How can I achieve these 14 worldwide objectives?
Here are my worldwide objectives:
1. The saving of lives.
2. The advancement of health.
3. Preventing and relieving poverty.
4. Helping those in need due to age, ill health, disability, financial hardship, and other disadvantages.
5. Advancing education.
6. Promoting equality and diversity.
7. Promoting religious and racial harmony.
8. The advancement of human rights, conflict resolution, and reconciliation.
9. Advancing the arts, heritage, culture, and science.
10. The advancement of citizenship and community development.
11. Protecting and improving the environment.
12. Promoting animal welfare.
13. The advancement of public participation in sport.
14. Promoting veganism.
How can I achieve these worldwide objectives? To achieve these objectives, I have been donating blood since I was 17 years old. I am 47 now. I have been on the NHS Organ Donation Register for donating all organs since I was 18 years old. I have volunteered with lots of charities. I have worked in the healthcare sector. I have donated as much money, food, etc. I could afford to. However, I have not managed to achieve my objectives yet. I want to do much more than I have done so far. I hope you will share with me your wisdom about how to do it effectively.
1. The saving of lives.
2. The advancement of health.
3. Preventing and relieving poverty.
4. Helping those in need due to age, ill health, disability, financial hardship, and other disadvantages.
5. Advancing education.
6. Promoting equality and diversity.
7. Promoting religious and racial harmony.
8. The advancement of human rights, conflict resolution, and reconciliation.
9. Advancing the arts, heritage, culture, and science.
10. The advancement of citizenship and community development.
11. Protecting and improving the environment.
12. Promoting animal welfare.
13. The advancement of public participation in sport.
14. Promoting veganism.
How can I achieve these worldwide objectives? To achieve these objectives, I have been donating blood since I was 17 years old. I am 47 now. I have been on the NHS Organ Donation Register for donating all organs since I was 18 years old. I have volunteered with lots of charities. I have worked in the healthcare sector. I have donated as much money, food, etc. I could afford to. However, I have not managed to achieve my objectives yet. I want to do much more than I have done so far. I hope you will share with me your wisdom about how to do it effectively.
Comments (116)
And to what end do you want to complete these?
You obviously can't save lives forever, do you just want a quantitative amount of lives saved?
What exactly do you mean by religious harmony? (One religion, or just coexistence and acceptance)
I would say it could definitely be possible to do this in just one country, and I think that is what you will have to try. (Start with one country and then move onward.)
I would say unless you're the billionaire batman, you will need to gain the support of many people. This also isn't something you need to do alone.
To do these things you will need to advance education and technology. People will always have to fight for themselves, and advancements to education can make each person better which can overall improve the situation.
As for how I would go about it, have a strong message and gain publicity. You need a plan on how to make these things happen, gain the support of the public and then push forward to change.
And finally if you are especially interested, look towards history. Modern advancements in all those segments all happened for a reason, and how people change the world would definitely be helpful towards your goals.
Good Luck and don't forget there are always consequences even if they are unknown.
To the extent the problems you identify are soluble at all, it would only be through political action.
So .keep doing what youre doing?
Understandable.
In terms of your goals, though, I think that the best you can do is continue to do as you've been doing. Your goals are all worthy of pursuit.
They are, however, very big goals. And not just 1 very big goal, but 14 very big goals.
I'd suggest starting to look at how much one individual can achieve in the circumstances they find themselves in. There's a lot of important things to pursue, but an individual person is very limited on what they can effect in the world. As a fellow dreamer of a better tomorrow whose tried more than one thing I can tell you that I, at least, had to recognize my limit as an individual. Maybe you'll find a better route other than a kind of faith and doing what you can today for tomorrow, though it be so little.
Your list covers pretty much everything that might need doing. That's the main part of your problem. You've heard of hubris? add "Diminish my hubris" to the list.
Kudos for donating blood, putting your body up for parts (upon your death), and contributing to charities. I know NOTHING about you -- absolutely nothing. But it is possible for you to have done everything that you claim to have done, have the highest objectives in mind, and STILL BE A VERY UNPLEASANT PERSON. Not saying you are, just that you could be.
My recommendation is that henceforth you strive only to be a kind, decent man. By being kind and decent you will have made a little progress toward several goals. A little progress? Yes, just a little. You are one man among 8 billion men alive. You may have another 47 years of life to live -- 47 years among the thousands of years we have been stumbling around is not a long time.
Look after your own actions; try to be the kind of person you wish we all were.
Some organisms are biologically immortal, e.g. planarian flatworms, immortal jellyfish, hydra, etc. If we could genetically engineer all living things to be biologically immortal and place them in spaceships to visit other star systems, thus spreading life across the universe, lives could be saved forever.
Quoting Red Sky
By religious harmony, I mean the peaceful coexistence of people with different religious and secular beliefs. Hundreds of millions of people have been murdered across the world over the millennia by both religious and secular people. It is still happening despite our scientific advances. I am so sad about all the suffering, injustice, and death.
Quoting Red Sky
I don't have much money. How would I get all the people to unite and work together to achieve the 14 worldwide objectives?
How would I achieve global political action?
The problem is that living things are suffering and dying every second. Keeping doing what I am doing is not enough to achieve the goals.
You are right in that I have very limited abilities. If I could unite all humans with the goal of achieving the 14 worldwide objectives, then we could make it happen. How can I unite everyone?
I totally agree. How can I unite everyone towards achieving the 14 worldwide objectives?
I don't have hubris. I am so sad about all the suffering, injustice, and death in the world. At least 99.9% of all the species to evolve so far on Earth are already extinct. The climate crisis has placed the remaining 0.1% at risk of extinction. Humans have killed hundreds of millions of humans across the world and trillions of other species in the last 300,000 years. I long to change the past, but I can't. I long to change the present, but people keep doing selfish things, e.g. murder, exploit, rape, torture, cheat, steal, bully, etc. Less than 1% of the 8.23 billion humans currently alive are vegan. There is so much poverty, inequality, ignorance and disease in the world. I have failed to achieve my objectives.
How can I unite everyone to achieve the 14 worldwide objectives?
Quoting BC
I am already kind to everyone. It's not enough that I am kind to everyone or else the objectives would have been achieved many years ago. Everyone needs to be kind to everyone. How do I get everyone to be kind to everyone?
I don't live in the USA. I live in the UK. I don't agree with Donald Trump's policies.
Thank you - sadly, my capacity is limited. Although I have managed to save and improve some lives - the world is still full of suffering, injustice, and death. How do I unite everyone to achieve the objectives together?
It is enough to achieve your goals though, in fact its all you can do. It seems to me the hidden problem for you is the timetable. You cannot achieve such lofty goals in a single lifetime, your goals are not something you can enforce or convince on the massive scale of the whole of humanity. Yours goals will take time. A lot of time. Look at history and you see how things, very slowly, change. It happens by leading by example, spreading your ideas and leading your life with those goals in mind.
So when I say keep doing what you're doing I dont mean because you cannot achieve your goals but rather because that is the way, the only way, to achieve your goals.
Make the best contribution you can while you're here and let the ripple effect of your hard work shape the future. Thats the only way progress to your goals that has ever been made, you just have to have the long view.
I see your point. I am being too impatient. I want to see rapid changes, but that is impossible. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
I wouldnt. This is your quest, not mine. I was just commenting that the only possible way of achieving what youre talking about is politics. Unless, I guess, you are a billionaire like Bill Gates. Hes done incredible things with his money.
No, I am not rich with money, but I am rich with love. Yes, he has saved and improved many lives.
It's in the lounge, it's under "all categories".
The lounge is where political stuff is put so that it doesn't show up on the front page. On the old forum there was a current events sub-forum to the political-philosophy forum, and you could see the link to the sub-forum but last post wasn't shown, which was a less confusing way to achieve the same thing of not showing current events last posts ( / controversial flamewars) on the front page.
Same thing was done for scriptural discussion sub-forum to the theology main forum.
Thank you
No worries. Slightly off topic but maybe others have the same question. The old forum had on the front page all the main forums and last-post of each forum, which encouraged posting in the less active forums (as your post would stay on the main page until it was a bit awkward no one responded yet). That each forum was on the front page had the bonus that sub-forums could then be listed (without showing the last post so as not to trigger people) but people looking for scriptural debate or then current-events knew exactly where to go to get their fix. Mostly scriptural debate was catholics arguing with protestants so was pretty amazing. There was this one catholic called Mariner who absolutely brought the fire; totally lit.
You can't. That's the job for someone with global influence. Keep your goals within your capacity to complete them. Be proud of what you've done. If 10% of folks tried what you've done, the world would be a better place.
I greatly admire Dorothy Day who with Peter Marin founded the Catholic Worker movement.
I'm not Catholic, not devout anything else at this point in life (I'm 78). One of the things I have admired about Dorothy Day is how she found joy and delight in the midst of what were often very dreary surroundings--she lived with the destitute. I could not begin to do what she did. (She is also a great writer!)
Was she successful in saving the world? In the big picture, no. Zero in on the 'little pictures' of individual lives, then yes -- she was successful. Likewise with any hero you might choose.
It is not "settling for little" to find success in changing individual lives. In order to increase results beyond the individual, you might begin or join a larger movement, and that is hardly a risk-free strategy. Organizations can get stuck in weedy ruts much faster than an individual's efforts.
So, carry on carrying on!
You are right. I should indeed keep my goals within my capacity to complete them. Thank you very much.
I think that immortality is wrong, death is of course horrible but it is also a part of life. Personally it is what I believe gives meaning to our lives.
As for religious differences and persecution obviously have no objections, but I can't think of an effective way to stop it.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I don't have a terribly bright idea of how to go about this, because getting every person's support is damn near impossible. However if you stand firm to your principles and never give in, I think those that support the same things you do will follow.
I am sorry I don't understand - please explain how death gives meaning to our lives.
Quoting Red Sky
I agree. I wish there was an easy way to unite everyone.
Overly lofty goals makes people lose touch with reality, inflate their ego and promote inaction rather than action, because in regards to the world's problems one is powerless and without responsibility anyway.
Logically thinking things that are rarer (or in this case are around for less time) are more valuable. It is just very hard to put a value on life in the first place. For me it has more to do with the inspiration of life, why do anything and why not do anything when you live forever. You can always do it later and literally push it off for eternity.
It might be easier to specifically think of it in terms of time. When you have an infinite amount of time value loses itself because you can do everything. However when time is on a clock you can really only choose the things that are more precious. Would you waste a normal human life without reaching your dream?
Additionally immortality would be perfection, it would absolutely stop evolution. This is of less concern, because the method to gain immortality would override any imperfection in my mind. However the original intention with that is if humans as we are now gain immortality. Emotionally, I think it is impossible for humans to become immortal. The amount of time that passes would make anyone an emotionless robot. (However, I have not experienced immortality, so I wouldn't know =) A body would still be alive, but the mind and emotions of the person would be all but ruined.
Thank you for explaining your reasoning. I certainly wouldn't impose immortality on anyone who didn't want it. I want to be immortal because it would let me have an infinite amount of time to have an infinite amount of experiences. I posted a flash-fiction I wrote: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15765/the-choice You may enjoy reading it.
I am not convinced that having an infinite amount of time would cause me to procrastinate indefinitely on everything I want to do.
I am not convinced that immortality would be perfection. There are already biologically immortal organisms that can live forever if not killed. They are not perfect. Nor is perfection required to be immortal.
I am not convinced that being immortal would make me or anyone else emotionless. I see no reason for emotions to vanish given how emotions are produced by our brains.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I would disagree, sometimes it is just one slip up or letting something slide just once that changes your entire being. While it is possible to not give in a single time, it is very unlikely even more so over the long time of immortality. That is not to say that once you fall into Procrastination you cannot come out. However the main problem is if immortality is wide spread,if there is no stop in reproduction there could be huge amounts of people (billions, trillions, and even more) who are procrastinating.
Not to mention that I think everybody would be a near carbon copy of each other. If you think about life as a funnel, everybody would end up at the same place after long enough time. (Their experiences would barely be different from each other)
For you personally, procrastination might be a different problem. You yourself state that immortality wouldn't make you procrastinate on the things you 'want' to do. What about the things you don't want to do. I think it would take a very special person to enjoy every part of life. Otherwise in your case, you would ignore the things you don't want to do in favor for the things you do want to do. (Which might not be a problem, but I would consider it so.)
Please see this thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16045/understanding-human-behaviour for more details about the Genes, Environments, Nutrients, and Experiences Causal Self Model.
There are many biologically immortal organisms already - they are not all identical in terms of genes, environments, nutrients and experiences. Every sentient biological organism has a unique GENE Profile. Our choices occur according to our unique GENE Profiles. The closer two organisms are in terms of their GENE Profiles, the more similar are the choices they make. The biologically immortal organisms that currently exist get on with their tasks as per their GENE Profiles. They are not stuck due to procrastination.
Life is not a funnel. It's more like a tree. There is an unbroken line of living cells that connects each and every organism currently alive to the first living cell - LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). I am made of living cells. I began as a zygote. My zygote came into existence when a sperm fused with an egg. The sperm and the egg were both living cells and were created by other living cells. You can keep going back like this through all of my ancestors, who were all made of living cells.
All multicellular organisms, including humans, are composed of living cells that perform various specialised functions.
A zygote is the first single-cell stage of a new individual formed by the fusion of a sperm and an egg. It is a living cell that undergoes division and differentiation to form your entire body.
Both sperm and egg (gametes) are living, specialised reproductive cells. They are produced by germline cells, which are themselves living cells within the reproductive organs of your parents.
Your parents germ cells originated from their own zygotes, which came from their parents gametes and so on. Every gamete and somatic cell arises through the division of a preexisting cell, tracing back continuously.
This unbroken line of living cells forming a continuous cellular lineage goes back through all of your ancestors, human and pre-human. Each generation passes on living cells to the next.
All currently living organisms humans, plants, fungi, bacteria trace their cellular lineage back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), a single-celled organism thought to have lived around 3.5 to 4 billion years ago.
This means there is an unbroken chain of cell divisions from LUCA to every living cell today, including yours, mine, and everyone else's. We are all connected to LUCA and each other. We are one.
I think you are putting to much emphasis on genes, (I have read your other current thread).
I think that experiences play more of a role in a person than genes. I see genes as more of a foundation, they decide more early factors which then affect later factors.
An example for this, think of two people across the world from each other. Both have lived a pretty ordinary life, they are salary men, an average worker. While they have different genes their experience is not much different. If you don't know the people you wouldn't see them as anything different. While there would obviously be small changes in culture and the like, there genes play a smaller role than their experiences in life. Now compare them to a soldier, or more precisely a veteran. The veteran has gone through many life and death battles. He would obviously be incomparable to a soldiers. Is the difference between them their genes, or experience?
(Just realized I like to use the word 'obviously' a lot)
Yes, but how does that connect to our original topic. You are basically agreeing with me that the Gene part in GENE is less important than the other parts.
The original topic was about immortality, if Genes are the least important out of GENE then what about immortals. How would their bodies deal with nutrients? Would they all not choose a similar environment or environments to live in? Would they all not have experiences so similar to each other that they aren't different.
When considering immortality, you have to consider everything. Even the nearly impossible.
When a monkey jumps on a type writer for eternity he will eventually write books more beautiful than any human could ever write.
No, all four categories of variables - genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences are essential. If you remove one, the others will be unable to create a living and sentient biological organism. If you removed my genes and replaced them with the genes of a bacteria, I would never be able to post anything on this forum. I would not even be sentient. Obviously, a bacteria obtains nutrients very differently from a human. Bacteria can survive in environments where humans can't. The organisms that are currently biologically immortal would never be able to type anything because they don't have the kind of brain and hands you need to be able to type words.
To what end?
I am not saying that it is not important at all, but only minimally so. In normal human life I would put a much greater emphasis on it, however if we were to talk about becoming immortal I think it would play a much less vital role.
All four categories of variables i.e. genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences are essential for the construction of a sentient biological organism such as a human or a dog or a cow.
There are already many biologically immortal organisms. Their genes, environments, nutrients and experiences make them so. Why would it play a much less vital role?
I am not talking about a role in their life, but more of their personality.
My original intent was that because of immortality many people would experience extremely similar or even exactly similar experiences. This would cause their personalities and some views to be exactly the same.
Genes are important to their life, but immortality is much to long that experiences become more important to personality than genes.
No human is currently immortal. So, I don't have any way to test how being immortal would affect a human. I have already tested how being immortal affects planarian flatworms. They thrive unless I kill them by denaturing their cells by heating them to 300 degrees Celsius. Since they can't talk using English, I couldn't ask them questions about their personality.
That's actually kind of cool.
How exactly do they thrive?
And testing the personality would be impossible.
They survive and reproduce in situations humans can't e.g. having their head chopped off. That's how they thrive. I would love to be able to grow my head back after it is chopped off. I really admire planarian flatworms.
Is their ability to regrow their heads the only reason you admire them?
No. Planarian flatworms are truly extraordinary organisms with several remarkable biological features that have fascinated scientists for decades. Here are their most impressive characteristics:
### **1. Regeneration Superpowers**
Planarians are famous for their **astonishing regenerative abilities**:
* They can **regrow an entire body** from just a **tiny fragment** - as little as 1/279th of the original worm.
* If cut in half, each half can regenerate into a fully functioning worm.
* This regeneration is powered by **pluripotent stem cells** called **neoblasts**, which make up around 20 30% of their cells.
### **2. Functional Immortality**
Planarians can potentially **live indefinitely** under the right conditions:
* Some species show **no signs of aging** (senescence).
* They can **rejuvenate themselves** by periodically regenerating tissues, essentially renewing their bodies.
### **3. Molecular Memory Retention**
Incredibly, planarians can **retain learned behaviors** even **after decapitation**:
* Experiments have shown that trained planarians, when decapitated and regenerated, still "remember" certain behaviours.
* This suggests that **memory may be stored outside the brain**, possibly at the molecular or epigenetic level.
### **4. Simplified Yet Functional Nervous System**
Despite their simplicity, planarians have:
* A **centralized brain-like structure** with two lobes.
* **Two ventral nerve cords** connected by transverse nerves, forming a **ladder-like** nervous system.
* Eyespots that help them **detect light**, enabling **simple decision-making** like moving away from light (negative phototaxis).
