That came from one of the twentieth century’s most cold-blood mass murderers, Josef Stalin. It haunts us so, because it tells us something true about ourselves that we wish wasn’t. Our capacity for compassion is not limitless. We really don’t care about the anonymous masses of humanity; we don’t even know them. That’s exactly what Dunbar’s Number gets to. There is a neurological capacity to our appreciation of human life; beyond that, we no longer deal with human beings, but abstractions. We don’t care about a billion individuals, we care about the idea of billions dying.

It doesn’t get much touchier than this, and there’s certainly enough hyperbole to go around. Perhaps it is our calling to transcend the neurological limitations of our brains, but I think I tend to agree more with Ben here. “Selfishness”–that is, tribalism–once worked quite well to keep us all safe and well-cared for. It kept us from wandering off to die alone in the wilderness. Each group looked after its own. Those things won’t suffice in a large-scale, complex society. Different groups are put together, communities disintegrate, and what was once adaptive tribalism becomes maladaptive, and gives rise to racism and worse. The very same impulse that guided us and protected us through a million years of evolution, in a different context, gives us ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust.

“I’m one of those people that say, ‘Well, come on already, Collapse Already!!!’”? I cringed when I read that, and frankly, I’m surprised it took this long to explode. You’re right, Miranda, I know you in person, and that’s precisely why I’m not exactly defending you on this. You’ve expressed such sentiments before, and though I kept it to myself, I was horrified each time. I was no less horrified this time. Yes, collapse is inevitable now; and yes, it shouldn’t necessarily be thought of as entirely negative. It is the only road forward left to us, and its ultimate result is a far better world than what we have now. But we must never lose sight, even for a moment, of what that road is, the suffering it entails, the blood, the misery. Not for one second should we lose sight of that. Yes, generations to come will look back and remember collapse as a “good thing,” in the long run–but if we, who must endure it, ever slip into actual anticipation of it, we’ve forfeited all claim to morality and become monsters.

That might be the only thing I’d respond to strongly here, Al, had you not deemed Ben sub-human. Ben accepts the limitations of human cognition. We are not gods capable of infinite compassion, however much we may aspire to that. I’m not even entirely convinced it is a good goal. Chinese junks may have skirted the coasts of the New World, but they were primarily moored in the harbors of the Middle Kingdom, sitting in smug content willing to let the outer barbarians wallow in their savagery. It was Christian compassion that motivated missionaries to spread the gospel of Christ throughout the globe, and with it, disease, slavery and the disintegration of indigenous cultures that had preserved those people throughout the millennia. Human compassion does not have a very sterling record of positive results, particularly when our compassion extends to people we do not know or understand. Perhaps it is better to remain confined only to our own, small group. It is a strange twist that while tribalism preserves peace and minimizes violence, compassion creates wars and maximizes death.

Ultimately, though, it is a simple, proven fact of human neurology that we cannot have compassion for everyone. Ben is harshly honest with himself and has come to grips with that–perhaps a bit too coldly, but if nothing else, honestly. You may aspire to be more than human, but whether or not that is possible, or even a good idea, that Ben does not share your aspirations to godhood does not make him something less than human. Your ethics do not define humanity.

We’re talking about events that will mean the painful and miserable end of billions of human lives. We try to hold that in our brains, and find that fleshy matter is insufficient to contain it. We try to imagine the tragedy of a single death, and multiply it a billion times, but we cannot hold so much pain. Instead, we latch on only to the abstract notion of “humanity.” But to have compassion for “humanity” is not to have compassion for anything real–it’s to have compassion for an idea. It is, ultimately, meaningless and hollow. We cannot have real, meaningful compassion for people we do not know.

But there is a difference between relinquishing one’s hubristic claims of godhood and omnibenevolence, and being so callous and self-centered as to actively wish harm upon those abstract billions simply because it benefits you and yours. Defending one’s own against outside attack is laudable, but there is no attack here. Miranda’s statement was incalculably callous, even monstrous, but I doubt she had any of that in mind when she wrote it. In some ways, that makes it even worse, because then it is simply that she did not even think of the billions who would suffer and die.

We all need to come to terms with the future looming before us in our own way. The wounds are many, and deep–ecological, physical, psychological and spiritual. It will likely take generations. But the kind of judgment, intolerance and bigotry in this thread, exhibited by pretty much every single person here, does nothing to help that. In fact, it simply inflicts several more wounds to heal. This entire episode is shameful.

Obviously, a lot of people are very heated at the moment. That’s why I’m closing this thread to comments for the time being, to give everyone a chance to walk away, think of what’s happened, and hopefully return to this with cooler heads, and a consideration of how we can help to heal one another, rather than wound one another.

See you on the flipside, I’m done with you and your pretense of being a member of the human race.

I hope the rest of the merry band here has more of a sense of humanity than you do.

You amuse me. I think you’ll taste good with carrots. But you make poor and repetious conversation. Would you like to converse about the topic or simply insult me for the purpose of feeling superior?

Why are you still argueing from your ethical perspective? I don’t understand or share your ethics. Can you explain them to me?

What holds us back is physical reality. Quite frankly I trust physical limitations over something as flimsy as “morality.” Your honored civilizations have ethics that say “be nice.” And no physical limitation against it. Interestingly enough civilization is responsible for the most anti-social of behaviors: genocide.

Yes, I’ll take my ethics that have not caused the extinction or destruction of a single speices or culture over your’s that’s so big on words and small on deeds.

I never said that selfishness is virtuous.

I’ve got a gun and I grew up using firearms. I won’t like it but I will protect my family from would-be predators. My ethics do allow for that. Aggression against other people has a penalty, especially if the world becomes more dangerous. That isn’t the same as thinking it is every man (and genetic relations) for himself and everyone else is meat.

It’s depressing that people like you believe themselves to be virtuous but I did supppose that people like you existed. I just expected them to be ignorant, not willful, in it.

Oh no, I’ve been watching civilization very closely. Apparently you haven’t been, and seem to be ignoring the majority of human history anyway. I fail to see your point. Unless you are claiming to be ethnocentric?

You really just don’t want to get it. When you’re ready to understand come talk to me and I’ll try and explain. Until then this is a waste of my time. You won’t convince me that your civilized ethics are sensible, I’ve spent too much time studying them. And you aren’t ready to hear about something new.

I’ll be sleeping the sound sleep of the peaceful.

:lol:, you called me “morally bankrupt,” that’s rich.