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Christopher Cook's avatar

"how to mitigate our antisocial tendencies."

Regarding this and #3 (community), I believe we also have to be very cautious about our social tendencies. We are one of the most social species on the planet—"ultra-social," as Michael Tomasello calls us. That leads to our great strengths—cooperation and community—but it also has a dark side, especially when mixed with power.

We are driven to work as a group, to form social groups, and to find collective solutions to problems. We are biologically and emotionally driven towards this; even a misanthropic convict starts to go nuts in solitary confinement. But this drive can easily morph from voluntary community into forced collectivism and the effacement of the individual human person. Without a moral grounding in individualist ethics, human social nature drives some to behave (and act politically) as if the individual does not have a choice, and may be forced to participate in whatever the collective tells her to. "What do you mean, you do not want to be a part of that? You don't have a choice. WE HAVE TO FIND WAYS TO LIVE TOGETHER." And there it happens—a biological/emotional drive becomes a political impulse to turn the individual into nothing more than a cell of a larger collective body.

Antisocial tendencies are always a problem, but they are also easily spotted. The difference between chosen community and forced collectivism, on the other hand, is, to many, a lot more subtle…and thus, in my view, quite pernicious. The totalitarian monstrosities of the 20th century are an egregious, but certainly not the only, example.

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Max More's avatar

I'd like to see a new version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, but instead of an interplanetary organization controlled by robots, there's an interplanetary network of benevolent beings who seek to uplift the less developed. Instead of: "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration." "Your choice is simple, pursue your present course and continue fighting and impoverishing yourselves, or listen to out guidance and see our examples of how to live in peace, liberty, and improvement."

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