### **5. Asexual Reproduction**
Many species reproduce by **fission**:
* They **tear themselves in half**, and each part regenerates the missing half.
* This allows them to **clone themselves** without mating.
### **6. Highly Efficient Stem Cell System**
* Planarian neoblasts are **the only known adult cells** in animals that are **pluripotent**.
* This makes them a **model organism for stem cell and regenerative medicine research**.
### **7. Adaptability and Environmental Sensitivity**
* They respond to a wide range of environmental cues - light, chemicals, and electric fields.
* Their behaviors make them useful for studying **neurotoxicity**, **learning**, and **environmental sensing**.
### ?? **8. Symmetry and Simplicity**
* They have **bilateral symmetry** and a **three-layered body plan** (triploblastic), unlike simpler organisms like cnidarians.
* Lack a circulatory or respiratory system; they rely on **diffusion** for gas exchange.
### **Applications in Science**
Because of all these traits, planarians are:
* A **model organism** in research on **regeneration**, **aging**, **memory**, and **stem cells**.
* Used to study the **evolution of body plans** and the **origins of centralised nervous systems**.
Wow, that is all very interesting.
I am in no way an expert, or even baseline in this kind of thing.
However, from what I know the DNA chains shorten when cells split. (Or something of the like) Which is what makes us age.
Does this not happen to planarian flatworms?
You're absolutely right: in most animals, DNA chains shorten during cell division, specifically at the telomeres - the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, telomeres shorten, eventually leading to cell ageing (senescence) and organismal ageing.
But planarian flatworms appear to escape this fate. Here's how:
1. Telomere Maintenance in Planarians
Planarians do not show typical telomere shortening during regeneration and cell division.
This is because their stem cells (neoblasts) express high levels of telomerase, the enzyme that rebuilds telomeres.
In most humans, telomerase is active only in early development or cancer cells, but in planarians, it stays constantly active in their regenerative cells.
2. Eternal Youth via Neoblasts
These neoblasts are pluripotent and renew themselves indefinitely without ageing.
This allows planarians to:
Replace damaged tissues continuously.
Reproduce asexually by fission with no loss of cellular integrity.
Avoid senescence-related deterioration seen in most multicellular animals.
3. Experimental Evidence
Studies (e.g., Wagner et al., 2011) have shown that telomerase activity is critical for the planarians regeneration and longevity.
Inhibition of telomerase in planarians leads to impaired regeneration and tissue degradation over time, resembling ageing.
Summary
Planarians do not age the way we do because:
Their telomeres do not shorten dangerously thanks to active telomerase.
Their neoblasts can divide indefinitely and replace old cells.
They have molecular systems that prevent senescence.
You learn more everyday.
I can definitely see how this could be a prime subject for research.
Lots of scientists are using planarian flatworms for many research projects.
This is really not how it works.
Cells can add more telomeres to chromosomes to keep them healthy. Of course, in a chronically unhealthy person that cell maintenance will degrade so associations between telomeres health and overall health would not be surprising (though even this has weak evidence; as DNA health is a core task that cells may continue to do even in adverse conditions).
However, the best evidence that telomeres doesn't simply shorten until there's none left and you die is that there are vastly different cell division rates in the body, so if the hypotheses was true then organs with faster division (like intestinal walls) would be far more likely to fail first and people who die of natural causes would overwhelmingly die of organ failure associated with fast cell division.
Instead of that, people die of all sorts of organ failure, and one leading cause of death is heart failure and heart cells don't divide at all in adulthood. Likewise, neurons don't divide at all in adulthood.
The premise that making people live longer achieves your objectives I also think is highly questionable.
First, because there is a long list of more pressing matters of war and poverty and illness, that we have the knowhow to address already but it is a matter of political organization.
Second, it is completely nonsensical to even consider extending human life without first being assured we are taking care of the environment and our economic activity derived from the environment sustainably.
Third, natural age is an evolved trait that nature has found to maximize our chance of survival as a species, and the wisdom of trying to reprogram evolution on these fundamental points resulting from hundreds of millions of years of genetic optimization is highly questionable.
Extending the life of the boomer generation, for example, seems incredibly foolish from the perspective of concern for humanity and the wellbeing of all life on the planet. Natural age may simply be nature's way of getting rid of such generations before it's too late.
In that case, why do some organisms age (e.g. humans, cows, dogs, etc.) and some organisms don't age (e.g. planarian flatworms, hydra, Bristlecone pines, etc.)?
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
On its own, making humans and other species immortal won't be enough to achieve all 14 objectives. In addition to making humans and other species immortal, we would need to build spaceships to transport humans and other organisms to other planets and moons in our solar system and to other planets and moons in other star systems so that we can spread life throughout the universe. If there is more than one universe, we should spread life to all universes. If we have an optimum population at each location, and everyone went vegan, and we stopped fossil fuel usage completely, and we stopped polluting the air, water and land with toxins, the environment would recover.
Quoting boethius
If we stopped being selfish and instead shared resources equitably (i.e. everyone receives according to needs and contributes according to ability) there wouldn't be any poverty.
Many illnesses are preventable, and many more are treatable. Again, sharing resources would make healthcare accessible to all. I have been trying for 37 years to get everyone to love everyone, but I have failed so far because people haven't listened to me. If everyone loved everyone, there wouldn't be any wars or crimes or poverty or injustice or exploitation. Why doesn't everyone just love everyone and be vegan egalitarians? We should share resources equitably, and everyone should receive according to need and contribute according to abilities.
Quoting boethius
Evolution is a deeply flawed process. Here is a list of biological design flaws in humans and other species that strongly suggest evolution through natural selection, rather than intelligent design. These features reflect evolutionary compromises, historical constraints, and trial-and-error processes typical of evolution:
Design Flaws in Humans
1. The Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve
What it is: A nerve that runs from the brain to the larynx but loops down into the chest first, detouring around the aorta.
Why it's a flaw: In humans and other species, the detour is wasteful. In giraffes, it's over 5 meters longer than necessary.
Evolutionary explanation: Inherited from fish ancestors where this route was more direct. Evolution could not rewire it completely without disrupting function.
2. Human Birth Canal and Bipedalism Conflict
What it is: Narrow pelvis for upright walking makes childbirth difficult and dangerous.
Why it's a flaw: High risk of obstructed labour, especially with large-brained babies.
Evolutionary compromise: Upright walking (bipedalism) came with a cost to birthing ease.
3. Wisdom Teeth
What they are: Extra molars that often dont fit in the modern human jaw.
Why it's a flaw: Commonly causes crowding, impaction, and infections.
Evolutionary explanation: Our ancestors had larger jaws and more abrasive diets, which wore teeth down and made space for third molars.
4. Blind Spot in the Eye
What it is: A spot on the retina with no photoreceptors where the optic nerve exits the eye.
Why it's a flaw: Vertebrate eyes are "wired backward," so light must pass through nerve layers before reaching receptors.
Contrast: Octopus eyes evolved separately and dont have this problem their nerves are behind the retina.
5. Back Pain and Spinal Issues
What it is: Chronic back pain and slipped discs are common.
Why it's a flaw: Our spine evolved from four-legged ancestors and struggles with vertical weight-bearing.
Evolutionary compromise: Bipedalism is recent in evolutionary terms, and our skeletons are imperfectly adapted.
6. Appendix
What it is: A vestigial organ, once useful for digesting cellulose.
Why it's a flaw: Can become inflamed or rupture (appendicitis) without much function today.
Evolutionary holdover: Remnant from herbivorous ancestors.
7. Testicles Outside the Body
What it is: Human testicles descend into a vulnerable scrotum.
Why it's a flaw: Increases risk of injury.
Evolutionary reason: Sperm production needs cooler temperatures than core body heat.
8. Choking Hazard in the Throat
What it is: Humans share a passage for food and air.
Why it's a flaw: It increases the risk of choking to death.
Evolutionary constraint: Arises from the descent of the larynx to allow complex speech.
9. Poorly Designed Knees
What it is: Prone to injury (e.g. torn ACL).
Why it's a flaw: Knees evolved for quadrupedal locomotion and are not well adapted to the torque of upright walking and running.
10. Menstrual Cycle Wastefulness
What it is: Shedding of the uterine lining if fertilisation does not occur.
Why it's a flaw: Energetically costly and causes discomfort or anaemia.
Not all mammals menstruate: Most reabsorb the lining instead.
Design Flaws in Other Species
1. Flatfish Eye Migration
What it is: Both eyes end up on one side of the body.
Why it's a flaw: Awkward and inefficient anatomy reflecting a patchwork adaptation.
Evolutionary explanation: Adapted from symmetrical fish ancestors to lie flat on the ocean floor.
2. Panda's "Thumb"
What it is: A modified wrist bone used to grasp bamboo.
Why it's a flaw: Far less efficient than a true opposable thumb.
Evolutionary compromise: Makeshift adaptation rather than a well-planned structure.
3. Giraffes Long Neck with Same Number of Vertebrae
What it is: Despite its neck length, the giraffe has only 7 cervical vertebrae.
Why it's a flaw: Limits flexibility and increases the risk of injury.
Evolutionary constraint: Most mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae, and changes are highly constrained developmentally.
4. Flightless Wings in Birds
Examples: Ostriches, emus, kiwis.
Why it's a flaw: Waste of resources for animals that dont fly.
Evolutionary vestiges: Wings are leftover structures from flying ancestors.
5. Male Seagull Mating Error
What it is: Male seagulls sometimes try to mate with anything that looks like a female, even dead ones.
Why it's a flaw: Behavioural overgeneralization due to evolutionary pressure to reproduce quickly.
Not intelligent behaviour: Just evolutionary instincts gone awry.
6. Cetacean Respiratory Limitation
What it is: Whales and dolphins must consciously surface to breathe.
Why it's a flaw: They can drown if unconscious (e.g., during sleep or entanglement).
Evolutionary constraint: Ancestors were land mammals; complete aquatic adaptation remains imperfect.
Why These Flaws Matter
If humans and other species were designed by an all-powerful, intelligent designer, wed expect optimal, elegant, and efficient systems. Instead, we observe:
Redundancy
Vestigial structures
Inefficiencies
Developmental constraints
Painful trade-offs
These are consistent with natural selection, which works by modifying existing structures, not by designing from scratch.
It's an evolved trait that optimizes over time for the survival of the species.
In terms of chromosomal continuation all species are functionally immortal in terms of their chromosomes until they go extinct. From the perspective any chromosome you have right now, there's an undivided chain of chromosome divisions all the way back to the common ancestor, and it all happens inside a cell membrane of one form or another. Of course, most chromosomes die when the individual of a species dies but all chromosomes in your or any other organisms cells today "doesn't know that", so to speak. How exactly a species chromosomes perpetuates into the future then evolves to best able to do that. Turns out that having individuals that procreate and then die is an efficient evolutionary strategy (to use teleological language).
Rate of mutation is also an evolved trait. There is an optimum rate of mutation that balances harm to the species due to the vast majority of mutations being harmful and the benefit to the species that some mutations are required to evolve.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Step one in such a plan would be to ensure the current biosphere of the planet we're currently on is sustainable.
The idea that colonizing the moon, Mars or anywhere else in outer space somehow mitigates the danger we've created to our own survival on our own planet is preposterous.
If Elon Musk actually succeeds in sending people to Mars and having them live there permanently, such a colony would be entirely dependent on supplies and technology and people from earth for likely hundreds of years.
Therefore, if things are not sustainable on earth there is no point in trying to leave earth and colonize elsewhere. In the situation that the earth biome really was collapsing it would still be far easier to setup a sort of space colony on earth (under the sea, or in a bunker, or just out in the "desert of the real") than in outer space somewhere.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Yes, so therefore that's the primary problem and making people immortal would be a secondary problem, even if it was a good idea which is debatable.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Improving society is a slow process. I don't see why you would expect it to go any quicker than history would lead us to believe.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Evolution as such is not a flawed process as it's a natural process that did not have any design criteria to begin with. Saying evolution is a flawed process is like saying a volcano or the sun is a flawed process. Natural processes are the conditions in which we find ourselves and to assign flaws to those conditions doesn't really make any sense.
We humans can make processes to change our conditions to meet some criteria and those processes we make can be flawed given our objectives.
For our customary human goal of good health, clearly our knowledge and technology can help us change natural processes, such as diseases, with processes that can be flawed, such as side effects.
Not only is it extremely implausible the idea we could make flawless medicine but diseases too evolve.
But the project of human health through medicine is simply unsound in the context of critically damaging our ecosystems. First for the obvious fact that if we do not tend to the conditions necessary for our own survival, pursuing pristine health through a calamity makes little sense, but secondarily most of our diseases now are caused by the same agents that damage the ecosystems and it is cheaper anyways to address these causes than to continuously treat the symptoms. The focus on medicine (that the pharmaceutical corporations love) is a distraction from the political organization question that is the cause of so much disease from both pollution and poverty.
I am sorry that I don't understand. How can the ageing of most species and the non-ageing of some species be an optimised evolved trait? They are the opposites of each other.
As we don't yet know how to make humans and other species immortal, let's put that plan aside for now.
How do I get everyone to love everyone? We humans have killed hundreds of millions of other humans across the centuries and throughout the world in the name of colonisation, slavery, ideologies and religions. We have killed countless other organisms, too. If everyone loved everyone, there wouldn't be any wars or crimes or poverty or injustice or exploitation. Why doesn't everyone just love everyone and be vegan egalitarians? We should share resources equitably, and everyone should receive according to need and contribute according to abilities. If everyone loved everyone, there wouldn't be any wars or crimes or poverty or injustice or exploitation. Why doesn't everyone just love everyone and be vegan egalitarians? We should share resources equitably, and everyone should receive according to need and contribute according to abilities. If we can do this, all 14 worldwide objectives would be achieved.
Natural death evolves when older individuals in a species are a hindrance to the younger individuals. The old must die to make way for the young essentially.
Trees are the best example of these sorts of evolutionary pressures to evolve natural death, as they grow to similar sizes and have the same basic features and conditions (i.e. "eat the same thing" of relying on photosynthesis, minerals and nitrogen fixing etc.), yet some trees grow to be thousands of years old, others essentially immortal, and some have a natural death after only about 70 years.
With non-tree organisms there's a lot of confounding factors like size and metabolism and diet, but trees are a sort of special case where confounding factors filter out.
Obviously trees can live a super long time, so if that was an evolutionary advantage in all cases then all trees would be super long lived.
The advantages of natural long life or natural short life are also easy to see with trees.
There is the clonal advantage of not needing to bother with sexual reproduction at all:
Quoting List of oldest trees, Wikipedia
Then there's "stemming" trees which have the advantage of capturing resources over a vast areas and occupying the soil, even though individual "trees" are shorter lived.
Quoting List of oldest trees, Wikipedia
Then there's long lived trees, without stemming or cloning, in the more normal sense of a single trunk that live thousands of years:
Quoting List of oldest trees, Wikipedia
Of which the advantage is monopolizing space in the canopy.
Point being, there are plenty of trees covering most ecosystems that can live a really long time, way longer than short-lived trees in the same ecosystem.
Compared to the shortest lived trees of similar size, so like a birch, is about 60 yeas.
One advantage of a shorter life span is that the species can evolve and adapt more ably. If evolution is largely constrained by generations, the shorter the generation the quicker it's possible to evolve to new conditions. Trees can produce a lot of seeds so "probably" young trees of the same species are going to grow in the space where an older individual dies. Though that's not even a universal tree strategy, as trees in rain forests have evolved ways to keep distance to avoid epidemics of diseases and pests; for in a more biodiverse environment the pests and diseases are evolving quicker too.
Another advantage is that shorter lived trees usually grow faster and do that by being less dense and so are weaker and more likely to be felled by a storm, eaten by birds and insects and beavers, and burn in a fire and so on. Species that anyways don't have long-term survivable conditions have no evolutionary pressure to be able to survive long term anyways, so can put energy and information creation and preservation (that also takes energy) into other things.
I could go on about trees, they're pretty fascinating, but I hope this is sufficient to explain why very different characteristics may co-evolve in different species of the same general kind in the same environment. There are pros and cons to different characteristics and natural death span has lot's of positives from an evolutionary survival and adaptability point of view.
Trying to make humans immortal is more likely to be a recipe for extinction than continuing on as we're doing. We know the current way "works" and balances all sorts of factors (including younger generations learning from the mistakes and biases of the old), whereas trying to make humans immortal, or as immortal as possible, may go terribly awry in all sorts of ways.
We can even develop interesting game theory scenarios to underline how dangerous it is. For example, someone adopting the explicit goal of causing the extinction of humanity is a rare event, but not impossible; such a maximally destructive individual with a limited life-span will face very adverse conditions for achieving their objective; the goal is rare, he or she will find few allies, very special circumstances will need to be created to ensure the extinction of all human life with any assurance and those circumstances will take considerable time and effort to create, so difficult that it is likely impossible for one individual to accomplish in a natural human life time span. Make that person immortal! In obviously super sophisticated technological conditions, able to work in the shadows for centuries if not millennia to find that "very special sauce of circumstances" that would kill every living human. Given enough time and consistent application of a single person's faculties, such goals are no longer discountable. Immortality is not a goal we would have any reason to believe extends the life, exploration and enjoyment of humanity as a whole.
But again, it is not even worth considering extending human life as a project apart from general health and well-being, in conditions that are not sustainable. If our environmental and ecological conditions were sustainable then we could argue the morality, theology, practicality of trying to extent people's lives beyond the natural bound that evolution has resulted in.
*Please note: Any teleological language to describe natural processes is because it's more understandable, and easier to use teleological language but then remind everyone at the end that trees do not themselves have "a strategy" of evolution; evolution happens to the trees regardless of what they think about it.
I didn't read ahead, but hopefully my expose on trees is some use and interest to the conversation.
However, obviously we agree medicine is a good thing all things being equal, and so making medicine available to people is going to extend human life on average.
But poverty and pollution are far bigger killers, and cause of suffering, now than a lack of access to medicine. Most people alive today do not owe their lives to modern medical intervention, and so pursuing medicine is diminishing gains in terms of helping people on the whole. Why the focus on medical research and medical access in poor countries is because corporations profit from that and the corporations and imperial policies that make ad keep those people poor aren't put into question in the framework that medicine will make their lives better.
