.... saints.... those that put the needs of others in higher regard than the needs for their own satisfactions?

yup..... they are few.....

Thanks.

And I'm a Baptist, so I believe all Christians are saints.

[joeknows]

belief makes a saint not....................action my friend action......... tithe to the world through action

[TheKurp]

"A man's character is his fate." ~ Heraclitus

[outbaksean]

I still think people are good deep down

[Zguy28]

"A man's character is his fate." ~ Heraclitus

"Bad company corrupts good character." ~ Paul

This is going to turn into the thread of witty sayings.

[Zguy28]

"For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." ~ Jesus of Nazareth

[JohnLockesGhost]

I found this article relevant to the discussion. Does it really matter if Wal-mart was motivated by self-interest or altruism?

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=405747

In Wal-Mart we trust

Who did the most to help victims of Hurricane Katrina? According to a new study, it was the company everyone loves to hate

Shortly before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, the chief executive officer of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, gathered his subordinates and ordered a memorandum sent to every single regional and store manager in the imperiled area. His words were not especially exalted, but they ought to be mounted and framed on the wall of every chain retailer -- and remembered as American business's answer to the pre-battle oratory of George S. Patton or Henry V.

"A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level," was Scott's message to his people. "Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and above all, do the right thing."

This extraordinary delegation of authority -- essentially promising unlimited support for the decision-making of employees who were earning, in many cases, less than $100,000 a year -- saved countless lives in the ensuing chaos. The results are recounted in a new paper on the disaster written by Steven Horwitz, an Austrian-school economist at St. Lawrence University in New York. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency fumbled about, doing almost as much to prevent essential supplies from reaching Louisiana and Mississippi as it could to facilitate it, Wal-Mart managers performed feats of heroism. In Kenner, La., an employee crashed a forklift through a warehouse door to get water for a nursing home. A Marrero, La., store served as a barracks for cops whose homes had been submerged. In Waveland, Miss., an assistant manager who could not reach her superiors had a bulldozer driven through the store to retrieve disaster necessities for community use, and broke into a locked pharmacy closet to obtain medicine for the local hospital.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart trucks pre-loaded with emergency supplies at regional depots were among the first on the scene wherever refugees were being gathered by officialdom. Their main challenge, in many cases, was running a gauntlet of FEMA officials who didn't want to let them through. As the president of the brutalized Jefferson Parish put it in a Sept. 4 Meet the Press interview, speaking at the height of nationwide despair over FEMA's confused response: "If [the U.S.] government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis."

This benevolent improvisation contradicts everything we have been taught about Wal-Mart by labour unions and the "small-is-beautiful" left. We are told that the company thinks of its store management as a collection of cheap, brainwash-able replacement parts; that its homogenizing culture makes it incapable of serving local communities; that a sparrow cannot fall in Wal-Mart parking lot without orders from Arkansas; that the chain puts profits over people. The actual view of the company, verifiable from its disaster-response procedures, is that you can't make profits without people living in healthy communities. And it's not alone: As Horwitz points out, other big-box companies such as Home Depot and Lowe's set aside the short-term balance sheet when Katrina hit and acted to save homes and lives, handing out millions of dollars' worth of inventory for free.

No one who is familiar with economic thought since the Second World War will be surprised at this. Scholars such as F. A. von Hayek, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock have taught us that it is really nothing more than a terminological error to label governments "public" and corporations "private" when it is the latter that often have the strongest incentives to respond to social needs. A company that alienates a community will soon be forced to retreat from it, but the government is always there. Companies must, to survive, create economic value one way or another; government employees can increase their budgets and their personal power by destroying or wasting wealth, and most may do little else. Companies have price signals to guide their productive efforts; governments obfuscate those signals.

Aside from the public vs. private issue, Horwitz suggests, decentralized disaster relief is likely to be more timely and appropriate than the centralized kind, which explains why the U.S. Coast Guard performed so much better during the disaster than FEMA. The Coast Guard, like all marine forces, necessarily leaves a great deal of authority in the hands of individual commanders, and like Wal-Mart, it benefited during and after the hurricane from having plenty of personnel who were familiar with the Gulf Coast geography and economy.

There is no substitute for local knowledge -- an ancient lesson of which Katrina merely provided the latest reminder.

Darn those evil corporations.

[Beer is Food]

The poll should be comparing Thomas Hobbes not Hamilton. The social contract.

[JohnLockesGhost]

The poll should be comparing Thomas Hobbes not Hamilton. The social contract.

Hobbes and Rouseau perhaps?

Hobbes believed the natural state of man was a "state of war" and government was necessary to force/scare the people into cooperation.

Rouseau believed in the "noble savage," and that government is formed voluntarily, the social contract, by the people to enact systems of justice.

I certainly believe Rouseau's noble savage to be a myth. I believe that the primary role of government is to be the overpowering force, Hobbes' Leviathan, that keeps the people from waging war on each other.

[Beer is Food]

Hobbes and Rouseau perhaps?

Hobbes believed the natural state of man was a "state of war" and government was necessary to force/scare the people into cooperation.

Rouseau believed in the "noble savage," and that government is formed voluntarily, the social contract, by the people to enact systems of justice.

I certainly believe Rouseau's noble savage to be a myth. I believe that the primary role of government is to be the overpowering force, Hobbes' Leviathan, that keeps the people from waging war on each other.

Perhaps Rosseau. Hobbes' state of war principle is based on the fact that man is motivated by self interest. The role of the Gov't to limit our rights in order protect our mutual self interest- forming the social contract. For example, we agree to give up the right to steal or murder, in order to ensure that we won't be killed or murdered ourselves. We give up these rights- not neccessarily through fear or force, but as a way to further our mutual self interest. Thus, all laws limit our natural rights.