If you were to create a partisan group, what would you fight for?


  • The evolvement of greater understanding of humans in this day and age is thanks to decades of research within human psychology. With that in mind, how would you go about seeking justice to end tyranny, by righting the wrongs in society today in the name of psychology? What radical changes do you think need to be changed?


  • @partizan This turned out to be a longer response than intended:

    The most immediate threat seems to be wealth, so I would suggest pooling our resources into technology to develop robots to take over all menial life-sustaining labor like food production (agriculture and food distribution), water/wastewater treatment, housing construction, and government oversight (balancing cost). This would be a form of communism except robots would bear the brunt of the costs, not humans. The bare essentials would be provided to all members of society, systematically eliminating homelessness and survival costs; people would then be allowed to focus on art, further scientific research (fueled by curiosity, not necessity), or perhaps nothing at all.

    This sounds like a great idea on paper, but in reality, humans are really ambitious, greedy creatures. Even if we provide all the bare essentials for survival, human beings will find something to fight over (income inequality, gender, race, etc.). It's not feasible to provide income equality to everyone because there's no way to determine the value of a job (i.e. should a football player be getting millions of dollars/year for something that doesn't directly benefit society vs. a school teacher); and who's to say that even if we decide on a way to compare the value of each profession, that people won't argue about it, protest, and cause a disruption. You can't eliminate prejudices and biases because this is a part of who we are, a part of the human condition. One could argue that we could become slaves to technology, i.e. develop artificial intelligence that will manage everything, decide people's jobs based on their genes or upbringing (basically their fate); this would lead to world peace, but not necessarily satisfy people either. Another way could be to create a world for every single individual by putting them to sleep in a pod and letting them imagine/dream whatever they want, but at that point you've isolated humanity from the real world.

    The real question is, what would you like to preserve? Humanity? Free will? Survival? Even when people think about heaven, it's a very vague sense of utopia usually from the perspective of one individual. But I guess my answer is a bit too idealistic for the shitshow that is the world today. Maybe all I need to say is we should start with religion, then race, and then gender. What do you think?


  • @i-am-male I totally agree. You have good points and good solutions.
    On the "crime and punishment" side of humanity, vs. psychology, punishment of any kind is a notion that must be erased. Instead it must be replaced with solutions such as "sentenced to rehabilitation" or "mental realignment" etc.
    This is because research within psychology has proven that humans do, act and say due to causes that led them to do things that cause discomfort to other humans, no matter what it may be. Psychology put it into a term called "cycle of abuse" Abuse is done in any way that inflicts discomfort/harm to other humans, whether its through, lying, cheating, stealing, war, violence, sexual abuse, murder etc.
    Humans are not evil. Humans are conditioned, affected to do, say and think by external forces, i.e other humans. Essentially it means that humans are all equally innocent, and all equally guilty for all the wrongs that people do. How humans treat other humans is what causes them how they treat others. This is done in different ways, psychologically and physically. Its not about reason anymore. Psychology has proven that it is about causes. Causes that effect them psychologically, consciously or unconsciously to do harmful things to others.
    It would be interesting to, for example, welcome an alien to Earth and explain about how we do things here, such as, "Hi, yeah so, uh we punish humans, imprison and execute them amongst other things when they do bad things. Welcome to Earth!"
    I wouldn't be surprised if the alien would think, "What! You creatures are insane. Of all the evolving you have done so far within science, technology and making things easier for yourselves, you haven't evolved away from the whole punishment notion yet? So, when humans mistreat other humans, those humans in return hurt others, and then you punish them for being mistreated? How long have you been doing this. Do you not have any better solutions?"
    "Well, I don't know, I guess we've done this since we came to being"
    Punishment is an archaic mind-set. Punishment is a nicer word for revenge. People only think of the whole punishment thing because they have been taught about it since birth. Take away the punishment notion, and put in rehabilitation, then the future humans will see it as a normal solution. "Ok, this person did harmful things, we will send them to rehab" People at that time will just think, "Yes, that is how we do things here"
    Once humans come to this understanding, the alien may very well consider visiting us again, thinking "wow, they actually took a giant leap in their evolving!"
    This new level of evolving can be done. Humans have the ability to change their ways of thinking. It is not hard to change how they perceive things. Look at the many norms we have today in society, even things that have been de-stigmatized which in the past was considered heresy, blasphemy, or downright evil and wrong and punishable by torture, imprisonment and death.
    Humans can be conditioned to believe anything -ANYTHING! This is done, amongst other ways, through desensitization. Also through re-education, and through media that bomb the old ways of thinking out of peoples minds and into a different way of thinking about what is right and wrong. The powers that be are aware of this strategy, the question is, why they haven't done it yet in this topic.


  • @partizan Punishment is a good deterrent for crime, not a good means of correction after a crime has already occurred.

    I can agree that humans aren't "evil", though even if you "fix" the way humans interact with one another, there's no way to control other aspects of the external environment (i.e. natural disasters, random events like winning a lottery), so there will always be some inequality, and even if you teach people not to compare themselves to other people (or teach them to blame nature for all their problems), ultimately there will come a time when people want compensation for inequity/loss to the extent that they will start robbing it from the "more" fortunate; this is just human nature and a survival extinct from natural selection/evolution, it's programmed into our genes; you can fight it, but you can't destroy it.