I have also put a lot of thought into what is "the best" that can be done, both from the perspective of some general strategy or collection of strategies of the humanist-ecological movement broadly speaking, as well as my own individual strategy to maximize my contribution.
Since I studied math and numerical analysis, I am conditioned to view objectives as the increase or decrease in a single variable. The first thing you learn in numerical analysis is that simply waiting for the computer to finish the job and just sit there staring into space is almost always cheaper than trying to think of a more efficient program, not to speak of solving anything analytically like some sort of deranged self-flagellating priest of mathematics seeking purity at the cost of his own flesh and sanity!
The second thing that is taught is that for optimization to be an approachable problem a single variable must be defined that we are optimizing for. So if there are several different measurable or otherwise quantifiable metrics of consideration, they must be combined by some function into a single variable of which the change, up or down, is good or bad in the context of the problem and of which the purpose of the algorithm is to push to some global or local maxima or minima. If all goes well the process even says something about the real world.
To translate this mathematical insight into more profane terms, I once had a friend (before he started helping to launder money for international illegal diamond cartels) that wanted to do good and also be rich and saw no issue with being able to pursue both goals maximally.
Now, while doing some good and being quite rich are compatible, unde most conditions under consideration for the exercise, I explained that they cannot both be maximized, if by "being rich" meant spending money on enjoyments and pleasantries (leading a "rich life")above what is required to pursue the first goal. One can do good insofar as it makes one rich (but equally willing to do bad insofar as it makes one rich), and one can make money insofar as it helps to do good (and lose all one's money insofar as it helps to do good), by maximizing both is not possible.
Every dollar that comes in one must choose whether it goes towards the good works, granting they are good works, or then goes towards personal enjoyment. If the personal enjoyment is required to do the good works (like sleep) then that is money going towards the good works and it is just the special case where the money being spent on yourself maximizes that goal. If it's to useful to starve as continuing to live is the best way to continue the good works in question, then obviously some capital must be spent on eating and drinking and even keeping up good spirits and creativity. There is no reason to assume suffering would be required, though it cannot be excluded either depending on the conditions. If it was good to hide jews from the Nazis, and doing so resulted in getting arrested and tortured by the Nazis, then in these circumstances it was necessary to risk suffering to do good; but assuming that's not the case, reducing expenditures on ones own creature comforts only insofar as it maximizes the good works is by definition the maximum of the good works. Simply imagining the life of a multi-billionaire with all its normal pleasantries and imaging plenty of good works is not maximizing those good works. It may not be maximizing the life of a billionaire either, but the point is there is no rational way to determine which dollar goes to what (every dollar that comes in one must choose whether to help others or whether to help oneself beyond the point of what is efficient to help others, which is just helping others but in the special case described), and so the life would be arbitrary and thus meaningless.
Now, this is clearly not your dilemma, but by seeing how "living the life of a billionaire" (in how we normally think of it) and "doing good" cannot both be maximized as a matter or principle simultaneously, even if health and comforts in themselves are fine things and can be subordinated to a single goal of maximizing good, so too does the same problem arise in considering all the good things that we could list would ideally occur.
For, it is not such a difficult task to list the ideal characteristics of a system. Ideally food is healthy, tastes good, instantly available, free of any cost and changes in an ideal way to keep those good ideal characteristics at every meal.
Where optimization comes in is how to navigate all the ideal characteristics we would wish for and stay clear of unwanted consequences in a rigorously defined way. For example, higher quality food generally costs more. One may say if we're optimizing the food then cost is not an issue, but obviously it is as other necessities in life also have a cost and so spending all ones funds on food does not optimize overall health. Even if we were to solve the most optimum lifestyle for health ... well what would be the point if all resources and time were consumed by that objective? What about other objectives? Shouldn't we be productive and pursue health insofar as it makes us more productive and able to accomplish some goals? For example, ensuring the society we're optimizing our health in itself stays healthy and sustainable.
So, we have a numerical model of what goes into a meal, imbedded in a numerical model of what goes into a healthy life style, imbedded in a model of productivity, imbedded in a model of what goes into a healthy society and environment.
The point of going through this exercise that a component (such as a single meal) cannot be optimized without larger and larger context and ultimately the context of the whole, is not only instructive in how optimization works, but also how over-optimizing a single component is going to lead to pathology. If someone was only concerned about food quality they are going to spend all their money on food which is going to cause more problems than it solves.
I have to go now, but the end point of these deliberations is that getting to the full context reveals fossil fuels and the centralized economic systems that result from their exploitation is the root cause of nearly all our problems. Local solar energy is the one thing that addresses our problems but is underdeveloped from its potential, and so it is not the only thing to do (as there are always diminishing returns in doing any one thing) but the one thing that can spread exponentially and radically alleviate poverty in a sustainable way, while also removing the "need" for resource wars as the sun shines everywhere.
My pleasure, trees are really an extraordinary life form and taking care of them is foundational for a sustainable way of life.
I agree. I love trees, in fact, I love all autotrophs. I wish all organisms were autotrophs. In fact, it would be even better if all organisms were energy beings who could live without consuming any air, water and food.
Yes, there are other renewable technologies, but there will likely only be one that is significantly underperforming, therefore the optimum choice to develop.
To connect with trees, a tree when used for fuel is a solar energy device turning the suns energy into chemical energy. As a solar energy device a tree is less than 1% efficient, for a long list of "losses" if the goal is to burn the tree; likewise for all biomass sources.
Even worse, as a ecosystem degrades biomass production efficiency gets less and less, orders of magnitude less when the ecosystem can't even support plant growth over most of the surface most of the time (such as a desert). So using trees unsustainably is an exponential process of ecosystem degradation.
There are roughly 2 billion people that rely on biomass as their primary energy supply and billions more that rely on fossil fuel as a primary energy supply, which is obviously also not good (but better than deforestation, these local uses being pretty minimal compared to Western emissions from cars; although particle pollution is still a big problem from uncontrolled fossil burning, but biomass burning has the same problem).
But just take the 2 billion people currently relying on fossil burning, upgrade them to a solar thermal device and solar efficiency of their technological setup is now around 50%, so 50 to 1000 times the increase in solar efficiency compared to the previous technology of burning biomass.
If the technology can be made with only common materials (which solar concentrators can; just mirror, steel / aluminum, and even wood/bamboo construction) and built and maintained locally, the potential is truly revolutionary. And this solar revolution has already happened spontaneously in many places in the global south where it becomes simply common sense to use a solar water heater for example. Solar water heaters are super simple but limited in temperature; higher temperature solar thermal devices allow for the same kind of revolution where it becomes common sense as simply obviously cheaper, but each temperature bracket requires more skills and sophistication.
We can get into the limitations of all the other renewable technologies in detail if you so desire, but in short: all the technologies that produce primarily electricity (wind, hydro, photovoltaic) simply don't really address the fundamental energy problem which is heat based. Most energy consumed is to heat things; and even more so if we're talking about primary energy needs; things that need electricity, such as lights and electronics, simply don't consume much, few watts, especially in a low-income region whereas heat needs are in kilowatt -- doesn't take less energy to cook rice simply because you're poor, but you can make do with very little lights or computation and still derive significant benefits.
Then there's complex issues around the grid. We take the grid for granted in the West, but grid ubiquity is due to burning coal. It's way better to burn coal in a far away power station and "pipe in" the energy by wire, and if the coal is plentiful and cheap then that pays, in terms of energy to-do-it and energy derived from it, the cost of making the grid. However, without burning "cheap coal" (in brackets to ignore their external environmental costs), grids don't make much sense to move thermal energy around. Whereas there's a huge incentive to get coal smoke out the city, there's similar pollution reason to put a solar device far from where you're living.
There's a lot of technical details and history, but the basic thesis is once renewable energy is being considered as the primary input into society, the Western grid connected way of life doesn't make much engineering sense. If we have the technology to get energy from sunlight, then putting these solar devices far away and transferring the energy over long distances makes little engineering sense.
This is particularly critical for poor places that do not at the moment have a high capacity, high reliability grid. Because even when you have a grid, more energy simply can't be dumped on it; increasing the capacity is massively expensive.
Grid capacity is usually financed on 30 year amortization periods paid by governments. And building up capacity is a slow process; a few percent growth in capacity per year. Then there's the problem of copper supply and battery storage if we want to transition to renewable energy.
However, off-grid systems can be up and running basically instantly. If they provide the same value, there's really no need for a grid. However, off-grid electricity is limited in its value production. Most primary economic activity requires huge amounts of heat, which can be supplied by solar thermal.
To compare to just wind even ignoring it doesn't provide low-cost heat: The first problem is that there's not so much wind in the tropics where large numbers of people live, especially poor people. The second is that the efficiency of wind turbines increases to the 3rd power of the wind blade diameter, so there's massive efficiency gains in building huge wind turbines. So to realize the recent gains in wind turbine technology requires a large amount of capital not just to build the wind turbines but also to build the grid and a long list of grid balancing requirements to deal with variable wind inputs into the grid, and none of this is helpful to the vast majority of poor people on the planet. Likewise there is similar issues for all the other renewable energy sources.
However, solar energy can be accessed tomorrow pretty much anywhere in the world with technology you can carry around, available in even more intensity in the tropics and is not limited in total supply such as wind and hydro (which, even assuming all the grid problems are solved, fundamental limits are rapidly reached; for example, extracting all tidal energy on the planet would be 2 terawatts, whereas humanity consumes about 20 terawatts; sun represents about 170 petawatts).
On top of these basic engineering efficiency considerations, there's massive systemic benefits to decentralized systems. To take one example, solar thermal devices are completely immune to an electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare or nuclear weapon; if primary energy needs and economic activity are powered by solar thermal devices then a massive EMP would not cause much problems at all. The spread of disease can be far easier controlled in a decentralized system, and quarantine, if necessary, would be by village and not people staying individually in their apartments with massive long term harms to society. Most of all, however, is in a decentralized system in which energy, food and most materials and their transformation are mostly sourced locally, volume of transportation can be radically reduced, which is the main cause of our ecological problems (just moving billions of tons of stuff around the globe is not sustainable in itself, even if you did have renewable energy to do it).
Glad we share an interest in trees. Highly debatable if it were better that there was no life as we currently know it.
Why wouldn't energy beings who don't need to consume air, water and food to live be better than the autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites we currently have?
I view life as we know it a good thing, so the diversity and predation and so on goes along with life as we know it.
Now in some sort of super abstract discussion, it's certainly a compelling argument that being some sort of autonomous demi-god is better than being a mortal human.
However, such an argument would not exclude life as we know it still being a good thing. Energy beings of one sort of another can presumably co-exist with life on earth (for example by living on the surface of the sun).
So such "what if" considerations, don't reduce the value of life on the planet as it is today and our responsibility towards earth life.
Quoting Truth Seeker
There's lots of nuance, but the main part is the amazing abundance of solar energy available everywhere.
The problem is that local solar energy doesn't "plug in" to the grid and powering cities very well. Solar heat does not really transport directly at all over any considerable distance, and to do so one would need to convert the heat to electricity and then transport the electric energy over a grid.
So if you just imagine in your mind a solar device 100km away making heat to make steam to turn a turbine to turn a generator to then make electricity that flows through a long series of electronic wires and devices, to boil some water to cook rice, and then imagine just using the suns energy where you are to cook the rice, it's easy to appreciate the economic difference.
The obstacle is that cooking the rice where you are with the sun requires a different social organization than what we have now. Building up such a solar economy where people currently are mostly still rural and don't have a grid requires a foundational capacity and skills building.
However, once a critical mass of technology and skills is achieved in a local economy and it's clearly simply a better way of life (creating income, conserving trees, providing all sorts of comforts that low cost energy enables), then it can spread exponentially throughout the planet. Solar thermal technology requires only mirror (glass and a silver or aluminium layer), steel and aluminium (also wood and bamboo are possible for structure), so has no resource bottleneck for exponential growth.
Doesn't mean other technologies aren't useful in specific niches or where available, nor does it mean a grid isn't adding value where population density is high enough. The cost of the grid scales with capacity after a relatively small one-time investment to layout the basic structure, and also scales with storage capacity needed to use primarily intermittent renewables. So simply lowering the capacity needed due to most energy bering captured and used on location (in particular heat energy) solves a lot of grid problems; likewise simply reducing dramatically the capacity of transport from most food and materials being harvested and used locally, solves most transportation problems.
If you look at essentially any super industrial renewable energy proposal to power Western economies today, the resource bottlenecks are enormous, and then even more enormous if the proposal is to scale that solution (which we clearly don't have as like 20 COP meetings with zero deviation in emissions demonstrates) to the global south. However, simply improve poor people's lives in the global south with solar energy, we can do literally tomorrow at not only radically low cost compared to massive industrial proposals but after a critical mass it is self perpetuating (just as plenty of poor regions simply spontaneously adopt solar water heating as it's just cheaper).
One caveat I may not have emphasized, but focusing on solar thermal is both a core component of a global viable strategy for the humanist-ecological movement, but also something amenable to my skillset of numerical analysis and prototyping.
Such a strategic analysis does not imply there's not other things to do, such as direct poverty alleviation, stopping genocides, governance, organic farming and a myriad of other things. Just so happens that solar thermal is particularly underserved by the larger community of do-gooders and I suited to try to increase the realization of its potential.
However, where it is fundamental compared to other clearly also-good things is that energy sources structure and condition society, so a viable strategy to address everything must start with energy. Food obviously is also an energy source but we've inherited plenty of sustainable food growing practices, so have a good starting point from our inheritance in terms of food. Exosomatic energy (energy we use outside our metabolism) on the other hand we've never been sustainable above a relatively low population density (in which burning trees is not an issue), and so it's solving this exosomatic energy problem that is the limiting factor (in the sense we don't have existing traditions that offer solutions) for true sustainable and peaceful living (as there is no "need" to steal another's sunlight).
So I while I would argue it is critically important, that does not imply it's the only good thing worth doing. Still important a long list of things and people with skills and circumstances amenable to those things should do them, but the movement as a whole also needs a feasible vision of how to ultimately solve these long list of problems. With solar thermal energy a technically feasible social organization and as important a feasible scaling pathway can be rigorously proven.
Therefore, I would propose the development of local solar thermal based economies, in particular in the global south, as the key element required to attain your objectives by the whole community of people striving for a peaceful and sustainable world without poverty and slavery.
Life on Earth, as it has been and currently is, comprises much suffering, injustice, and death. That's why I imagined energy beings who don't need to consume any air, water or food to live. The energy beings would not need to consume any sunlight or heat either. They would be eternally self-sustaining. I imagine them to be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. I am all too aware that these beings don't exist outside my imagination.
How can we implement widespread use of solar power for generating electricity and heat?
Certainly human life as we know it, but in terms of healthy ecosystems generally speaking, predation and a struggle for survival agains the elements is apart of life.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Well maybe there is such a place to aspire to in the afterlife.
For the time being, however, I would propose we have this life and the life on the planet to tend to.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I've been working on this for 20 years, and I've collected some of the old open source material in this folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16eIpgNP7vvBcm_P6nfFzywqjcHuTV9qD?usp=share_link
These two videos are also useful:
https://youtu.be/CXJgAmft2jI
https://youtu.be/q3WeRU8geSs
There's also a lot of material on lytefire.com, a company I founded to prove the economic viability of the technology (as it was only possible to raise the funds needed as a company; not even other non-profits trust non-profits to deliver technology), but then certain management differences emerged, around staying true to the original open source strategy (idea was to raise funds, develop tech, then open source once proven commercially), but mostly on whether it was a good idea or to to help launder African diamond money. I was against it, but turned out a minority opinion.
It is not just a question of technological development, but then on reaching critical mass of capacity and skill in real locations on the planet, in addition to integration with complementary technology. Small wind, PV and hydro are excellent technologies for relatively small amounts of off-grid electricity; where solar thermal competes in making electricity is if there's an economic need for a lot heat, such as green houses or in textile / paper making, and so an inexpensive steam engine can produce some electricity and the exhaust steam power these other processes.
The critical part for developing the needed suite of technologies as well as integrating with other technologies to optimize actual solutions for real people, is the software simulation.
What's in the folder above is the termination point of the open source software. So it's this software (or more precisely developing something from scratch that does the same thing and more; as this was early days in my programming career) that is the key, as without software simulation building solar thermal technology is hugely expensive trial and error.
For, even if you have the capacity to build the technology, without software simulation it's just guesswork not only what to build but if there is even any deployment of the technology, even solar thermal technology in general, that solves the problem economically in real world conditions. With software you can get close enough in terms of the required performance to make fabrication a reasonable risk to take.
There's not only technical and environmental elements to simulate, but also things such as a reasonable work day. A lot of renewable energy projects fail because things are just not thought through (not because the engineers don't know thinking things through would be reasonable, but because executive can go tot the government and present ideal or laboratory conditions that "prove" things will be economically viable). For example, a baker needs to get to work and start baking, and baking quite a lot of bread, so a device that can get to the temperature and thermal-momentum required to bake one loaf of bread at high-noon on a absolutely clear day, is of no use to a baker. A solar oven that heats in the morning when the baker gets to work (so sun is low), and heats a commercial scale oven with high power and thermal-momentum to bake professionally to run an actual business, is what is required with enough extra capacity to deal with some haze and some clouds to bake most days.
So the software is essential to make plausibly reasonable simulations of an actual business case.
As important, software simulation is absolutely critical to develop any new application, as many applications cannot be adapted from equipment that runs on gas or electricity, and needs to be developed specifically to integrate with a specific solar thermal device. So software is critical and making software available open source to engineers with expertise in those application domains (pasteurization, desalination, absorption fridge, ceramics, paper, metals, textiles etc.) allows them to build up the simulation of the application and run various total optimizations and economic simulations, enough to be confident enough to build a prototype.
The more applications that exist the more valuable the technology becomes (and by technology I mean solar thermal technology generally speaking if there are superior designs for a given context; ideally the software would model all available designs and provide comparisons), in the same way that the more appellations for a mobile ecosystem are available the more valuable the mobile device (and also that a critical mass of key applications are required to drive exponential growth).
Not just human life. Other sentient biological organisms suffer and die. I don't want any living thing to suffer and die. I want all living things to be forever happy.
Quoting boethius
There is no such thing as the afterlife. If you can prove there is an afterlife, please do.Quoting boethius
This is awesome! Thank you very much for sharing. I look forward to exploring them.
