What's going on in Russia

[CPK]

1 hour ago, Salomons Cat said:

I think that it does, because it is not rational and it is not wise; we should not have called ourselves sapiens. Humans all have the same enemies: Aging, cancer, diabetes, frailty, earthquakes, one day a meteorite will hit the earth, later the moon will collide with the earth, the sun will explode and the universe will ultimately implode or evaporize.

But instead of trying to solve these problems, we kill each other and waste resources and time because of tiny square metres of land that we don't need. Russia is big enough anyways, China is also big enough. Even Liechtenstein (where I grew up) is big enough as a country. If this is our nature and we cannot overcome it by rational thinking then we have no future in the long term.
 

 

I agree, clear rational thinking can go a long way in helping mitigate the worst effects of our humanity, but it can't ultimately cure it.

Human nature is inherently selfish, and will tend to put the interests of the self ahead of anyone or anything else, including the good of society as a whole. We're not forced to act this way, there have been great acts of selfless heroism, but that is not the default setting - for you, me, Putin, anyone.

[JeandAcre]

3 hours ago, CPK said:

Brains - primitive or otherwise - have nothing to do with it. The problem is human nature. Technology, or higher intelligence, cannot and never will solve that problem; it only magnifies it.

@CPK, you nailed it.  The species will keep right on advancing technologically; the real problem is always going to be how it's used.  To someone else's point (dang, now I can't find the post), we're only the ostensibly most intelligent species of mammals on the planet.  That's what we still are.

To your earlier point, thank you, replacing one fascist regime with another, only especially by violent means, isn't likely to solve, um, very much.  At the moment, this is only the most glaring example of the effectively total disconnect, never mind dissonance, between the technology, and the politicians who are falling over themselves to implement it ...in nefarious ways.