    I'm pretty sure that an alien capable of space travel wouldn't want to visit Earth if they discovered it, we're probably extremely primitive in their minds. Would you want to visit a colony of bacteria, the really boring kind? Consider a society that is capable of such technological advancement and has not blown themselves up (i.e. if they had nuclear weapons but at a scale that could blow up the solar system, they must have a philosophical belief or "computer" system in place to prevent them from going to war, because if they ever fought, they'd destroy their entire species/civilization with just one missile). The point I want to make here is for a species that advanced, they would have nothing to gain by visiting Earth and are better off avoiding an unnecessary risk (consider if we ever learn of or steal their technology but are incapable of controlling ourselves, we might destroy the universe). I'm pretty sure aliens that advanced have one of the "solutions" I previous mentioned; either a computer controls their every thought so they have no free will but also no risk of destruction, or they're all sleeping in pods somewhere tucked away.

    This new level of evolving can be done, but really it all comes down to chance in my mind. The powers that be are the richest people in the world, and in today's society, you can't really climb the top without having done some corrupt things - you have to take advantage of people to beat others (capitalism). So, in that sense, because people are greedy, and the only way to maintain wealth is to create institutions which put different groups against each other (black vs white, gay vs straight, women vs men), and because people are too foolish to see the bigger picture, this creates a positive feedback/endless vicious cycle/"revenge" where the masses keep holding one another down, and those at the top profit - without an incentive to truly better the lives at a scale that puts their own wealth at risk.

    To summarize, people are inherently greedy and those with power want to stay in power; the world is unfair, so even if you do manage to create a society with social equality, there's no way to guarantee that people have the same amount of "luck" (or will stop blaming each other for differences in "power" - usually expressed in material wealth like money, # of houses, etc). The forms of punishment that exist are in place to maintain the vicious cycle. Aliens probably won't visit us unless to destroy us (they have very little to gain). True peace from an idealized standpoint probably won't be achievable without the cost of our humanity, because you can't prevent the risk of greed (someone may realize that they can get more out of the system than someone else, and at the cost of someone else; or vice versa, someone might be more powerful than someone else, and another person will want to rob that power).


  • @i-am-male Yes, certainly. I very much concur with all of your points.
    Its rather extraordinary how many "developed" nations require that people who want to work for government, such as within branches of law enforcement and security, have to undergo rigorous psychological evaluations before being allowed to work in positions such as Police officers, and why there isn't the same "screening" process when employing politicians, especially before they are allowed to become candidates before taking the position as a prime minister or president of a nation?
    The same goes for people with power that may work as executives within other areas of government.
    Within the community of psychology, it is known, and proven, that at least one out of 100 people are psychopaths (those that lack empathy) (A quick definition: empathy is a feeling, not a thought. Psychopaths can show sympathy but cannot feel empathy. They can learn how to behave empathetically, but are not able to feel it) Many psychopaths are found in places of power. Psychopaths have a general thirst for power, to be in a position where they can control other people.
    In other words, it may be safe to even say that, the world is controlled by psychopaths :) (not all of course)
    Physical and emotional needs is what drives people to do exactly anything to secure that, even if they have to step on others to achieve it.


  • @partizan You must not live in a country with police brutality or racial profiling. I mean, I can understand why... in terms of stereotypes, it is more likely for certain races to be guilty of certain crimes, but, that shouldn't be enough of a reason to arbitrarily take action against anyone. Basically police officers should accept that they're the ones shouldering the burden of inequality, not enforce the law against individuals by using the group as a surrogate for likelihood of crime. I doubt there'll ever be a true systematic way for training politicians since corruption is rampant and lobbying is too lucrative. I mean, George Bush went to Yale, Donald Trump went to UPenn, these are excellent schools... even if their grades weren't very good. (Steven Bannon went to Harvard.) Mainly I think we should focus on educating the masses to vote for better politicians, rather than "conditioning" politicians to do the right thing.

    It's easier to achieve power motivated by psychopathy than it is by upholding morality, usually at one's own cost. As a result, psychopaths are typically the ones standing at the top (i.e. sexual harassment is a big issue right now and women are only just being able to speak out against it). I think we also tend to ignore the good in the world too, so I would like to point out Justin Trudeau as a counterexample... though I can list a lot more baddies than good guys.

  • MORBHEAD

    Suppose that you were sitting down at this table. The napkins are in front of you, which napkin would you take? The one on your β€˜left’? Or the one on your β€˜right’? The one on your left side? Or the one on your right side? Usually you would take the one on your left side. That is β€˜correct’ too. But in a larger sense on society, that is wrong. Perhaps I could even substitute β€˜society’ with the β€˜Universe’. The correct answer is that β€˜It is determined by the one who takes his or her own napkin first.’ …Yes? If the first one takes the napkin to their right, then there’s no choice but for others to also take the β€˜right’ napkin. The same goes for the left. Everyone else will take the napkin to their left, because they have no other option. This is β€˜society’… Who are the ones that determine the price of land first? There must have been someone who determined the value of money, first. The size of the rails on a train track? The magnitude of electricity? Laws and Regulations? Who was the first to determine these things? Did we all do it, because this is a Republic? Or was it Arbitrary? NO! The one who took the napkin first determined all of these things! The rules of this world are determined by that same principle of β€˜right or left?’! In a Society like this table, a state of equilibrium, once one makes the first move, everyone must follow! In every era, this World has been operating by this napkin principle. And the one who β€˜takes the napkin first’ must be someone who is respected by all. It’s not that anyone can fulfill this role… Those that are despotic or unworthy will be scorned. And those are the β€˜losers’. In the case of this table, the β€˜eldest’ or the β€˜Master of the party’ will take the napkin first… Because everyone β€˜respects’ those individuals.