Quoting boethius
That's unfortunate. Did the money laundering stop, or is it still going on?
I'm going to be honest, beyond some abstract comparisons, this seems to me an unachievable goal.
Also debatable if the natural cycle of life is a bad thing. If life has beauty and value then so too the predation, pain and death that is a natural apart of life.
And if not a bad thing, the alternative point of view is that pain is not suffering in itself, but comes from moral wrongs carried out by people that has nothing to do with a lion eating a gazelle.
For example, when Martin Luther King, Jr. stated "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends," the underlying moral framework is that the lack of action by people who claim to be friends, causes more suffering (the wrong will be remembered) than the actions of outright enemies. For, an outright enemy is closer to a natural process of fighting a lion, but being abandoned by one's community, in which there are stronger moral bonds, causes a deeper moral rift and thus more suffering.
To push the example to the extreme, imagine showing up on an island with an uncontacted tribe and taking a poison arrow to the chest that causes incredible pain but you survive. Although definitely an unpleasant experience, it would be unlikely to cause extreme psychological trauma because there's not really any moral problem. Maybe you were trying to do good by going to the island for some reason, tribe is just doing what it normally does and you completely expected they may do, so there's no betrayal in any moral sense.
Quoting Truth Seeker
There is no way to really prove anything.
However, I do believe there are good reasons to believe there is an afterlife. I elaborate the argument in this essay: https://open.substack.com/pub/eerik/p/the-cromulomicon-the-book-of-croms?r=33um1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
The main problem the essay tries to solve (if we take a shortcut and ignore problems such as needing an ethic to begin with in order to have problems, so there is no ethically neutral position in which the problem of what is the true ethic can be addressed, as an ethically neutral position would have no problems at all; dilemmas the essay seeks to solve), is to harmonize the search for truth and the love of humanity and life and acting in the interests of all life rather than oneself.
What we may call "pretty usual ethics" values truth, life, fairness and justice, empathy and compassion for others, and does indeed call upon people to make the ultimate sacrifice to save others (such as fire-people saving children in a burning building; if not "binding" certainly a good and heroic thing to do and not considered stupid and foolish). And, indeed, more can be added to the list of "usual ethics" shared by nearly all cultures.
As we have already discussed, it's not possible to optimize for different things and when there are different things under consideration such as learning the truth, protecting others and all life, seeking justice, and so on, either they are in conflict with one another or then harmonized and in fact represent merely different facets of a single value.
For, it can be argued on the surface that if I am searching for truth and I am reading one of my books, if you were to come to me dying of thirst I would be wise to not give it to you and so let you die as I search for truth and my reading is more important.
The value of truth seeking is a fairly easy ethic to arrive at, as I suspect you may agree @Truth Seeker, but a great many important truths are much harder.
It is easy to see that what our culture, and indeed most cultures, proposes as good moral principles are those very principles necessary for the culture's survival and perpetuation into the future (cooperation, fairness, sacrifice for other when necessary to ensure the groups survival), but seeing this explanation for where ideas come from does not actually resolve if those ideas are correct. The question remains of whether it is good for society to survive or indeed oneself.
To really get to the bottom of these things is a long journey and the structure and nature of all existence becomes necessary to posit at a context to resolve these sorts of questions. For there are alternative hypothesis available, such as caring only for oneself and having no appreciation for whatever is done by others, both present and in the past, for your benefit without payment and feeling no obligations in turn; that the fate of society, humanity, all life is of no concern to oneself and those that do concern themselves are fools that cause themselves trouble.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I am very appreciative, don't hesitate to ask any questions as they occur to you.
Quoting Truth Seeker
The coverup, at super high levels including the prosecutor general of Finland and also the President and PM, continues to this day: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SXU6VkygIWM14S4O-IQQUhlz41qYBjFH?usp=share_link
I'm under investigation for "defamation to the auditor" which is not even a legally possible crime (why "proper channels" exist: total immunity from defamation). You could commit fraud in what you communicate to an auditor, but defamation is not legally possible. Why police just keep me under investigation for 4 years now to harass me and also pretend like the case could potentially be defamation, instead of overwhelming evidence of money laundering; evidence they explicitly refuse to collect, but in a trial I can just submit the evidence myself. So, police can't charge me or then the evidence appears in trial, but can't drop the case without admitting the only possible way to drop a defamation case concerning accusations of African diamond money laundering would be that the accusations are supported by evidence and reasonable to make. Why Finnish police are helping to launder money is because they are involved in human trafficking and narcotics smuggling. This was literally the first thing the chair of Transparency International told me (that my case of police refusing to investigate obvious evidence is similar to an existing case of theirs where police refuse to investigate an obvious case of human trafficking and child abuse; and the explanation for that is that police are involved in human trafficking and child abuse); the chair could not get approval from her board to do anything for an entire year and then was replaced by a person from Brussels (for sure 100% organized crime representative from Brussels).
But yes, the money laundering is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected doing business in Africa. What was unexpected is all other board members and executives who did not originally participate in the money laundering, helped to cover it up and send me endless threats and bribes including I'll "be destroyed" and also 1 million Euros to drop all "claims and pursuit", even after they agreed there is significant money laundering!
I foolishly believed that people I thought were genuinely concerned for alleviating poverty in Africa and empowering people with a source of energy they could build and control themselves would not tolerate our work being used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of African diamond money for Isabel Dos Santos.
That I was alone in my disposition, made me very alone indeed.
I know that.
Quoting boethius
This is false. When I slap myself, I feel pain. That proves to me that pain is real.
Quoting boethius
Not convinced. All the gods are evil and imaginary.
Quoting boethius
I am so sorry. We live in an evil world where the evil prosper and the innocent perish. European Christians, and Arab Muslims colonised and killed hundreds of millions of humans worldwide for centuries and got away with murder, rape, forced conversions, torture, theft, slavery, etc. This is why Christianity is the number one religion and Islam is the number two religion on Earth. Now they are getting away with neocolonisation and causing the climate crisis through 300 years of burning fossil fuels. If you haven't read the whole Bible and the whole Quran, I highly recommend that you do so: https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
You haven't proved it to me though. Maybe you're a chatbot, maybe you don't feel pain and are lying, maybe you're a figment of my imagination etc.
You could say that you proved it to yourself, but again if you're a chatbot, or lying, or don't really exist, that hasn't happened either.
Quoting Truth Seeker
How did you prove that?
Quoting Truth Seeker
This is true, but if it is good to do good, then that is unaffected by how much bad there happens to be.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I have zero problem with the history.
If the technological conditions are war allows a culture to expand, and certain types of religion help that culture to stay both cohesive and warlike, then we should not be surprised that violent religious fanatics take over the world.
That historical result, however, does not resolve the core issues. Bad people also use principles of physics to do bad things, doesn't mean those physical principles are false; so too if bad people do bad in the name of god, or an eternal soul, or any idea whatsoever, does not therefore imply those principles are false.
The philosophical question has nothing to do with religion.
Is existence ordered or complete chaos?
If ordered, is existence ordered in a good way or a bad way or then perhaps indifferent way?
If ordered in a good way, what are good decisions in a good cosmos? If the universe is ordered in a bad way, are any good decisions possible in a bad cosmos, or indifferent or chaotic cosmos?
That people have made over time religions to answer fundamental moral, metaphysical and epistemological, and natural questions, and then some have gone on to do super violent things using whatever answers they find to keep a violent society cohesive, does not somehow eventually prove through that historical process that the original questions are somehow meaningless or then don't have answers to them or then the answers don't matter.
People made exactly similar stories to answer natural questions as they did for moral or theological questions, yet no so called "rationalist" goes around listing off all the crazy stories of storm gods and so on in order to demonstrate no answers can be correct and particle physics is therefore as meritless an answer to natural phenomena as is storm gods and river spirits.
If there is no order, or the order isn't good, then by what measure can you judge these religions you have issue with to be bad?
For example, the critique of liberated nihilism that there is no good and bad, don't be "fooled" by religion, religion is bad, look at all the bad things, makes no sense if good and bad are denied as a premise. If there's no good and bad, or then only personal good and bad, then it's not bad to be religious if you want to, even in a violently fanatical way.
To judge religious people, or anyone, one must be in a position to judge, to have proven what is right and wrong, and that is not so easy. But feel free to posit an ethic that is independent of cultural heritage, for, if part happens to be true (certainly not all, as most of the moral heritage is religious), such as not randomly killing people or going on world conquering crusades for that matter, there must be some reason that it's actually true other than simply being received wisdom (especially if one is rejecting the largest part of received wisdom globally, which as you note is to be religious of one kind or another).
If your moral ideas do not come from a cultural heritage at all, then from where do they come and why are they true?
For, to critique moral systems, religious or otherwise, on the outcomes of those systems, either historically or contemporaneously (putting aside the issue of what actions genuinely follow form those systems--i.e. who's really a true adherent), one requires a moral system to make those judgements about those outcomes.
Moral system A is bad because people B who believe system A do bad things, requires a moral system C in which to demonstrate those are bad things. "Skeptics", who say there is no moral system they accept, commit the most base fallacy by then going around claiming anyone's dong anything bad at all. From a morally neutral system, all outcomes at all times are likewise morally neutral. If we evaluate the doings of lions from an internally morally neutral system such as science (it is not externally morally neutral as to do science requires a moral system in which fabricating evidence is bad), then whether the lion catches the gazelle or then the gazelle manages to escape are both likewise morally neutral outcomes. From such a morally neutral perspective, whether a religion conquers and subjugates the entire world in a violent theocracy is a morally neutral outcome, same as the lion catching the gazelle (it happened, we can see the reasons why, same as we can see the reasons why it might not have happened, but it did).
I don't need to prove it to you. I have proved it to myself, which is enough. If solipsism is true, I am the only entity that exists. Everyone else is just hallucinations or dreams or illusions or simulations, etc. Please note, I am not a solipsist. There are lots of other things that I can prove. For example, if you behead a chicken, the chicken dies. It happens every time a chicken is beheaded. The same is true for beheading other organisms, such as humans. However, if you behead a planarian flatworm, he or she does not die.
Quoting boethius
I have a lot of problems with the history of living things. At least 99.9% of all the species to evolve so far on Earth are already extinct. There is so much suffering, injustice, and death. Life is horrific, and I wish I had never existed in a world like this.
Quoting boethius
At the subatomic level, reality is chaotic. Things happen randomly. However, at the macroscopic level, quantum chaos averages out due to quantum decoherence.
Existence is ordered in an indifferent way. That's why there is nothing fair about who lives how and who dies how. Here is a list of **biological design flaws** in humans and other species that strongly suggest **evolution through natural selection**, rather than **intelligent design**. These features reflect evolutionary compromises, historical constraints, and trial-and-error processes typical of evolution:
---
### **Design Flaws in Humans**
#### 1. **The Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve**
* **What it is:** A nerve that runs from the brain to the larynx but loops down into the chest first, detouring around the aorta.
* **Why it's a flaw:** In humans and other organisms, the detour is wasteful. In giraffes, it's over 5 meters longer than necessary.
* **Evolutionary explanation:** Inherited from fish ancestors, where this route was more direct. Evolution could not rewire it completely without disrupting function.
#### 2. **Human Birth Canal and Bipedalism Conflict**
* **What it is:** A narrow pelvis for upright walking makes childbirth difficult and dangerous.
* **Why it's a flaw:** High risk of obstructed labour, especially with large-brained babies.
* **Evolutionary compromise:** Upright walking (bipedalism) came with a cost to birthing ease.
#### 3. **Wisdom Teeth**
* **What they are:** Extra molars that often dont fit in the modern human jaw.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Commonly causes crowding, impaction, and infections.
* **Evolutionary explanation:** Our ancestors had larger jaws and more abrasive diets, which wore teeth down and made space for third molars.
#### 4. **Blind Spot in the Eye**
* **What it is:** A spot on the retina with no photoreceptors where the optic nerve exits the eye.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Vertebrate eyes are "wired backwards," so light must pass through nerve layers before reaching receptors.
* **Contrast:** Octopus eyes evolved separately and dont have this problem their nerves are behind the retina.
#### 5. **Back Pain and Spinal Issues**
* **What it is:** Chronic back pain and slipped discs are common.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Our spine evolved from four-legged ancestors and struggles with vertical weight-bearing.
* **Evolutionary compromise:** Bipedalism is recent in evolutionary terms, and our skeletons are imperfectly adapted.
#### 6. **Appendix**
* **What it is:** A vestigial organ, once useful for digesting cellulose.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Can become inflamed or rupture (appendicitis) without much function today.
* **Evolutionary holdover:** Remnant from herbivorous ancestors.
#### 7. **Testicles Outside the Body**
* **What it is:** Human testicles descend into a vulnerable scrotum.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Increases risk of injury.
* **Evolutionary reason:** Sperm production needs cooler temperatures than core body heat.
#### 8. **Choking Hazard in the Throat**
* **What it is:** Humans share a passage for food and air.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Increases risk of choking to death.
* **Evolutionary constraint:** Arises from the descent of the larynx to allow complex speech.
#### 9. **Poorly Designed Knees**
* **What it is:** Prone to injury (e.g. torn ACL).
* **Why it's a flaw:** Knees evolved for quadrupedal locomotion and are not well adapted to the torque of upright walking and running.
#### 10. **Menstrual Cycle Wastefulness**
* **What it is:** Shedding of the uterine lining if fertilisation does not occur.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Energetically costly and causes discomfort or anemia.
* **Not all mammals menstruate:** Most reabsorb the lining instead.
---
### **Design Flaws in Other Species**
#### 1. **Flatfish Eye Migration**
* **What it is:** Both eyes end up on one side of the body.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Awkward and inefficient anatomy reflecting a patchwork adaptation.
* **Evolutionary explanation:** Adapted from symmetrical fish ancestors to lie flat on the ocean floor.
#### 2. **Panda's "Thumb"**
* **What it is:** A modified wrist bone used to grasp bamboo.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Far less efficient than a true opposable thumb.
* **Evolutionary compromise:** Makeshift adaptation rather than a well-planned structure.
#### 3. **Giraffes Long Neck with Same Number of Vertebrae**
* **What it is:** Despite its neck length, the giraffe has only 7 cervical vertebrae.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Limits flexibility and increases risk of injury.
* **Evolutionary constraint:** Most mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae, and changes are highly constrained developmentally.
#### 4. **Flightless Wings in Birds**
* **Examples:** Ostriches, emus, kiwis.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Waste of resources for animals that dont fly.
* **Evolutionary vestiges:** Wings are leftover structures from flying ancestors.
#### 5. **Male Seagull Mating Error**
* **What it is:** Male seagulls sometimes try to mate with anything that looks like a female, even dead ones.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Behavioral overgeneralization due to evolutionary pressure to reproduce quickly.
* **Not intelligent behavior:** Just evolutionary instincts gone awry.
#### 6. **Cetacean Respiratory Limitation**
* **What it is:** Whales and dolphins must consciously surface to breathe.
* **Why it's a flaw:** They can drown if unconscious (e.g., during sleep or entanglement).
* **Evolutionary constraint:** Ancestors were land mammals; complete aquatic adaptation remains imperfect.
---
### Why These Flaws Matter
If humans and other species were designed by an all-powerful, intelligent designer, wed expect **optimal, elegant, and efficient systems**. Instead, we observe:
* **Redundancy**
* **Vestigial structures**
* **Inefficiencies**
* **Developmental constraints**
* **Painful trade-offs**
These are consistent with **natural selection**, which works by **modifying existing structures**, not by designing from scratch.
Quoting boethius
Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil. Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, 1949.
Joshua 10:1214, Bible (New International Version)
On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.
So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies...
There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a human being. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!
Making the Sun and the Moon stand still so that God's followers can murder more people is not loving. Why is there no record outside the Bible of the Sun and the Moon being still? Lots of people in many places on Earth had invented written languages at that time. Could it be because it is fiction? I am convinced that it is fiction.
The Bible, particularly the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), contains several verses in which God is described as commanding the complete destruction of entire peoples actions that meet the definition of genocide: *the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.* Below is a list of such verses, mostly from the books of *Deuteronomy, **Joshua, **Numbers, and **1 Samuel*.
---
### *1. Deuteronomy 7:12*
> "When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations... you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy."
> * Commands total destruction of seven nations*
---
### *2. Deuteronomy 20:1617*
> "However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites as the LORD your God has commanded you."
> * Commands killing of *everything that breathes**
---
### *3. Numbers 31:1718*
> "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
> * Massacre of Midianites; only virgin girls spared as captives*
---
### *4. 1 Samuel 15:23*
> "This is what the LORD Almighty says: I will punish the Amalekites... Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
> * Explicit command to kill *children and infants**
---
### *5. Joshua 6:21*
> "They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys."
> * Jericho: all inhabitants slaughtered*
---
### *6. Joshua 10:40*
> "So Joshua subdued the whole region... He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded."
> * Genocidal conquest of the entire southern region*
---
### *7. Joshua 11:1112*
> "Everyone in it they put to the sword. They totally destroyed them, not sparing anyone that breathed, and he burned Hazor itself."
> * Northern campaign led by Joshua*
---
### *8. Deuteronomy 2:3335*
> "The LORD our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army... We completely destroyed them."
> * Refers to Sihon the Amorite king and his people*
---
### *9. Judges 20:48*
> "The men of Israel went back to Benjamin and put all the towns to the sword, including the animals and everything else they found. All the towns they came across they set on fire."
> * Near total destruction of the tribe of Benjamin*
The Bible contains multiple verses that regulate, endorse, or command various forms of *slavery, including **chattel slavery* and *sex slavery. These appear primarily in the **Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)*
---
## *GENERAL SLAVERY IN THE BIBLE*
### *Leviticus 25:4446 (NIV)*
> Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you... You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.
> * Endorses chattel slavery of foreigners as permanent property.*
---
### *Exodus 21:26*
> If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free... But if the servant declares, I love my master... then his master... shall pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.
> * Allows indefinite enslavement of Hebrews who choose to stay.*
---
### *Exodus 21:2021*
> Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies... But if the slave recovers after a day or two, the owner is not to be punished, since the slave is their property.
> * Permits beating slaves nearly to death without punishment.*
---
### *Deuteronomy 20:1011, 14*
> When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace... If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you.
