5 ms·

If ethnocentrism is natural, where is the "problem"?

by kingmanaz 9y ago

sknuds 9y ago
Because it's not good and we can do better. Natural disasters are also natural.
- trophycase 9y ago
  Why isn't it good? Ethnocentricism provides meaning and purpose which is sorely lacking in our relativist, globalist society.
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    Because it's something that evolved for small unsophisticated groups, not for societies with billions of people with nuclear weapons. Probably we all can think of a lot of instinctive behaviours that are a bad idea in what, now, are our normal contexts and that we avoid in a daily basis. Intelligence, unlike evolution, is not blind (or, at least, no so blind).
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Relativism merely the philosophical tolerance for doubt, which is the beginning of wisdom. Moral absolutism is an escape hatch for people who don't like doing the hard work of thinking. Ethnocentrism certainly provides some meaning and purpose, but it's a shitty purpose of 'my interests at the expense of those other horrible people' and almost invariably ends in atrocities. Globalism is simply a function of technological advancement, which is not going to go into reverse. We are not giving up instantaneous communications, or high-efficiency containerized shipping, or air travel, or GPS, or any of that other good stuff, despite the urgings of people like Aleksander Dugin. You can have both a globalized society and meaning and purpose: there's a whole cosmos out there waiting to be explored, and the idea that there's more meaning to be had in militarizing the marginal differences between different ethnic groups is bizarre to me.
  - empath75 9y ago
    Well one thing you can always say about nazis is that they had a meaning and purpose.
khedoros1 9y ago
I don't follow. "Natural" isn't a synonym for "beneficial".
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  E.g. botulism, skin cancer, hypothermia, category 5 hurricanes, asteroids heading towards Earth, and gamma ray bursts are all "natural" phenomenon that I think we all agree are worth trying to avoid or mitigate.
NPMaxwell 9y ago
Whoever crafted this entry for Wikipedia did a nice job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
carsongross 9y ago
Human ethics transcend nature, where might makes right. Ethics is meaningless if it is "just how it is." That's not to say that nature and natures way can't inform ethics, or to commit to any particular ethical outlook.
- Amezarak 9y ago
  Some people claim their ethics transcend nature, which is an entirely different. Nobody can explain why their version of the good is right with reference to objective criteria, thereby allowing everyone to come to the same conclusion. Ethics, when not studied from an anthropological perspective, is just religion. Here in reality, you might not feel that might makes right, and I may or may not agree with you, but that's moot when some other ethical outlook out-competes yours via violence, oppression, demographics, or social trends and a thousand years from now someone is reading about your ethical system and laughing at its quaintness, or perhaps shivering a bit with horror. Personally, I regard 'universal humanitarianism' as something of a suicide pact.
  - durge 9y ago
    I hear you, and agree. An individual human being living to increase the fitness of others would be considered extrememly mentally ill, possibly toxic in their inability to sustain themselves. When this is taken to a societal scale (ie many industrialized nations devouring themselves inside out for the benefit of a few at the very top and helping to pull many globally out of poverty) it is seen as somehow a sustainable thing. I'm not here to debate whether or not this is what should be done, but clearly the demographics of this way of being are the human equivalent of 'colony collapse disorder'.
- blfr 9y ago
  Human ethics transcend nature I don't think that's true. Of course you can come up with ethical systems which transcend nature but the ones that actually get adopted are simply sets and heuristics which make the group benefit the most from "just how it is." Considering that moral attitudes are partially heritable, on a long enough time-scale, ethics that are truly separate from nature are bound to disappear or be relegated to marginal groups of people.
kleer001 9y ago
The problem is the high long term (dozens of generations) cost of favoring short term and small area beneficial strategies for a long period of time (millennia). The problem is kind of like the species level of version of the tragedy of the commons. These different tribes/breeds/races all preferring the short term preference of saving their territory/mate/child/self versus saving the lives (and infinite potential) of their stranger neighbors. The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Scaling rules. It forces the previously multi-use smaller pieces to over specialize, but the gain are unimaginable as the voyager space probe is to a amoeba.
- laretluval 9y ago
  > The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Multicellular life did not arise from cells being universalist. It arose from cells banding together with their mitotic offspring against other groups of cells. Similarly, the Voyager probe only happened because of us-vs-them competition in the cold war.
  - ktRolster 9y ago
    I'd rather not have another cold war. There are other ways to achieve interstellar probes.
    - kleer001 9y ago
      Cold war was an arms race, arms race fruit some fantastic solutions. Check sexual selection in beetles.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Teleological claims. REaction to selection pressure is not the same thing as opposition. You're trying to obviate the possibility of willing cooperation despite its obvious existence.
  - kleer001 9y ago
    Good point. Termites will never build spaceships. I guess I'm just partial one side of the coin, when both must be present for it to spin. Still, it's a shame to waste all that potential... even if recent research into General Adversarial Networks hints to us that us/them is a lever buried deep.

