The Human Virtue

[Starbuck_Jones]

The human virtue. Over the last while or so, I’ve put a few brain cells to work on some minor personal philosophy. I am sure none of it is original and someone more famous than me has put it on paper long before I was born, but I’m going to share anyway.
Americas culture; what is it? This is something that came up a week or two ago in a discussion. When I look at other cultures, I can point out and describe or show say a 4th grader what that culture is and what it’s about. You can look and point out something that is Japanese, or Italian, French, and Australian. But how would you describe the American culture to a 4th grader from America, or even another country? It kinda bugs me that I could describe another culture better than I could my own. I think that the USA has become so homogenized that there is no culture. If I absolutely had to pick something it would be warfare, we build and sell more weapons than anyone, got to war more and it’s all you see in the news. Being such a blend of cultures has its strong points that everyone gets to learn about as they go through school. But I think it has alienated us from the rest of the world as well as each other.

When I see groups of people who migrated to the US and they retain their culture it stands out. A lot of people don’t like this and that’s another debate for a different time (immigration legal or not). It saddens me to see that a virtue we say is important to us is only a two faced lie. Tolerance.


There are lists of virtues out there that you can look up, I personally like the 8 from the old Ultima games, the 3 theological virtues and 4 cardinal virtues are good examples as well. But it’s all a fairy tale. There is no happily ever after and I wonder what the world would be like when people stop living the lie. Im not trying to say that we should ignore virtues or stop trying to follow our own faiths and beliefs, so don’t take it that way. First is marriage, the whole mate for life thing is such a fraud. No animal on earth, humans included, “mate for life” or go into some sort of romantic mourning if the mate dies. It is a total fallacy. Yes I know there are examples out there of high school lovers growing old and dying together in their 90’s and stuff, but those one in a million exceptions are not the norm and im not going to argue about the 0.1% of things that are exceptions, I’m talking majority here. Now, most people at some point get married in their life time. Like 80-90% of us and depending on where you read anywhere from 30-60% of those end in a true divorce and I can’t find a reliable or consistent source for people who are still married, but separated and how many of these numbers are just the same people going through the motions again and again.

Anyway my point is, humans are not monogamous creatures. There seems to be some sort of fantasy that God or whatever will bring the right person along when the time is right. If you live in your parents’ basement, the only way a girl is showing up is if you pay one. Humans do the most evil things to each other on a daily basis. From war and murder, to psychological and physical abuse, there doesn’t seem to be any limit to it. People will come up with any excuse as well to inflict this pain on other people as well. I’m not firing you from your job, the company is. The new cyber bullying that’s been in the news a bit like people hating on others through myspace and other social networking avenues.

I just can’t seem to put my finger on it. It’s like there is this ugly foundation of lies and ignorance that we all walk around on and ignore. That most people we see and meet are just these fake shells that try to portray what they want other people to perceive them as. The sanctuaries are out there where people are real with each other, but they seem too few and far between.

[mmcookies]

Well, that all depends on how old are you?
(edit: nm it says you're 30 in your profile)

If you really want to be pessimistic about it, study a bit of world history, ancient and modern, and see how it's like a bad daytime soap opera -- different people, different places, different circumstances, same f'ing story, with the same f'ing "surprise ending that nobody could see coming."

Ask yourself whether you can honestly blame the individuals involved in each of these circumstances, or perhaps they're merely indicative of a systemic fault that humans are unable to escape from?

[sixzandsevenz]

Not too many people can take an honest look at humanity and see the truth that you see.

You'll appreciate this,

What's the difference between a Coal Miner and a Psychiatrist?

The Psychiatrist digs down deeper and comes up dirtier.

[heffner]

Of course Americans have a culture. Culture encompasses many things from religion to food to language. It's just a big country with many regional variations [which most countries have]. I am sure how you describe Japanese, Italian or X culture is the same way they describe Americans.

Also, there are definitely examples of animals mating for life. Monogamy isn't exclusive to humans. There are good reasons for this too, which I am sure you can figure out.

I would have to agree that there are a lot of selfish and greedy people out there, but I bet most are not. It's not like the world is in total anarchy.

[Moorea]

Wall of text crits moorea...

[shaeman]

If you look for ugliness, duplicity, character flaws,mistrust, violence and negativity that is all you will find.

Instead look for beauty, intelligence, compassion, friendliness - there is plenty around.

[Bigfish]

I think that the USA has become so homogenized that there is no culture.