> * Allows the enslavement of conquered peoples.*
---
### *Ephesians 6:5 (New Testament)*
> Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
> * Reinforces obedience to masters without calling for abolition.*
---
## ? *SEXUAL SLAVERY*
### *Numbers 31:1718*
> Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
> * After war with the Midianites, virgin girls are taken for male use; widely interpreted as sexual slavery.*
---
### *Deuteronomy 21:1014*
> When you go to war... and you see a beautiful woman among the captives and become enamoured with her, you may take her as your wife... If you are not pleased with her, let her go... you must not sell or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.
> * Allows war captors to forcefully take women as wives.*
*Genesis 2:16,17*
And the Lord God commanded the man, You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.
Gods Warning vs. What Happened
What was said: In Genesis 2:17, God tells Adam that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would result in death on that day.
What happened: Adam and Eve eat the fruit, but they do not die that day. Instead, they are:
Banished from Eden.
Cursed with suffering (painful childbirth, hard labor, mortality).
Told they would return to dust implying eventual death, not immediate.
Wider Fallout: Collective Punishment
Not only were Adam and Eve punished, but all of humanity and even non-human animals suffer and die.
Eves punishment was extended to all women, with pain in childbirth and submission to men (Genesis 3:16).
Adams punishment led to a cursed ground, requiring hard labor to survive (Genesis 3:1719).
This presents God as:
Inflicting intergenerational punishment.
Imposing suffering on billions (including animals) for a single act of disobedience.
Commanding reproduction (Genesis 1:28, Genesis 3:16) even though childbirth is cursed a painful contradiction.
Deception: God said one thing (immediate death) but did something else.
Cruelty: Instead of just death, the punishment was lifelong and multigenerational suffering.
Injustice: All descendants and other species suffer for the mistake of two.
From an ethical perspective, punishing innocents for the actions of others especially when omniscient and omnipotent is morally wrong.
The Bible is the most self-contradictory, inaccurate, cruel, and unjust book I have ever read.
The Quran is the second-most self-contradictory, inaccurate, cruel, and unjust book I have ever read.
Please see https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com which goes through the Bible, the Quran, the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita and points out the various issues with them. If you are short on time, please see https://www.evilbible.com which goes through the evil verses in the Bible.
Quoting boethius
My morality comes from empathy, compassion, evidence and reason. Causing deliberate harm to living things is evil, and saving and improving lives is good.
Which is what I mean by not really possible to prove anything, as in the context I make that statement you're asking a proof from me, so proof in the context refers to proving it to you, which, seems we agree, is not really possible.
It is always possible to maintain a standard of doubt that is insurmountable.
For proofs to be socialized, i.e. agreed to as proofs by multiple parties, there must be prior agreement on premises and a framework of proof in which proofs become possible; i.e. there must be agreement on a standard of doubt that is possible for parties to overcome. For example, you can prove to me it's raining outside if I'm willing to accept time stamped video evidence or then going outside and seeing and feeling for myself the rain; but if I doubt your video evidence is authentic or then I doubt my own senses as maybe hallucinating both you and the rain, then it's not possible to prove to me anything.
So, in the context of you asking me for proof, I can't really prove anything if there's not existing agreement on logic and evidence you would find acceptable.
Quoting Truth Seeker
There is no chaos at the subatomic level.
Quantum mechanics is linear, for there to be chaos requires non-linear equations.
What is not deterministic is observation of quantum events, but that's not chaos.
However, this has nothing to do with fundamental chaos. You can have a system that has order (laws and continuity and predictability and so on) that has chaotic phenomena inside it, such as turbulence, but that is not fundamental chaos. By fundamental chaos I mean no rules of any kind, no structure of any kind, everything is fluke, the "sensation" of coherence but random hallucinations bound to occur in a sufficiently large chaos for a sufficient amount of time (and even time is not a structured order on this chaos).
Quoting Truth Seeker
If existence is ordered in a fundamentally indifferent way, then it would follow that existence is indifferent to there being any order over chaos.
If we simply ignore that problem as it's inconvenient, if existence as a whole is indifferent why would it follow that parts of the whole would not likewise be indifferent and so there is no judgements to make about anything. Existence isn't good or bad and therefore no part of existence is good or bad.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Ontology is not reducible to Christianity.
That's why I spent some time explaining that historical explanations for natural phenomena you don't accept, like river gods, don't imply anything about the underlying question about the phenomena.
You don't accept ancient religious answers to ontological questions, fine, doesn't mean those ontological questions can no longer be discussed or then the opposite is therefore true.
For example, in mathematics (a context in which there is agreed criteria for proofs), things are erroneously proven all the time, doesn't mean the opposite is therefore proven due to these mistaken proofs. Many people over the years have believed they've proven all sorts of things, but turns out they were wrong. These mistaken efforts don't resolve whether conjectures can be proven true in the future or not. Why would they?
Even if a tour of religions was relevant to the fundamental ontological questions, you'd need a tour of all religions, not just a couple.
Key word reason. What's the reason empathy is a good quality to have in the first place? And assuming it is good, how does empathy translate into decisions in complex situations?
For example, without an ethical framework to begin with, why not empathize with the perpetrator of an alleged crime and their desire to get what they want? Who's to say it's a crime and therefore empathy should therefore be with the victims? If there's no good reason it really should be a crime, then the real crime is a false accusation and empathy should be with the alleged perpetrator.
If you have the feelings you do due to evolution, and therefore evolution is good because your feelings are good, well what exactly is the next step in evolution? Anyone can argue pretty much anything new (from random killing to slicing up brains to "upload" the neural pattern into a computer) is the "next step" in evolution. Evolution just helps explain how we got here, anything whatsoever can happen and then evolution explains again why we're now in a situation of that thing having happened; at no point does evolution imply anything should have happened that didn't, or should not have happened but it did.
More fundamentally, why would an indifferent cosmos bestow upon you the right feelings and virtuous character, when you see plainly for yourself it is lacking in so many others or you would not be addressing the problems that concern you?
Where are we again?
Quoting Truth Seeker
and also:
Quoting Truth Seeker
Yet in this indifferent and unfair existence where evil prospers, you happen to have the right and good feelings, right and good reasoning, that imbue you with the correct morality?
So many others are in the wrong and don't know it, mistake themselves to do good when they do not, yet you are in the right and do know it and make no mistakes in your self-evaluation?
I agree.
Quoting boethius
By chaos, I meant non-deterministic. I am not a physicist, so thank you for explaining the difference.Quoting boethius
I didn't know that. Can you please give me an example?
Quoting boethius
Pain is painful. That's why I don't want to be in pain. In the same way, other sentient beings don't want to be in pain. If I see someone being tortured by someone else, I would intervene to protect the victim of torture from the perpetrator of torture because torture is painful for the victim.
Quoting boethius
There is already an ethical framework. Causing deliberate harm to living things is evil, and saving and improving lives is good. It's my ethical framework. This is why I am a vegan egalitarian. This is why I save and improve lives. A crime is called a crime because it causes harm.
Quoting boethius
I have examined the top twelve religions on Earth. My favourite is Jainism, but I am not a Jain because Jains believe in souls and karma and the reincarnation of souls according to karma. I see no evidence for the existence of souls, karma and reincarnation.
Quoting boethius
Very few people are vegan egalitarians. Most humans don't agree with me, or else most humans would be vegan egalitarians. I am convinced that being a vegan egalitarian is the best way to live. Please see https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan if you want to know more about the reasons for going vegan. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism if you want to know more about egalitarianism.
People propose proofs of mathematical conjectures all the time, both experts and amateurs, that turn out to be wrong.
I'm not sure what the most erroneously proven conjecture (i.e. someone believing they've proven it but the proof is wrong), but some famous ones that get claimed to be proven on a regular basis are Riemann hypothesis, the twin primes conjecture, Goldbach's conjecture, Collatz conjecture, P=NP, and other Millennium Prize Problems not listed there also get significant attention (but some are quite technical so don't get much attention from amateurs, who generate the most wrong proofs).
Probably the theorem with the most wrong proofs is Fermats Last Theorem, and so a good example of a huge number of wrong proofs not providing any actual evidence the opposite is true and no proof is possible, as Fermats Last Theorem has since been proven.
As interestingly, there are plenty of conjectures that nearly all mathematicians believed must certainly be true, but later proven to be false. So in terms of positing inherent knowledge about anything, these examples are cause for some doubt.
In researching some examples, there's a super good answer to exaclty this question by a one KConrad on stalk overflow:
Quoting KConrad answering Widely accepted mathematical results that were later shown to be wrong?, Math Overflow
There's links and also notation that does not copy over, but I hope this is a good example of the process of actually proving things, even in a context where the conditions and methods of proof are agreed, is not so easy.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Pain is not sufficient to build a moral theory. The gazelle does not want to experience the pain of being eaten by the lion, is therefore the lion "immoral" for causing pain or we humans who could "arrest all liens" immoral to allow these wanton lion attacks to continue?
Avoiding pain is simply a description of what organism generally do, but that does not establish a moral theory. If we do not stop the lion, if predation is natural between animals, then why stop human predators preying on other humans? Lions don't only kill gazelles but also other lions in struggles for power, why would it be any less natural for humans to likewise kill both gazelles for food and other humans for power?
One requires a moral theory to be able to categorize some pain as good and bad. Exercize is painful but we categorize it as good pain. Gazelles being eaten by lions is painful but we categorize it as morally neutral pain; lion is just being a lion, she can't do other than pursue her nature.
So there are these fundamental issues, but even if a moral theory is presented that pain is a sensation that really is "bad" and should be minimized, and why it's different between humans and doesn't apply to animals and so on, there is an even bigger problem.
For society to function requires people going straight into pain (a firefighter into a burning building) and risking their lives for the good of the community. It is this leap, avoiding pain for oneself to avoiding pain for the community as a whole over time and even accepting great pain to oneself to achieve that, is not resolved by the principle of simply avoiding pain nor simply empathizing with the pain of others.
Quoting Truth Seeker
But where does this ethical framework come from? And why is it superior to others who likewise claim to have an ethical framework which proves what they do is good and what others do is bad?
And again, a crime causes harm ... but if the crime is not actually justified then the real harm is a false accusation. So without actually knowing what is really a crime then any alleged criminal circumstance the alleged perpetrator could be the real victim and the purported victim the real perpetrator. Plenty of things were crimes in the past that are no longer crimes and the new view is that the alleged perpetrators (such as being gay) were the actual victims for being accused falsely. How do we actually know anything is a crime?
The basic problem is that harm requires a moral framework to determine, so you cannot argue something is bad because it is harmful without first having a theory that identifies harm.
A situation of crime is (for the most part) someone claiming to be harmed and therefore it's a crime due to the harm. But in nearly all cases the harm is already agreed by society to be harmful; to not be in a loop, the question of why society believes it to be harmful and is society correct about that, needs to be demonstrated.
Worse, most feelings of harm are due to society believing they are harmful, and in a society in which the action is not viewed as bad people often do not experience the harm. Vikings thought is was perfectly acceptable to challenge anyone to the death and then kill them at essentially anytime; vikings did not experience these fights to the death as some sort of social harm but in fact necessary for the health of viking society.
Quoting Truth Seeker
There's literally thousands if not tens of thousands of religions. If disproving religions to your satisfaction was relevant to prove anything about the fundamental ontological questions you would need to go through every single known religion. You can't just do 12 and then generalize from that small sample.
However, my basic point is doing so, even addressing all religions everywhere, doesn't prove anything about the ontological questions religions addressed in the past without modern understanding or tools.
Quoting Truth Seeker
But the religious people you have issue with also claim to be convinced their way is the best way to live.
How do you actually know you're not making some similar mistake in reasoning just about different things. Religious people too point to all the bad done by atheists and also other religions to justify their religion.
So knowing is the key problem. But if existence is filled with evil, then on average one would expect to fall in the category of evil people who mistakingly believe they are good.
Quoting boethius
Just because something occurs in nature, it doesn't make it ethical. Lions are not ethical, but lions don't have the capacity to consider the moral implications of their choices. People can consider the moral and legal implications of their actions. Humans are moral agents, but lions are not because we have the capacity to think about the moral dimensions of our actions.
Quoting boethius
I am all too aware that there are billions of people who are convinced that their religion is the best way to live. I am a vegan, egalitarian, agnostic atheist. For them, my position is wrong. Just as for me, their position is wrong. "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare.
Yes, but we are also in nature. A moral theory must demonstrate why what happens in nature (and really anything we could possibly do at all would be "happening in nature") should not happen in human affairs. What makes us different from lions that their hunting, even of their own kind, is fine and natural, but that does not apply to us?
Quoting Truth Seeker
But we can also consider the implications of the actions of lions and stop them. And, as we just established, we don't really know what anyone else is really thinking or knows, perhaps lions also consider the consequences of their actions or then the vast majority of humanity does not and are the same as lions. For example, perhaps the lion considers the consequence of killing the gazelle is that she will be able to eat. Perhaps most humans do not consider the consequence of their actions of wanton consumption that others elsewhere will not eat.
Quoting Truth Seeker
But this is the crux of the problem. What makes us moral agents? Simply being able to consider consequences does not in itself provide any moral information.
A theory is required to go from the consideration of consequences, which I agree is the start of the problem, to what consequences are actually good and bad.
Nearly all lay moralizing is simply the discussion of consequences with the assumption that everyone already agrees on how to judge the outcomes. It's not really a moral debate but rather a strategic debate on how to achieve shared objectives.
To do moral philosophy is to ask how those outcomes are known to be good or bad in the first place.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Would it not be good to find out who is correct?
Quoting Truth Seeker
This is exactly my point a few comments ago, that it is moral betrayal that really cause suffering. Pain, even very intense, that has no moral element, just an accident, can cause very little suffering over the long term, whereas moral betrayals that involve no physical pain at all can cause life long suffering.
The point of really understanding that, is that simply avoiding suffering cannot be the basis of a moral theory, as it is moral beliefs derived from moral theories we inherent or adopt that gives rise to the possibility of suffering.
It's not ethical, but it is what happens. Just as people kill people. That's not ethical either.
1. Direct Human-Caused Deaths (War, Violence, Homicide)
Prehistoric (~300,000 BCE to ~5,000 BCE):
Anthropologists estimate that about 1015% of prehistoric deaths were due to interpersonal violence.
Population estimates vary, but let's conservatively estimate:
Average global population over this period: ~110 million.
Total deaths: ~45 billion over 295,000 years.
Violent deaths: ~400700 million.
Historic Period (~5,000 BCE to 2024 CE):
Known wars, genocides, and violence (including colonialism, slavery, revolutions):
Estimated 1 billion+ deaths, including:
World Wars: ~100 million
Genocides (e.g., Holocaust, Rwanda, Armenia): ~30+ million
Colonial violence and enslavement: hundreds of millions
Murder and interpersonal violence: hundreds of millions
? Total direct human-caused deaths estimate: ~1.5 to 2 billion
2. Indirect Human-Caused Deaths (Famine, Exploitation, Disaster Neglect)
Famine, disease, and natural disasters are sometimes natural in origin, but often intensified by human actions:
Bengal Famine (1770): ~10 million deaths, worsened by British East India Company policies.
Irish Famine (184549): ~1 million deaths, made worse by British economic choices.
Soviet & Chinese famines (Stalin, Mao): tens of millions of deaths from political decisions.
Modern disasters (e.g. Hurricane Katrina, COVID-19): responses often slow, unjust, or corrupt, leading to avoidable deaths.
Estimating conservatively:
Over the last 10,000 years, at least 24 billion deaths from famine, disease, and disaster have human negligence, cruelty, or mismanagement as significant causes.
? Total indirect human-caused deaths estimate: ~2 to 4 billion
Grand Total Estimate (Direct + Indirect):
~3.5 to 6 billion humans have likely died due to the actions or inactions of other humans over the past 300,000 years.
Quoting boethius
The plants, the gazelles, the lions and the humans are being selfish. All autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites are selfish. Being selfish is evil. We should look after the interests of everyone. That's why I want all living things to be energy beings who can live forever without consuming anything.
Quoting boethius
For me, killing living things and harming living things is bad. Saving and improving lives is good. What about you?
Quoting boethius
I already know what outcomes are good and what outcomes are bad. Life, health and happiness are good. Suffering, illness and death are evil. Egalitarianism and veganism, and equitable sharing of resources are good. Selfishness and omnivorousness are evil. I know these things from my experiences and from reflecting on my experiences. What about you? How do you know what is good and what is evil?
Quoting boethius
I agree.
Apologies for the delay, I have been fairly ill and moral philosophy was beyond my ability to focus on for the last few days.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Not-ethical can be interpreted as absence of ethical consideration (such as whether the moon is being ethical or not in orbiting the sun; it's just not an ethical question), but can also be used to mean bad.
Not intentional, but switching the meanings in the same context is the bait-and-switch fallacy.
When you say the lion is "not ethical" the meaning is clearly that there is no moral evaluation as the lion is not a moral agent.
However, when switching the consideration of people killing people, the meaning of not ethical is not a lack of moral evaluation but to mean the opposite of good, as in bad.
Quoting Truth Seeker
We agree that lot's of bad things have happened to people and lot's of people have done bad things.
However, a moral theory cannot be based on moral-recoil, as in an emotional reaction, at listing bad things.
For, you only have an emotional reaction to bad things because you already have a moral theory, whether explicit or implicit, in which those things are evaluated as bad and thus something to feel bad about.
This is what makes moral philosophy so difficult, because everything easily goes in emotional driven circles that are not arguments but simply beg the question. For example, an emotional reaction to murder does not, in itself, support a moral argument that murder is wrong.
The emotional reaction to wrong is due to the pre-existing belief that those things are wrong. In cultures where beliefs are different, the emotional reactions are different.
A classic example is that our Western culture has a strong emotional reaction to female genital mutilation and doing so to a child, or anyone, in the West is a crime. However, mutilate the genitals of boys to your hearts content and a whole army will defend your practice as actually a good thing. If male genital mutilation was not normalized, the reaction would be the same as for female genital mutilation. If people argued that the male genital mutilation was 'just a bit' and that why female mutilation is still bad as it's greater, well people would just respond that you could obviously mutilate female genitals just a bit too so the effect is exactly comparable, would that then be ok? Obviously the double standard cannot be maintained in any rational discourse. The moral recoil in the West concerning female genital mutilation and not male genital mutilation is because of the pre-existing belief that one is ok and the other not, due to normalization of one and not the other. Given this obvious history, the emotional reaction is obviously not a justification to condemn female genital mutilation and not male genital mutilation.
