@manored,
manored;93950 wrote:
1. Everone needs a purpose, one may chose that (Making society as good as possible) as his purpose.
2. Depends of whenever you are interested in leaving a "mark" in the world after you die or not, I suppose.
3. All societies require sacrifices, then someone escapes death thanks to expensive treatment given by the government, all of the country made a small sacrifice. Sacrifices improve society in overall, and the idea behind then is: You benefit from the sacrifice of others, in exchange of being willing to do sacrifices yourself. In this example, if pay a small amount per month but, in exchange, if you do need treatment during your life you will get it. Perhaps you could not pay by yourself and would die.
Every action requires a sacrifice. It's not a characteristic of societies or interpersonal decisions. Everything is more or less a cost-benefit matter. When you are thirsty it is worth for you to spend the energy that going for a glass of water takes. Else it isn't.
I just think that, to a non believer at least, no benefit can result from dying. I guess that if you know that you'll be horribly suffering for the rest of your life you can figure out that suicide is the best option you have. But sacrifice? I don't think so. Having left a
mark means nothing if you are dead.
I guess that what gives a really big inertia to society is selfishness.
Naturally, if you estimate that being selfish means going around attacking other people, then it's quite difficult to think it possible to move on from where we are, at least in the right direction, without thinking as well that we can sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others without some serious miscalculation. But I'm not that sure that stabbing people in the back is only a sign of selfishness. It's also the result of our current set of strategies. And that set of strategies is not proven to be optimal.
Consider only the huge amount of energy we spend continuously in competition and self defense and even in attacks. Much more that the amount we dedicate to really achieve things. There is a chance that really everybody would have something to gain if there was a way of controlling the strategies we learn and use.
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Off topic...
manored;93950 wrote:Hum, I dont get how that would be different from teaching children how to lie but that lying is bad. The only other way I can see is not teaching about lies, but that doesnt seens to be what you are talking about here.
I think we do tell children what lies are and, most times, that they are bad. But, even if we don't encourage them to lie, we don't succeed in avoiding that they obtain benefits of their own lies. It seems to be close to impossible to annulate all the possible positive effects of a lie every time a child tells one.
Nevertheless, a very young child is easily caught when it tells a lie. It would mean constant attention from everybody around to ascertain that the consequences are not good for the child (from the child's point of view), but maybe it can be done. Because if it never achieves anything by telling lies, then it will not practice much, and will never be any good at it.
The real problem is that it is not only lies, but also aggressive behavior, and laziness, and... probably lots of undesirable strategies we haven't noticed to be wrong so far.
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