RE: Striving for Eudaimonia

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Aug 27 2001 - 23:13:25 MDT


Anders writes

> at present there are no good visions of human nature that both fit
> the humanistic vision of humans and the scientific advances of the
> last 200 years.

Okay, then criticize this: human nature is a mixture of good and evil
(of course the behavior came first and the descriptions later) where
in historical times the costs of being good (e.g. altruistic, friendly,
generous, peaceful) often outweighed the benefits. As technology and
especially mass production increased, those "luxuries" could be indulged
in more frequently. Peace also happened to become more profitable than
war, so that by the 20th century the destructiveness of warfare left
winning societies poorer as well as (of course) losing societies.

Lee



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