One would need an argument independent of emotional reaction to evaluate all genital mutilation as bad, or then justify male genital mutilation as ok and female not or then both are fine. In order to make any such moral evaluation at all one requires in turn a moral theory that can be used identify good and bad things.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I thought we just agreed above that things like lions hunting are not ethical questions. But if you meant above that you meant not ethical in the same way, that lions are bad (and therefore should be stopped?) please clarify.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Lions are not selfish, they will share the hunt with their pride. Plants will share their pollen with bees and other pollinators, and their fruit with all sorts of creatures and their leaves with the humus organisms and their sugars with symbiotic mycelium. Gazelles will look out for each other and feed their young.
It's not clear how selfish can apply to other organisms.
For humans, selfish refers to seeking gain at the expense of others, with a strong connotation that it is in a way that's not mutually beneficial; however, other species have evolved to survive as a species in balance with their native ecosystems (and if they invade a new ecosystem, by natural processes or artificial processes, they will co-evolve back into balance after some time).
Of course, this statement about other species is with the caveat of as far as we know no other species deliberates on choices in a moral sense thus making them also moral agents. As far as we know all other species only make decisions of a tactical and strategic nature to achieve innate objectives (stay alive, protect the group if they're a social species, try to mate, nurture young etc. with any exceptions being due to having different innate objectives happen to anyways be suitable to the ultimate evolutionary pressure of perpetuation of the species, and any anomalies evolutionary experiments due to natural variation exploring by trial and error differences that maybe advantageous in new conditions).
Quoting Truth Seeker
Again, I'm not quite sure what the purpose this hypothetical comparison serves you.
Moral philosophy is about making decisions and so a comparison that is not attainable cannot be used to make decisions in the world we actually inhabit.
To summarize, you do not really present a moral theory. Even if I agree with many of your principles, the moralizing method of simply boldly stating principles and then feeling that "moral strength" is in the boldly stating things, and that evaluating the principles critically would therefore be the opposite of boldly stating things and so moral weakness, is the moral method of the majority of people, at least in the Wes, and so why discourse of real moral differences in Western society mostly reduce to each side simply shouting at each other (to reassure themselves that they are stating their principles the boldest, and thus most morally).
However, once it is realized that emotional reactions are caused by moral beliefs, as you note above "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so," then such a method must be abandoned.
How the bold statement morality self reinforces is that the starting assumption is being right without the need of explaining or justifying anything, and so critical evaluation is a process that either results in justifying the beliefs one already has, and so is redundant, or a change to one's belief.
However, if the starting assumption is one is for sure 100% right, then the prospect of changing one's belief is clearly 100% bad and must be avoided at all costs.
Therefore, if one assumes one must be right without needing to "know" anything about it, then the process of knowledge is a bad thing that must be avoided as it can only confirm what one already knows or then result in a change of belief that, according to ones current beliefs, are correct and therefore must never change.
The result is the continuous assertion of knowledge without any justifying argument that would justify the belief really does represent true knowledge.
This is what most people do, at least in the West, and it is usually impossible to explain to them their psychological self-reinforcing process that is structured to avoid critical scrutiny that would lead to knowledge.
In short, the modus operandi of Western culture is that doubt about one's moral moral beliefs are bad (because they risk only changing what is good) and therefore anyone creating doubts is also bad, and the only good reaction to a challenge to one's beliefs is simply stating even more boldly what those beliefs are and eschewing even more clearly the very notion some argument or justification is needed (and if one does boldly assert arguments and justifications, then in turn avoiding any critical scrutiny of those justifications and arguments).
However, the basic process of knowledge is subjecting assertions to critical scrutiny.
Why such a process is relevant to this particular conversation is that you assert a series of moral principles without justification. You simply define things as good or evil and then simply list things to have an emotional reaction to based on your definition, proposing the latter exercise justifies the former.
You're initial question is that you haven't achieved your objectives, of which a reasonable formulation of your question would be how to be more effective in striving towards, with others, your objectives .... but also how to be sure your objectives are the right ones in the first place?
And both questions go together, as if you want to be more effective (which is the only rational disposition given any objective at all) then you require a theory that can allow optimizing your actions with respect to different aspects of what must be one single objective that is required to make evaluations between different uses of time and resources available.
For example, stating all life should be converted to energy beings is not a unifying principle, even if it were preferable in abstract comparisons, as there is no way to achieve the goal.
The protection of life on the planet, including its current dynamic, on the other hand, can be a unifying principle that resolves strategic and tactical considerations. Of course, such a principle would need itself justification, but it is an example of a highest objective which can in turn both justify secondary objectives (as strategically sound) as well as resolve what would otherwise be competing principles.
I am so sorry that you were ill. I am glad you are feeling better now. In my previous post, I asked: How do you know what is good and what is evil? You didn't answer. Please answer this question. Thank you.
Autotrophs consume nutrients and compete with each other for nutrients. Herbivores consume plants, to the detriment of the plants. Carnivores consume other sentient organisms, to the detriment of the organisms they kill. Omnivores consume everything, to the detriment of plants and sentient organisms. Parasites consume nutrients from the hosts, to the detriment of the hosts. That's why I have called them selfish. Lions may share their meat with other lions - that's just kin selection. They have no problem with killing gazelles. Selfish genes make selfish organisms.
Quoting boethius
It is bad that lions hunt. The whole system of consuming in order to exist is evil. If I could upgrade all living things into energy beings who live forever without consuming anything, I would have done so already.
Thanks for the concern, I seem much better now.
Quoting Truth Seeker
It is mentioned in the previous post as the protection of all life, as an example of a unifying principle; it is also what I happen to believe personally but I was not so clear about it.
It's also in the super long essay linked to previously: https://open.substack.com/pub/eerik/p/the-cromulomicon-the-book-of-croms?r=33um1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Humans are also part of life and so also need care and protecting, it is also mainly through a better society which is the main mechanism to protect life (as humans are the main danger to both other humans and life in general).
The moral foundation being the ethic of searching for truth and so also resolving contradictions, and then the truths found being existence is ordered and good and a long series of other ontological and epistemological considerations to ensure the entire logical structure is coherent and non-empty.
The essay is so long in order to resolve apparent dichotomies such as the choice to continue to read (so what may appear as knowledge maximizing) but letting someone die of thirst; or then, the example considered in the essay simply the most extreme version of the scenario of the choice between continuing to read and the destruction of the entire planet or then dying and the planet not being destroyed.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Here I disagree, if life has value then natural systems, including predation, has value.
If life is evil, it follows oneself is evil, presuming one is alive, and from that it follows that good beliefs and thoughts we would not expect to find in an evil life form, but rather the evil of thinking oneself to be good when one is not.
The logical framework developed in the above essay is that in order to make any decisions at I must assume that I have value and what follows from that is that other humans and life in general also has value, as I am alive and cannot know of any a priori ontological difference with others. I think I'm conscious and a moral agent and assign myself value, and you are similar to me so it is reasonable to assume you also are conscious and are a moral agent and have value. We are both alive and so it stands to reason that if we have value life as a whole has value in addition to anyways depending on life in general to sustain our own life.
Pain and death are apart of life and therefore also have value.
What is evil is causing pain and death to disrespect and destroy life, especially manipulating others to be harmed as that is an additional disrespect and abuse of the truth as well as life; or then to simply be indifferent to our duties to others and to life is not as bad but still definitely evil in this framework.
Immortality of the soul is posited to ensure different decision paths never arrive at the same situation, such as not existing, and therefore be pragmatically equal. That would be a crisis in my framework and so I assume it isn't true.
Thank you for clarifying. In a previous post I had quoted the following:
Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil. Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, 1949.
My goal of saving and improving all lives is supported by the quoted words.
I am sorry but I couldn't finish reading your super-long essay. I am suffering from depression. My concentration and comprehension and thinking are all affected by my depression.
Quoting boethius
Life has value, but predation is against that value. Predation involves prioritising the life of the predator over the life of the prey. This is selfish. This is evil.
Quoting boethius
No, pain and death diminish lives. So, they are to be prevented. I am trying to figure out how to upgrade all living things into immortal energy beings who live forever without consuming anything.
Quoting boethius
I agree that causing pain and death is evil. That's why I am trying to change consumption-based existence to non-consumption-based existence.
Yes, I also didn't emphasize that it's "my unifying principle" as it's a pretty common unifying principle that is ancient, with many variations such as treat others (all life) as you would have them treat you.
My super long essay is my is born from feeling to clarify this principle to myself as well as unify this principle with the more fundamental principle of searching for truth, as presumably if the principle of protecting life is true then one would first need to search for this truth to find it.
So the central question of my deliberation is why is searching for truth and protecting all life the same thing?
For, as mentioned above concerning numerical analysis, we cannot optimize for 2 different factors at the same time; the only exception being that the two factors are both necessary conditions to the same thing and so are never in conflict.
In addition to this, there is the question of why exactly searching for truth and protecting all life are good things in the first place.
Quoting Truth Seeker
No worries but if you want to my position on these matters in detail it is in the super long essay.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I empathize, we live in troubling times, to say the least, and life is being destroyed and disrespected at a truly unimaginable scale, from Palestine to the extinction of species no one's even named yet.
However, if we did not get depressed we would never be motivated to fundamentally change anything.
It is also worth considering that it is only when depressed that it is possible to analyze our own ethical system, as so much in "normal life" is driven by emotional reactions it; so it is only when those emotions are gone that it is possible to think through carefully what exactly is right and wrong in a given situation, and what emotional reactions are justified and what are from social conditioning of one form or another, and most importantly what we may already know we have to do but emotions stand in the way of doing it, for fear of loss or humiliation. For to be depressed and feel nothing is also to fear nothing: a powerful tool for good or for ill.
Quoting Truth Seeker
You may need to reflect deeply on this and also perhaps study life systems in more detail to appreciate how life is and not what you wish it to be.
For predators are not harmful overall to the species they prey upon. Without predation of herbivores, for example, the population would grow exponentially and eat all the food and then die. Predation maintains ecosystem balance.
It is also again a bait-and-switch fallacy to equate a lion hunting a gazelle and our logging old growth forests for furniture as the same thing called "consumption".
A better word for what the lion is doing is nourishment within the cycle of life; there is no "destruction" happening. It is we humans that consume in the destructive sense as what we do is not sustainable and leads to ecosystem collapse.
Definitely we humans should stop consuming the natural world to engage in poisonous follies, but the cycle of energy and atoms in natural processes is not a process of consumption in this destructive sense.
Quoting Truth Seeker
We keep coming back to this.
Earlier you seemed to agree that this was not an achievable objective.
Seems to me an example of the ideal fallacy of describing an ideal system, describing some characteristics of an ideal system and then assuming that it is therefore good to pursue that ideal in the real world.
For example, most would agree that ideally I could fly by simple act of will. Easy to argue that this is a true statement. An example of the ideal fallacy is then reasoning based on this assumption that because it is ideal that I can fly by my own act of will I should jump off a building in pursuit of this will-flying ideal.
The error in reasoning is that pursuing one aspect of an imagined ideal, in this case that I can just jump off buildings and fly away in my ideal world design, entails that approaches the ideal and therefore is good to do.
Other examples would be that "ideally people would not have any property, so therefore I should go and destroy their property," or "ideally all people would be self sufficient, so therefore I should never help anyone to encourage their self sufficiency," or "ideally authority is never wrong and therefore I should always do what authority tells me to do" or "ideally I would simply know things without needing to go through the proposed effort required to gain such knowledge, so therefore I will assume I simply do actually know or then God told me".
Quoting Truth Seeker
In your case, you seem to be reasoning that "ideally people would not have any physical bodies and therefore should be liberated from their bodies".
That, in believing in an indifferent universe with no existence after death, your thoughts become essentially obsessed with creating your own immortality is perhaps reason to not dismiss my arguments for the immortality of the soul as a rational assumption in the above mentioned essay.
Without an indefinite timeline under consideration decisions become arbitrary, is the key problem.
Quoting Truth Seeker
In one comment you say you recognize disembodying not simply everyone but every living thing is not an achievable goal, and in the next comment you are entirely dedicated to achieving it.
If you want to get into the technical reasons it's not a practical objective, quantum information cannot be copied.
You could, at best, destroy the entire planet and build a simulation of the planet, running in a computer that consumes energy, presumably from the sun. There is zero reason to believe any simulation of consciousness would be actually conscious, zero way to test out if it is or if it isn't, zero way to confident any process whatsoever could transfer consciousness into a device of which we have zero confidence contains any consciousness, and also plenty of reasons to believe consciousness cannot be transferred by any available technology due to no-cloning principle of quantum mechanics.
Why the ideal fallacy is a fallacy is that things cannot be considered in isolation; the world is complex and all aspects (or then as much as is feasible) of how the world really is must be taken into account to improve the situation. We can move with each action ever so slightly towards ideals taking into consideration all the knock-on and systemic effects we can, but to simply take one aspect of is imagined to be an ideal situation and then reduce the focus of one's action to one aspect of the ideal and try to make that little aspect happen, has zero logical basis of why it would work and plenty of historical examples of the strategy not working.
This near death experience maybe worthwhile to listen to:
I watched the Near-Death Experience video in full. I think her experience was a hallucination produced by her distressed and frightened brain. I have watched many NDE videos and read many NDE accounts over the years. She talks about how she chose all her life experiences as a conscious soul before she was born.
**A Rational Critique of Pre-Birth Selection of Life Events**
**1. No credible evidence supports it.**
There is no scientific or neurological evidence that consciousness exists before birth, chooses life events, or continues after death. While Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) can be vivid and life-changing, they are likely generated by the brain in extreme conditions, such as oxygen deprivation or neurochemical surges not glimpses into a pre-birth realm.
**2. It can unintentionally blame victims.**
The idea that people choose everything before birth, including trauma, poverty, abuse, disability, or oppression, shifts responsibility away from those who cause harm or perpetuate injustice. It risks implying that:
* A child chose to be abused.
* A person chose to be disabled or ill.
* A population chose to be born to be victims of genocide or famine.
This is not only irrational its deeply unjust.
**3. It can discourage empathy and social action.**
If we believe people chose their suffering during their life before they were born, we may be less motivated to help them. Why fight poverty, stop child abuse, or cure disease if these are lessons that souls selected? This belief can serve as a spiritual bypass numbing our compassion and our ethical responsibility to reduce suffering in the real world.
**4. It contradicts what we know about biology and psychology.**
Our experiences are shaped by **genes**, **environments**, **nutrients**, and **events** not by pre-birth selection of life events by conscious souls. Trauma has measurable, often devastating impacts on the brain, body, and relationships. These are not signs of soul-level "growth opportunities" they are signs of harm needing healing, justice, and compassion.
**5. It appeals to comfort, not truth.**
Believing everything happens for a reason or I chose this can help some people cope. But comfort is not the same as truth. We must be careful not to turn tragedy into theology or fantasy, especially when it denies the lived reality of others.
I don't think this is true. I have considered my ethical system both before being depressed and during depressive episodes. Here is a mood scale:
+5: Total loss of judgement, exorbitant spending, religious delusions or hallucinations.
+4: Lost touch with reality, incoherent, no sleep, paranoid and vindictive, reckless behaviour.
+3: Inflated self-esteem, rapid thoughts and speech, counter-productive simultaneous tasks.
+2: Very productive, everything to excess, charming and talkative.
+1: Self-esteem good, optimistic, sociable and articulate, good decisions and get work done.
0: Mood in balance, no symptoms of depression or mania.
-1: Slight withdrawal from social situations, concentration less than usual, slight agitation.
-2: Feeling of panic and anxiety, concentration difficult and memory poor, some comfort in routine.
-3: Slow thinking, no appetite, need to be alone, sleep excessive or difficult, everything a struggle.
-4: Feeling of hopelessness and guilt, thoughts of suicide, little movement, impossible to do anything.
-5: Endless suicidal thoughts, no way out, no movement, everything is bleak and it will always be like this.
I am at minus two on the mood scale right now.
Quoting boethius
Thank you for your advice. I will do this.
Quoting boethius
It is not an achievable objective. I am still thinking about it because it is so fascinating. I have no way to achieve the objective of upgrading matter-based lifeforms that need to consume air, water and food into energy-based lifeforms that can live forever without consuming anything.
A dragonfly eating a mosquito is evil and selfish? Fuck those guys.
Sure, but you have no proof.
There is no proof she experiences anything at all, as you could be hallucinating this whole conversation along with this video, or then there is a world as we commonly understand it but she just appears to be be conscious but is not actually conscious.
There is no box that you can put some matter inside and it lights up green if it's conscious or red if it's unconscious.
Quoting Truth Seeker
First this seems like AI output which is banned in the forum.
However, the reason I bring this matter up is because you find it entirely reasonable to be working on some sort of technical way to render mortal beings immortal.
Seems to me as plausible a theory in strict scientific terms these near death experiences of what appears to be immortality.
There are reports of the experience by people, which is the basic nature of science. The experiment is repeatable by anyone when they too die.
Absolutely scientific.
Though, to be clear, the reason for my postulating the immortality of the soul is in the process of determining a non-arbitrary logical structure to support a non-empty ethic.
However, since I assume people are conscious and souls are immortal it seems plausible to me that people may indeed have such authentic experience.
Of course, when I have similar experience after painstaking street heroine research nobody seems to assign any spiritual significance to my reports, and yet people dropping far large quantities of opioids on the operating room table is somehow entirely different and credible. Seems a complete double standard to me. (This is a joke, but there is also a point, that there seems to be a lot of opioids involved in the near death reports I've came across)
Quoting Truth Seeker
And you feel there is nothing in the slightest to change?
Quoting Truth Seeker
Doesn't seem a complete crisis yet, hopefully the routine of knowledge seeking will see you through and also that you will find what you're looking for.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Excellent. Life systems are quite remarkable.
Quoting Truth Seeker
But in the meantime there is existing life that in need of protection.
Quoting Truth Seeker
We definitely agree here.
I agree.
Quoting boethius
The more depressed I am, the worse I feel, and the harder it is for me to do things. I have been at minus five on the mood scale many times.