If ethnocentrism is natural, where is the "problem"?

sknuds 9y ago

Because it's not good and we can do better. Natural disasters are also natural.

trophycase 9y ago
Why isn't it good? Ethnocentricism provides meaning and purpose which is sorely lacking in our relativist, globalist society.
- RobertoG 9y ago
  Because it's something that evolved for small unsophisticated groups, not for societies with billions of people with nuclear weapons. Probably we all can think of a lot of instinctive behaviours that are a bad idea in what, now, are our normal contexts and that we avoid in a daily basis. Intelligence, unlike evolution, is not blind (or, at least, no so blind).
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Relativism merely the philosophical tolerance for doubt, which is the beginning of wisdom. Moral absolutism is an escape hatch for people who don't like doing the hard work of thinking. Ethnocentrism certainly provides some meaning and purpose, but it's a shitty purpose of 'my interests at the expense of those other horrible people' and almost invariably ends in atrocities. Globalism is simply a function of technological advancement, which is not going to go into reverse. We are not giving up instantaneous communications, or high-efficiency containerized shipping, or air travel, or GPS, or any of that other good stuff, despite the urgings of people like Aleksander Dugin. You can have both a globalized society and meaning and purpose: there's a whole cosmos out there waiting to be explored, and the idea that there's more meaning to be had in militarizing the marginal differences between different ethnic groups is bizarre to me.
- empath75 9y ago
  Well one thing you can always say about nazis is that they had a meaning and purpose.

khedoros1 9y ago

I don't follow. "Natural" isn't a synonym for "beneficial".

dwaltrip 9y ago
E.g. botulism, skin cancer, hypothermia, category 5 hurricanes, asteroids heading towards Earth, and gamma ray bursts are all "natural" phenomenon that I think we all agree are worth trying to avoid or mitigate.

NPMaxwell 9y ago

Whoever crafted this entry for Wikipedia did a nice job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

carsongross 9y ago

Human ethics transcend nature, where might makes right. Ethics is meaningless if it is "just how it is." That's not to say that nature and natures way can't inform ethics, or to commit to any particular ethical outlook.

Amezarak 9y ago
Some people claim their ethics transcend nature, which is an entirely different. Nobody can explain why their version of the good is right with reference to objective criteria, thereby allowing everyone to come to the same conclusion. Ethics, when not studied from an anthropological perspective, is just religion. Here in reality, you might not feel that might makes right, and I may or may not agree with you, but that's moot when some other ethical outlook out-competes yours via violence, oppression, demographics, or social trends and a thousand years from now someone is reading about your ethical system and laughing at its quaintness, or perhaps shivering a bit with horror. Personally, I regard 'universal humanitarianism' as something of a suicide pact.
- durge 9y ago
  I hear you, and agree. An individual human being living to increase the fitness of others would be considered extrememly mentally ill, possibly toxic in their inability to sustain themselves. When this is taken to a societal scale (ie many industrialized nations devouring themselves inside out for the benefit of a few at the very top and helping to pull many globally out of poverty) it is seen as somehow a sustainable thing. I'm not here to debate whether or not this is what should be done, but clearly the demographics of this way of being are the human equivalent of 'colony collapse disorder'.
blfr 9y ago
Human ethics transcend nature I don't think that's true. Of course you can come up with ethical systems which transcend nature but the ones that actually get adopted are simply sets and heuristics which make the group benefit the most from "just how it is." Considering that moral attitudes are partially heritable, on a long enough time-scale, ethics that are truly separate from nature are bound to disappear or be relegated to marginal groups of people.

kleer001 9y ago

The problem is the high long term (dozens of generations) cost of favoring short term and small area beneficial strategies for a long period of time (millennia). The problem is kind of like the species level of version of the tragedy of the commons. These different tribes/breeds/races all preferring the short term preference of saving their territory/mate/child/self versus saving the lives (and infinite potential) of their stranger neighbors. The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Scaling rules. It forces the previously multi-use smaller pieces to over specialize, but the gain are unimaginable as the voyager space probe is to a amoeba.

laretluval 9y ago
> The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Multicellular life did not arise from cells being universalist. It arose from cells banding together with their mitotic offspring against other groups of cells. Similarly, the Voyager probe only happened because of us-vs-them competition in the cold war.
- ktRolster 9y ago
  I'd rather not have another cold war. There are other ways to achieve interstellar probes.
  - kleer001 9y ago
    Cold war was an arms race, arms race fruit some fantastic solutions. Check sexual selection in beetles.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Teleological claims. REaction to selection pressure is not the same thing as opposition. You're trying to obviate the possibility of willing cooperation despite its obvious existence.
- kleer001 9y ago
  Good point. Termites will never build spaceships. I guess I'm just partial one side of the coin, when both must be present for it to spin. Still, it's a shame to waste all that potential... even if recent research into General Adversarial Networks hints to us that us/them is a lever buried deep.