The end of faith.

Faith seems like a bad scapegoat for humanity's stupidity. The decline of faith in the 20th century has been accompanied by two of the biggest, bloodiest wars in history. I'm not saying that there is a causal relationship from the former to the latter. It's just that if faith and religions were such major causes of carnage as some folks would have us believe, we should expect to see a decline of violence following a major decline in religion and faith. That has not been the case. People don't need extra help from religion or any other abstract aid in order to justify screwing each other over.

I don't see much value in putting faith in ourselves, either. I see billions of people out there who are brutalizing each other, and yet no one thinks that they themselves are part of the problem. I doubt anyone claims that they are part of problem. Similarly, no one thinks that they are a roadblock to the solution to our world's problems. And yet, there is a whole lot of evil stuff going on in the world. Obviously, a lot of people must have misjudged themselves. No one ever really stops and asks if he himself is part of the problem.

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Ayos:
To further illustrate my point, I'll use a personal experience. My trust was betrayed in one of the worst ways by someone I thought would never betray it. Because of that, I've lost faith not only in people, but also in God AND in myself.

I'm sorry to hear that. Let me give some of my own personal experience, though. I was hurt in a very attrocious way back when I was in the eighth grade, and I did something very similar to what you describe: I shut myself off from others. If I don't go far outside of myself, I don't get hurt as much. But you know what I discovered? Loving someone else requires you to open yourself up to getting hurt. The more you love someone, the harder it hurts if they reject you. And yet, I think human experience agrees with me when I say that love is worth it. Love assures us that we are not alone in the world, and it makes life worth living. I know that doesn't get rid of the pain. I don't think deep wounds completely heal in our lifetimes. But don't let that stop you from learning to love. Learning to forgive, especially in the most attrocious cases, is helpful, too. Very difficult, but worth it.

I'd argue that having faith in ourselves is not the solution. No matter how we define 'having faith in oneself', I guarantee that we can find at least one premium example of such a person that fit the definition that was also a monster. Having faith in oneself seems to relate too closely with self-love. There is no shortage of self-love in the universe, and most if not all of the world's problems can be traced back to one person/people seeking only after their own narrow self interests.

IMHO, it seems the only solution there is to this mess we're in is to stop pursuing our own self-interests and start seeking after the common good. It's only when we ditch our own self-love and care enough about all people that people will stop trying to screw each other over. Not that I think humanity as a whole is capable of such a thing on its own, but I don't think it is impossible for some people to overcome their narrow self-interests. Think Mother Theresa.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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Bradylama:
"Self-interests" are ultimately subjective, and there's no such thing as a "common good." Anybody's vision of a common good is going to end up disadvantaging one group in favor of another, and as hard as ideologues have tried to create unstratified societies, they've never pulled it off.

Who said anything about unstratified societies? 'Common good' does not refer to a state of being where everyone is treated "equally," whatever that may mean. 'Common good' refers to a state of affairs where the group of people is more important than the individuals that compose it. The mentality that I am describing is not theoretical. It was a mentality that existed until the Enlightenment, when the individual gained unrivaled precedence over society.

At any rate, you are reading much more into my words than I said. I said nothing about stratified or unstratified societies, or anything along those lines. All I said is that narrow self-interests create more problems than it solves. I don't have to think long before I can come up with an example of needless death and destruction just because President Joe wanted better materials to make his yacht.

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I'd also say that nobody has the right to dictate what is the "common good," because perceptions of the common good will vary according to culture.

The lack of agreement about what the common good is does not demonstrate that there is no such thing as the common good. Nor does it prove that there can never be such agreement. Is the term problematic? Sure it is. Most, if not all, philosophical questions are. The modern idea of 'freedom' is equally as problematic.

Besides, based on the second to last discussion I had with you, you don't seem to think that ethical principles are rationally discernable anyway, so what is the point of debating this with you? According to that philosophy, all we are doing is emoting, anyway.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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I'm well aware of that, yet the period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment was also marked by brutal European imperialism, and the concept of the "common good" was for the sake of common white men.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I think it wouldn't be unrealistic to find more cases where somebody tried to make the world better, and ended up making it worse than you would with "narrow self-interests."

Sure. And thus European imperialists' actions can be judged to have been too limited in scope in whose good was being served. Notice that the principle I am putting forward of stepping out of oneself and looking after the goods of all over one's own person interests is not being contradicted by the example you are giving. All the imperialists were doing was looking after their own interests. I don't see how that is a valid counterexample.

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I think ethical principles are subjective and not universal, and while you can create a body which determines what is and isn't ethical, there will always be someone who disagrees.

And I'd argue that we don't establish moral principles. They exist whether we like them or not.

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The only people capable of determining as a group what qualifies as the common good, are nationals. Aside from the basics of law, being that murder, theft, and in some cases assault are bad, everything else is flavor determined by the dominant forces in society, irregardless of whether or not those forces represent a majority.

You're right. Theft and murder are instances of actions that are universally taboo. Few would deny the principle, even if they disagreed on the application.

Again, ethical principles are not determined by people, whether they be nationals or otherwise. Any person is capable of discovering something that already exists.

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In order to "end injustice" and to establish a universal "common good," you would have to create a global authority and culture, and considering basic factors such as religion, ethnicity, locality, history, and other aspects of culture it simply ain't gonna happen, either in this or other lifetimes.

You are missing my point entirely. This isn't some utopian program. I've said it once, and now I'm going to repeat myself. My point is a lot tamer than the one you are trying to pin on me. Let's perform a thought experiment, not an actual plan of action or a now or future state of affairs, but a world of make believe. Now image that the prevelance of narrow-self interest was reduced to a level where people took only what they needed to survive, and they had so much respect for human life that they would volutarily give what they did not need to those who had not. Why? Because they valued themselves more than they valued themselves What incentive would there be for things such as world wars, etc?

Again, this is not reality, nor do I think that such a reality can ever exist. The point of the thought experiment, and the point that I've been making all along, is that if there were no libido/ will to power for more than what was needed to satisfy, most of the incentive for the most terrible crimes of our century would not exist. Hence, I think I've discovered a cause of a lot of the evil in the world. It's not as if I'm coming up with a new idea. I think most political philosophers and ordinary men of common sense have agreed. Where they disagree is in how essential the promotion of our own self-interests is to our own natures.

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In order for there to be a universally established common good, humanity as a whole does have to accept it on its own. Humanity itself must change its nature, and as I believe you've implied it, if we have to rely on some type of authority to steer humanity in that direction, ultimately the only case of that ever happening, in my opinion, is if we're engaged in inter-special war with aliens, or by altering our very biology. Neither of which is a good option in my opinion.

I don't think humans will be able to change their natures. I'm actually quite politically conservative, if you care to know. There's a difference between isolating the causes of our species' woes in addition to what would hypothetically be needed to eliminate those causes, and claiming that such a state of affairs is actually possible. No where do I say that such a state of affairs is possible. My proposition is hypothetical: If we want to eliminate the biggest source of our world's problems, then people need to stop looking after their own narrow self-interests.

Not that I deny that people can put aside their own narrow self-interests on an individual basis. Mother Theresa is an obvious example of virtue, even if virtue to that degree is rare. But even if the state of affairs will never exist on a global level, that shouldn't stop me as an individual from practicing self-denial. If people hate you, and despise you, and utter every slander against you, love them anyway. It's not a matter of good intentions; I can have good intentions while committing murder. It's about establishing the rightness of actions along with the right intentions, aimed at the good of all rather than of the ego.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.