Quoting boethius
Only if solipsism is false and other living things actually exist. I think solipsism is false even though I can't prove it to be false. I am a vegan egalitarian because I care about other sentient organisms. Are you a vegan egalitarian?
Or perhaps the harder it is to keep doing things that led to your depression in the first place, but the easier it becomes to make some radical change.
For example, you say you're devoted to the protection of life. There is a genocide going on right now, perhaps consider connecting with people who are at least protesting it, not to mention all the rest of the madness going on in the US and world right now.
Day-dreaming of technological immortality seems, from my point of view, a distraction.
Not only the technical problems are super amazingly likely to be impossible to solve (no-cloning theorem in quantum mechanics) but it would not be actual immortality but just life extension and you'd be back quite rapidly to being anxious about death even in such a situation. Stars die, blackholes evaporate, but odds are some improbable fatal event would happen far sooner (1 in a million year freak fatal accidents will happen on average once every million years; and the problem with freak accidents is that there's a bunch of them; so even if you pushed your safety systems to 1 in 1 billion year fatal accident rate, you're likely to have 1000 such 1 in a billion year risks, resulting in a likely life-span of a paltry million years).
Even more likely, the mind cannot be maintained in a sane state over long periods of extended-life time (even if that was possible) and madness would be the result; a hellish madness that you may then just have to wait an expected time of one million years for safety systems to fail.
Now, simply assuming consciousness is immortal as we know it exists and there is no experiment that can prove it ever stops existing, or then my approach of requiring indefinite time lines to resolve decisions making so just going ahead and assuming those requirements.
Quoting Truth Seeker
It's of course a faith. But your confidence solipsism isn't true is likewise faith.
Why limit yourself to only adopting this one assumption on faith due to its convenient nature to function, when assuming not only are people conscious but have immortal consciousness is of additional convenience to function?
You might be brought out of your day dreaming stupor and be able to focus on grasping the task at hand.
There is life all around us, if we're responsible to protect rather than destroy life then there is much to do.
Quoting Truth Seeker
I was vegetarian for some years in France and as organic as possible.
However, in moving to Finland I did not feel I was maintaining the same health on a vegetarian diet.
It's not ideal, but I am not against predation and animal husbandry on principle (for the cycle of life arguments above), population density in Finland is low so animal husbandry is not as destructive as elsewhere, and we have far bigger problems to address so I decided is was best to be fully effective. The problem being little grows in Finland so most fruits and vegetables at the supermarket are imported, not so fresh, not so nutritious, super little organic options compared to France, and also really expensive.
At the moment I live far below the poverty line due to being harassed by police with a 4 year investigation as retaliation for reporting super obvious money laundering to police. 4 attorneys told me that's exactly what would happen "if you report money laundering to police, they won' investigate that but will put you under investigation instead and destroy your career" and then recommended I take what they agreed was a bribe to not-report-money laundering. However, my response to these attorneys was "big if true" and we should probably alert society to these alarming facts that seem common knowledge to the bar association that Finnish police and prosecutors and judges are in the money laundering business and not the stopping-money-laundering-business. And I had a lot of interactions with all sorts of attorneys and auditors in the many years before this, and they never sent me a memo titled "by the way, law means absolutely nothing when it comes to money laundering, all anti money laundering compliance is theatre so society thinks the legal community is looking for laundered money, but really what we do here is suck money laundering dick all day long, especially judges in Finland in exchange for being supplied child victims to abuse by organized crime," so what pisses me off the most is it's just false advertisement; no where in the bar association of Finland material does it explain attorneys can advise on what crimes to commit because police, prosecutors and judges in Finland are involved in those same crimes.
Long story short, the only way to survive in Finland on a tight a budget is a substance called "makkara", which is rumoured to contain meet. So, not ideal, but I need to compromise to survive in harsh conditions and continue my battle with police based organized crime here in Finland. In short, if makkara is required to be able to standup to police, prosecutors and judges both helping to launder money and sex traffic children, then that's a compromise I'm willing to make.
I am, in general, not caring much in the slightest about personal legal choices, but rather on political systemic change. The solution to bad laws, such as the true cost of meat not internalized in the purchase-cost, the ethical standards of the industry (which are better in Finland than elsewhere) or then the ethical implications of meeting eating full stop (which certainly has merit), is changing the law and not personal choice. I view "ethical consumerism" as practiced by most ethical consumers a placebo for political engagement and actual responsibility. That being said, it's of systemic importance to show good things are feasible so when ethical consumerism is combined with political action then that's effective, but for the most part corporations promote ethical consumerism to blunt political action; but the factor of primacy to optimize for is political effectiveness.
I first had depression when my younger brother died because of a doctor's error on 9 February 1988.
Quoting boethius
I am so sorry. I didn't know what it was like to live in Finland. I have never been there.
Quoting boethius
That's awful. Finland is supposed to be the second least corrupt country! Please see: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024 I am so sorry this happened to you.
Unfortunate event, and understandably leads to existential crisis.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Political engagement is not reducible to signing petitions.
Things could also be a lot worse. For example, right now we have ecological destruction on a grand scale and also a live streamed genocide and the Western political system enables these terrible things to occur.
However, it could be a lot worse if people universally believed that it was good to destroy ecosystems and also good to carry out genocide.
Instead, most people on the planet do not value ecological destruction and mass torture and murder of children and others, so as terrible as things are we are in a far better position to be strategically than if we were in the position of needing to convince people on the basic principle of the value of nature and human life.
With respect to previous horrifying things like chattel slavery it took literally thousands of years simply to convince most people that this wasn't such a great thing.
There's actually more slavery today, so the world is not very good practically speaking at ensuring basic human dignity as well as for other species, but we have progressed at least to people mostly wishing there wasn't slavery.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Finland has many good aspects too, and I'm a Finnish citizen so I am co-responsible for what's going on here. There's (mostly) clean lakes, and (mostly) free health care and (mostly) free education and (mostly) comfortable and affordable trains.
Quoting Truth Seeker
These statistics are mostly complete bullshit, measuring things like amount of investigations and convictions.
In a thoroughly corrupt system there are no investigations and convictions of major corruption.
I'm literally the "senior supervisory manager" of a 280 million diamond mine energy project for Angola, and I say it's money laundering as the senior manager of the whole thing, backed up with the commissioning papers that place me as senior supervisory manager (along with accounting ledgers, contracts, endless fraudulent statement) and police and prosecutors not only keep deciding there will be no investigation, but keep writing that there's "no evidence" or "no indication" at all. Which is truly mind blowing level of gaslighting.
Even crazier, they place me under investigation for defamation for accusing people of laundering money since 2021, and a defamation investigation is by definition an investigation into the validity of the accusations. An investigation is not into particular accusations but into circumstances and the law, as is common sense, is that an investigation is neutral as to what crimes were committed and by whom (the whole point of an investigation to try to determine what happened), so it doesn't even make any legal sense for police and prosecutors to write down there won't be an investigation into circumstances in which there is already an investigation. The only legally sensible thing to write down is there is already an investigation into the circumstances ... and that's it.
Unfortunately police thought judges were corrupt enough to be able to coverup money laundering (involving judges and prosecutors) and then judges could just put me in the slammer for calling them all corrupt.
Now, Finnish judges, on the whole, are absolutely worthless class of people that I have no respect for, but unfortunately for police (who just make shit up basically), judges do have to deal with actual evidence. Just because police don't collect evidence doesn't matter in a trial; you don't need police to collect evidence you already have and as chair of the corporation for 10 years I don't need any corporate offices to be raided because 99% of everything in the office is in my own personal archive. This is where police being absolute morons works against them. They don't collect evidence, don't accept my repeatedly offering to confess to the crimes I'm suspected of, but that doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist already.
Hence, the only solution their tiny worthless minds could come up with is just having me under investigation until the statutes of limitations expires (so in 2026).
As wild, most normal Finns, as well as Westerners generally, or not alarmed at prosecutors saying there's no evidence at all when there's literally thousands of messages and documents, but my word as supervisory manager of the whole diamond mine energy project should anyways be enough to establish plausible suspicion if I say it's money laundering (including the prosecutor general, because not-investigating, even though there's already an investigation, doesn't resolve anything and you can keep complaining about each decision not to investigate, which requires another review).
However, it's not a sorry-for-me situation, I don't want corrupt police, corrupt prosecutors and corrupt judges running the country into the dirt and trafficking children for organized crime, their political and elite networks.
I am quite pleased that police and prosecutors and judges are stupid enough to try their corrupt moronic bullshit on me, self document their crimes, and just have to accept my accusing them of laundering money (because covering up money laundering is also money laundering) and trafficking children for years without being able to put me in prison.
And it also just disturbs the system a whole archive of obvious serious organized crime just sitting on the public internet for years and nothing done about it.
I'm never even asked to stop accusing people of laundering money in public the time for the investigation to complete. Which would be quite usual in most circumstances: there's an investigation, I should respect that and let the investigation take its course, if there's money laundering then the investigation will reveal that (and the whole purpose of making accusations public is to motivate an investigation).
Why don't police even ask me to stop accusing people in public of laundering money and trafficking children? At any point in their 4 year investigation? Because they know my response will be "how about you make me, you dirty swine money laundering pig" and they don't have a good followup move for that.
You might say that obviously they could just charge me with insulting a police officer. True, but I can defend myself against that charge to that it's not an insult but a perfectly accurate description of corrupt police officers which is trivially easy to prove with the corruption these police have self documented. You might say, "but surely corrupt worthless judges that deserve only to be spit on and then burn in hell will just dismiss your defence" ... but it just gets too complicated as the evidence is all in documents and easy to submit in a trial (it's not some story that could be subject to endless objections and he-says-she-says etc.). Also ... I'd still be calling them corrupt money laundering morons from prison, I can appeal, at least twice, so that doesn't really solve the problem even if they had some way to organize a circus court involving more of their worthless colleagues.
The situation is actually absolutely optimum that after 2 decades of senior management I use my skills to continuously insult, and more importantly expose as criminals, corrupt police, prosecutors, judges and politicians.
It's the best use of my skillset at this particular moment in time, so I'm glad these worthless corrupt morons came to me with their bullshit, because if they didn't they'd still be corrupt worthless morons harming a long list of people (less able to defend themselves), I just wouldn't be able to do much about it.
And anyone who thinks I maybe exaggerating the harm to society of police, prosecutors and judges laundering money:
Quoting report By Paul ODonoghue, Senior Correspondent, AML Intelligence
Europe outperforms the rest of the world in money laundering to GDP by a factor of x2.5!!
Why?
Because nearly all corporate CEO's in Europe would take a 1 million Euro bribe to shut up about money laundering and if they didn't most of the rest would be intimidated by skin head fascist police investigating them for defamation instead of investigating obvious money laundering.
But our choices are either CEO's should stop helping to launder money in Europe or then we all accept things like the corruption of our political class resulting in support for genocide, incompetent government policy, endless harms by fascist worthless police, I spit on their badges and names, (such as sexual violence against children and abetting organized crime) on endless victims.
So, be the change you want to see in the world, is my attitude.
Time for CEO's to stand up, let our voices be heard! We're not going to take it anymore!
Whenever I hear about someone exposing corruption and paying a personal cost for doing so, my reaction is never "oh, no, should have kept his mouth shut" but instead "fuck yeah, fuck up those fascists pricks".
In this particular situation, happens to be my turn to fuck with the fascists, and it's an honour and not a burden.
While Finnish authorities coverup money laundering (including the Prime Minister and President involvement in money laundering and child trafficking), the country drops 12 places in child wellbeing.
Quoting Finland plummets in Unicef child wellbeing ranking
Why does this happen?
Because the country has been captured by organized crime to launder money.
So, if you empathize with police, prosecutors, judges, politicians, corporate board members, auditors and attorneys, and feel just soooo bad at the very possibility that they could ever be held accountable for their own actions, such as participating in organized crime.
Which I get, these people would feel really super terrible if ever held to account for being corrupt morons.
Well, you need to weigh that empathy against literally the entire child population that suffers the consequences of corrupt government authority and policy. Hundreds of thousands of children have a worse life generally, and many die of suicide or drugs or or abuse or human trafficking, and many traumatized for life due to failing systems, all because adults in Finland (hundreds that I've talked to in all sorts of positions, including politicians that might not be part of the money laundering) are comfortable with clear as day evidence authorities are laundering money for organized crime.
For once law enforcement and the judiciary and the highest political offices are laundering money for organized crime, the very next thing that happens is putting corrupt people in charge of all sorts of important positions such as child protection position to use state power to kidnap and traffic children, but mostly just launder as much government money as possible from as many departments as possible into this money laundering network. A syphoning off of tax payer money that results in a worse service to the taxpayer. Again, anyone who pays taxes in Europe should be pretty pissed of authorities, not just in Finland (as authorities in Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, UK, France, Italy, Germany, in the least, are also helping to launder African diamond money) and including the European Public Prosecution Office (who does not followup on clear fraud against the European Central Bank, as they too, and so every European, are defrauded in the scheme on secured loans from the ECB for PPA's that are totally fraudulent I was the only person responsible to deliver the power for those multi-million Euro Power Purchase Agreements, so can 100% tell you that is for sure fraud).
So it's really quite terrible the tolerance of money laundering in society. People keep saying they don't like children being raped ... but are absolutely fine with Europe outperforming the rest of the world by a factor of x2.5 in laundering money that finances the child rape industry. For me I really don't get it, but seems money laundering has been so glamorized by Hollywood that most people think it's sexy and actually a good thing.
Nothing to apologize for. You got to go easy on yourself a bit in terms of what's feasible to accomplish.
The movement to simply convince people slavery was bad and there isn't lower kinds of humans, or then not even humans, took thousands of years. Imagine being an abolitionists (which there were) 2000 years ago!
That our consequence is quite small is precisely what makes our choices moral tests.
For if something is good to do, it is good to do even if the good is only a little, even if the odds are that it will fail, even if the attempt is likely at great personal cost.
It is precisely the difficulty, the consequences far after we're dead, the dependence on others to also make a stand without any guarantee anyone will, that makes the difference between moral decisions and mere wish.
My attitude is to view moral stands as a form of extreme sport. Extreme Jobing I call it.
For, plenty of activities are more dangerous, more difficult, more painful but as long as labeled "extreme sport" then a perfectly normal, sane and laudable activity for people to engage in.
Fucking with fascist police is just as exhilarating as base jumping off a mountain, but the difference is far more people benefit from fucking with fascist police than just the personal experience of jumping a long way.
For example, police had me in their little van hole for a few hours. Got to go the whole way without a seatbelt (which the van hole doesn't have for some reason). Absolutely off the hook adrenaline rush.
You are so brave. I hope you triumph against the corrupt.
It's not bravery. Police can't do much. The can put me in their little van hole. They can put me in jail for a day. They have to give me free food.
It's just unusual for people to take issue with corrupt police. What's normal in our society, unfortunately, is to suck corrupt cop dick, no matter how putridly corrupt, rather than spit on their names, their badges, make it clear that respect is earned and being a corrupt sack of shit sexually harassing girls and trafficking drugs and humans and helping to launder money and coverup the perverted crimes of corrupt elites, is negative a million points on the respect scale.
You present me a cop that has earned some reason to respect him and I'll do. You present me a corrupt little sack of crap why would I respect him just because 99% of people would kiss his badge and suck his nuts.
Simply not choosing to defile myself with a single word of deference to corrupt swine pigs is not bravery, it's just an aversion stinking myself.
What can these little hitler loving skin heads that go around calling themselves officers of the law actually do to me?
In 4 years the answer is consistently nothing. These swine pigs are as useless at covering up their crimes and the crimes of the elites as they are at not-beating-their-spouses (cops statistically beat their spouses the most, the worthless maggots).
Who is actually responsible for covering up the money laundering and would do an actual good job of it?
CEO's! that's who.
Had I taken it upon myself to coverup these illicit financial events, no one would have ever heard about them again. Forever lost to the entropy of corporate email compaction.
I think you did the right thing by blowing the whistle. Well done.
It's self evident that exposing reasonable suspicion of money laundering is the right thing to do.
That our Western society no longer views it as self evident is basically why our society will collapse.
However, there will be survivors and passing on the message that it turned out letting hundreds of billions of dollar of laundered money circulate unimpeded and doing absolutely nothing when clear evidence of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of this money laundering corruption by public officials is exposed, wasn't good for society, and most people respecting money launderers, even in public office, because they have "money" in their criminal job description (and people like money) is not a sound basis for a body politic.
I agree. I despair when I think about all the suffering, injustice, and death. My depression has gotten worse.
Consider the possibility you are in a quite normal situation of your knowledge about problems outpacing your application to those problems.
The only sense of meaning possible once one is aware of how serious our collective problems are, how much suffering evil people cause, is to be finding the best option to address those problems, given ones situation and skillset and general disposition, and then carrying out those options.
Any actual good change to our social systems is incredibly slow and both the risk and the small nature of our individual contributions is precisely why moral problems are problems. If it was easy to make the world a better place just by wishing it so, then that wouldn't really be a moral problem in any meaningful sense. Might be an intellectual problem of what a better world truly is, but any improvement in our understanding we could simply wish immediately to be the case in such a scenario.
Navigating the objective conflict of interest (in terms of consumption of resources and simply staying alive) between oneself and others is what renders moral issues in the world we actually live in so tense and difficult.
Now, you list your objectives in your opening statement. Very far reaching objectives, as ideal as you can formulate.
But as for your actions, you list only things pre-approved by society as a good thing that gets you a pat on the back. Which, insofar as they really are good things, is perfectly fine to do. Society wouldn't last very long if it approved of only good things. A lot of people go around not randomly murdering people and I'd say we all recognize that deserves a little pat on the back.
However, when one recognizes society is sick, as you clearly demonstrate you understand, then doing only that which society celebrates ultimately only reinforces society's profound sickness.
And without acting to find out the real causes for things and call those things by their true names (like the true name of corrupt cops is putrid swine maggoty pigs) then your despair simply measures the extent you participate in and ultimately contribute to a rotten system while knowing it to be the case but fooling yourself about it.
The only way out is a radical leap into the unknown in search of truly effective action that overcomes critical scrutiny.
I do not fuck with fascist police because I am particularly brave, but because taking a bribe to coverup money laundering does not overcome crticial scrutiny.
And yet, nearly every member of our society would pat me on the back for taking the money and demonstrate zero concern for what organized crime is doing to children and other victims all around the globe.
