this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Degrowth

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To save the environment, we must end the profit system (climateandcapitalism.com)
submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The "selfish human nature" meme was basically invented as a post-hoc justification for the dysfunctional social systems that lead to people behaving that way, it doesn't actually hold up to scrutiny. Thomas Hobbes for instance was taking the cultural memory of the horrors of war and giving people an easy to swallow explanation, he wasn't an anthropologist.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The "selfish human nature" meme was basically invented as a post-hoc justification for the dysfunctional social systems

No, it's a biological reality rooted all the way in theory of evolution. It's an inherent part of nature of any living being

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Taking survival of the fittest and using it as evidence of vaguely analogous principles for how human society works has a long history of being wrong. That the way we behave is biased towards survival and reproduction in our native habitat does not imply that the concept of self interest must be at the foundation of how our minds function.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

You're trying to throw away milions of years of evolution that shaped us, because why exactly? Evolution is a well established scientific theory, what's your counterargument?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You may want to take a look at the book "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It provides a compelling argument that past human societies were quite egalitarian, cooperative and non-authoritarian, and that the human civilizations of recorded history being the way they are is actually an aberration from the norm.

Quick video summary of the book by one of the author's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJi0sHrEI4

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

You should look into "Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. Cooperative strategies are perfectly viable for selfish reasons - don't mistake cooperative efforts with altruism