Philosophy thread

[Mr. Hero]

Originally Posted by irishbucsfan

Why? I find blanket statements like that to be repulsive.

I think the individual is the greatest strength of mankind and believe that unimpeded genius is what has driven us out of caves and formed our dominion of this planet. To me the group is only as strong as the members of that group and how well they perform their role so I have quality over quantity-ish feelings toward human beings, I'll also be the first to admit I'm a very low quality human being. I tend to avoid excessive generalizations, but in the case of the individual I break from that pattern. To put it bluntly individual genius is my god. Now I completely understand that most of our great accomplishments where the results of groups working together to accomplish a common end, but what is the most important part of that to me is that those groups are a collection of individuals who for their own varying reasons chose to come together and bring to life the visions of a select few.

Originally Posted by iowatreat54

Yes, I don't necessarily agree that the group is greater than the individual, but just that in some cases the good of the group is greater than the good of the individual. In my experience, the great majority of people make decisions that will usually result in short term benefit to themselves while sacrificing a long term benefit for society.

I find that very often much long term harm is the result of large groups trying to act for the benefit of others. The idea that the path to hell is paved with good intentions rings true in a different way than it's normally interpreted to me. So while I certainly see that same self-destructive short sightedness that many people seem to be afflicted by, I see far greater and more powerful evil being created as the result of a large groups attempts to help a situation that they simply do not understand. I don't intend for this to get political and so if a mod finds it to be such please removing the following, but I just can't help to think of our war on poverty and how damaging that has been to the atmosphere of progress that the american dream initially entailed. I understand that people don't mean to cause harm but so often people's good intentions mess with the natural balances and incentives of a situation to degrees they never could have predicted or intended and so often a situation just stagnates or worsens because we as a group intervene when had we left the situation alone and perhaps only had individuals work for the result we desire in their own ways I feel we would've progrosed far quicker and the situation that had us so worried would have been resolved more effectively and promptly.

Sorry for the rant guys but yesterday kicked my ass, so I'm still not running at maximum efficiency.