Nearly all in our society would then demonstrate their own sense of bravery by showing they do not care about such consequences and care even less about critical scrutiny of anyones actions, mine or theirs.
However, if people not caring about critical scrutiny is not a decision making foundation that resists critical scrutiny. It is easy to join them or then feel a sense of security in not being criticized, and indeed patted on the back, but most members of our society, but insofar as you yourself can still think still know yourself that your decisions don't overcome critical scrutiny.
The only possible result is negative emotions about oneself for knowing one could subject oneself to critical scrutiny where others don't, but choose not to.
I wouldn't pat you on the back if you had taken the bribe. I think doing the right thing is important.
I am reading a book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgive-Good-Proven-Prescription-Happiness-ebook/dp/B003SE6Y28 that I bought today. I love it and recommend it most highly.
Always excellent to hear anyone against the taking of bribes.
Of course, there are some of us, and attitudes will change generally once the consequences of corruption are lived on a grand scale, which is already happening but I expect things will have to get much, much wore for Western society as a whole to become less tolerant of corruption.
Quoting Truth Seeker
This is great to hear. A good book is generally always excellent for the mind.
I haven't read it, but the title "Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness" definitely seems exactly some wisdom that could be of great help to you right now.
For, what we control are our actions and decisions, and what are the best actions and decisions right now to take is a question that is independent of any grudges or past wrongs (of which there is nothing to do about).
Forgetting what is no longer any use is as important to focusing on what is currently useful in order to sharpen the mind and will towards right actions.
Why, not surprisingly, talk therapy has been shows to be not so effective for a lot of people, and even counter productive, if there is nothing really to do or analyze further about whatever it is.
Of course, if there's something to actually learn from some past circumstance, it's certainly useful to talk about it, but otherwise it's generally more useful to focus on what there is to do now.
Not sure if that's what the book is about, I'm just going with the impression I get from the title, but it does very much seem like a good message to me, and particularly suited to your current reflections.
Please report back when you have completed this literary adventure.
I will. Thank you for your interest.
Finland is the 12th country on Earth in terms of HDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index Therefore, I am surprised by the level of corruption you mentioned. Why is there so much corruption in Finland, despite its high HDI?
I'll write a fuller account later, but the short version is the combination of several factors.
The sort of "zeroth factor" is the context of the global narcotics trade, and now also human and arms trafficking trade, which in turn mostly reduces to racism.
The war on drugs is an obvious failed policy, but it is implemented and maintained because it disproportionally harms black people as tool of control post-segregation. The foundation of a tyrannical system is always criminalizing normal behaviour in the targeted groups requiring systemic repression.
Unfortunately even for white people who like to see this racist system in operation, the long term consequences of drug criminalization is the generation of massive amounts of illicit cash in the global financial system.
The first thing this illicit wealth does is invest in ventures (such as political careers) that are going to protect it and the next thing it does is invest in more criminal schemes that require large upfront capital (i.e. present a barrier to entry, same reason large venture capital firms want to invest in high-capital startups with a large barrier to entry into the space).
For example, the child sex-trafficking (i.e. child rape, torture and murder on an industrial scale) industry could not be booted up organically as it's too expensive to get going. Wheres the drug trade is fuelled by drug use being a natural human activity and so easy to find both users, traffickers and dealers who "believe in it" essentially and also like the money, the same is not true for kidnapping and raping children. You have to pay people a lot more money to go against their nature to traffic in child abuse, so it requires the foundation of an existing criminal organization and high startup costs, for a long list of reasons.
As importantly as needing the criminal capital base to start trafficking child rape slaves on a large scale, law enforcement systems must also already be compromised (thanks to decades of investment in law enforcement careers). There's a strong natural instinct for most humans to protect children, so to organize child abuse on a large scale in a not-corrupt system you're going to be caught. It is essential for law enforcement to be working for the child rapists for such an industry to exist for any length of time. Child rape is not a criminal network that is hard to dismantle by non-corrupt law-enforcement. Whereas for drugs it is a very natural activity and therefore if you arrest 10 drug dealers you'll just have 10 new ones the next day, not so for child rape slave pimping; there is not a near infinite supply of child rape slave pimping and people willing to work at each step in the child-rape supply chain.
Whereas the average sober person turns a blind eye to drug dealing and doesn't narc on the party, the average person does not protect child rapists from accountability.
It's very adverse criminal circumstances that requires a lot of capital to get going and deep penetration of law enforcement and political offices to protect. The core problem of running child rape slaves as an industry (compared to "closed child rape systems" such as in the religious organizations you rightly condemn) is you need clients, therefore it's incredibly easy to compromise these networks with undercover agents. Whereas the demand and essentially moral support for drugs is high enough that police cannot win such a war of attrition against the mafia and cartels, the police would win such a war of attrition against child rape slave pimp networks. Under non-corrupt circumstances it's simply not an easy feat to regularly kidnap children and pimp them out for rape, torture and murder. For such an activity to endure, the protection of police chiefs, police in charge of money laundering, organized crime and specifically the child kidnappings, in addition to the special prosecutors oversee these investigations and judges who oversee them, and finally the politicians that could order special investigations when this corruption comes to light, all must be essentially working directly for organized crime.
Which sounds like "a lot" but could represent literally 20 people in a whole country that need to be compromised for organized crime to run essentially unchecked, so after decades and decades of the corrosive influence of just the "normal" drug money, it is not surprising that the entire organized crime investigation chain can be completely compromised by organized crime.
So above is global circumstance of organized crime which creates the capital and pressure to compromise as many law enforcement systems as possible in which to operate freely.
The conditions particular to Finland are:
First, that low levels of petty and mid-tier corruption attract large scale corruption because wealth is safe also for criminals. Crime bosses don't want to launder their money into unstable countries for the same reason no one else wants to store their wealth there.
Second, if you do launder your money successfully into a developed country with a good international reputation, such as Finland or other nordics, that money will be far less scrutinized when moved on elsewhere internationally (as presumably you don't want to live in Finland but on the Azure coast).
Therefore, stable countries known for low-corruption are extremely attractive for large scale money laundering precisely for those reasons. Successfully laundered money is safe from being stolen by corrupt officials or then endless demands for bribes as well as just safer for basic economic stability reasons (that if you launder your money into a Finnish corporation denominated by Euros, it will more likely retain its value compared to laundering your money into Chile denominated by the Chilean Peso).
These factors are not sufficient in themselves to cause large scale corruption, just explains the "demand" for laundering money through Finland and similar countries, just as a casino having a lot of cash explains why bands of witty and handsome thieves would want to steal said cash.
Just as a casino can have systems preventing all its cash being stolen, so too can countries have systems preventing large scale money laundering.
All of the above explaining essentially the demand by criminal networks to corrupt a country like Finland and for what purpose, mainly the cleaning of money. When money is washed through the Finnish corporate and banking system, it is white as snow. Anyone you might suspect of laundering money in Finland is going to be equally white and in our global system white people are largely immune from investigations started due to reasonable suspicion (their whiteness cancels out most if not all evidence). Some far more tanned banker in Italy is not going to just willy-nilly accuse a white person in a nordic country of suspicious banking activity simply due to evidence. World just doesn't work like that.
So, for the same racism that creates the drug trade in the first place, money is far cleaner when washed through white countries.
The last factors to explain the situation is why Finland is particularly vulnerable to corruption.
The main problem is that Finland has essentially no democratic oversight of law enforcement and the judiciary.
The whole point of democracy is to solve the problem of corruption and incompetence that emerges when people in power have no accountability. So that's basically the system in Finland and would explain why Finland has more large scale corruption compared to its peers, to the extent now of "un-developing" and sinking in all the development rankings.
Unfortunately, Finnish culture is also ideal for large scale corruption as there is a near universal and unlimited acquiescence to authority in Finland. Basically imagine if Nazis (which most Finns were extremely sympathetic to the Nazi ideology of their ally in WWII) found themselves in a democracy. For most Finns questioning authority is taboo, doesn't matter the evidence. The more evidence the more taboo in fact.
And the reason for comes down again to racism. Finns are incredibly racist, don't hesitate to call black people "niggers" in Finnish, and police beat down on immigrants and therefore most Finns simply tolerate, mostly deeply love, the system of corruption and second-class citizenry that enable the police to harass immigrants. Even if the average Finn wanted to put an end to police corruption, there's no direct way to do it as there's essentially no democratic oversight of police, prosecutors or judges in Finland. So a combination of most Finns wanting corruption, as long as it doesn't target them and instead harasses immigrants, and there being no mechanism of democratic oversight anyways, makes the country vulnerable to being essentially entirely captured by organized crime. So it's a "careful what you wish for" kind of situation in that decades of cheering on police corruption against immigrants has now led to large scale systemic corruption and the eroding of the mechanisms of government and institutions that provided the white population a good quality of life to begin with and the whole reason immigrants are not welcome here.
And this is not an exaggeration; every once in a while police go too far in their white supremacy and get caught being involved in literal neo-Nazi organizations, which is not because the justice system isn't a white supremacists organization as a whole dedicated to Himmler's vision of society, but because police are supposed to be a bit smarter than literally dressing up as Nazis. However, with few exceptions all Finnish police would dress up like Nazis if they could.
And when you have a police force nearly entirely dedicated to racism and organized crime, they easily dispatch with the career of anyone (politician, journalists, etc.) that would frustrate their organized crime and racist activities, and they can also easily compromise fully their allies (mostly by supplying child rape slaves to key elites).
Which to tie everything together, this new phase of corruption is worse than what we had before due to the development of the child rape slave industry. For, with drugs, you could easily compromise (and then boost the careers of) key politicians, prosecutors, judges, police, journalists, with drugs, but there's a sort of natural limit to the corruption a normal person would engage proportional to the nature of the extortion. So, a sort of "average" person, for lack of a better word, who knows organized crime has images of him or her snorting cocaine, is going to go along with a lot of corruption due to that extortion (and also donations to their campaign funds) but there will be a limit. Contracts to one business rather than another, sure, why not, but the line maybe drawn with covering up murder or then abducting and raping children. Normal people will have some limit to the corruption they'll enable simply to hide drug use, afterwhich they may simply quit or worse start exposing the corruption as an insider, as you can recover from drug use by "going to rebab" and realizing some things (even in the decades when it was far more stigmatized than today).
However, no one recovers career wise from raping children, there's no "child rape rehab" after which you can go on talk shows and hit rock bottom and then had to turn your life around to fawning attention (due to being male and white of course, and obviously going to jail was never a possibility), therefore it is the ideal corrupting activity.
The whole reason a few (of hundreds out there) of these elite child rape networks have been exposed is because it's not pervasive part of Western governance and there is going to be a few cases that happen to get exposed (then the system learns how to avoid that happening again) due to random chance as well as due to infighting between these corrupt networks (at some point the extortion gets used in such a corrupt system).
Why things seem now at another level of corruption tracks entirely with the growth of the child-rape industry, as people compromised by child rape have no natural limit. "Quitting and going to rehab" is not an option; they can be extorted to stay exactly where they are and also keep taking promotions; and likewise there is no limit to the corruption such as person will engage in, including obviously child rape itself.
Analysts have noticed, and questioned without being able to see the obvious answer, that everything has become really stupid, that there's not even an attempt to try to make obvious corruption make any sense, and there's also zero accountability: journalists, police, prosecutors, judges, politicians, literally zero mechanisms of accountability left in the system.
One final note, it's not that the average person can easily be compromised with drugs or raping a child, but it's a combination of sufficient people can and then the obstacles in their way can be removed. Once you corrupt police and prosecutors you can just make up fake cases against the people that represent some accountability in the system (wherever they are), destroy their careers.
These "big" corrupt moves are in the context of a system that is also corrupting overtime that makes all the decisions in the system vulnerable to influence. For example, a lot of large corrupt outcomes are due to a series of seemingly insignificant corrupt decisions due simply to pressure; in particular the career advancement of people who are 100% compromised is going to depend on a long series of smaller decisions. Those decisions can be directly influenced by various forms of pressure which the target may not even realize is corrupt (such as just spreading rumours and then going and confiding that the alternatives have been accused of this or that, you know "you've heard things"), in addition to things entirely outside the system such as letting corrupt police you're invested in make the odd drug bust or solve some robbery, then they appear like geniuses.
Once corrupt people advance to the top, without top-down accountability and without even trying to hire competent people of integrity, these systems quickly thoroughly corrupt anyways and idiots start doing all sorts of corrupt things all by themselves (plant evidence to catch "who they know are guilty", or taking a little bit of entirely deserved repayment for fabricated expenses, and just doing favours for friends and so on), and this pervasive corruption then makes small forms of corruption even easier as spreading a rumour has limited affect on non-corrupt critical thinkers (may still bias them, but is of limited corrupting influence) but implying knowledge and evidence of some corruption people chose to do all by themselves has a very large corrupting influence.
So, it's not a case where you need literally the whole government to rape children on camera, you just need maybe a dozen key people to do so (whether "tricked" into thing the child was older or just into raping children) and then move those people into bottleneck positions. For any corruption case to go forward in a country may require 1 of as few as 6 people, so as long as those 6 people have raped children or been involved in covering it up, then you essentially control the entire country (the only other weaknesses being the legacy media, but they can be corrupted too and even more easily as you can just buy these institutions with laundered money and aligned "legitimate" business allies, and put your people in charge).
It is extremely disturbing, and unfortunately people don't want to see the evidence for it.
One additional note that I forgot to mention is that our Western political systems were intentionally designed to ensure the corrupting influence of the wealthy elite.
The wealthy elites who designed liberal democracies didn't want the monarchies and feudal system of aristocratic rights (that they no longer saw a reason for and just stood in the way of business) and to overthrow feudalism they needed the support of the people and revolution in the name of the people ... but they didn't exactly want the common people to have any actual power.
Liberal democracies therefore were designed by wealthy elites to serve the interests of wealthy elites, but they of course viewed themselves as honourable and rational and that they would "do good" with power over governance (same exact thing kings and aristocrats believed before), but of course a system in which wealth has the most power is naturally vulnerable to the power of illicit wealth.
Illicit wealth also naturally corrupts the entire business community without really needing "to do" much actual corruption other than invest illicit money that's been cleaned and have your people sit on corporate boards as part of the investment package. Most business people are naturally easily corrupted by simply offering them what they want.
So there's lots of vectors of corruption, both big and small, and the best way to visualize it as all summing to a sort of corrupt pressure that reaches a tipping point and the whole system switches over into a corrupt mode in which even the corruption that is uncovered there is no accountability, after which it's a point of essentially no return until the system collapses.
Just to add a couple of key points.
The system of corruption is not planned in any coherent sense, but it's mostly reactive. There's this large illicit capital base that invests in actions (including careers of key people) to both avoid accountability and keeping the money flowing. The people who control this capital are not necessary allies but their interests are aligned in making sure money is easy to launder and there's never any real investigation into how billions of dollars are moved through the financial and corporate system without almost any being found.
So, when there's a threat the corrupt network of people either purposefully benefitting (think attorney who's business is washing money) or then people who are compromised, one way or another, and realize any actual impartial investigation would reveal their part in the corruption as well.
With time either organized crime would be mostly "dealt with" and go away or then all threats to illicit capital will be removed. Once you get rid of one nuisance prosecutor or judge it's even easier to ensure they aren't replaced with anyone more of a nuisance; indeed, most people are cowards anyways and won't "make waves" so just the process of getting rid of the nuisances will result in a compliant system anyways.
The system is not stable with large illicit funds.
It's also immensely profitable to corrupt the government ... it's not even really a tax on illicit capital, as once the government is compromised to ensure the safety of illicit cash flows, the same system of corruption can be used to embezzle government funds.
Even better, a corrupt government can be manipulated into war, which is the most profitable conditions for organized crime: allowing vulnerable children without fathers to be even more easily kidnapped and sold into the child-rape industry as well as endless cash and weapon systems to "go missing" in the fog of war.I
It's simply commonly accepted fact that half the money sent to Ukraine is stolen and laundered as well as a large proportion of the arms sent to Ukraine. When the Western media deals with this issue it's simply shrugged off as a cost of doing business if we want our war.
The Ukraine war is both one of the most profitable events in the history of organized crime as well as supercharging corruption and organized crime in Europe.
From the outset European governments know Ukraine is going to lose (that the West is not going to risk escalation with Russia, so the only available policy is prop up Ukraine until is loses), knows propping up Ukraine and encouraging their no-diplomacy position will result in hundreds of thousands dead, know sending money and arms to the most corrupt country in Europe and number 1 in the world in illegal arms trafficking even before the war is just pouring tax payer wealth directly into the most ruthless organized crime networks on the planet, know there will child abductions and organ harvesting on a large scale, knows literal organized crime Nazi groups need to be armed and financed in order to prop up Zelensky, and that all this is at the immense harm to European economies.
So what's a better explanation? That policies ideal for organized crime and that don't accomplish anything else except politicians weakening their own countries and harming their own population, are due to politicians just suddenly having the statecraft acumen of toddlers and "Putin meanie" is the absolute extent of their diplomatic skill now, or that these politicians work in the interest of organized crime, and none of the money sent to Ukraine and then laundered is found because law enforcement also works for organized crime?
Point being, the evidence for regulatory capture by organized crime is extremely obvious and abundant and offers the best explanatory theory of the policies we see as well as what we don't see (it's simply admitted as a "necessary evil" that a lot, if not most, of the money sent to Ukraine will be stolen by Ukrainian elites because they are obviously super corrupt ... so why not any policies to try to mitigate that? Or then mitigate the weapon being stolen and sold on the black market? Or the to mitigate the child-rape industry? Etc.).
One pretty good heuristic for systemic corruption in an organization (private or government) is increase in debt levels.
Corrupt people do not think about the future and simply takin on debt is the easiest way to satisfy all corrupt stakeholders and avoid inter-corrupt competition.
Consider Finland's national debt growth (Directly from the Finnish government debt page):
Compared to Finland's most direct peer that is Sweden (also direct from their government page on national debt):
Notably, Sweden is a lot less racist than Finland, so this difference in debt outcomes is compatible with racism being a core driver of law-enforcement and political corruption.
Of course increases in debt is not only caused by corruption, so there would be a lot to discuss, but it is one feature shared by all countries with corruption problems that debt increases. Corrupt people generally don't moonlight as brilliant financial planners.