I think your perspective is far too narrow. It’s not science that must save us, science can’t do much in the face of willful ignorance and entitlement.
Just look at global warming, the science has been there since the 70s yet we’re still walking past line after line till we reach points of no return. It’s not about the science it’s about the human element.
Humans themselves are the problem, too divided and focused on wealth and power instead of unity and progress. No fucking shit we haven’t gotten anywhere in the last grand, we’ve been too busy killing/robbing/exploiting each other, and that WILL NEVER STOP.
Tack onto this the fact that we have these insane billionaires and oligarchs across the planet who actively purchase big media and control narratives, working to keep the people divided and distracted. It’s not an accident.
With all that said, there is hope especially when it comes to science and my example with global warming, but will we see it reach fruition or will we see it falter in favor of quarterly profits?
You are not going far enough back. We are genetically the same as humans for ~75,000 years ago. To all intents and purposes we are ice age hunters with smart phones.
will science save us?
Honestly, no. We have known about climate change and the dangers it poses for at least 50 years but we have done basically nothing.
Science is just informing us how screwed modern civilisation is over the next 100 years.
I was thinking less genetic and more cultural. That by good education, communication, government, diet, art… we might grow beyond our monkey nature.
But maybe the 99% will always be a monkey.
We are animals with built in characteristics. Unless science re engineers humans, then we will never change.
You think things changed until 1000 years ago?
There’s not enough generations of humans to evolve significantly under 1000 years. Especially since we have been living under relatively no evolutionary pressure to change dogma and violence
Quite a bit of human development has been in the category of nurture, as opposed to nature. While humans have changed little biologically, I have an “appendage” in my hand that can communicate with an individual in space. Memes replicate and evolve much more quickly than genes do.
Yes but the change is not permanent. It dies with you.
All you would need is for the change not to be passed on to the next generation and all that progress is lost.
We currently spend decades passing on that knowledge to each child.
If that ever stops, the progress disappears in one generation.
Accumulated knowledge in our society really is frail. Take a computer mouse, tons of people are involved in making them, they’re considered extremely simple tools. Yet not one person on the planet could go out into nature, get the natural resources required, and without help turn those resources into a working computer mouse.
While it is true that we have collectively made significant progress with technology, (if that’s what you mean by “nurture”) it hasn’t changed our aggressive behaviour as a species which is what OP was questioning. Sure, we have made significant changes culturally, technologically, and with memes- so what?
I suggest memes as in the Richard Dawkins original definition, not funny haha memes but shared reproducible culture. We are social creatures, more than any other, and our social development has happened far more quickly than typical evolution ever could.
I think you should take a look at the numbers and perhaps complexity your premise.
Well, individuals only get 80 years. So you get what we have here.
Not true. For example, people with epilepsy use to be considered demon possessed, and were sometimes executed. This happened for at least thousands of years. There’s a ridiculously long list of examples of how we have come far.
Scientists are egotistical too… obsessed with self-promotion and citations.