No offense, but that's a very ethnocentric point of view. Of course we have culture. It is just difficult for us to see ourselves because to us, it's all normal.

[Kel]

It's probably much easier to define a culture other than your own because you can do so in a much more stereotypical way. If you asked a Japanese or Australian person to sum up their culture to a child they would probably have quite a lot of difficulty with it as well. People tend to see members of their own group as more individual (or unique/diverse) than people of other groups, people in other groups get lumped together as 'them' and 'they' have particular noticeable features which make them different from 'us'. Being outside a culture I think it is difficult to understand the different nuances within that culture, also western culture is not the only one that adapts and changes with outside influence. The idea of culture as a static thing is also rather naive, again as with other cultures we look at our historical culture from a simplistic point of view. It's easier to focus on the dominant discourse (for want of a better word) or the time, rather than to look at the variations and influences on that historic culture over time.

Regarding all the awful things that humans do to each other, I think it's too easy because we've evolved in a way that has let us advance to technological and ,in a way, intellectual supremacy to think that 'humans' are much better than other creatures. We had certain traits (opposable thumbs :P) that lead to an opportunity for us to develop, when the right motivation presented itself, more than other animals (this is highly simplified of course and not based on any sort of scientific evidence, but I do believe that humans at the start weren't destined to be special and that other creatures with the right catalyst could have developed into the dominant species instead. Some members of the crow family and also chimpanzees have shown tool use for problem solving, but given the status of humans they would never have the chance to develop that into what we have now). Our society is something which has been developing from animalistic roots and is something that will always be developing, territorial fights are not uncommon in the animal world and whilst I've heard that animals generally don't kill others of their species, given how numerous humans are it's probably not that surprising that we can (as on a species level the deaths of members of the species will not impact it's future survival adversely **discalimer** I am in no way, shape or form condoning murder of anybody for any purpose, merely pointing out that as a species you can see why we might have this behaviour when other animals do not).

The values (or virtues if you prefer) that our society has developed (remember also that not all cultures are monogamous) can broadly be seen to either a) cater to the survival of the species as a whole and/or b) to further the interests of those in power, the origins of our cultural values are too complicated for me to understand/find out and probably would take far too long to be written here (and then contested by people with another interpretation of it and so on). Bottom line is we have certain ideals which are aspired to (attractiveness, wealth, monogamy and so on) and which we need to confirm to to some extent to fit in well in society. I don't see the idea of 'mate for life' as a lie, more as an aspiration which many people may never achieve but which we still value as a society. But it's not something set in stone, with seperations becoming more common we are getting more realistic expectations for relationships in the world we are living in at the moment. Also bear in mind that a changing rate of divorce doesn't mean that people are any less happy in their relationships, it may just reflect that divorce has become a more acceptable thing and the stakes aren't so high (back when men owned all of a womans property once they married and had sole rights for childcare I'm pretty sure there weren't many divorces, I'm also pretty sure that not all marraiges were happy).

We are social creatures, a solo human doesn't really have great odds compared to other creatures when left alone, you could argue that with the technology we have a human could survive perfectly well, but that technology was developed collectively, not by one individual. Not being 'real' with each other is one reflection of the way in which people adapt to try and fit in with the rest of society and also to gain greater power within it. It is, perhaps, a negative impact of people trying to conform to societal norms, that being said if everyone was completely honest with each other it doesn't mean that the world would be a better place.

[Kromtor]

No animal on earth, humans included, “mate for life” or go into some sort of romantic mourning if the mate dies.

If you take a look at this list of animals that mate for life you'll find a very important species:
http://www.wonderquest.com/animal-mate-for-life.htm

The bald fucking eagle. *salutes the flag*

[Kaynin]

Just some points.

Culture is developped over the centuries.

With all due respect, the US is one of the youngest countries in the world. I wouldn't say they lack culture. Their culture is just fresh and new. And Because it is fresh and new, it doesn't 'look' like culture. It's all still... new..

There's some cultural highlights I can point out on the fly though. Las Vegas for example. American Football is a culture, despite it's based on another sport abroad, but hey, you're only 4 centuries old. That's not a helluva lot of time to develop new games. :P In that regard, most things considered culture in older countries/areas where civilization has lasted much longer. Obviously have more cultural ighlights.


Don't forget Native Americans have a VERY broad, intreresting and remarkable culture that's often not considered as well.


And now some on topic then...

"Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked
than it is loved by the good."

That's all I got to say about it. :P